To the actors behind The Legend of Vox Machina, season 2 felt risky. Season 1 went off without a hitch, but who knew if a mainstream audience would form around an animated adaptation of a Dungeons & Dragons-style campaign from the friend-group-turned-media-company known as Critical Role — beyond their core online fan base, of course. Fortunately it did, but unlike that freshman run, the sophomore bow left a pretty big cliffhanger that could only be resolved if Amazon approved a third season.

“We were like, ‘We’re going for it!’” Travis Willingham tells Entertainment Weekly in an interview with his costar and fellow executive producer Sam Riegel. “If we don’t get another season, it’ll be a little funny.”

“It’s really scary to leave that dot at the end of the last page of the last episode and hope that you can finish the sentence in a year,” Riegel adds. “Luckily, Amazon’s been really excited about the reaction and the ratings of the show.”

Now, more than a year after the events of that cliffhanger, The Legend of Vox Machina season 3 (on Prime Video Oct. 3) will offer the conclusion to the Chroma Conclave arc, which began when an unlikely alliance of nefarious dragons launched an assault across the world of Exandria, kickstarting a plot to reshape all the land with a whole horde of fire-breathers.

Willingham and Riegel return to voice the warm-hearted barbarian Grog and sex-positive bard Scanlan, two of the core members of the Vox Machina squad, which is also comprised of half-elf druid Keyleth (Marisha Ray), gnome cleric Pike (Ashley Johnson), steampunk gunslinger Percy (Taliesin Jaffe), and half-elf twins Vex’ahlia (Laura Bailey) and Vax’ildan (Liam O’Brien). Matthew Mercer, Critical Role’s dungeon master from the original D&D campaign, also voices various characters.

“Season 3 is going to leave a mark,” Willingham teases. “It is going to test individual characters; it’s going to test relationships, both familial and of a romantic variety; but it’s also going to start to show the lines of division in this tight-knit family that is really starting to feel the pressure of the world and things even beyond the realm of Exandria. This is the first season where not everything is going to be the same at the end in the way that it started.”

Fans already caught peeks at the new opening titles sequence, as well as a clip of the core crew back together, but EW can reveal five exclusive images from season 3 that preface the story’s continuation. Featured prominently in the new imagery are supporting figures like the sorcerer Gilmore (Sunil Malhotra). Riegel promises, “We will get to see a little bit more of where Gilmore came from and also some of his powers. He does do a bit of fighting, which we haven’t really seen him do yet.”

Willingham teases members of the Tal’Dorei Council “might get a little more screen time,” such as the wizard Lady Allura Vysoren, who is present in the first-look imagery. So, too, does Keyleth in her quest to fulfill her Aramenté, a journey to earn the title of headmaster of her Ashari druid tribe. Riegel further teases how other characters who weren’t part of the original D&D campaign at all will now make an appearance and “make your jaw hit the floor when they do.”

“We knew we were going to get far, far away from Emon and Whitestone,” Willingham explains of leaving the bounds of the two primary locations of past seasons. “Our characters are definitely going to be using their passports, not just to leave the land, but in some cases leaving the realm. It’s been amazing watching [animation studio] Titmouse try to adapt to the madness that we write.”

It’s not just the Chroma Conclave that Vox Machina have to worry about. They may have felled the dragon Umbrasyl (Mercer) and now have to contend with Thordak (the late Lance Reddick), Raishan (Cree Summer), and Vorugal (O’Brien), but Riegel promises there are other forces the heroes must contend with.

“You feel like there are three dragons and those are the bad guys, but that is definitely not the case,” he says. “Yes, there are three dragons and, yes, they are bad guys, but they are not the only ones. There are villains, both familiar and brand new, that will rear their heads and continue to menace our characters through the whole season — and possibly beyond.”

Speaking of… As the actors (who collectively serve as executive producers) continue charting the course for their flagship Amazon series, they are also deep into work on their next show, The Mighty Nein, another animated series set in the same world as Vox Machina. The concept adapts a different Critical Role campaign, about a group of criminals and misfits — the human wizard Caleb Widogast (O’Brien), goblin rogue Nott the Brave (Riegel), tiefling cleric Jester Lavorre (Bailey), half-orc warlock Fjord (Willingham), human monk Beauregard “Beau” Lionett (Ray), tiefling blood hunter Mollymauk “Molly” Tealeaf (Jaffe), and aasimar barbarian Yasha Nydoorin (Johnson) — who are thrust together to save the kingdom when an arcane relic capable of reshaping reality falls into the wrong hands.

“It’s so good,” Willingham says of the series. “We’re deep in production. Everything is moving along smoothly. We could say really buzz-worthy things like ‘it’s bigger,’ ‘it’s badder,’ ‘it’s better.’ It’s just been an incredible thing to work on, but I think 2025 is going to hold all sorts of beautiful little nuggets that we’ll finally be able to share with the world.”

Riegel chimes in, “It’s really tonally different from Vox Machina, and I can’t wait for the audience to get their first glimpse.”

“It’s almost like [how] we took season 3 of LVM with that slight divergence from what was really more of a canonical telling and starting to experiment with changing the storyline up,” Willingham adds. “The Mighty Nein is from the get-go a complete departure. You’re still going to get the things you love and the story moments, but the way we’ve gone about it is a totally different approach and we think one that people will love. We’re going to be sounding the alarm very early in that you’re coming into the characters that you love, but a totally new story.”

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The Vox Machina characters aren’t the only ones who need their passports, it seems. Critical Role’s world is blowing up.