Though The Mighty Nein is an ensemble piece, it doesn’t take this first season long to position wizard Caleb Widogast (Liam O’Brien) and monk Beau Lionett (Marisha Ray) as its main characters. One’s a rookie detective dispatched to investigate the Kryn Dynasty’s stolen beacon; the other is a former student of Trent Ikithon, who currently has said beacon.
Neither are aware of their shared connection, but they do have one thing in common: they do not like each other.
Last week’s episode, “Little Spark,” and this week’s, “Many Gifts,” put the human duo through the wringer.
First, there’s Owelia, a magical Volstrucker assassin who nearly killed Beau in episode one and used to be a classmate of Caleb’s back in the day. Like the bugs she controls, she easily gets under their skin and drives a wedge between the two, which persists even after Caleb kills his former peer with a gnarly volley of fire.
Then in “Gifts,” as the group looks for a legendary pirate compass, there are multiple instances wherein Beau and Caleb argue and snipe at each other while working to complete their objective.
All in all, not too dissimilar from how the two butted heads during the live show early on before eventually becoming best friends. While they weren’t constantly at each other’s throats, you could definitely feel the tension between them until they got advice from the rest of their party and literally hugged it out. So it makes sense for the show to bring that dynamic forward, since, as Ray herself put it…
“Conflict is juicy!” she happily told io9 at a recent press event. That these characters have bad interpersonal skills is a small but key way where the Mighty Nein differs from Vox Machina, and it’s as much of a deliberate choice now as it was when the cast crafted these characters nearly a decade ago.
Back then, DM Matthew Mercer “was very clear going into [Campaign Two] that it’d be more nuanced, and we’d have more skullduggery and political intrigue, and I think we all wanted to build characters that exemplified that.”
The Vox party debuted in live-action and animation as friends, with their onscreen adventures reinforcing their bonds to one another. Conversely, the Nein arrive in both mediums with the cast in scattered groups, making for some strife when they’re all forced into working with one another. But whereas the beef between Nott (Sam Riegel) and Fjord (Travis Willingham) is generally played for laughs, Beau and Caleb’s distrust is more real and out there in those early arcs, and the hostility was something Ray acknowledged could be a bit much.
“A dozen or so episodes in, I remember thinking, ‘Maybe we can spare one person a compliment every now and then,’” Ray laughed. In the campaign, it was Beau who caught the most flak, and one of the live show’s earliest recurring gags was that she’s so abrasive, Fjord had to help her be more personable.
Things are a bit more even-sided in the adaptation in that Beau’s still Beau, but her anger towards Caleb stems from him and Nott accidentally (and unintentionally) interfering with her investigation in the first two episodes, leading to public fights that land her (and eventually all three of them) in prison. His secrets and general disposition put her off a bit, and that’s before she learns he’s ex-Volstrucker and sees how cold-blooded he can be with his fire magic.
It can be tough figuring out how to create characters at odds with one another and to know how audiences will react to that. Out of curiosity, we asked during the interview how the creators gauged the right amount of hostility between characters or if there were any worries of amping things up too much.
While the Critical Role cast check scripts to ensure their characters are consistent in the episode (and as their older selves), Riegel said the writers choose to emphasize conflict “where possible.” To him, it provided a better way to introduce these characters at the start of their individual journeys and show “how they slowly learn to be, if not a family, then at least rely on each other to get them through the hardest times.”
Even without the awkward hug that puts them on the path to becoming true friends, the seeds of Beau and Caleb’s relationship are planted in the final moments of “Gifts” after the group is out of danger. Where it goes from there in the adaptation, we’ll see throughout the rest of Mighty Nein.
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