A brand new baddie is coming to The Legend of Vox Machina, however for those who’ve been enjoying Dungeons & Dragons for any size of time, it is a character you may already know of. On the Critical Role panel at New York Comedian Con 2025, the OG CR forged was in attendance to tease the present’s upcoming 4th season, and through the panel, they could’ve revealed that legendary D&D villain Vecna was coming to collection.
Properly, kind of.
Some context right here: in attendance on the Critical Role/Prime Video panel at this yr’s NYCC had been Sam Riegel, Liam O’Brien, Marisha Ray, Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe , Matthew Mercer, Ashley Johnson, and Travis Willingham, the founders of Critical Role and forged behind the titular Vox Machina. Feeling unusually beneficiant with info, the forged spent half of the time speaking about what to anticipate from the present’s 4th season, and at one level, the story’s personal Scanlan Shorthalt (AKA Riegel), dropped a tantalizing trace at its upcoming antagonist.
“I am tremendous excited,” mentioned Riegel, “That we get to tease some new villains. Or outdated villains. In actual fact, is it time to disclose The Whispered One?”
Sadly, and a lot to the frustration of the group, the reply to that query turned out to be, ‘no.’ Although Riegel continued to verify that a character referred to as The Whispered One would seem within the subsequent season of the hit fantasy collection, there was nothing revealed in regards to the character save for his identify. Fortunately for these lore-obsessed Critters on the market, a identify was all they wanted.
If that does not describe you; this is all you have to find out about Vox Machina’s upcoming large unhealthy. The Whispered One is an historical, evil, highly effective king of the lifeless within the cosmos of Exandria, who the titular heroes confronted down within the first marketing campaign Critical Role ever assembled. By way of terrible magic of the lifeless, the character advanced from sorcerer to lich to archlich to god, and for those who’re one way or the other unfamiliar with CR however very accustomed to D&D, you are most likely pondering, ‘Hey, that sounds a entire lot just like the villain Vecna.’
And for all intents and functions, you are proper – the characters are mainly the identical.
The factor is, although, that Wizards of the Coast personal the license to the identify, “Vecna,” that means that Critical Role could not use the phrase to seek advice from their mystically zombified antagonist. So, every time the character is talked about within the hallowed halls of Exandria, the identify given to him is, as an alternative, “The Whispered One,” who Riegel was pleased to tease at this yr’s NYCC.
How the Stranger Issues individuals had been in a position to get the identify for their very own D&D-inspired archfiend is anyone’s guess, though it most likely rhymes with “Shnetflix Shmoney.”
The Legend of Vox Machina season 4 is scheduled to launch on Prime Video a while in 2026.