“You don’t plot for 500 years without some contingencies”

Fair enough on his part, but darn it all. I don't think I've seen a villain's victory that absolute and devastating since Thanos from Infinity War

So, as a bit of extra information, The Whispered One is the copyright free name, and the title of the character, who you're probably aware of: Vecna.

The show is indeed deviating, so the Pike plotline didn't originally happen.  Ashley was absent filming for at lot of the campaign.
However, in situations where only a single player enters a mysterious/dangerous place, Matt would absolutely have everyone else leave the table!

One important thing to know: the gods of Exandria CAN'T intervene because they're trapped behind something called "the Divine Gate." After the Calamity, which took place 800-1000 years prior to Vox Machina, the Prime Deities (Everlight, Dawnfather, etc) saw the carnage they had wrought upon the world (like 2/3rds of the population died), and they sealed themselves away to prevent divine intervention on this scale from happening again.

So, even if they wanted to help (and obviously they do, since the Matron is sending Vax into the viper's nest), they can't.

Fun Fact?

Taryon is heavily based on iron man (iron man was made as a challenge to make an obnoxious character that everyone would love) thats why his parents names are Howardt and Mariya (like Howard and Maria stark). he is meant to be a rich smart boi who made a robot using his family's money. His character is supposed to embody and exaggerate the negative habits, insecurities, and flaws of other Vox Machina members :)

As someone that has seen all of Campaigns 1-3, I knew EXACTLY where thia season was going and where it was going to end. But I can say, it didn't make it any less painful. Get your drinks ready people, Season 5 is going to be brutal

Season 5 is gonna be WILD.

Edit: The Whispered One is voiced by Andy Serkis.

So Tary was played by Sam Riegal in game but here he’s voiced by Wayne Brady

"There's no way he's bringing any of them back." - I disagree. He's absolutely gonna bring them back. I just don't think they'll be happy with whatever state they're brought back in.

In the actual campaign, the whole thing started as a one shot for Liam O’Brien’s birthday. Sam Riegel had never played and asked Liam what the least cool/worst combo was and was suggested a gnome bard. After the Chroma Conclave arc he had been playing Scanlan for like 3 years at that point and wanted to shake things up and make Scanlan not just the comic relief bard. So he played Taryon for like 15 episodes while giving Scanlan’s storyline space to resolve itself. It works out pretty well for LoVM because Sam found out he had tonsil cancer in 2024 and had to have surgery to remove his tonsils and parts of his tongue and soft palette, and spent the next few months learning how to talk again. Depending on when they recorded the voice lines, he was either in the middle of recovery or had just come back. The bit where he couldn’t hit the high notes in the song is a nod to that.

All the OG Critters knew Vax was going to die. We just didn't know how and when, because they re-arranged the story.

Yeah, a Canapé is pretty much what you could find on a charcuterie board just put together rather than the guest putting together themselves.

1:50:08 They weren't really hiding it, at the end of episode 6 instead of "we are his blood" Delilah told Gideon "I am your blood," so I think that was meant as the confirmation

Saying  Grog is your favorite character and not knowing he's always been the emotional center of the team since season 1 is crazy

59:01 Travis actually said in one of their "behind the scenes" videos for season 4 that it was difficult to say long elaborate sentences in Grog's accent!

1:45:50 So the interesting thing, they actually had moments where the party split to do separate questing, which allowed guest players to come to the table. One week, they'd focus on group A, then the following week they focus on group B. Though with the case with Pike, because Ashley Johnson frequently had scheduling conflict between her acting career and being at the table for D&D, there would be large spaces of time where Pike wasn't around. So because Pike didn't have much to work with, it allowed the writers to add more to Pike's character.

My daughter is currently playing Final fantasy 13-2 and the main protagonist and antagonist are voiced by Vex and Vax and I cannot unhear it

So, the joke with Lionel being changed into a duck is that in game, he's a Barbarian/Bard multiclass, with his barbarian subclass being Path of the Duck (custom made for the character)

In older cartoons, the reason that the book that moves the cabinet always looks more detailed, is because that one is on the "moving" animation layer and the rest are part of the background layer.  In this case, they did it on purpose.  +1 point to Percy for being the first character in all of media to discover a secret passageway leading down and then going to get all his friends before exploring further.  -1 point for saying "let's split up to cover more ground" almost immediately afterwards.

We didn't actually have to wait between episodes 11 and 12 - they dropped 3 episodes per week for 4 weeks.  That's their usual release schedule for this show.

Next season is 100% "we're in the endgame now" type shit.

Pike is played by Ashley Johnson. She was an actress on the Blindspot TV show. She was on the other side of the country for filming and only made it to games seldomly. Sometimes through Skype or in person(even rarer). That means everything with Pike is basically all original to the animated series.

Edit: Also if we're doing who's who in One Piece, Matt Mercer is Law.