Vox Machina: is Percy's death undone by love, not magic?

The final run of episodes before the last three of this animated season of The Legend of Vox Machina (2022), starring Laura Bailey, Liam O'Brien and Taliesin Jaffe, is about grief. I think the themes of these episodes will matter more later than the individual events. The events will come back too. These episodes take Percy de Rolo away, and through Vex'ahlia's mourning they show that grief doesn't look the same for everybody.

Percy dies in the original campaign as well. In this version I thought he might stay dead a bit longer. I hoped it would be resolved within the season's remaining three episodes, because I didn't want to miss him for a year. I understood if the show went that way, though. Taliesin Jaffe, who plays Percy, wanted his resurrection to be hard to complete, and grief doesn't land as hard in a fantasy story if you can simply bring someone back.

Percy's death mirrors the trap that killed Vex

This handful of episodes is about finding Ripley and defeating Thordak. The group does find Ripley. Percy has confessed his feelings for Vex and heard nothing back from her. Then he is essentially kidnapped, because Vex sets off a trap.

That parallels Vex's own death, when Percy set up the trap that accidentally killed her. Fun isn't the right word for that parallel. It's heartbreaking that they keep doing this to each other.

Percy ends up talking to Ripley and forgiving her. He feels he has to prove he isn't a creature of revenge anymore and that he wants to be a better person for Vex. He forgives Ripley, and then he dies at her hand.

Pike's words suggest Orthax may have Percy's soul

The death scene has an interesting detail. Percy drops his gun to the ground as a sign of forgiveness, and it starts glowing when he dies. I believe he probably has his soul taken by Orthax and is suffering some punishment from that demon.

Part of my reason is Pike. When she tries to revive him, she says he's gone instead of he's dead. That's interesting wording. It sounds like she maybe can't feel his soul at all, rather than feeling it pass on.

Later in these episodes, Kash dies, and the Raven Queen comes to collect him. I'm sad we won't get more of Kash if he doesn't come back. In the campaign he was supposed to become a father, with the players imagining twins named after Vex and Vax. Kash wasn't supposed to die, so he serves as the example of what happens when someone dies. That suggests Percy maybe didn't go the same way, since we never saw the Raven Queen collect him. But Vax wasn't there to see it, so we don't know.

Vox Machina loses its youngest member

Percy's death drives many characters' motivations, because Vox Machina has lost its baby brother. Percy is the youngest of the group. In the campaign he talks to Grog about Grog being his big brother, and Percy is excited to have a big brother again.

Scanlan wasn't there for it. The only other death we know Scanlan has experienced is his mother dying in front of him. I'm interested in how Scanlan might mourn Percy, if he weren't comatose, since he wasn't present. He had also missed the two recent times Percy was in trouble.

Vex'ahlia's grief echoes her mother's death in Kith & Kin

Vex is in love with Percy, even though she won't say it. Her feelings draw on both the campaign and the novel Kith & Kin, which tells the story of the twins before they joined Vox Machina. It covers their grief for their mother and the moment they learn she has died. I think her mourning for Percy is similar in some ways.

In Kith & Kin, Vex is overwhelmed by the city around her. Her first reaction is to sneak out of the inn at night and run, because she needs to escape the feeling. The walk gets her into trouble, but it shows she tries to run from what overwhelms her.

These episodes show Vex spending much of her time in guilt, especially over things left unsaid, and over setting off the trap that led to Percy's death. This isn't her first sudden loss. The twins had left Byroden to live with their father. When they came back, they found Thordak had attacked their home. Their mother was dead, and nobody had told them.

That quick realization that someone you loved is suddenly gone is what she relives now. In the book Vex says she always thought they would be able to go home. Because their mother was human and the twins are half elves, they expected to outlive her. But Vex never imagined she couldn't go home to her mother sewing dresses by candlelight to meet a deadline. Vex internalizes that, and it's why she won't get close to anybody: what happens when that home doesn't exist anymore?

Why Vax knew where to find Vex

I'm enjoying that the show isn't necessarily depicting healthy coping mechanisms. Grief is individual, and it isn't always the healthiest, but it's the way you process it. In the book, Vex's grief is guilt and denial, and that's what she focuses on with Percy too.

On the night the twins learned their mother had died, Vax spent the whole night comforting Vex as she cried. That's probably why he knew where she was mourning Percy. They're twins and know everything about each other, but it had also happened before. They spent the next day at their mother's grave. The twins don't have many people to lose, and it changes them fundamentally.

After that day at the grave, Vex promised Vax that they would keep walking away from Byroden. To herself, she promised to keep walking away from the grief and from accepting it. That's what she does with Percy when she says she needs to leave Vox Machina, Whitestone and Percy's grave, and get as far away as possible because she isn't useful to them.

Some people thought she was out of character. I found it exciting that she handles grief the same way. Writing grief as predictable isn't interesting, because people often don't act normally when grieving.

Vex's silence and the Dawnfather

In the book, the twins' childhood friend Duncan comes to talk to them, and it becomes a conversation between Vax and Duncan, with Vex rarely speaking. She is quiet and withdrawn. That happens again at Percy's funeral, where they pray to the Dawnfather. Vex will one day become something like a patron of the Dawnfather, the deity she'll work under, so I liked that she said nothing during his funeral.

A mother's line about love foreshadows Percy's resurrection

The memory where the twins' mother says love is stronger than anything is important foreshadowing. At the table, Taliesin wanted Percy's resurrection to be difficult. He didn't want it to be a case of the group missing Percy and asking for him back. Percy was fairly content: he had confessed to Vex, forgiven Ripley and left the path of revenge. Bringing him back had to take something strong.

What brings him back is Vex saying her heart always belonged to him. She tells him she loved Whitestone because of him, not her father or the title, and that he let her be part of the thing he holds dearest. She ends: "Whitestone still needs you, darling. I still need you here. I should have told you. It's yours." That love is stronger than simply missing him, and I enjoyed that the show foreshadowed it with their mother.

Defeating Thordak is the twins' first step toward healing

The mother's line also foreshadows the twins landing the killing blow on Thordak and saving everybody. The shot of Vex before she kills Thordak is cinema.

Defeating Thordak doesn't mend their relationship with their father or bring Percy or their mother back. But it's the first step in the twins understanding their losses, making amends and learning from them instead of running away. I think it will be important for their healing. Grief doesn't go away overnight, but from here I think they'll actively choose to work through it.

Andrew Garfield was quoted around Twitter during a press circuit saying, in essence, that it hurts to love fully because of the inevitable loss, but that it's the only way to live with vitality and meaning, and it breaks hardened hearts open so we can reconnect with ourselves. I think grief is a portal into our hearts that lets us feel love too. I haven't found anything that captures the theme of these episodes better.

Grief is going to stay heavy and keep haunting them, especially with Scanlan's fate unknown. I have theories based on the campaign, but the show has changed so much. Vax has also finally talked to Keyleth, and they're kind of a thing now, which he feared before, and the two twins have been foils for each other this whole time, showing the opposite of what each is going through. These episodes were heavy, and that heaviness matters for the story going forward.