The Legend Of Vox Machina has always been full of surprises<\/a>. Smack dab in the second three-episode drop of season four sits \u201cDe Rolo\u2019s Eleven,\u201d a hysterical riff on, you guessed it, Steven Soderbergh\u2019s Ocean\u2019s Eleven.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe episode hits nonstop jackpots: Percy (Taliesin Jaffe) having the time of his life as the episode\u2019s Danny Ocean analog, Pike (Ashley Johnson) rocking Die Hard lines, Titmouse getting to play with brand new animation styles, the twins Vex (Laura Bailey) and Vax (Liam O\u2019Brien) revealing deep, dark secrets against their will\u2026 it\u2019s hilarious, heartfelt, and a necessary reset for our heroes after they\u2019ve spent a year apart from each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Written by O\u2019Brien and fellow executive producer and star Marisha Ray, \u201cDe Rolo\u2019s Eleven\u201d follows Vox Machina as they work to steal a scroll from the Cobalt Soul\u2014yes, the very same group that Beau, Ray\u2019s character from Critical Role\u2019s second campaign, hails from. Of course, Mighty Nein fans will remember it\u2019s dang near impossible to pull a fast one on the hyper-devoted and trained-to-the-teeth monks. The scroll, in theory, contains intel on the Whispered One, an entity so feared that no other information about him exists anywhere else in Exandria. For the heist to work, Vox Machina needs a plan! An infallible plan! A plan that definitely will go exactly as intended without a single screwup from a band of lovable oafs who are just a tiny bit out of sync after being apart for a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Naturally, it all goes to shit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Percy\u2019s enthusiasm to pull a heist is one of the most endearing parts of an episode tailor-made to delight the Vox Machina faithful. As Jaffe told The A.V. Club, the storyline was a dream come true.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have wanted to give a heist speech for my entire life,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not kidding. I\u2019m a big fan of the genre and being able to be the person who lays the entire thing down, it\u2019s just\u2026 there\u2019s a real tempo to \u2019em and they\u2019re really fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jaffe\u2019s monologue is accompanied by a stellar animation sequence in which Titmouse pulls out all of the stops for a retro illustration of the plan that juxtaposes brilliantly against the traditional animation used for the show. \u201cI knew that they were gonna go all out for the animation and it was still beyond my wildest dreams of \u201960s pop,\u201d Jaffe said.<\/p>\n
For an episode to be so silly, intricate, and warm by equal measure, it has to be well-written. For O\u2019Brien and Ray, the first priority was fun.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted it to have all the qualities that make heists exciting, and then it was about treating it like a Rube Goldberg machine because every part of that machine affected another part of it,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cAnd, oftentimes with great heist movies, they have a great plan, but then the plan breaks, and you have to see them improvise in the moment and still get to the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of that improvisation rests on the gargantuan shoulders of Pike\u2019s bestie, Grog (Travis Willingham). The barbarian isn\u2019t exactly known for his brains; sure, he\u2019s saved Vox plenty of times when the rest of the team is overthinking and the answer requires a level of simplicity, but no one\u2019s asking the Big Man to solve a math problem. That is, until there\u2019s a slight mix-up and Grog takes the potion of comprehension meant for Pike so she could decipher the scroll\u2019s ancient text. Enter the alternate personality Bailey gleefully refers to as \u201cSmart Grog,\u201d and the comedy of errors that transformation implies.<\/p>\n
\u201cDe Rolo\u2019s Eleven\u201d isn\u2019t all hijinks, though. Snuck between the laughs are two earnest admissions from twins, suddenly thrust together again with a talisman of truth in their possession. Out of nowhere, Vex finds herself revealing that she and Percy secretly married in their year apart from Vox Machina, inviting none of their found family\u2014or, more pointedly, her brother. Immediately after, Vax lets slip that he thinks he\u2019s dying from the Matron\u2019s blight before realizing that he must really mean that. It\u2019s the first time the half-elf rogue acknowledges the concern, having been otherwise focused on supporting Keyleth on the final trial of her Arament\u00e9.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe beauty of Liam writing the scene with the twins is that he knows our voices so well,\u201d Bailey said. \u201cIt just felt like words coming out of our own brains. They were so funny and so perfect, and the scene was so wonderful. Everybody\u2019s moments in [\u201cDe Rolo\u2019s Eleven\u201d] are some of my favorites of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the show\u2019s third season ending with the team going their own ways after defeating the Chroma Conclave, season four was always going to be tasked with bringing them back together. What\u2019s refreshing about the Critical Role team\u2019s approach to Vox Machina\u2019s reunion is that they\u2019re not shying away from the hiccups. Vex and Vax\u2019s disconnect hits the hardest because of the nature of their relationship, but the splinters run in every direction. Vox Machina is still family, but a lot changes in a year. Keyleth\u2019s ceremony brought them back together in last week\u2019s \u201cThe Coronation,\u201d but it\u2019s \u201cDe Rolo\u2019s Eleven\u201d that shines a light on the team\u2019s growth both apart and as they figure out how to come back together.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll need to figure it out soon, too. The threats to Exandria ain\u2019t getting any smaller, and Vax\u2019s blight seems to only grow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article discusses plot points of The Legend Of Vox Machina\u2019s fourth season. It\u2019s rare for a TV…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":728540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-728539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/728540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}