Netflix Is About To End An Era For Dungeons & Dragons’ Best TV Show

Published Oct 10, 2026, 8:45 PM EDT

Angel Shaw is a Lead Writer and Critic on ScreenRant's TV team, covering new-release and classic TV shows across all major streaming platforms. She has been a writer with ScreenRant since 2022 and specializes in Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and fantasy. 

Angel holds a bachelor's degree in language interpreting and is passionate about all things culture and communication—especially in how it relates to popular media throughout history (from Shakespeare to Friends to Game of Thrones).

Prime Video's The Legend of Vox Machina has been the top dog of the Dungeons & Dragons television world for some time now, but that's sure to change. While D&D has been highly popular within a specific community for decades, it rather recently exploded into the mainstream. We can largely thank the show Stranger Things for that, which used its own supernatural plot in parallel with concepts and tropes from the classic fantasy game. Since then, waves of new players have found Dungeons & Dragons, and the entertainment industry has responded.

A concept like Dungeons & Dragons is well-suited to film and television, so it's no surprise that there have been a good handful of adaptations. Aside from Stranger Things (which can be counted as an adaptation in some sense), we had the rather successful Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. There were some problems with this project, and though it still gained a lot of attention and achieved a Certified Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, the film didn't stack up well against the likes of The Legend of Vox Machina.

Prime Video's Dungeons & Dragons TV series, The Legend of Vox Machina, is truly the cream of the crop. The story comes straight from the actual-play web series Critical Role, so it's about as organic D&D as it gets. Proof of this series' quality sits right on Rotten Tomatoes, which reflects a 100% approval rating from critics across the board. It's a pretty massive deal, but while The Legend of Vox Machina has been far better received than Honor Among Thieves, it's a bit less noticed. This is for one simple reason—The Legend of Vox Machina is animated.

The sad truth is that animated fantasy TV shows just aren't going to gain the same sort of mainstream attention as live-action ones. We've seen the evidence of this in a variety of mixed-media franchises. So, while The Legend of Vox Machina has been sitting atop the Best-Dungeons-&-Dragons-Adaptations list ever since it premiered, it's almost guaranteed to be overtaken by Netflix's upcoming live-action Ravenloft ​​​​​​series.

Netflix's Dungeons & Dragons Show Almost Certainly Won't Be As Good As The Legend Of Vox Machina

There's been a lot of excitement around Netflix's Ravenloft series since the moment it was announced. We are still a long way off from this dark and gritty live-action series, based on the iconic, gothic setting of Dungeons & Dragons, becoming a reality. However, it's becoming pretty clear that this is going to be quite an event. Ravenloft has long been an exciting potential setting for a film or series, so Netflix is delivering on some hopes and dreams with this project. Additionally, as a live-action series, Ravenloft is all but guaranteed to capture more attention than The Legend of Vox Machina ever did.

This ultimately means that, once Ravenloft actually premieres, The Legend of Vox Machina will likely be demoted from its place of glory. However, this by no means means that the Netflix series will be a better show. The Legend of Vox Machina is an intimate adaptation by D&D fans for D&D fans. This has allowed it to deliver precisely what devoted viewers are looking for. Ravenloft, on the other hand, will be another massive, high-budget Netflix project that will, like Stranger Things and The Witcher, very quickly gain lots of fans and a whole lot of haters.

The chances of Ravenloft achieving The Legend of Vox Machina's perfect 100% RT score are basically nonexistent. This is both because there will be a lot more eyes on this project (making such a percentage nearly impossible) and because, with so much at stake, Netflix will have no choice but to make this a definitively mainstream story. Yes, this will be Dungeons & Dragons, but this streaming giant is all but guaranteed to layer on enough creative liberties to alienate long-time fans in favor of the broader public. We can look forward to Ravenloft, but it will be a real shame to watch the end of such a golden era.