Critical Role campaign two


The second campaign of the Dungeons & Dragons web series Critical Role premiered on January 11, 2018—four months after the conclusion of the first campaign—and concluded on June 3, 2021. The series starred Travis Willingham, Marisha Ray, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Sam Riegel, Liam O'Brien, and Laura Bailey as the players with Matthew Mercer as the Dungeon Master.
The campaign is an actual play which follows the Mighty Nein, a party of seven adventurers, in their travels across the continent of Wildemount. It occurs at a time of very high tensions between the Dwendalian Empire and the Kryn Dynasty—two of Wildemount's major powers, which are divided by the Ashkeeper Peaks mountain range. Over the course of the campaign, the Mighty Nein work towards rooting out political corruption, especially within the Cerberus Assembly, and establishing peace between the Kryn Dynasty and the Dwendalian Empire after war breaks out. They also thwart apocalyptic threats such as Tharizdûn attempting to escape his imprisonment and the Somnovem attempting to return to the Prime Material Plane.
Campaign two aired each Thursday at 7 p.m. PT on Twitch, YouTube, and Alpha. When production switched from Geek & Sundry to Critical Role Productions in February 2019, distribution on Alpha and the other Geek & Sundry channels ended; the campaign then aired on Critical Role Productions' official channels. It consisted of 141 episodes with a total run time of over 550 hours. The show has returned twice with specials set after the conclusion of the campaign – a two-part special titled The Mighty Nein Reunited in 2022 and a live show titled The Mighty Nein Reunion: Echoes of the Solstice filmed in Wembley Arena in 2023. Critical Role won multiple awards during the campaign, such as the 2019 Webby Winner and People's Voice Winner in the "Video Series & Channels – Games" category from the Webby Awards, and the 2019 Audience Honor in the "Games" category from the Shorty Awards. An animated television adaptation for Amazon Prime Video, titled The Mighty Nein, was announced in January 2023 and premiered on November 19, 2025.

Cast

Campaign two featured all eight primary cast members from the end of Campaign one, in addition to occasional guests. Ashley Johnson was absent for several lengthy periods over the first 86 episodes due to her filming schedule for the NBC drama Blindspot, which ran from 2015 to 2020.
Two of the player-characters for this campaign are based on characters their actors had previously created. Jester is based on a character Bailey had portrayed in two one-shot adventures, one with GameSpot and one with Kinda Funny. Mollymauk was originally designed by Jaffe as a possible replacement for Percy, his character in Campaign one, in the event of Percy's death.

Main

Campaign two had eight cast members—seven players who form an adventuring party and the Dungeon Master.
  • Travis Willingham as Fjord Stone, a half-orc warlock who unwittingly makes a pact with a malevolent leviathan named Uk'otoa when he is drowning at sea. After a period of self-discovery, Fjord breaks his pact with Uk'otoa and becomes a follower of the Wildmother, who also has dominion over the sea, and multiclasses into a paladin.
  • Marisha Ray as Beauregard "Beau" Lionett, a human monk working for the Order of the Cobalt Soul to root out corruption in the Dwendalian Empire. Beau is initially presented as being resentful of authority and anti-social, and rises to the rank of Expositor to carry out sensitive, covert investigations.
  • Taliesin Jaffe as:
  • * Mollymauk "Molly" Tealeaf, a tiefling blood hunter and con artist working in a traveling circus. Mollymauk is killed when the Mighty Nein attempts to free party members from a slaver group.
  • * Caduceus Clay, a firbolg cleric in service of the Wildmother, goddess of the wilderness. Caduceus is searching for a way to save his home from a magical blight. The Mighty Nein recruits Caduceus before the party's second attempt to rescue their captured members; he remains with the group because he believes it will aid in his journey.
  • * Kingsley Tealeaf, a blood hunter/rogue who awakens in Molly's body in the final episode of the campaign.
  • Ashley Johnson as Yasha Nydoorin, an aasimar barbarian who is exiled from her homeland in Xhorhas for marrying outside the strict arranged-marriage traditions of her clan. She is haunted by her time as the "Orphanmaker" and her involvement in a cult that gave its followers control over her.
  • Sam Riegel as Nott the Brave, a goblin rogue who escaped jail with Caleb and wishes to support his growing magical potential. She was previously a halfling woman named Veth Brenatto and was cursed to be a goblin after a goblin raiding party captured her family. She is returned to her halfling body in episode 97 and struggles with her conflicting desires to continue adventuring with the Mighty Nein, and to stay with her husband and child.
  • Liam O'Brien as Caleb Widogast, a human wizard who was enrolled at the Soltryce Academy, the Dwendalian Empire's premier magical school, until he was chosen to train to become an assassin for the Empire. This training was physically and mentally traumatizing, leading to a breakdown. Caleb is known for inventing spells. The Zemnian accent O'Brien used for Caleb "resembles real-life German"; when spoken, Modern German was used for the fictional language Zemnian. Mercer explained this was "a narrative reference/tool" based O'Brein's "love of German for Caleb", however, "Zemnian has no specific language equivalent".
  • Laura Bailey as Jester Lavorre, a tiefling cleric who follows an obscure entity known as the Traveler. Her relationship with the Traveler is temporarily strained when she learns he is not actually a deity as originally claimed, but an archfey named Artagan, a recurring non-player character from Campaign one.
  • Matthew Mercer as the Dungeon Master, who organizes the gameplay, describes the effects the player characters' actions have on the world and narrative, and plays the NPCs. He introduced 1,144 unique NPCs during this campaign.

