Critical Role has announced the return of its original video podcast series, Weird Kids, starring Ashley Johnson and Taliesin Jaffe. The new season is scheduled to premiere on 5 May, marking a significant expansion of content for the company’s proprietary subscription platform, Beacon.
The upcoming season consists of 24 hour-long episodes, a substantial increase in production that signals Critical Role’s intent to bolster Beacon’s value proposition. The series features Johnson (The Last of Us) and Jaffe (The Legend of Vox Machina) reflecting on their shared histories as child actors in Hollywood, exploring the “strange debris” of their pasts through the lens of Los Angeles oddities and counter-culture.
The Beacon pivot
The move to make Weird Kids exclusive to Beacon represents the latest step in Critical Role’s “walled garden” strategy. By shifting high-personality “hang” content away from public platforms like YouTube and Twitch, the company is insulating its most dedicated community from the shifting algorithms of third-party tech giants.
Ashley Johnson, who also serves as the President of the Critical Role Foundation, described the series as a “weirdly healing” process.
Coming back for more episodes of Weird Kids feels a little like reopening the strangest scrapbook imaginable. We get to talk about the people, places, and moments that shaped us, and somehow it’s equal parts hilarious, surreal, and weirdly healing.”
Reclaiming the child star narrative
The series eschews the traditional “tragic star” tropes often associated with Hollywood’s past. Instead, Jaffe and Johnson lean into the “beautiful absurdity” of their upbringing. For Jaffe, known for his deep ties to Los Angeles’ underground history, the show serves as a digital archive of the city’s fading landmarks and offbeat anecdotes.
Taliesin Jaffe, Co-founder at Critical Role, said;
There is something deeply satisfying about taking all the wonderfully strange debris left behind by childhood and turning it into conversation. This lets us dig even deeper into the beautiful absurdity of growing up weird, growing up in Hollywood, and somehow surviving with our sense of humor intact.”
New episodes will roll out every Tuesday following the 5 May premiere. While Critical Role continues to support its main roleplaying games on public platforms, the sheer volume of this Weird Kids order suggests that the future of their personality-driven, non-gaming content lies firmly within their own subscription ecosystem.
