The adventure-comedy animated series, The Legend of Vox Machina, is returning for its second season on January 20th, and the cast talked with Variety about delivering more fantasy-inspired laughs and gasps. Ashley Johnson, who voices the gnome cleric Pike Trickfoot, says the next season is going to be closer to Dungeons and Dragons, the role-playing game the show is based on:

“This season almost feels in some ways closer to the game. I feel like it’s sillier and it’s darker — and it’s bigger and badder. I feel like everything is just turned to 11.”

The Legend of Vox Machina is an animated adaptation of Critical Role, which is a live web series where professional voice actors play Dungeons and Dragons. It's more than just a live stream of a game, since the players/actors truly role-play as their characters as they interact with each other and go on adventures led by the host, legendary voice actor Matt Mercer. Mercer voices several side characters in The Legend of Vox Machina, and loves how the show can go from serious themes to slapstick comedy in an instant:

“I’m very proud of the fact we, as swords-and-sorcery, high-fantasy genre storytelling, can graciously grasp world-ending cataclysms and the true drama of friendship lost and the consequences of one’s terrible actions — and in the next scene, have dragon-butt stuff.”

Related: The Legend of Vox Machina Season 2 Clip Has the Gang Making a Squishy Landing

Sam Riegel Says There's Material for at Least Five Seasons

The Legend of Vox Machina S2
Prime Video

The plot of the second season revolves around the party having to stop not one, but four potentially cataclysmic dragons. Liam O'Brien, who voices the half-elf thief, Vax'ildan, says the party will be tested as they bring themselves closer together: "We see this new family tested in the face of insurmountable odds... and what they do to hold each other up."

Vox Machina isn't just any family, though. They're also tasked with saving the world, and have to do some rather gross things in order to do so. Sam Riegel reveals that his character, the gnome bard Scanlan Shorthalt, will have to enter a dragon "through its intestinal tract," saying the scene is exactly what audiences want out of the show: “The people want what they want, and we’re not going to stand in the way of that.”

Travis Willingham, who provides the voice of the barbarian Grog Strongjaw, promises there will be "consequences" to a certain character's actions as the second and third seasons set up "endgame elements." That doesn't mean the series will end with a third season, which has already been greenlit. Sam Riegel says “we could go for five seasons or more" since there are hundreds of hours of the Critical Role web series, which began in 2015.

The second season of The Legend of Vox Machina begins streaming on Prime Video on January 20th, 2023, and features the voices of Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Matthew Mercer, Liam O'Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham.