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List of Critical Role episodes
Episodes of the web series Critical Role From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Critical Role episodes split by campaign and then by year, as well as one-shot episodes.
Series overview
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In February 2025, the cast of Critical Role finished their third Dungeons & Dragons campaign.[1] The fourth campaign is scheduled to premiere on October 2, 2025.[2]
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Campaigns
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Campaign one (2015–2017)
The Vox Machina campaign originated as the home game of the cast, played from 2012 to 2017; the show begins in medias res with the characters regrouping in the city of Emon after approximately 6 months apart and the streamed campaign picks up where the cast's original home game left off. While the adventures prior to the Kraghammer arc (2015) were not formally recorded, some shorter recordings have been released by the cast. This includes audio from the first session of the campaign, which was released as a segment in the third episode of the podcast All Work No Play.[4] Additionally, Liam O'Brien released a recording of the magic carpet being discovered by the party.[5] Episode 36 features a summary of the pre-series history,[6] with artwork created by Wendy Sullivan Green and voice-overs provided by the cast.[7] The comic book, Critical Role: Vox Machina Origins, is an adaptation of the group's game before the show.[8] The animated series, The Legend of Vox Machina, also adapts a canonic story that took place within the pre-stream time frame.[9][10]
Campaign one originally broadcast live on the Geek & Sundry Twitch and YouTube channels between March 12, 2015, and October 12, 2017, for a total of 115 episodes.[11][12] Starting in November 2016, it was also broadcast live on the Alpha streaming service from Legendary Digital Networks. The show on Alpha had a unique overlay that included "real-time character sheets, damage and heal animations, and visualizations".[13] Campaign one's closed captions were transcribed by a fan group who submitted them to Geek & Sundry. Geek & Sundry then added these to the YouTube copies of episodes.[14] The VODs have since been uploaded to Critical Role's own YouTube channel.[15]: 0:41
The episodes of campaign one spilt by year:
Campaign two (2018–2021)
The second campaign began on January 11, 2018, and follows the adventuring party known as The Mighty Nein. The story is set on the continent of Wildemount, which was briefly visited during the Vox Machina campaign. The Mighty Nein campaign is set about 20 years after Vox Machina's final battle against Vecna;[16][17] it takes place at a time where tensions are very high between the Dwendalian Empire and the Kryn Dynasty, two of Wildemount's major powers.[18]
Prior to a hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the show had broadcast live, but has been pre-recorded since its return for episode 100 of Campaign Two.[19] In May 2021, the cast announced that campaign two would end shortly, however, "the Mighty Nein's story wasn't finished".[20] Collider reported that "Campaign 2 has spanned 100 hours of battle, 440 slain villains, and 530 total hours of dice-roll-driven adventuring. And that's not even counting the upcoming 7-hour finale".[21] The finale aired on June 3, 2021;[22][23] it was the longest episode at just over seven hours.[23]
The episodes of campaign two split by year:
Campaign three (2021–2025)
The third campaign premiered on October 21, 2021 with a simulcast live in Cinemark Theatres along with the regular Twitch and YouTube livestream.[24][25] Critical Role continued to be pre-recorded for the third campaign.[26][27] Starting with the third campaign, the main campaign of Critical Role did not air new episodes on the last Thursday of every month; instead, other content by the studio aired in its time slot.[26][27][28] The campaign is set on the continent of Marquet, which was briefly visited during the Vox Machina campaign. SyFy Wire highlighted that Marquet is "home to massive deserts, mountains, and even a volcano" and that it is "uncharted territory for the series".[26]
The story is set immediately after Exandria Unlimited which took place 10 years after the events of the second campaign.[29][25][26] Several cast members reprise their roles from Exandria Unlimited.[30] The party, Bells Hells, gets drawn into the mystery surrounding the Apogee Solstice and Exandria's second moon Ruidus.[31][32] In August 2024, Mercer started to seed the return of the players as their previous campaign parties within arcs in the third campaign.[33] In October 2024, the cast then reprised their roles as the Mighty Nein while also role-playing as the Bells Hells.[34][35] In November 2024, the cast also reprised their roles as Vox Machina in a concurrent arc focused on destroying the Malleus Key.[36][37] The finale aired on February 6, 2025; at over eight and a half hours, it became the longest episode of the series.[1][38][39]
The episodes of campaign three split by year:
Campaign four (2025–present)
The fourth campaign is scheduled to premiere on October 2, 2025.[2][40] In August 2025, it was announced that Brennan Lee Mulligan will take over as Game Master from Mercer for Critical Role's fourth campaign;[2][41] Mercer will appear in the campaign as a player.[42] It will also feature a new world "outside its usual Exandria setting".[2] Cheryl Teh of Business Insider commented that while the previous campaigns used Dungeons & Dragons as their game system, Critical Role's tabletop game imprint Darrington Press has also just released their own tabletop role-playing game, Daggerheart. Teh noted that this announcement did not reveal which game system the campaign will use.[43]
