okay you’ve appealed to my love of both hamlet as a play and meta writing about cr, and i do have a lot to expand on this
i mean just as a note first off i love how literal that comment about the friends is, because hamlet was directly referenced in ep 69, and they went “nope, we care about you more than that, and we have what hamlet didn’t which is access to resurrection magic! now get your ass back in the game and stop trying to take the easy way out of your redemption arc”
but also he’s not just going through the characters in hamlet, there’s a direct progression of themes as well, which is honestly really fascinating and something that would be hard to do in any other format than this progression of dnd characters (though it’s now giving me a lot of ideas for ways to do a production of hamlet with, a very different message than the original)
hamlet itself is a tragedy, so hamlet can’t learn from the people he meets, the story won’t allow for it, and he’s the kind of person that even knowing the story, he himself wouldn’t allow for it. the path he takes is just circular destruction until it ends by everyone dying. but in another story, in another life, he could learn from it.
percy, up until episode 69, follows the hamlet pattern to a t. estranged son of royalty, whose entire life was changed when his family was murdered by those that then usurped his throne. becomes obsessed with revenge, incited by a supernatural force, and driven to restore his home and make things right. but it goes wrong, he kills people he didn’t intend to, scares the people who care about him, no one is sure if he’s evil or crazy or just straight up suicidal (and the answer of course is a little of all three). leaves home, changes his perspective on things, but by then it was too late - the circle of revenge set in motion by both his actions and those out of his control keeps on turning until he finds himself in a perfectly matched (were it not for the trap he didn’t know about) duel, and everyone left in the circle dies.
and that, for a while, was taliesin’s plan. percy’s perfect ending. the final piece in this story told so many times. he even said percy didn’t want to come back, matt was waiting on taliesin to confirm it before resurrecting percy, depending on what the others said during the ritual. vex, as she has so many times for so many reasons, saved his life.
but let’s look at taliesin’s original plan. because here’s where it gets really fascinating - what purpose does the player king (and all the other players) serve in the original play? well, to show the power of a story. you can make people laugh with a story, you can make people cry. you can change someone with a story, but equally you can use a story to reveal someone’s true nature. which is the purpose they end up serving, to reveal claudius’ true nature and prove that he deserves to die. the players, in a story about the cycle of revenge, ultimately only serve to facilitate that revenge.
taliesin had molly as a backup character for percy for a long time. but the molly that would have joined the party if percy had died for good back then, is not the molly we’re used to. taliesin’s original plan was to have the carnival swing through town, with a play about “the terrible tinkerer of tal'dorei” - a caricature of a character that was ripley and percy all rolled into one, which he made specifically because he wanted the rest of vox machina to hate his new character on sight, and then see what happens from there. in this version of things, molly’s stories might have been revealing percy’s true nature, or ripley’s, they might have been changing people’s perceptions and twisting the memory of them, they would definitely be proving they deserved to die. and who knows what vox machina would have done in response to that, but it would only be negative, would be continuing the cycle of revenge.
caduceus, in percy’s story, is a character that didn’t exist. he wasn’t part of taliesin’s original plan, he was made on the spot over a weekend part of the way into the next campaign. the gravedigger in hamlet has useful advice, were hamlet in a different situation, but he’s not, and we’re too far into the story to turn back now, by this point the dominoes are falling and they’re all going to die. this role, in this story, is ineffective, a fancy for another time and place.
but say hamlet wasn’t doomed by the confines of his narrative. say he had friends with resurrection magic, and got another chance.
what does he learn from his own story? that revenge is only ever destructive, and ultimately worthless, in the end. that you can’t change others, only yourself, so you might as well focus on the good in your life rather than the bad. removing bad people from positions of power is, of course, justified, but don’t let them consume you. put good things into the world, spend time with the people you love, and forge a new future, away from the things that dragged you down.
your past does not define you.
hand that message off to the player king. what does he have to teach now? away from the cycle of revenge, those stories are no longer a tool to hurt, but a way to inspire. sometimes bad things happen, in a world you have no control over, but you don’t have to limit yourself to that world. there are millions out there, that are yours for the taking. maybe your past is terrifying and dark but you don’t have to accept it. stories change people. and with the right story your future can be colourful and magical and more you than your past ever was.
and they may not be real, but what does it matter? a tear shed from watching a play is still a tear, a laugh is still a laugh. you don’t owe the world the truth. sometimes a lie is far more beautiful and far more comforting, and makes people happy. and they may not last long, but the impacts they leave last a lifetime. even the shortest of stories still matter.
we learn this from the gravedigger too. we’re ready to hear it now. the dominoes stopped falling a long time ago and all we’re left with is silence. the gravedigger knows that everything comes to an end eventually. that once we’re in the ground and our stories are over, our bodies are just food for the earthworms, or the plants that grow over the graves. but we mark our graves so we know where our loved ones are. we keep their memories in our hearts forever. which circles back to percy’s philosophy, really. a person doesn’t live as long as their body. they live as long as people still remember them. which is why stories are important, and why none of us are ever going to stop telling them.
including the crit role cast, who sit down for four hours every week and keep this story going, which gives us reasons to talk about it and analyse it and relate it to another story that’s survived half a millenium, because people are always people, and analysing gothy character themes is super fun
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