Review: The Legend of Vox Machina “Hell to Pay” ;“The Frigid Wastes”; “The Coming Storm”

Overview:

While Vax, Keyleth, Pike, Grog, and Scanlan seek magical armor in the Hells of Despath, Percy, Vex, Kima and Allura try to survive against the savage Vorugal. Can each team survive the fires of hell and the frigid doom?

As Vorugal hunts Kima, Allura struggles to stop the beast and save her love. Meanwhile, in hell, Pike gambles against a devil for the souls of her friends and the world’s future. Does she have an ace up her sleeve that can save the day?

Welcome friends, to The Chateau Shorthalt! There’s singing, dancing, and more chicken than you could ever eat. Not enough for you? How about juvenile dragons attacking Whitestone? Or perhaps Raishan is betraying Vox Machina?

Our Take:

The first thing that stood out to me on the team’s visit to hell was the animation. I’m more of an anime guy opposed to Western animation because for whatever reason western animation has taken an interesting turn in the last twenty or so years. But with the popularity of shows like this and Blue Eyed Samurai, I’m hopeful that we will see more animation styles like that. I love shows like Rick and Morty and Big Mouth but the animation style is a bit jarring, they fit for comedies but it feels like that is how ALL animation has been here for a while. That was a bit of a tangent but what I was trying to say is Hell was beautiful. I mean from an animation standpoint, it’s an awful place to be but it was so well animated I couldn’t take my eyes away.

A lot of the characters have been tested up until now but with Pike being a faithful cleric I had a feeling that Hell was going to be time for her arc. Nothing will test someone’s faith like Hell after all and I thought she would be the one to get the Plate of the Dawnmartyr. My only nitpick of this mini-arc was during the card game with Zerxus. It was a typical game with the devil we’ve seen before but it managed to stay interesting. My problem was that Zerxus has done this before and while I can understand that Pike’s question rattled him, it was a bit disappointing that he reverted to an easy tell like Pike had earlier in the episode. But he was an interesting character and I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him.

One thing I didn’t expect was to see a giant demon throw down with a dragon. It was a brutal and crunchy fight that reminded me of some of the monster fights in the recent Godzilla movies. One thing I didn’t have on my bingo card was for the demon to give the dragon a stone-cold stunner. I don’t know if the writers are WWE fans but that was a cool moment.

Things can’t stay positive for the motley crew for long I’ve learned. Just when they got the Plate of the Dawnmartyr they returned to Whitestone to find it under attack by freshly hatched dragons. But this group is used to getting beat down and then getting back up so I think this will be a springboard for them.