Legend of Vox Machina Does Witcher's Season 1 Dragon Twist Right

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Chalk up another glorious victory for The Legend of Vox Machina, as Critical Role's animated series beats The Witcher in the dragon twist stakes. In The Witcher season 1's «Rare Species» episode, Geralt and Yennefer embark upon a dragon hunt commissioned by mysterious adventurer Borch. Once they near the beast's den, however, Borch reveals he was the dragon all along. Many viewers called out The Witcher's dragon twist for being too obvious, and season 2 even referenced this criticism during Jaskier's ill-timed port rant, when a dockhand-turned-critic complains, "I spotted the dragon reveal a mile away" — an echo of tweets aimed The Witcher's way in late 2019.

The Legend of Vox Machina crafts a similar scenario in its own debut season. As a pre-Briarwood introduction to Vox Machina and their native continent of Tal'Dorei, The Legend of Vox Machina's merry mercenaries hunt an unknown monster preying upon local townsfolk. The beast in question is soon discovered to be a mighty blue dragon, but when Vox Machina finally confronts it in episode 2, said blue dragon is revealed as the true nature of a transformed General Krieg, Tal'Dorei's military commander voiced by a fiery David Tennant.

Related: Why Grog & Pike Are So Close in Legends of Vox Machina Season 1

Here, we have two major fantasy TV shows releasing on rival streaming networks (The Legend of VoxMachina on Amazon, The Witcher on Netflix), both dropping twists whereby a dragon is surprisingly unmasked as a human character hiding in plain sight. But then why does The Legend of Vox Machina's dragon twist prove considerably more potent than The Witcher season 1's? The decisive difference lies in how The Legend of Vox Machina actually anticipates the audience may work out