Stars and executive producers Travis Willingham and Sam Riegel join showrunner Tasha Huo for an exclusive premiere postmortem with EW.

The Mighty Nein exclusive premiere breakdown: Stars unpack key campaign changes, Yasha’s intro, and more

Stars and executive producers Travis Willingham and Sam Riegel join showrunner Tasha Huo for an exclusive premiere postmortem with EW.

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in *Vanity Fair*, Vulture, IGN, and more.

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November 19, 2025 12:00 p.m. ET

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'The Mighty Nein'. Credit:

Courtesy of Prime Video

- Key members of *The Mighty Nein* break down the big reveals of the three-episode premiere.

- Travis Willingham and Sam Riegel explain how they settled on Caleb, Nott, and Beau as the three main characters to kick off the season.

- Tasha on Yasha: Showrunner Tasha Huo explains how they found the right introduction for Ashley Johnson's character.

*The Mighty Nein* gets a fresh start.

The new Amazon animated fantasy series, set in the same world of Exandria (but not the same time period) as *The Legend of Vox Machina*, brings to life Critical Role's second tabletop campaign, about a disparate group of misfit characters thrust together on a kingdom-shaking mission that impacts the entire continent of Wildemount. The TV adaptation, however, does not begin in the same way.

The campaign began at a certain traveling carnival (later featured on the show in episode 3), where most of our heroes meet for the first time through a series of interconnected events. *The Mighty Nein*, the show, places the starting point of the adventure much sooner, choosing instead to visit individual pairings of characters first before they come together as a group.

The tormented fire mage Caleb Wildogast (Liam O’Brien), alcoholic goblin girl Nott the Brave (Sam Riegel), and adept monk Beauregard "Beau" Lionett (Marisha Ray) become the starter pack of main characters guiding the rest into this saga.

Riegel, who also serves as an executive producer on *The Mighty Nein*, joins fellow cast member and EP Travis Willingham (voicing shipwrecked half-orc sailor Fjord Stone) as well as showrunner Tasha Huo for an exclusive premiere breakdown of the first three episodes with **. They discuss major changes from the campaign, expanded backstories, key moments, and what’s ahead.

Nott the Brave (Sam Riegel) and Caleb Widogast (Liam O'Brien) on 'The Mighty Nein'.

Courtesy of Prime Video

The team did a fair amount of brainstorming to figure out where to start the saga. In *Dungeons & Dragons*-speak, Willingham says they took a "session 0" approach to offer established Critical Role fans more backstory to their favorite characters. (For anyone not fluent in tabletop role-playing, session 0 refers to a planning stage with the Dungeon Master in charge of the campaign and all the players to establish the groundwork.)

"In discussing it, one character that just has a real sense of magnetism around him for the Mighty Nein has always been Caleb," Willingham recalls. "There's not an award given for the most traumatic backstory, but if there was, Caleb is certainly a very strong contender."

According to Willingham, Caleb helps the audience understand that these characters are "literally in the gutters" of this world, while Riegel points to the importance of his relationship with Nott. It's symbolic, Riegel adds, "of a lot of the other relationships that we're gonna see: two broken people finding each other."**

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The team admits they really could've started* The Mighty Nein* from any character POV. Huo mentions they considered Mollymauk "Molly" Tealeaf, the horned, purple-skinned carnival tarot reader (Taliesin Jaffe), since Molly and his traveling carnival become a key meeting point for the group (as seen in episode 3). What ultimately answered their question was the beacon.

That's where Beau, whom Willingham describes as "just abs and a halter top," comes in. The monk from the order of the Cobalt Soul is in *True Detective* mode, unraveling a mystery directly tied to the stolen item. "We just felt it lended a really strong baseline for what you could expect in this world, especially coming off of an intro to the episode that feels so fantastical and enormous," Willingham adds.

Beauregard Lionett (Marisha Ray) on 'The Mighty Nein'.

Courtesy of Prime Video

"At one point there was a pitch — I don't know how seriously it was taken — to start the series with a narrator or a history-book-type of a beginning to say, 'Welcome to the world of Exandria,'" Riegel reveals. "We dismissed that pretty early on because we trust our audience. We know that they're gonna be asking all those questions, and we trust them enough to follow along with us and learn as they go."

More “Hot Boy Essek”

Essek (Matthew Mercer) and Ikithon (Mark Strong) on 'The Mighty Nein'.

Courtesy of Prime Video

The *Mighty Nein* team long teased how the show will expand on the story of Essek Thelyss, the morally complex (and noticeably handsome) elf wizard from the Kryn Dynasty (hence the "Hot Boy" nickname). We get those changes in this three-part premiere.

Essek, voiced by Critical Role's Dungeon Master, Matthew Mercer, helped Ikithon steal the Luxon beacon, and together they are using it to change the course of both their kingdoms. We learn early on how the brooding bad boy's motivations are tied to his mother, who's afflicted by a neurodegenerative disease that, if discovered by the Kryn, would result in her execution.

"The show ends up being about the geopolitics of this entire area of the world, and to do that, we have to show both sides of the story," Huo explains. "Matt Mercer's setup in creating Exandria is that there's no good guys, there's no bad guys. Every side has a story, every side has something they're fighting for that's deeply personal. We knew we wanted to dip behind that curtain and see the Dynasty very early on so that, when it all does blow up eventually sometime in the future, we understand why."

