Critical Role campaign three

The third campaign of the Dungeons & Dragons web series Critical Role premiered on October 21, 2021 and concluded on February 6, 2025; it is set after the conclusion of the second campaign and Exandria Unlimited. The series stars Marisha Ray, Ashley Johnson, Laura Bailey, Travis Willingham, Liam O'Brien, Taliesin Jaffe, and Sam Riegel as the players with Matthew Mercer as the Dungeon Master. Campaign three aired each Thursday at 7 p.m. PT on Critical Role Productions' Twitch and YouTube channels and the Beacon streaming service except for the last Thursday of each month.
The campaign is an actual play which follows the Bells Hells, a party of adventurers who met on the continent of Marquet. The campaign begins two months before the Apogee Solstice, a celestial event which influences the ley lines of Exandria and magnifies magical abilities. The party gets drawn into the mystery surrounding Exandria's second moon Ruidus and the superstitions around the Ruidusborn, people born during spontaneous flares of the red moon. They eventually discover that the gods crafted Ruidus to imprison an ancient evil known as Predathos and that the Ruby Vanguard – founded and led by Martinet Ludinus Da'leth – seek to free this entity during the Apogee Solstice. The Bells Hells attempted to prevent this by targeting the Malleus Keys, magical devices built by the Ruby Vanguard to aid their ritual. The party interferes with the ritual preventing the release. Afterwards, Ruidus is locked in place over the Hellcatch Valley Malleus Key which allows people to travel between the moon and Exandria. The Exandrian Accord brought together nations and factions from across the world to form a military alliance in opposition to the forces of Ruidus; Bells Hells, along with the adventuring parties Vox Machina and Mighty Nein, lend their aid as coordinated strike teams against various Ruidian targets.
Campaign 3 has maintained the previous Campaign 2 main cast members, consisting of seven players and the Dungeon Master. The characters met in the city of Jrusar and later named their adventuring party the Bells Hells after a fallen member. Some of the cast played as mortal incarnations of the Prime Deities during the Downfall special. During the later part of the campaign, the cast also reprised as their Vox Machina and Mighty Nein characters from Critical Role's previous campaigns.
Additionally, the following guests have made appearances:
The story takes place roughly 10 years after the events of the second campaign, shortly after the events of the limited series Exandria Unlimited. It is set on the continent of Marquet, which was briefly visited during the Vox Machina campaign. SyFy Wire highlighted that Marquet is "home to massive deserts, mountains, and even a volcano" and that it is "uncharted territory for the series".
Multiple characters in this campaign are returning characters. Dorian, Orym, and Fearne premiered in Exandria Unlimited while Bertrand premiered in the one-shot "Search For Grog". Mercer noted that both Johnson and O'Brien brought character concepts they were toying with for Campaign 3 over to Exandria Unlimited, where they had the chance to develop them with Aabria Iyengar. There was no expectation to carry the characters over to Campaign 3, but the two players enjoyed the characters so much, they decided to keep using them moving forward. Daymond was brought in a special guest to help carry them forward over into Campaign 3. Willingham's second character, Chetney, was inspired by a character he had previously played in the non-canon one-shot "The Night Before Critmas". Additionally, Mercer has brought back several player characters from previous campaigns as NPCs such as Vox Machina's Keyleth and Pike and The Mighty Nein's Caleb and Beau.
The format is largely unchanged from the second campaign, with videos of the cast and any battlemaps presented in 3-5-hour episodes. Technical changes introduced during the second campaign such as subtitles, character information and pre-recording were maintained. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the show had broadcast live, but has been pre-recorded since Campaign Two Episode 100. A new set, designed by professional amusement park designers Shaun Ellis and Polly Hodges, was built for the third campaign. The cast are no longer divided into socially distanced individual tables, but returned instead to a common table as had been the case prior to the pandemic. The campaign featured "enhanced set designs, music, lighting and effects, along with improved sound (each actor will have an individual mic)."
The show aired each Thursday at 19:00 PT on Critical Role's Twitch and YouTube channels. In a change from the previous campaign, campaign three of Critical Role did not air new episodes on the last Thursday of every month; instead, other content by the studio aired in its time slot. The third campaign's premiere was simulcast live in Cinemark Theatres along with the regular Twitch and YouTube livestream. Similarly, the 17th episode of the third campaign was simulcast in Cinemark Theatres, Landmark Theatres, and Cinépolis alongside the regular livestream as part of their 7th anniversary celebration. The campaign went on hiatus from the end of May 2022 until June 30, 2022 (during which Exandria Unlimited: Calamity aired). In May 2024, Critical Role announced that Episode 98 will be filmed live at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on June 15 before airing on June 20, 2024. Brennan Lee Mulligan hosted a Q&A before the live show.
