Season 4 of The Legend of Vox Machina should start on a high note. All five members of the Chroma Conclave are dead. Vex/Percy and Vax/Keyleth are official couples now. Scanlan finally reconciled with his daughter Kaylie. Everything should be good, right?
It’s not.
The group has gone their separate ways and you can practically feel the distance between the members. That doesn’t last for long as a new threat, and an annoying new ally, make their presence known in Tal’Dorei.
Episode 1: One Year Later
Grog kicks things off the season by singing a song “Fuck Shit Up.” It’s a catchy, profanity-laced tavern song recapping the first three seasons with Grog offering his…um…unique perspective on those events.
When a fan asks Grog for his autograph, he admits they haven’t spoken to the rest of Vox Machina in a year. Pike is drowning her sorrows with alcohol. All the devastation the Chroma Conclave wrecked on Tal’Dorei has left the gnome cleric feeling guilty Vox Machina couldn’t save everyone. She’s bitter that the other members have moved on with their lives and is disgusted with the Everlight as well.
Then a man in bejeweled golden armor crashes through the tavern window and lands on a table. His name is Taryon “Tary” Darrington. He’s an aspiring hero, author, and can’t for the life of him remember Pike and Grog’s names. He wants their help protecting his father’s gem business from brigands. Grog wants to accept just so he can fight somebody. Pike is skeptical of Tary but ultimately agrees to go along with Tary’s plan.
The job goes sideways when a bandit steals Tary’s gems. Pike chases the thief and recognizes her as High Priestess Talia, the Head Cleric of the Everlight who once helped Pike reconnect with Sarenrae. She’s barely recognizable now. She’s frantic, violent, and capable of surviving fatal injuries like Grog accidentally breaking her neck. When the trio follow her into a shrine dedicated to the Matron of Ravens, Talia calls the gods liars and destroys the shrine by smashing a handful of Sunder Stones, apparently killing herself in the process. Again, she survives.
Meanwhile, Percy and Vex have settled into their new life as nobles in Whitestone. And Vex is bored out of her mind. The constant balls and formalities have her longing for her old life as an adventurer. Percy sympathizes with her, but he’s distracted. He’s trying to turn off the ziggurat sphere Deliah Briarwood placed beneath Whitestone Castle back in season 1. But Percy can’t figure out how to shut it off.
After hearing reports of a massive black panther prowling near the forest, Vex decides to investigate. What she finds is a gloomstalker, a strange creature that drains the life of its victims.
It eats her bow Fenthras, but she’s able to kill it with help from her bear companion Trinket. Then she has to kill it again by using a vine as a garotte to decapitate it. Back at the castle, Percy discovers that the orb absorbs magic. When he brings a magic lantern close by, the orb sucks all of its energy. He barely escapes when the orb’s pull nearly takes the whole room with it. He stops it by letting the orb consume the lantern.
The episode ends with Talia reaching a hidden chamber underground somewhere in the desert. A blindfolded individual uses one of the stolen gems to perform a dark ritual. A volunteer is stabbed in the back with a massive knife. The knife’s necromantic magic transforms the volunteer into a much bigger and stronger warrior.
Episode 2: Trial by Water
Keyleth and Vax make their way to Vesrah, home of the Water Ashari. Their ship is being tossed around by a storm, which doesn’t help to ease Keyleth’s nerves about her final Aramenté trial. Water is the one element she doesn’t truly understand. Vax reassures her that she will pass her trial. When a wave nearly takes him overboard, Keyleth’s power surges and the weather calms down. Keyleth notices the blight on Vax’s arm from the Matron of Ravens is getting worse but Vax draws her attention back to the approaching city of Vesrah.
The couple gets a cold welcome from Headmaster Uvenda. For her final trial, Keyleth must enter the Water Plane through a rift and retrieve a lodestone that keeps the rift sealed without killing anything. The moment she crosses through, a booming voice saying “I recognize that essence” fills the water. She turns and finds herself face to face with a kraken.
The kraken taunts Keyleth by telling her that her mother Vilya came to this same place to complete her trial and failed. Sensing Keyleth’s concern for a dying Vax, the kraken offers to help her save her lover’s life and finish her Aramenté if she allows the kraken to leave the rift. Keyleth rejects the offer and tries to escape its attacks.
