Liam's Quest: Full Circle

is the sixteenth special episode of Critical Role and the sequel to.

Laura, Taliesin, Sam, Travis, Ashley, Marisha, and Matt find themselves lost in time after the battle against Conan O'Brien. As they continue to loop through apocalyptic versions of Los Angeles they must ask themselves what they're willing to sacrifice in order to return everything to normal.

Part I
After the events of their previous adventure, Sam, Laura, Travis, Ashley, and Taliesin wake up in a mysterious jungle, surprised to find that they have been reverted to the age of children. Amid strange vibrations of energy in their heads, they explore their surroundings, finding a crushed child and the skeletal remains of the dog Bixby, and fighting off a strange, skinless wildcat. They make their way across a marsh and spot an old man trying to crack open a giant gourd. They approach him and he flees, and they discover Matt and Marisha (now teenagers) sleeping inside the gourd.

As they are trying to remember how they got to the jungle and deciding what to do, six more skinless cats attack them. Through Taliesin's warlock powers, Marisha's martial arts prowess, and Ashley's intimidation and using one of the cats' corpses as a weapon, they defeat the cats and decide to keep moving before more come. Sam looks around the jungle and finds the path the old man went, and they begin following it. The path takes them to an ancient, sunken parking lot, where they see the foundation of the tower where they fought Lich Conan O'Brien. Realizing they're in LA, they continue following Sam as he tracks the old man, gathering what feeble natural weapons they can for self-defense along the way.

After catching a glimpse of the old man in the trees, the group sprint to catch up with him. Just as they're nearly close enough to speak with him, they hear the blast of a war horn as a wave of the vibrating energy peaks in intensity, and the jungle vanishes. The group finds themselves in the frigid waters of a beach where the remnants of a highway lead from the distance into the sea. As they look toward the shoreline, they see before them a massive legion of nightmarish creatures, led by the 50-foot-tall demon prince Demogorgon. Sam, Taliesin, Matt, and Ashley immediately submit to the devils and swear fealty to them. However, despite their attempts to bargain, fight back, grovel for mercy, and (in Matthew's case) use their knowledge of D&D to dispel the nightmare, Demogorgon devours Travis, crushes Marisha, then eviscerates the others one by one. As Laura lies in the water, frozen from Demogorgon's gaze, her vision blurs, then all she sees is white as everything goes silent.

Part II
There is darkness as the group comes to, not knowing whether years or minutes have gone by. They look around and realize they are in a motion capture studio, still as children, as Neil Druckmann finishes a scene take for a Naughty Dogs video game called Savage Starlight. The crew, including Liam, do not seem to notice that the group is still of young age. Despite this confusion, the group follows along with the script as they do another take. Suddenly, the same nauseating energy bombards the group, and the room warps around them. The cameras and technology in the recording room animate and attack the crew.

The group starts to fight back against the animated machinery, which audibly kills Liam in the back room. Throughout the fight, the central mass of cords and camera screens in the center of the room attacks from a pit in the ground. As it is damaged, screens on the camera equipment flicker disjointed messages, including "NO," "SAM," "ASH-O-LEY", "HUSBAND," and "FORGIVE M". Marisha finds a memory chip on a glowing cylinder on the base of the cameras, and Sam approaches the main camera and addresses Liam through it, urging him to calm down. In response, the camera screen flickers "FIND ME." Neil is impaled by a camera, but he manages to disconnect its cables before it falls on him and crushes him. Matt finds Liam's mangled body, confirming his death. Marisha and Sam manage to knock the cylinder off of the largest camera, disabling it. With all the cameras defeated, the group enters a glowing green tunnel in the side of the wall.

After a long jog up the tunnel, the group begins to see through glass on the tunnel's walls what seems to be the LA they once knew, though it is littered with sickly green lights and black spires that tower in the sky. Finally, they reach an archway that leads into a domed glass chamber. The chamber is filled with oily technological cables, and in a giant central glass column, they see Liam floating in a tank of fluid, seemingly unconscious. The face of Liam is projected onto the wall by luminous cables and wires, looking at the group. Through the vibrations of the devices around the room, Liam addresses the group, expressing how much he missed them and explaining how he came to be in his position.

He speaks of a group of beings who took Liam away 8,642 years previous and imprisoned him. His anger and loneliness warped reality as he tried to reconnect with reality and pull his friends close to him, and he unwittingly spread incarnations of the group across the dimensions and worlds of reality. He explains that he is the "lynchpin" of all the dimensional chaos he has created, and implores the group to destroy him so that he can rest and they can return to their original timeline. Matthew pleads with Liam to reconsider and to try using the powers that has brought everyone to this point to reverse the process and fix it from the beginning. Liam agrees to try, but, unsure of whether he will survive the process, asks if the group will indulge him as he speaks some words he has meant to say to them for thousands of years.

One by one, Liam speaks to Ashley, Travis, Marisha, Taliesin, Laura, Sam, and Matthew, addressing them first as "MY FRIEND," commending them for their friendship and their place in his life, and ending with "I AM RICHER FOR HAVING KNOWN YOU. FRIEND." Unable to bring themselves to unplug or destroy Liam's machinery, the group places their hands on the tank together, each pleading with Liam to consider any other way to fix the problem. Liam explains that he cannot free them if they do not kill him, as the black spires in the distance begin to explode and a wall of green fire roars toward them. The group accepts their doom, preferring it over forsaking their friend.

The group wakes up again, this time in the Geek & Sundry studio, where they are preparing to play a game of Dungeons & Dragons with Liam as the Dungeon Master. The screen fades to black as they begin their game.

New

 * Neil Druckmann

Returning

 * Laura Bailey
 * Taliesin Jaffe
 * Ashley Johnson
 * Matthew Mercer
 * Liam O'Brien
 * Marisha Ray
 * Sam Riegel
 * Travis Willingham

Mentioned

 * Bixby
 * Conan O'Brien

Quotations
Laura (to child Sam): "Your face is smaller but your teeth are the same size!" Sam: "Who are you?" Laura: "I'm Laura!" Sam: "You're too fat to be Laura!"

Matthew: "Ashley, continue to prove your savagery! Chew deep, and revel in the insanity as this day, we prove our mettle against the force of darkness!"

Matthew (to Demogorgon): "I know everything about you. I've seen your pictures. I've red every single aspect of your existence. And here's the fun part: When it all comes down to it, you're just a figment of some fat guy's imagination! ...vicious mockery."

Liam: "I WAS RICHER FOR HAVING KNOWN YOU."

Trivia

 * This is the third episode where Liam O'Brien is the Dungeon Master.
 * The other two episodes are and.
 * This is the first episode where Matthew Mercer is a player instead of being the Dungeon Master.
 * The "chestnuts" that were on the ground where Sam woke up were actually dormant versions of the skinless "cats". They grew on the trees.
 * The beach scene was inspired by a real nightmare that Liam once had.
 * Matthew's comment "Liam, how do you spell farmhouse?" is a joke referencing how Liam's robot voice resembles that of a Speak & Spell toy.
 * "Savage Starlight" is a comic series in the game The Last of Us, a game that Liam is the VO director for and that Ashley starred in.