by Emily Maesar, Associate TV Editor

Fantasy High: Junior Year
Episode 1, “Summer Scaries”
With Brennan Lee Mulligan, Emily Axford, Zac Oyama, Siobhan Thompson, Lou Wilson, Ally Beardsley, and Brian Murphy
Streaming now on Dropout.tv

Welcome back intrepid heroes! The Bad Kids™ are back for a third season of Dropout’s incredible actual play Dungeons & Dragons show, Dimension 20: Fantasy High. And boy howdy is the premiere of the season a kick in the ass! We’re back to the classic style of Dimension 20, where the season has already been played and we’re now watching a highly curated and edited piece of the story, rather than just a live stream that’s purely theater of the mind (like Sophomore Year was, the last time they played the Bad Kids in early 2020).

We begin in media res (the most interesting way to begin continuing adventures like this, I think), following the events of Sophomore Year. Our teen heroes are chasing after the Night Yorb, while being flanked by Yorbies, the followers of said creature. We’ve got the gang split between the top and inside of the Hangvan, the gang’s sentient family van. Up on top with Gorgug (Zac Oyama), Adaine (Siobhan Thompson), and Fig (Emily Axford) is a giant solar lasso connecting them with the BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy) of the moment.

The other half of our crew is resting inside, with Riz (Brian Murphy) driving, Kristen (Ally Beardsley) ignoring her god, and Fabian (Lou Wilson) eventually making a failed attempt to jump from the van to his sentient motorcycle, the Hangman, before nearly getting run over. It’s an incredible set of story moments and a spectacular showcase of dice rolling, both good and bad.

As the Bad Kids have been traveling around and having adventures without us, we get to become reacquainted with them, their new stats and character changes, and their merry band of NPCs (both new and returning). It is here that the first true piece of comedy happens, as our Game Master extraordinaire, Brennan Lee Mulligan, introduces us (with minis!) to Squeem, Moggy the Doggy, Ecaf, Balthazar, and Duggan McCann. It’s delightful and fun, but potentially a little confusing—because it’s all bits, baby! That’s right! We actually don’t know any of these people, but the characters do! We haven’t seen our intrepid heroes since the end of their sophomore spring break and now it’s the end of summer before junior year. Time has passed and they’ve had adventures without us. And that our lovely cast just goes along with it, pretty convincingly, when Brennan presents them with people they’ve never actually seen before, is a really lovely way of expressing just how in tune all these performers are with each other.

That connection has been the backbone of the series since the beginning of Dimension 20, even in the non-Fantasy High seasons. Something about the Dome at Dropout, the phoenix rising out of the burning ashes of College Humor, really brings out a connected and deeply in-sync table of D&D players. It’s what makes all the great actual play TTRPGs actually interesting to watch or listen to. Personally, I think Dimension 20 is, perhaps, the best show to watch if you’re interested in D&D and feel a bit overwhelmed by something as massive (and long) as Critical Role. An amazing show, but the episodes are almost always over three hours and it’s dense with how many campaigns and how many episodes of each there are. Dimension 20 is much more curated and has the added benefit of lots of newer players, so you get to learn with them, how abilities work and what all those dice rolls actually mean.

So, I wanted to write about this show for a couple of reasons. The first being that Dimension 20 and, in particular, Fantasy High is just so damn good. I’m hoping that, while there are many hours of the show, maybe somebody will be interested enough in it (and D&D) that they’ll want to watch the series—and potentially play one of my favorite games. Both previous seasons of Fantasy High (Freshman Year and Sophomore Year) are actually all on YouTube, so it’s pretty accessible. The second is that with our teen heroes coming back, it felt like a great thing to write about in tandem with my new series “We Used to Be Friends: American Teens on the Small Screen.”

Fantasy High is a show where adults are creating teens in a highly curated game of fantasy improv, so it felt only right to have it as the second prong in this conversation. What transformations will our heroes, and the people in their orbit, make this season? With so many parental grievances having been dealt with in some capacity, it seems like the future might be internal (like Kristen being the disinterested jock and ignoring her god, instead of how it was in season one—quite the opposite), and potentially within the friend group. The Bad Kids are truly worthy of their adventuring school, but do they even need it anymore? I’m excited to find out what teenage drama and fantasy goodies this season of Dimension 20 holds, and I hope you are too!