Yasha is coming! The Mighty Nein stars tease 'a new route' to her story: 'It's better in the show...

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Ashley Johnson and star/executive producer Travis Willingham tee up what's coming for their soft barbarian lady. Yasha is coming! The Mighty Nein stars tease 'a

Ashley Johnson and star/executive producer Travis Willingham tee up what's coming for their soft barbarian lady.

Yasha is coming! The Mighty Nein stars tease 'a new route' to her story: 'It's better in the show' (exclusive)

Ashley Johnson and star/executive producer Travis Willingham tee up what's coming for their soft barbarian lady.

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in *Vanity Fair*, Vulture, IGN, and more.

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October 7, 2025 12:00 p.m. ET

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Yasha, voiced by Ashley Johnson, in 'The Mighty Nein'. Credit:

- Fans have been wondering about Yasha, so *The Mighty Nein* stars Ashley Johnson and Travis Willingham are easing your anxieties.

- The pair tease the "new route" they took for this character and her backstory.

- "I feel like now we finally get to tell the story that our soft barbarian lady deserves," Johnson says.

In mid August, the official Instagram account for Critical Role's two animated fantasy series on Prime Video released a single photo of Ashley Johnson's character, Yasha Nydoorin, on *The Mighty Nein*. The caption read, "We hear you...she's coming."

A few weeks earlier, ** had released the official first look at the upcoming show, which is set in the same world as *The Legend of Vox Machina* but a few decades later. Yasha was the only core character absent from that reveal, which included Sam Riegel's Nott The Brave, Liam O'Brien's Caleb Widogast, Marisha Ray's Beauregard Lionett, Laura Bailey's Jester Lavorre, Travis Willingham's Fjord Stone, and Taliesin Jaffe's Mollymauk Tealeaf.

Willingham, also an executive producer on *The Mighty Nein*, now tells EW that fans were "absolutely" flooding the feeds asking about Yasha, a barbarian woman and a roving mercenary from the wastes of Xhorhas in the Kryn Dynasty. "We have some of the most passionate, eagle-eyed fans that are out there, whether it's us doing little sneak peeks of Campaign 4 and people zooming in microscopically to see what details they can, or realizing that Yasha isn't present in the EW sneak peek for San Diego Comic-Con," he says.

With Critical Role now hitting up New York Comic Con this week to preview what's next for both *The Legend of Vox Machina* and *The Mighty Nein*, Johnson herself declares, "Our barbarian lady is gonna be in there. We just want to honor her story a little bit more now that we have the time and the space to do it." She adds, "I feel like now we finally get to tell the story that our soft barbarian lady deserves."

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*The Mighty Nein* adapts the second campaign of Critical Role's live-streamed tabletop role-playing adventures. While *The Legend of Vox Machina* is set in Tal'Dorei, the successor show takes viewers to another continent in Exandria called Wildemount. There, a different group of misfit adventurers will be haphazardly drawn together in a story involving a stolen artifact from the Kryn Dynasty to the east.

Johnson remained a key member of the Critical Role troupe over the years, but during the original role-playing campaign for *The Mighty Nein*, she was forced to travel between Los Angeles, where the group recorded their sessions, and New York City, where she filmed a role on NBC's *Blindspot*. She would participate over Zoom and sometimes in person when her schedule allowed, but it often forced Dungeon Master Matt Mercer to engineer creative ways for Yasha to pop in and out without disrupting the story too much.

"Matt did everything he could with me going back and forth," Johnson recalls. "It wasn't easy for Matt." Now that the team gets the opportunity to adapt that campaign for animation, however, Willingham confirms, "We are taking a new route with Yasha. It's very intentional. We're really excited about it."

They point to Yasha's backstory as one crucial opportunity. "There were a lot of things that happened to her before our livestream campaign started," Willingham continues. "This is a really interesting chance to see some of those backstory elements affecting her in real time."

Art of Ashley Johnson's Yasha for 'The Mighty Nein'.

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******Johnson agrees, "It's better in the show," she says. "Her arc of the story makes even more sense, and we just had more time with it. We were able to honor her story in an even better way than we were before."

Some of that material, as well as the big Yasha hits of the campaign, won't happen immediately. Because Amazon already greenlit *The Mighty Nein* for season 2, "we are able to plot this course a little more carefully," Willingham teases.

And what about the dynamic between Yasha and Ray's Beau? How will that translate from the campaign? Those eagle-eyed fans are surely wondering. "For fans that are wondering if that initial tension between Yasha and Beauregard will be there, it'll be there," Willingham confirms, "but it's all in time."

*The members of Critical Role will assemble at New York Comic Con for a panel this Thursday, Oct. 9, at 11 a.m. ET. *The Mighty Nein* will premiere on Prime Video Nov. 19. *

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