    Guest

There were seven guest players for Campaign two. Though he plays a different character, Chris Perkins is the only guest player who also appeared in Campaign one.
  • Khary Payton as Shakäste, a human cleric who aids the party as they investigate a gnoll attack in Alfield.
  • Mark Hulmes as Calianna, a half-elf sorcerer who enlists the party to help her find and destroy an artifact.
  • Ashly Burch as Keg, a dwarven fighter who joins the party in the fight against the Iron Shepherds.
  • Sumalee Montano as Nila, a firbolg druid whose husband and son were taken by the Iron Shepherds
  • Deborah Ann Woll as Twiggy, a gnome arcane trickster who stows away aboard the party's ship with a dangerous relic.
  • Chris Perkins as Spurt, a kobold inventor who joins the party as they cross into Xhorhas and dies within minutes of his introduction to the Mighty Nein.
  • Mica Burton as Reani, an aasimar druid and self-styled protector of Uthodurn who aids the party in their quest to re-forge a legendary sword.

    Production and format

The show's format was initially largely unchanged from the later episodes of the first campaign with videos of the cast and battle maps presented in three-to-five-hour episodes. During the second campaign's run, technical changes to subtitles and character information were introduced. A D&D Beyond-branded Twitch overlay was available to viewers using web browsers to watch live after February 28, 2019. The overlay displayed character-status information and allowed viewers to access digital character sheets. This was not available on the YouTube platform or for Twitch video on demand viewers. Episodes 1 through 53 were captioned by the same fan group that transcribed Campaign one. From Episode 54 onward, episodes were transcribed live on Twitch by a professional transcription service. The YouTube VOD relied on YouTube's auto-generated captions until the broadcast transcription was reviewed and added "within a week or so of upload".
The show was primarily filmed in a simultaneous multi-camera setup with two cameras at the players and a third at Mercer, the Dungeon Master. A fourth camera was used during battle scenes "to show a close-up of the miniatures and models used for in-game combat". The audience sees the camera feeds "arranged in a single window". The cast is seated together at a custom game table which was introduced to the set during the first campaign. It was designed by Wyrmwood to allow the cast to "see each other and interact with each other" while they are filmed from multiple sides. Mercer is positioned behind a gamemaster's screen in the inset portion with space for his notes; in the center of the table, there is an area for the miniatures and maps used in combat.

Changes during the COVID-19 pandemic

On March 17, 2020, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the show went on an unplanned hiatus. The show returned with the 100th episode of the campaign on July 20, 2020; before then, a video explaining how the production team was implementing the guidelines within the Hollywood White Paper and setting out the social distancing requirements that would be followed was uploaded to Critical Role's YouTube channel. The measures included the cast being seated at separate tables, spaced at least apart, rather than being seated around their custom game table. The cast used "laser pointers when issuing directions to the DM during combat". In addition, each cast member had an individual camera and the on-set production team was reduced to a skeleton crew. The show also switched to pre-recorded episodes rather than airing live. These changes were present until the end of the campaign on June 3, 2021.

Post-campaign

In October 2022, Critical Role announced a two-part special titled The Mighty Nein Reunited. The canonical story begins several months after the conclusion of the second campaign with the cast reprising their roles. Part One aired on November 17, 2022, and Part Two aired on December 1, 2022. The Mighty Nein Reunited was streamed on Twitch and YouTube, and was simulcast at Cinemark Theatres in the United States and South America.
The second post-campaign special, The Mighty Nein Reunion: Echoes of the Solstice, was recorded live on October 25, 2023, at the OVO Arena Wembley. Insider highlighted that while previous live shows "were in venues with 2,000 to 3,000 audience members", this arena has a much larger capacity. GamesRadar+ noted that this live show, with 12,000 tickets, sold out "in less than 6 minutes". In addition to the regular Twitch and YouTube livestream, it was shown in Cinemark Theatres in the United States and in Cineplex Theatres in Canada on October 26, 2023. The cast reprised their roles in a canonical story focused on the Mighty Nein coming together in the wake of events surrounding the Apogee Solstice in 843 PD. Beau and Caleb, as NPCs played by Mercer in the third campaign, 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. The fate of Beau and Caleb after the ritual is unknown. During a panel at MCM Comic Con London after the special, cast members mentioned that they hoped to revisit the Mighty Nein in future stories. Willingham highlighted that after playing level 20 characters in Echoes of the Solstice, he "felt like there was a whole boatload of story to come" and that "every session leads to the next story beat or the next idea or something that you wanna do".
In August 2024, Mercer started to seed the return of the players as their previous campaign parties within arcs in the third campaign which would allow the cast to "play as Vox Machina, the Mighty Nein, and Bells Hells in what would technically be the same fight, though spread out over their respective targets". In October 2024, the cast then reprised their roles as the Mighty Nein while also role-playing as the Bells Hells. In April 2025, Riegel was the game master of the limited series spinoff Wildemount Wildlings which focused on campers at Veth's Wildemount Wildlings Camp. It also featured two Mighty Nein camp counselors, with Ray and Johnson reprising their roles as Beau and Yasha respectively.
As part of the show's tenth anniversary celebration in 2025, Critical Role announced a live tour which occurred in cities across the United States and Australia. The June 2025 live shows in Sydney and Melbourne featured two blended parties with characters from both the Mighty Nein and Bells Hells on the search for Ludinus Da'leth in the Shattered Teeth. The October 2025 live show at Radio City Music Hall in New York featured the wedding between Jester and Fjord.