Then you, my friend, are ready for The Mighty Nein.
No that is not a typo.
The Mighty Nein is the name of a rag tag adventuring group, conceived of during a live-play of Dungeons & Dragons, by the amazing team at Critical Role. Why Nein? I’m not going to spoil that reveal for you, but what I am going to do is tell you that if you like fantasy adventure begins with your friends beside you, that has magic and cunning, big monsters incoming, and inspiration that helps you overcome impossible odds, then don’t think twice, roll the dice!
For anyone who watched the live-play, yeah.
Didn’t You Already Write About This?
You’re probably thinking about The Legend of Vox Machina, a disparate group of shit-heads who become the heroes of their world (Exandria), defeat dragons, and oh yeah, have a bunch of queers running around everywhere.
This story takes place on the same world, but with different people. On a separate continent, a grubby wizard, a drunk goblin, a shipwrecked sailor with a dubious accent, a temperamental monk, a cocky ringmaster, and a teifling who is chaos incarnate running around trying to save the world.
Now if you just counted on your fingers and said “Hang on, that’s six, why are they called the Mighty Nein?” then you’re already one foot in the door for this capricious adventure filled with talent.
Not only are the main characters voiced by a troupe of experienced, nerdy-ass voice actors, the recurring and guests have some insanely talented people. Guest stars in Season 1 include Anjelica Huston, Lucy Liu, Nathan Fillion, T’Nia Miller, Felicia Day, Graham McTavish, Ivanna Sakhno, Mark Strong, Alan Cumming, Tim McGraw, Anika Noni Rose, Ming-Na Wen, Auli’i Cravalho, Rahul Kohli, Robbie Daymond and Jonathan Frakes.
Is This Going to Be Too In-Jokey?
They say not. Unlike The Legend of Vox Machina, which was a lot to come in to and felt oddly structured, The Mighty Nein TV show has been carefully crafted to be separate from the show. See, as much as I loved TLoVM, it was hard to get into because you kind ofodid need to know a bit about how things worked. It also followed the plot of the tabletop game, more or lesso
By all accounts, The Might Nein has been written to not be as true to source. This is great news for fans of the grumpy barbarian (not seen in the trailer). One of the main characters, played by Ashley Johnson of Blindspot, was working in NYC when the live episodes were being taped. We never really got to know enough about her character because of that. Not only will she be more involved in the group, she’ll get more story of her own, which is going to be amazing.
But to do that, it pretty much required they do some major edits to the storyline, which will make this series outstanding for new and old fans alike.
Now, to be fair here, they did a lot of rewriting of plot in TLoVM to help it move along. That said, it still remained pretty true to form. Ashley’s character on the first series (Pike Trickfoot, the cleric) went off on her own a lot for the same reason as her barbarian: she had a job! But the missing live play sessions felt far more pronounced for the barbarian.
What’s Queer About It?
What’s queer about the Mighty Nein? More like what isn’t queer! We’ve got non-binary characters, lesbians, polyamory, throuples and more! Four of the main characters are profoundly queer (possibly five depending on what they change and if the character I’m thinking of shows up … “Help! It’s again!”). One of the main ‘antagonists’ is queer (they’re not really a bad-guy but they are working against the Nein for a bit).
And, more to the point for this website, there is a canonical same-sex pairing amongst the regulars.
So basically … yeah, this is hella damn queer.
Sounds Great! When Do I Watch?
November 19th, on Amazon Prime Video, worldwide.
Oh, and a word of warning, this is adult animation. While there were aspects of TLoVM that were iffy for kids, most of The Mighty Nein is going to be darker. We’re talking murder dark, and some characters with serious issues. If you’re worried at all for younger humans in your life, give it a pre-watch. I’m not the best judge of this, my parents let me watch things way earlier.
About Mika A. Epstein