She goes through every form she has: marlin, fire elemental, humpback whale, but the kraken throws her back into her true form. As its tentacles push through the rift into the Material Plane and Vax is caught in their grip, Keyleth transforms into a water elemental and uses her new powers to force the kraken back inside the rift. Working with the Water Ashari, they close the rift.
Despite failing to retrieve the lodestone, Uvenda tells Keyleth she passed. One trial doesn’t define a person and Keyleth is named the Voice of the Tempest.
Back in Whitestone, the gloomstalker Vex killed is back. A beastmaster breaks into Percy’s lab to revive it, and tries to escape the castle. Percy and Vex struggle to stop the beastmaster, but Tary’s sudden appearance at Whitestone isn’t helping.
The beastmaster flings himself through a window from hundreds of feet up, landing hard enough to crater the ground. His bones knit themselves back together while the gloomstalker is fully restored. Percy notices the energy surrounding the creatures matches the energy around the orb.
Vex leaps out the window to try to stop the undead abominations, using her vine arrows to break her fall. She shoots an exploding arrow at them, but it misses them as the gloomstalker and its passenger fly away.
Taryon mentions that he forgot the message he was supposed to relay from Pike and Grog. But he does mention they fought someone who was just as impossible to kill. At that moment, Percy and Vex receive an invitation to Keyleth’s coronation in Zephrah.
Episode 3: The Coronation
Vox Machina reunites in Zephrah for Keyleth’s coronation as Voice of the Tempest. The reunion is slightly awkward as nobody wants to be the one to share their experiences with the undead during Keyleth’s big day.
Before the ceremony, the Matron of Ravens draws Vax into a vision where he watches the golden threads connecting him to each member of Vox Machina dissolve, one by one. The Matron tries to warn him that everyone is in danger, but something interrupts the vision before she can elaborate.
Scanlan is the only member of Vox Machina that doesn’t attend the ceremony, seemingly still on his world tour with Kaylie. But Taryon manages to show despite not being invited.
Keyleth’s coronation goes off without a hitch. She is tested by each of the Ashari headmasters, mastering every element thrown at her. It’s a beautiful ceremony and for a few minutes, it feels like everything is going to be fine.
Then a white-haired, blindfolded necro-ninja addresses Keyleth as she floats into the arena. She tells the Ashari leaders they will be the first pillar of the old order to fall.
Over a dozen blindfolded, hooded figures from the Children of Truth cult attack everyone. The death knight from “One Year Later…” is with them, and manages to gouge out the eyes of Cerkonos of the Fire Ashari. The Children of Truth cultists pull out wands crackling with purple necromantic energy and open fire.
The fight that follows is a chaotic mess as everyone is confused and trying to escape. Keyleth takes command and holds the line. Grog and the death knight throw hands while Percy and Taryon rush to reclaim their confiscated weapons. Whenever someone tries to get answers from the hooded figures, they kill themselves instead.
Keyleth and the necro-ninja fight their way through the arena. The ninja gets the better of Keyleth and throttles her. She tells the druid she has the power to end meaningless cycles then throws Keyleth down the stone stairs.
By the time Keyleth regains consciousness, her father Korrin is bound by the necro-ninja. Saying she’s gifting the ability to see the truth, she presses her fingers to Korrin’s forehead and destroys his eyes. Vax intervenes by driving a dagger between her blindfolded eyes. The purple magic heals her immediately. She greets Vax as she acknowledges his status as the Matron’s champion before disappearing with the death knight.
Korrin is alive but Pike can’t restore his eyes with her healing magic. While Keyleth sits by her father’s bedside as he recovers, the team compares notes. Everything that’s happened recently with the gloomstalker, the beastmaster, Talia, the orb, the death knight, are connected. Taryon was able to collect one of the cultist’s wands and reveals that they’re powered by Shadowstone, a rare gem found near his home, Deastok. The team decides to travel there since it’s the only lead they have. The final moments of the episode has the necro- ninja telling her mistress that the Matron of Ravens has a new champion and that they need to accelerate their plans.
The first three episodes do a good job of setting up the season’s threat while showing where the group stands. With a new set of episodes coming later this week, I’m curious to see where the show is going with the Children of Truth arc.
Season 4 of The Legend of Vox Machina is here! A set of three brand-new episodes will premiere every Wednesday on Prime Video at 3:00a.m. ET/ 12:00a.m. PT until June 24, 2026.