A fan of the original *Mighty Nein* Critical Role campaign, Huo was fascinated by the Essek we come to know by the end of that story. The show became an opportunity to explore not just the origins of a villain, but the origins of that future Essek. (No spoilers.) "He was so, so isolated, so afraid to be around people, to trust people. And then the Mighty Nein just completely breaks him open," she says.

Yasha (Ashley Johnson) on 'The Mighty Nein'.

Yes, Yasha is indeed coming, though perhaps not in the way some fans would expect.

The Ashley Johnson-voiced barbarian and roving mercenary shows up in the cliffhanger ending to the first episode as a ferocious fighter also in search of the missing beacon. Then she disappears for the majority of this three-part premiere.

"We definitely talked a lot about where to put in Yasha, especially once we figured out we wanted to start with these individual stories and build to the Mighty Nein forming," Huo explains. "It became a puzzle because, of course, in the [original] live show, she's already there with Molly and they've been friends for a while and they have a little bit of a history. Once we started breaking those stories, we were doing ourselves and the audience a disservice by just ignoring a lot of backstory for Yasha and just assuming she's there and friends with Molly already."

The story of Yasha in the Critical Role campaign is well known among initiates. Johnson was traveling back and forth between her home in Los Angeles and the New York City set of NBC's *Blindspot* while the troupe recorded their livestream. Mercer worked with Johnson to find creative ways for the character to dip in and out as needed. Now with the TV adaptation, it's a different story — literally.

"There's so much richness in her backstory that we don't get in the live show," Huo continues. "We get a lot of it in the comic book or little hints and clues along the way when Ashley was gone [in the campaign] that Matt was serving up. So it felt like now's the time to really dig into that backstory and give her the strength of backstory and foundation that we didn't get to give her other places."

Unseen patrons

Jester (Laura Bailey) on 'The Mighty Nein'.

Courtesy of Prime Video

If Caleb and Nott are symbolically paired as two broken characters finding each other, Fjord and Jester share the common bond of having invisible deities backing them. When it comes to the latter, it's yet to be determined if the so-called Traveler is real or just a figment of Jester's wild imagination.

Critical Role fans already know the answer to this, but even Huo admits she wasn't sure either way when watching the original campaign. "Early on in the writers' room, we were all like, 'I guess we have to tell the audience whether the Traveler is real or not at some point,'" Riegel admits. "What better way to do that than by delaying it as much as possible?" The audience, he confirms, will find out at the same time as the Mighty Nein.

Fjord's patron is much more obviously real. Some leviathan with a glowing yellow eye from beneath the ocean's depths saved the half-orc from certain death in the middle of the sea and bestowed on him magical powers. To what end? We'll find out soon enough.

"What *can* we say other than he's got some very base, dulcet tones that are obviously speaking in very unnerving ways," Willingham teases. "And there seem to be a lot of eye imagery."

For now, this entity is part of how the cast and crew are painting the much larger picture of the mythology to Exandria. On top of the Kryn Dynasty and Dwendalian Empire, there are these patron entities that happen to be sources of great magic. "They don't all seem to have benevolent intentions," Willingham says. "We're hopefully setting up a bunch of question marks that folks will want answers to."

Hidden Matt Mercer (& Co.)

Fjord (Travis Willingham) and Jester (Laura Bailey) on 'The Mighty Nein'.

Courtesy of Prime Video

The "Hidden Matt Mercer" trend definitely continues on *The Mighty Nein*, i.e. Critical Role's Dungeon Master voicing various background roles on the show, as he did on *The Legend of Vox Machina*. According to the ending scroll of each installment, Mercer voices Dain in episode 1; Essek, Bluud, and Uk'otoa in episode 2; and "Mascot Bear" in episode 3.

"I'll also say this: There are *tons* of background roles that are just not credited because the credits would become a jumbled mess of letters and words," Riegel points out. "If we included them all, it would be Matt Mercer as 24 different characters in an episode."

But it's not just Mercer with the hidden roles. The core *Mighty Nein* crew, as well as the extended Critical Role family, play their part in voicing various one-off characters.

Willingham voices Ikithon's test subject (E1), while Riegel's son, Maximus, voices "Bird Kid" and "Scared Boy" (E3). Since Yasha's big moments are yet to come, Johnson first voices "Dancer" (E1) and "Unicycle Clown" (E3). Then there are folks like Yuri Lowenthal, a well-known voice actor in the biz (Peter Parker in Marvel's *Spider-Man* video games) and a pal of Critical Role, who voices a teen bully (E1).

Liam O'Brien voices Caleb on 'The Mighty Nein'.

Courtesy of Prime Video

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"God bless Yuri Lowenthal for playing a tiny, tiny role in the first episode, but he was so happy to do it and we were so happy that we could involve our friends in that kind of stuff," Riegel says.

Here's how most of those voice cameos came together: For the first pass, it's just the principal Critical Role folks recording audio. They all voice their own characters, but also other minor roles if their *Mighty Nein* players aren't in a particular episode.

"The cast of Critical Role is each other's best cheerleader and harshest critic, and we can always make each other do better when we're together," Riegel says. "So we do a lot of scratch [temporary recording] for the show with all of us playing soldiers or bad guys. Sometimes I do the scratch for Trent Ikithon, which is real bad."

As the team enters the editing and mixing stages, they often become more and more used to the scratch records. "We end up just leaving in whoever fits," he says. "So that's why there's a lot of us peppered around in the background."**

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