When the season 2 finale of The Legend of Vox Machina revealed that Thordak, the Cinder King has a nest full of dragon eggs, many viewers were confused. Where did all these eggs come from?
Thordak is male and he doesn’t have a mate. And yet he has a bunch of eggs that are going to hatch at any minute.
To answer this question, we need to go years before the show even begins to Thordak’s imprisonment and how it changed him in ways nobody expected.
A Dragon They Couldn’t Kill
Long before Thordak led the Chroma Conclave in its assault on Tal’Dorei, he was already causing trouble.
Mage Allura Vysoren first encountered him while he was devastating settlements near the Gladepools, including Byroden, the hometown of the twins Vax’ildan and Vex’ahlia and where their mother was killed.
Allura gathered a group of mercenaries to track Thordak back to his lair in the Stormcrest Mountains, but he was too powerful to take down.
So Allura turned to a circle of powerful arcane practitioners called the Arcana Pansophical, and together they came up with a plan. Since they couldn’t kill Thordak, they might be able to contain him. They crafted an artifact called a soul anchor from the heartstone of a fire primordial, an enormous gem of crystallized ruby and elemental power. The anchor was bonded to Thordak’s body and embedded in his chest, tying his soul to the Elemental Plane of Fire. He couldn’t leave without it, and the anchor couldn’t leave the plane. The trap worked and Thordak was sealed away, seemingly forever. Allura lost three of her companions in the process, but at least the Cinder King was gone.
Or so she thought.
How the Prison Changed Thordak
Being trapped in the Elemental Plane of Fire for years combined with fusing a massive, pulsing crystal to Thordak’s chest had unexpected consequences.
The crystal was a source of enormous elemental power, and Thordak could draw from it. Over time, that power made him bigger and stronger than he’d ever been. It also destroyed his sanity. By the time the show reaches its third season, Thordak becomes increasingly unstable. He’s paranoid, difficult to reason with. He’s as much a danger to his allies than anyone else.
But the most surprising side effect was biological. Being fused to a primordial heartstone for so long, while immersed in pure elemental fire, warped Thordak at a fundamental level. He wasn’t just a mere red dragon anymore. He had morphed into a new creature, some kind of elemental dragon. He was a new type of being that didn’t exist before. And that transformation came with the ability to reproduce asexually. The eggs in his nest came entirely from him.
What Did Thordak Plan to Do With His Eggs?
The goal is to lay as many eggs as possible to create an unbeatable dragon army. With his children by his side, nothing would stop Thordak from taking over Exandria and enforcing the rule of the Chroma Conclave.
In episode 6 of season 3 “The Coming Storm,” several of his eggs hatch into These eggs hatched into monstrous, mutated fire-breathing dragon spawn.
After the death of Vorugal, Thordak, under the guidance of Anna Ripley, sends his spawn to attack Whitestone while Vox Machina are away. The group arrives to find Percy’s sister Cassandra de Rolo fighting off a dragon on her own with a rapier. Even as babies, these dragons destroy much of Whitestone while giving Vox Machina and their allies a run for their money.
The spawn are eventually defeated, but not without a lot of collateral damage.
It’s worth noting that in the original tabletop campaign of Critical Role, Vox Machina didn’t even know the eggs existed until after Thordak was dead. They were discovered in the aftermath, almost as an afterthought. The animated series made a choice to make the eggs a ticking clock, another threat to deal with on top of trying to stop Thordak. It’s a change that raises the stakes and makes everything feel more urgent.
What Happened to The Eggs?
In the animated series, the eggs are destroyed during the Siege of Emon. Thordak learns about the attack in advance and joins the battle alongside his spawn, ambushing the allied armies. The troops are outmatched. Some of the spawn fall in the fighting, but the situation is desperate. Vox Machina decides to split up: half goes to help the army, half goes for the nest.
That second mission falls to Grog and Scanlan. They drop into the nest to destroy the unhatched eggs, but Grog hesitates. Even evil dragon babies are still babies, and he struggles with killing them for a moment. Scanlan resolves Grog’s dilemma by kicking him in the groin and slapping him in the face, which sends him into a rage.
The smashing begins but the duo only destroys a small portion of them before the rest start hatching, the newborns screaming for Thordak. Running out of time, Grog brings down the ceiling of the nest by punching out a supporting pillar, and they barely escape on Bigby’s Hand (called Scanlan’s Hand in the series). Most of the remaining eggs are destroyed in the collapse.
In the original campaign, the story plays out differently. After Thordak’s death, Raishan secretly collected two of his eggs and fled to the Island of Viscan. She had plans to disappear to a new continent and start something new with them. Vox Machina, along with a fighter named Kerrek, tracked her down and killed her. Then they burned the laboratory and the eggs down to ash.
You’d think that be it, but it turns out there’s one egg left. During the siege, one egg slipped away. An investigator found it the following year, hidden beneath the ruins of Emon, already growing. As of 836 PD in the campaign’s timeline, that egg is still unhatched and still growing. Nobody knows when or if this egg will ever hatch and its fate is still unresolved.
Whether it’s in the original campaign or the animated adaptation, Thordak’s eggs are no longer a threat to Exandria. At least for now.
All three seasons of The Legend of Vox Machina are available to stream on Prime Video. Season 4 will premiere on June 3, 2026.
