This episode of The Mighty Nein introduces a handful of new characters and a love story, and further develops the deep, mysterious lore of the beacon stolen in the first episode.
We open on the green-skinned fighter, Fjord, sparring in a duel with the captain of his ship. The captain wins the spar but tells Fjord he’d be a good captain one day if he stayed focused. When a storm comes and disrupts the captain and Fjord, the ship’s crew leaps into action. One of Fjord’s enemies, Sabian, sneaks below deck during the storm and lights a fire, sabotaging the crew. Fjord catches this act, but before he can tell the captain, Sabian stabs him in the chest. The ship blows up, and Fjord sinks to the bottom of the ocean, bleeding from his chest.
After the credits roll, we hear a deep voice beckon, “breathe.” Then, Fjord awakens on a sandy shore. He has no stab wound in his chest. His former captain’s hat is on shore next to him, leading us to believe he perished in the wreck. All that is on the shore is a sword, buried halfway in sand, and an arm brace. Fjord dons both the sword and the arm brace, says goodbye to his former captain, and leaves. As he goes, the sword lets out a green energy pulse.
Back with Beauregard, the spy who saved her at the end of the last episode, is training Beau in her house. They’re training to take down the Volstruckers. The spy sends Beau on a mission to a carnival a few towns over.
We are then thrown into a burlesque show. A beautiful, pink, horned creature performs a song for a crowd of men. After the show, the creature returns to her dressing room to her daughter, Jester. The creature tells her daughter that she has to cancel their plans for tomorrow because a client has requested her services. Jester says that it’s alright, but secretly vows to destroy the client to spend time with her mother.
The queen Leylas Kryn, ruler of the kingdom robbed in the previous episode, meets with an advisor, Essek. The queen tells Essek that she’s willing to unleash her entire army to get the beacon back. The beacon contains all of the souls of every soldier who ever fought for the Kryn dynasty. In order to avoid war, the queen tasks Essek with finding and ensuring the safety of the beacon. In fact, most of the people living in the Kryn kingdom have lived multiple lives, thanks to the beacon.
Lost, Fjord wanders the desert until he arrives at a gated town. When he asks to enter, he is denied by two guards. The guards say that because he doesn’t have papers, he can’t enter the town. Fjord begs to enter the town, but the guards deny him. When he shouts at them, “Let me pass!” his sword emits a green energy pulse, and the guards seem to step back and obey his orders robotically.
Caleb and Nott sneak into a horse stable to spend a night in a hay bale. They get a little shut-eye before waking up the next morning and stealing some more goods from locals. In the dead of night, Nott sneaks out and steals some liquor and food. This wakes up Caleb, and the owner of the horse stable. The owner barges in and demands that Nott reveal herself. Caleb and Nott hide in a horse pen, but the stable owner draws nearer and nearer. In some quick thinking, Caleb distracts the owner with some dust, and the two escape. In the process, they free the stable of horses. One of these horses just so happened to belong to Beau. While walking to their next town, the same carnival that Beau is going to, Nott tells Caleb that she knows that Caleb is wanted. Caleb thanks Nott for not turning him in, and that at the carnival, he wants to steal ingredients for some new magic.
Essek returns back to his home and speaks with his mother. Essek is hiding the fact that his mother has a bad disease from the queen. If the queen finds out, she would execute his mother. Essek’s mother gets intense flashbacks to her former lives, ones granted to her by the beacon. She ends up getting a bloody nose and passing out, unaware of her surroundings.
Finally, in the town, Fjord witnesses a local politician give a speech about avoiding war between the two kingdoms. He’s interrupted by Jester and some of the burlesque dancers. This politician is the one who took up her mother’s time, so to get back at him, Jester tells the town population that he’s been seeing her mother. The politician orders his guards to find and attack Jester. On the run, Jester runs into Fjord, and the two get arrested. Before getting detained, Fjord accidentally uses his sword’s magic to fend off the guards. Jester and Fjord escape through the streets. Jester falls for Fjord because he saved her, and Fjord puts on an act to seem more manly. Fjord lies to Jester, saying he was the captain of his ship. Jester’s mother tells Fjord and Jester that they have to leave before the politician catches up with them. She encourages the two to skip town. While on the road, Fjord asks Jester not to call him a captain, but only because they’re on land and not because he’s not actually a captain.
The episode ends with a series of short scenes. Beau, without a horse, now has to walk to the carnival with Owelia, secretly tracking her. Fjord has a dream that reveals what healed him on the beach. While underwater, an orange eye opens and closes the wound. It whispers to Fjord in the same deep voice from earlier, “become.”
The most captivating part of this episode is the relationship between Fjord and Jester. The two new characters are a hilarious and cute duo to watch traverse both the cityscape and countryside together. Jester’s background, working at her mother’s club, and worshipping a magical deity, is all a-tier character development.
Each character that we’ve been introduced to so far fills their own niche in the classical fantasy-world syllabus. You have the pirate-without-a-crew type in Fjord, the sneaky thief halfling in Nott, and the misunderstood streetrat outcast in Caleb. You have the powerful magic user a la Starfire in Teen Titans with Jester, and the devout wizard set on her first quest with Beauregard. More importantly, each of these characters has an in-depth backstory. Something that a lot of shows like these miss is the amount of world-building that has to take place in order for viewers to connect with the story emotionally. If the world doesn’t make sense, then the show won’t make sense. That’s the issue with a lot of Star Wars and Marvel shows coming out now. Each show is rooted more in the nostalgia we have for former characters than it is focused on actually developing new and interesting characters and worlds.
With The Mighty Nein, it is clear that Mercer’s experience as a famed Dungeon Master for the Critical Role campaigns means that he’s spared no detail when developing these characters and worlds. Both the macro-history of the two kingdoms, their relationship over the years, and the state of their feud now, and the micro-history of the characters and the factions they represent are clear as day.
Rating: 9/10