In an interview with Liam O’Brien of Critical Role, the actor spoke about a series based on Bells Hells and what he hopes to see from it.
The professional D&D group Critical Role has completed three major campaigns over the past 11 years—the fourth campaign is currently in full swing. But so far, only the first two have been adapted into animated series on Amazon. Both *The Legend of Vox Machina* and *The Mighty Nein* are considered outstanding, however, and have won over not only those fans who were already passionate about the D&D campaigns.
When we had the chance to speak with the voice actor and the player behind characters like Vax’ildan and Caleb Widogast before the Critical Role show in Berlin, we naturally asked Liam O’Brienwhat the chances are of seeing even more animated series like these.
The actor couldn’t give us a definitive confirmation—but he did share a few thoughts onwhat the challenges of future Critical Role series might be.
A Wild Bunch
Of course, it stands to reason that, following Mighty Nein, the hero group from Critical Role’s third campaign would get its own animated series. In fact, the fourth season of Vox Machina even featured a guest appearance by a key character from that campaign. However, even Liam O’Brien knows that this group of heroes called Bells Hells probably wouldn’t be that easy to bring to life. This is mainly because some truly outlandish character concepts were introduced here.
Bells Hells is a wild bunch. With this group of characters, the series would have to take a very unique approach. From a robot to a werewolf to a walking, dead woman. It would have to find its own special—and, in my opinion, wild—identity.
To put that into perspective a bit: At its core and at the beginning, the Bells Hells group consists of about eight different heroes. Here’s a list, sorted by absurdity:
- Orym:A halfling warrior, played by Liam O’Brien.
- Imogen Temult:A human sorceress, played by Laura Bailey
- Dorian Storm:A water genasi and bard, played by Robbie Daymond
- Ashton Greymoore:An earth genasi and barbarian, played by Taliesin Jaffe
- Fearne Calloway:A faun druid, played by Ashley Johnson
- Chetney Pock OP’Pea: An ancient gnomic bloodhunter, played by Travis Willingham
- Fresh Cut Grass:A small robot and cleric, played by Sam Riegel
- Laudna:An undead human warlock, played by Marisha Ray
By the way, I’ll just leave it up to you to figure out which of the characters mentioned is actually a werewolf. Judging purely by viewership numbers, the third campaign was noticeably less popular than Vox Machina and Mighty Nein, which was likely also due to the fact that the group was such a motley crew.
Another challenge specific to Bells Hells is that the campaign picks up storylines from Vox Machina and Mighty Nein. That could get complicated for a series that also wants to attract new viewers. Or as Liam says:
With every show, there are people who come in and ask, “What is this?” We’d have to create a show centered on Bells Hells and Campaign 3 that truly tied together all of Matt’s Exandria campaigns, with this wild bunch of characters, while also making the whole thing accessible to people who know nothing about it. We’d probably pull it off, but boy, I can just imagine the chaos in the writers’ room.
Critical Role Wants Series Based on All Their Campaigns
By the way, it doesn’t seem to be much of a secret that Critical Role wants to adapt Bells Hells into an animated series. At least, Liam made it very clear in the interview that he and his friends would love to see that happen. And it’s not just Bells Hells—the group would ideally like to reinterpret all their campaigns in some form:
Deep down in our hearts, we want to potentially breathe new life into every story we tell. We’ve made no secret of our plans for Calamity and, obviously, Bells Hells [as series]. And I’d love to see Hal [Liam’s current character in Campaign 4] open his theater on the big screen someday—that would be amazing. […] We’re just doing our best to keep up with the pace.
Calamity would certainly be very interesting as the next Critical Role series as well. It would likely be just a single season, since it was a short campaign in which Matt Mercer was briefly replaced as game master by Brennan Lee Mulligan. The series tells the primordial backstory of the planet Exandria, which is quite important to the plot of the third campaign.
Calamity has also already made a guest appearance in The Legend of Vox Machina: In Season 3, the heroes encountered the fallen knight Zerxus.