The show was placed on an unplanned hiatus in January 2025 as a result of the California wildfires in the Los Angeles metropolitan area where the studio, cast and crew are located. The filming of the finale was interrupted, with the cast returning to finish the following day. On January 30, 2025, Critical Role aired a live non-canon one-shot featuring the Bells Hells as a charity fundraiser to benefit the California Community Foundation (Wildfire Recovery Fund), the Latino Community Foundation and the LA Fire Department Foundation. Donors had the ability to choose various aspects of the game ahead of time and during the game. The finale aired on February 6, 2025; at over eight and a half hours, it is also the longest episode of the series.
The way in which guest players were scheduled changed for Campaign Three, moving away from single-episode appearances as had been common before. In the first two campaigns, the longest continuous appearance was Ashly Burch's four-episode run in Campaign Two, while Bailey and Willingham were absent following the birth of their child. Daymond portrayed Dorian for the first 14 episodes of the campaign. Shortly after Daymond's departure from the main campaign, he appeared in Exandria Unlimited: Kymal for a further two episodes as Dorian. He then pre‑recorded an audio piece for episode 41. Until Daymond, the guests with the highest episode count had been Will Friedle and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, who appeared in a total of seven episodes over the course of Campaign One.
In Episode 92, Mercer dismissed the main cast at the ad break including "himself as Dungeon Master". The episode then picked up with Aabria Iyengar as the Dungeon Master with Mercer, Daymond, Aimee Carrero, Anjali Bhimani, and Erica Lindbeck reprising their player roles from the spinoff Exandria Unlimited: Kymal. The following episode wrapped up the Crown Keepers storyline with the guest cast; the main cast returned after the ad break with Daymond as the only continuing guest star.
At the end of Episode 98, Mulligan took Mercer's place – his monologue was the opening of a magical projection of the past witnessed by Bells Hells and Ludnius Da'leth. Critical Role then announced the next episodes would be a three-part special titled "Downfall" with Mulligan as the Dungeon Master and the player cast as Bailey, Jaffe, Johnson, Noshir Dalal, Nick Marini, and Abubakar Salim. In 2022, Mulligan was the Dungeon Master for the limited series Exandria Unlimited: Calamity which focused on the events that triggered the Calamity. "Downfall" is set over a century into the Calamity; while officially part of the third campaign, it is advertised as a standalone special that does not require prior knowledge of Critical Role or Exandria Unlimited. Cheryl Teh of Business Insider highlighted that "Downfall" focuses on the fall of the magocracy Aeor and suggested this will "allow Mulligan to flex his storytelling chops, perhaps reprising some elements of his first EXU: Calamity run". Mulligan commented that the two series wrestle with very different themes so while both are about the fall of flying cities, each has a distinct story. Mulligan also highlighted that while Calamity shows the trigger of the Calamity, it was more about the end of the Age of Arcanum while Downfall occurs over a century into the Calamity and showcases that era. In the last hour of Episode 107, Salim reprised his role as the Arch Heart while also serving as the Dungeon Master. Teh noted that this is "the first time Mercer has handed over the CR reins to someone outside his regular nerdworld collaborators". Tara McCauley of The Escapist commented that unlike the previous guest Dungeon Masters for the campaign, "Salim's godly role combined Dungeon Mastering and divine intervention" by acting from the perspective of the Arch Heart.
In August 2024, Mercer started to seed the return of the players as their previous campaign parties within arcs in the third campaign which would allow the cast to "play as Vox Machina, the Mighty Nein, and Bells Hells in what would technically be the same fight, though spread out over their respective targets". In October 2024, the cast then reprised their roles as the Mighty Nein while also role-playing as the Bells Hells. From Episode 112 to Episode 114, the cast also reprised their roles as Vox Machina in a concurrent arc focused on destroying the Malleus Key. On the switch from playing one character for three years straight to playing multiple characters at once, Riegel stated "the biggest challenge is keeping our voices straight in our heads because we've played so many different characters over the years". Bailey noted that "it wasn't like jumping in from ground zero" due to recently reprising their older characters on The Legend of Vox Machina and The Mighty Nein animated series. Lindbeck, Iyengar, Navarro and Carrero reprised their various player roles in the finale.