This article discusses plot points of The Legend Of Vox Machina’s fourth season.
It’s rare for a TV series to reach a new creative peak in its fourth season. Then again, The Legend Of Vox Machina has always been full of surprises. Smack dab in the second three-episode drop of season four sits “De Rolo’s Eleven,” a hysterical riff on, you guessed it, Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven.
The episode hits nonstop jackpots: Percy (Taliesin Jaffe) having the time of his life as the episode’s 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’Brien) revealing deep, dark secrets against their will… it’s hilarious, heartfelt, and a necessary reset for our heroes after they’ve spent a year apart from each other.
Written by O’Brien and fellow executive producer and star Marisha Ray, “De Rolo’s Eleven” follows Vox Machina as they work to steal a scroll from the Cobalt Soul—yes, the very same group that Beau, Ray’s character from Critical Role’s second campaign, hails from. Of course, Mighty Nein fans will remember it’s 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.
Naturally, it all goes to shit.
Percy’s 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.
“I have wanted to give a heist speech for my entire life,” he said. “I’m not kidding. I’m a big fan of the genre and being able to be the person who lays the entire thing down, it’s just… there’s a real tempo to ’em and they’re really fun.”
Jaffe’s 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. “I knew that they were gonna go all out for the animation and it was still beyond my wildest dreams of ’60s pop,” Jaffe said.
For an episode to be so silly, intricate, and warm by equal measure, it has to be well-written. For O’Brien and Ray, the first priority was fun.
“We 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,” O’Brien said. “And, 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.”
Some of that improvisation rests on the gargantuan shoulders of Pike’s bestie, Grog (Travis Willingham). The barbarian isn’t exactly known for his brains; sure, he’s saved Vox plenty of times when the rest of the team is overthinking and the answer requires a level of simplicity, but no one’s asking the Big Man to solve a math problem. That is, until there’s a slight mix-up and Grog takes the potion of comprehension meant for Pike so she could decipher the scroll’s ancient text. Enter the alternate personality Bailey gleefully refers to as “Smart Grog,” and the comedy of errors that transformation implies.
“De Rolo’s Eleven” isn’t 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—or, more pointedly, her brother. Immediately after, Vax lets slip that he thinks he’s dying from the Matron’s blight before realizing that he must really mean that. It’s the first time the half-elf rogue acknowledges the concern, having been otherwise focused on supporting Keyleth on the final trial of her Aramenté.
“The beauty of Liam writing the scene with the twins is that he knows our voices so well,” Bailey said. “It just felt like words coming out of our own brains. They were so funny and so perfect, and the scene was so wonderful. Everybody’s moments in [“De Rolo’s Eleven”] are some of my favorites of the season.”
With the show’s 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’s refreshing about the Critical Role team’s approach to Vox Machina’s reunion is that they’re not shying away from the hiccups. Vex and Vax’s 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’s ceremony brought them back together in last week’s “The Coronation,” but it’s “De Rolo’s Eleven” that shines a light on the team’s growth both apart and as they figure out how to come back together.
They’ll need to figure it out soon, too. The threats to Exandria ain’t getting any smaller, and Vax’s blight seems to only grow.
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