‘The Mighty Nein’ Team Breaks Down Season 1 Finale Heist and That Twist Ending: ‘We’re Suckers for Cliffhangers’

Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Mighty Nein” Episode 8.

The conclusion of “The Mighty Nein” Season 1 finale is not the one Critical Role fans saw coming. 

As they attempt to use the Zadash sewers to make their getaway from Trent Ikithon (Mark Strong) and his Volstrucker enforcers in the climactic episode’s closing moments, the Mighty Nein end up in a dangerous face-off with two skilled Kryn Dynasty warriors carrying their nation’s highly coveted Beacon. Their plan to retrieve the Beacon or go out in a “blaze of glory” is interrupted by the arrival of Yasha (Ashley Johnson), who kills the Kryn before finally picking up the Beacon, the artifact she has been mercilessly hunting all season. 

However, touching the Beacon seemingly breaks Yasha out of her murderous trance and leaves her confused and on her knees in front of the Mighty Nein. “Please, help me,” Yasha pleads, just before the “Mighty Nein” finale cuts to black. It is a shocking moment — one that leaves much unresolved heading into Season 2.

“We’re suckers for cliffhangers,” Critical Role CEO and “Mighty Nein” producer, writer and star Travis Willingham told TheWrap of the ending. “We love to be left wanting more. Anything that makes you discuss it with your friends, talk about it online, look for fan theories. That’s what keeps you engaged in the story.” Willingham told TheWrap that the ending required a discussion between him, the rest of the Critical Role cast and “The Mighty Nein” showrunner Tasha Huo.

“In the end, we were just really excited about what it presented. You get a really good version of these characters in this season, and then we add the final cherry on top with Yasha coming in, finally meeting the Mighty Nein and not being the character that’s been presented for most of the season,” Willingham explained. “You get this brief glimpse of her that makes you go, ‘Wait, who is this? What does she want?’ And then we send you to black. That’s the best. We’re gonna give you a kiss, slap you in the face and then kick you out the door [Laughs].”

A turning point

The ending itself is surprising for many reasons, chief among them being it is not at all how Yasha met the Mighty Nein in the original, live-streamed Critical Role campaign that the new Prime Video series is based on. In that campaign, Yasha is introduced early on as a carnival worker and friend of Mollymauk Tealeaf (Taliesin Jaffe) whose violent past is only excavated much later. Johnson’s busy schedule shooting the NBC drama “Blindspot” at the time, however, resulted in Yasha disappearing for stretches of the Critical Role campaign that followed.

“The Mighty Nein” Season 1, therefore, presented the chance to rewrite that chapter of Yasha’s story and give her character what Johnson called a “more dramatic” introduction this time around. “I love how she comes across as this very imposing figure for much of the season. We don’t know much about her, but we’re scared of her and then we get to deliver this complete 180-degree flip when she asks for help,” Johnson said. “I love that moment because you’re not expecting it.”

“You’re not expecting this badass, terrifying creature who is the stuff of nightmares to have her very first vulnerable moment right when she meets this group of people for the first time and tells them she needs help,” the actress further explained. “If you know her story, you know that the Mighty Nein changes Yasha’s life. We just get to see a different [beginning] this time. I love it.”

I told Johnson that Yasha’s looming presence throughout the finale made a pit form in my stomach for reasons that will almost certainly be obvious to in-the-know Critical Role fans. “Great!” she excitedly replied. “For people who know the story, that’s what we’re wanting.”

An original story

Yasha’s first meeting with the Mighty Nein is not the only change that the Prime Video show’s season finale, titled “The Zadash Job,” makes to existing Critical Role canon. The episode, which was written by Huo, also centers itself around a heist to steal the Beacon that does not happen in the show’s original live-play campaign. In that version, the Mighty Nein essentially stumble upon the Beacon, rather than actively seek it out, and Huo said with a laugh that a straightforward adaptation of that moment would have made for some “very boring TV.”

Instead of strictly following her source text, Huo pulled inspiration from two Critical Role campaign moments to put together the episode’s central heist.

“Part of the origin was remembering how much I loved a scene early in the campaign with Liam [O’Brien] where Caleb is in the same room as Trent and we don’t know at that point what Caleb’s backstory is with Trent at all. I wanted to find a way to replicate that feeling,” Huo explained. “I also remembered how big of a deal it was when [Critical Role Game Master Matthew Mercer] introduced this huge wizard battle in the sky over what ended up being the Beacon, even though the cast and viewers had no idea about that at the time.”

“A lot of the process of adapting a series like this becomes making those kinds of connections,” Huo noted. It was not a change that the showrunner made without discussing it first with her cast and producers, though. Fortunately, Huo described the Critical Role team as “amazingly collaborative,” despite being the creators of all the characters and storylines in “The Mighty Nein.”

“There’s no other job I have had, or probably will ever have, where you can literally talk to the characters in your show and ask them questions about what they did or would do,” Huo observed. “If I ever came across a hurdle where I wasn’t sure how a character would act or respond, I could just text or call Liam and say, ‘Hey, the thing that Caleb’s doing here, can we talk about it?’ The cast is an amazing resource. We were always having conversations about how to tell the best story we could that also felt like it captured our experiences watching and portraying the Mighty Nein.”

Looking ahead

I noted to Huo that Yasha’s meeting with the Mighty Nein is likely not the dramatic beat many fans went into this season expecting it to end on, to which the showrunner responded with a smile, “Yes… It is very different.” That particular moment, which has been saved for a later date, is just one of many campaign plot beats “The Mighty Nein” Season 1 leaves to be adapted later. 

When I asked Huo, an enthusiastic Critical Role fan herself, if there are any remaining, specific moments she is looking forward to bringing to life, she responded, “I would love to see Nott’s [Sam Riegel] story come to fruition. We don’t know who she is in Season 1. We don’t know the real story. If you’re a fan, there are hints for you, but that’s really it. Getting to just shock the f—k out of people with what her real story is will be a real joy for me.”

“And then seeing Fjord’s arc,” Huo added. “All the s—t he’s dealing with in Season 1 and how difficult this is for him, to eventually see him come out of that and find his true self is going to be really fun.”

Huo is not the only “Mighty Nein” creative who is holding onto some specific Critical Role moments that they hope to see adapted in the future. Here are some of the others mentioned, presented without context or elaboration…

Travis Willingham: “I am, in particular, very interested to see the development of Darktow in the show. Any time we spend on a pirate island is fine by me.”

Marisha Ray: “Travis’ answer is mine. My favorite arc in the entire campaign is when the Mighty Nein set sail.”

Taliesin Jaffe: “If we do really well, we will make it to my favorite location in all of Critical Role, which is Aeor.”

Sam Riegel: “I want to see Kiri. I know that’s not a super deep cut. But I would love to see Kiri animated. I think she’s just very cute.”

Laura Bailey: “Isharnai.”

Ashley Johnson: “The tower.”

Liam O’Brien: “The city floating in nowhere.”

Matthew Mercer: “Spurt.”

“The Mighty Nein” Season 1 is now streaming on Prime Video.

The post ‘The Mighty Nein’ Team Breaks Down Season 1 Finale Heist and That Twist Ending: ‘We’re Suckers for Cliffhangers’ appeared first on TheWrap.