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Anthology and related series
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Exandria Unlimited
Exandria Unlimited (ExU) is an anthology series and is a spin-off of the main Critical Role series. The first season premiered on June 24, 2021. That season is set in the city of Emon on the continent of Tal'Dorei 30 years after Campaign One and 10 years after Campaign Two.[44][45] The season's game master is Aabria Iyengar.[46][45] In March 2022, a two-part adventure sequel, Exandria Unlimited: Kymal, was released.[47][48][49]
The second season, titled Exandria Unlimited: Calamity, premiered on May 26, 2022. It follows a group of heroes from the Age of Arcanum – an age 1,500 years before the Critical Role series[50] – who attempt to prevent the Calamity.[51][52] The third season, titled Exandria Unlimited: Divergence, premiered on February 13, 2025; it focuses on mortals rebuilding the world after the destruction of the Calamity. Brennan Lee Mulligan was the game master of both the Calamity and Divergence seasons.[53][54]
The Re-Slayer's Take
The Re-Slayer's Take is an all-ages actual play podcast set in Exandria, featuring an adventurer group that was rejected from the monster hunting group, "The Slayer's Take".[55] The cast consists of Jasmine Bhullar, Jasper William Cartwright, Caroline Lux, and Jasmine Chiong, with George Primavera and Nick Williams as Dungeon Masters.[56] The first season premiered on May 20, 2024;[57] the second season premiered on September 10, 2024.[58]
Wildemount Wildlings
Wildemount Wildlings is a spin-off of the main Critical Role series which premiered on April 3, 2025. The three episode limited series focuses on teenage campers at the Wildemount Wildlings Camp for Adventuring Kids and their two Mighty Nein camp counselors. The players are Eden Riegel, Aleks Le, Brennan Lee Mulligan, and Libe Barer as new characters with Marisha Ray and Ashley Johnson reprising their Campaign 2 characters, Beauregard Lionett and Yasha Nydoorin respectively. The gamemaster is Sam Riegel; while this series is based on the Wildemount Wildlings themed game he runs for his children and their friends, the show is aimed at adults.[59][60][61]
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One-shots
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In addition to their main campaign series, Critical Role has also broadcast many one-shots – short adventures that take place within a single session of play.[62][63][64][65] As of January 2025,[update] seven of these one-shots are considered canonical.[66] Most of the seven are epilogue episodes to one of the first two campaigns. The Search for Grog and The Search for Bob, however, cover events within the storyline of the last episode of Campaign 1 that required telling outside the time frame of the main show. Other one-shots have only a tangential relationship to the campaigns. These are set in the world of Exandria or feature established canon characters but are not considered canonical themselves.[65][67] Still other one-shots have no connection at all with the campaigns or the world of Exandria.[62][65] Some one-shots promote other intellectual properties commissioned by sponsors.[65][68]
Academics Lisa Horton and David Beard, in the book The Routledge Handbook of Remix Studies and Digital Humanities, explained that Critical Role's one-shots "use pastiche, parody, and other forms of obvious remix", highlighting that Critical Role has "mashed-up Harry Potter with The Breakfast Club and Peter Pan with the Wizard of Oz, and the results are entertaining, but they live and die within a single evening". They argued while these one-shots are fun and "achieve positive fan response", the one-shots are also "unchallenging" and "uncomplicated" as "creative dead ends" in comparison to Critical Role's campaigns.[69]
Canon
The following one-shots are listed as canonical parts of the official timeline.[66][65]
Shared world or characters
These one-shots are set within the world of Exandria or feature established characters from the main campaigns. They are not, however, deemed canonical—having no impact on the main storyline.
Promotional
These one-shots were made as promotions for other properties or groups.
Daggerheart
These are one-shots which feature the Daggerheart system published by Darrington Press, the tabletop game imprint for Critical Role Productions.[130][131][132] Cheryl Teh of Business Insider noted that the Critical Role cast "appears to be embracing, once again, the funhouse chaos of its early-day Twitch streams" by returning to the livestream format for the Daggerheart episodes.[131] Tara McCauley of The Escapist described the three episodes featuring The Menagerie adventuring party as a "one-shot-turned-short-campaign" which allowed Critical Role to "demonstrate Daggerheart and its open beta evolution with their signature actual play antics".[132]
Other
These one-shots do not fit into the above categories- they are not set within Exandria, they are not promotional, nor do they use Daggerheart.
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Notes
- Beau and Caleb, as NPCs played by Mercer in Campaign Three Episodes 50 & 51, were among the many people who failed to stop Archmage Ludinus Da'leth from utilizing the solstice in a ritual which resulted in the red moon Ruidus being locked in the sky and arcane powers across Exandria going awry.[77][78]
References
External links
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