The Legend of Vox Machina
Amazon
While it’s been a great decade for adult-oriented animation, there are some shows that stand above the rest. One is The Legend of Vox Machina, spawned from the web series Critical Role, and now entering its fourth season (in four years, a rarity). With that season, the show has now set a Rotten Tomatoes record I don’t think any Amazon original has beaten. Even in the streaming space overall, this may be a tough metric to overcome.
With scores coming in for The Legend of Vox Machina season 4, it currently has a perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes score. That would be good enough on its own, but that is now the fourth season it has gotten a 100% score, meaning that’s the rating of the series overall (plus a 94% audience score, to boot).
Across all of streaming, this just doesn’t happen for shows that have aired for this long. One show that has done this is Dark Winds, the AMC-to-Netflix series that has four perfect 100% scored seasons as well. It will soon have around the same number of reviews as The Legend of Vox Machina.
The Legend of Vox Machina
Rotten Tomatoes
I was surprised to see what I believe may have the all-time record for this metric, Jane the Virgin, a series that has five perfect 100% scored seasons, with more of those being “verified” with more reviews as well. Other shows are close. The just-ended Hacks has a 98% across five seasons. Broad City has a 99% in five seasons as well. If we’re talking about animation, Avatar: The Last Airbender has a 100% score across three seasons (and a killer 98% audience score).
As for The Legend of Vox Machina, there are more reviews to come for season 4, but if history is a teacher, it stands to reason that 100% in total will be easy to hit again. It will probably not surprise you that Vox’s sibling show, The Mighty Nein, also has a 100% score in its first season.
The point is…watch these. Critical Role amassed a huge fanbase for a reason, and the talented cast of actors and comedians and just fun people make these series unique in the genre. I do wonder if this is ever going to spawn a live-action movie, but this concept seems better contained in animation, and it seems unwise to mess with a good thing. With five 100% scores across two shows now, just keep doing what you’re doing, I say.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.