#Legend of vox machina season 2 series
#Legend of vox machina season 2 tv

Aided by his friends’ timely arrival, Grog manages to cripple one of Kevdak’s arms, but the half-giant simply tears the ruined limb off in a bit of badassery that boosts the Herd’s morale. Unfortunately, the subsequent fight scene is scored to some truly incorrigible butt rock, which is a shame because the fight is a good showcase for how powerful Vox Machina has gotten. It’s maybe the coolest the group has ever looked. Vex, Vax, Percy, and Keyleth - having been informed of their party members’ location upon their return to Whitestone from the Fey Realm - silently gather on the rooftops to prepare an ambush just in time. Grog has been bested, but luckily he has more friends than just the hostages Pike and Scanlan. He’s also buff as hell once more as he taps into that berserker barbarian rage and gets all his muscle back, evening the odds in his duel with Kevdak … until his uncle activates the Titanstone Knuckles and grows even huger. Now, did we need to have Grog explicitly say, “My strength comes from my friends,” when he sees a vision of Earthbreaker Groon and finally realizes the answer to that very obvious question? I’ll give this one a pass because, again, Grog is kind of simple. Things go from bad to worse when some of the half-giants discover Scanlan, Pike, and Kaylee, and Grog finds himself impaled on a wooden-spiked barricade (maybe the most gruesome injury in the show so far?) while Kevdak threatens to crush Pike in front of him.

This whole season, TLOVM has been really good at depicting one-sided battles (the Chroma Conclave’s first assault, Earthbreaker Groon beating Grog, Umbrasyl’s surprise attack on Kamaljiori’s lair), and the start of Kevdak’s utter thrashing of Grog is no different. Grog didn’t have a weapon but gamely stepped up to face his uncle in unarmed combat to the death. If at the end of episode nine, you thought Grog had a plan when his puny self challenged Kevdak for leadership of the Herd of Storms … you were mistaken. So Legend of Vox Machina ends its sophomore season on a somewhat unsatisfactory note despite some remarkable highlights and a trip into a dragon’s rectum.

#Legend of vox machina season 2 tv

The TV show didn’t need to devote hundreds of hours to Vax’s acceptance of the Matron of Ravens, but a little more would’ve gone a long way. Sometimes it works - the trips to Vasselheim and the Fey Realm took a lot longer in Critical Role but felt complete in the show - but other times, as in the final three episodes of season two, you can sense how rushed the plot developments are.

#Legend of vox machina season 2 series

Still, that’s a lot of D&D content, and the TV series naturally trims and compresses it to fit what would have been dozens and dozens of hours’ worth of stories into a tight 12-episode season. Granted, part of that is intros and ad reads, and a hefty chunk of the run time can be chalked up to how much longer it takes to play out combat in Dungeons & Dragons (a lot of time-consuming adding and rolling of dice) compared with TLOVM’s slick animated fight sequences. The first Critical Role campaign that The Legend of Vox Machina is based on is 115 episodes long and has a total run time of almost 450 hours.

Photo: Vulture Photo: Courtesy of Prime Video