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Critical Role’s Mighty Nein campaign is being adapted into an animated series, and look, if you’re here reading this, you already know that. But what you probably don’t know is that the campaign’s story will actually be expanded into the Prime Video animated saga; in particular, the antagonist magical sect the Volstrucker will play a larger part.

The news comes out of the Critical Role panel held at San Diego Comic Com 2025, attended by cast members Matthew Mercer, Travis Willingham, Sam Riegel, Liam O'Brien, Ashley Johnson, Taliesin Jaffe, Marisha Ray, and Laura Bailey. 

“Something we've always loved to do with these adaptations,” said Willingham of the upcoming series, “Is spend as much time with our antagonists as our protagonists. So we’ve got some individuals with some markings on their forearms for those in the know [...] we should talk about who those folks are.”

Which is exactly what Sam Riegel did.

“For those who don't know,” Riegel explained, “Those are the Volstrucker. They're kind of like wizard assassins, and they play a big part in season 1. […] They’re stealing an artifact that has the ability to start a war, or save the world, or do all sorts of things. And we'll find out more about that thing, The Beacon, as the season goes on. Like Travis was saying, we get to explore stuff that just didn't happen in the campaign, with people we didn't see in the campaign, which is so exciting for us and for new audiences to be seeing something for the first time.”

And because we are talking about a visual medium, one of the biggest things we’ll be getting from these baddies that we didn’t on the liveplay campaign is what they actually look like.

“It's one of my favorite parts about these collaborations,” said Matt Mercer, “Is going to talk to the art team and storybook artists and be like, ‘This is how I thought this would go, and I thought this could happen, and we could do this thing.’ And they're just like, ‘Bet.’ And they do it so much cooler than I could have ever possibly anticipated.”

The Mighty Nein debuts on Prime Video November 19.

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