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I recently got back into Critical Role after falling off it a few years ago. When I was into Critical Role previously, I watched Campaign 2 when it first started streaming. I immediately fell in love with Mollymauk Tealeaf and was naturally devastated after his death. (That wasn’t what turned me off the series though- I fell off watching roughly around the time the party arrived in Xhorhas, I think? There wasn’t a specific reason, I just got busy and other things caught my interest). However, my lovely sister was and still is a die-hard fan, so she kept me in the loop for goings-on during the rest of the campaign. She told me how Molly was brought back but didn’t have his memories anymore, which at the time I found very disappointing. I wanted the Molly we knew back and I felt cheated.
That brings us to now. The second season of The Legend of Vox Machina got me back into Critical Role properly, and I decided to rewatch Campaign 2 from the beginning as it was more or less my campaign. This endeavor reminded me just how much I loved Molly’s character (bawled like a baby during Beau’s eulogy) and I couldn’t resist skipping ahead a hundred episodes to watch the resurrection ceremony in C2E140 and Kingsley’s moments in the C2E141. It was also around this time I became genuinely curious about what Kingsley was. I saw a lot of theories flying around- he’s Molly without the memories and shaped by different experiences, he’s an amnesiac fusion of Molly and Lucien, he’s a brand new soul fragment altogether, etc.
That last one made me feel terrible, because it meant that the Nein’s resurrection attempts kind of failed altogether. But after thinking about literally nothing else for weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that this theory is not correct. The Nein were specifically trying to bring Molly back, so why would the Wildmother just break off a brand new chunk to revive? Also it implies Lucien’s soul was just shattered even further and while the guy was a prick, he didn’t deserve to have that happen to him again. No one deserves that.
So here’s the conclusion I’ve drawn that makes the most sense to me and makes me feel better about not getting Molly back in his entirety- a combination of the first two theories I listed off. Kingsley is both Molly AND Lucien to a degree, reborn but without memory and then shaped by his experiences. A lot of people both on Tumblr and here on AO3 hold similar ideas, but here’s my explanation for why I personally think this theory is the correct one.
(But please note I haven’t gotten to the entire actual Eiselcross Arc yet- I’m mostly going off clips I’ve seen and what was covered in the Nine Eyes book. Forgive me if something is off.)
There are two main reasons why I came to the conclusion that Kingsley is both Molly and Lucien- the first being the fact Lucien could not be revived without Molly. In Kingsley’s epilogue in C2E141, we learned that, through nightmares Kingsley has, that Molly was aware and trapped in Lucien’s mind during the Eiselcross Arc. We later learned in The Nine Eyes of Lucien that Molly was more or less back-sassing Lucien in the back of his head almost the entire time, trying to get him to stop his insane quest and do the right thing. So when Lucien was resurrected properly by Cree and the Tomb Takers, the Molly Shard came back into the fold so he could be whole. They became bound together again- however, I think since Molly had spent two years as his own entity, he was able to maintain some individuality and talk to Lucien.
(That being said, Molly seemed to no longer view himself as entirely separate from Lucien in the book. I suppose his death and re-entering the fold changed his view on things. At the end of chapter 28, he even specifically says to him, “Hope you’re not full-up on crazy because I’m here too. That’s right- I’m here, you can’t get rid of me. Not really. I’m you too.” And from then on he refers to himself and Lucien as an “us” whereas Lucien refuses to acknowledge Molly as part of him.)
Therefore, when the time came to bring Molly back to life with Caleb’s lucky rock, the Nein couldn’t call him back separately. Molly and Lucien were bound as one soul again, and to break them apart would mean shattering their soul all over again- which I already stated would have not have been fair to anyone involved.
(In reality, it was a bad dice roll, but it works well in-universe too. Plus I'm convinced that even if it had succeeded, Taliesin still wouldn’t have played Molly as he was again. The man once said that Molly wasn’t coming back as a celebration of the ephemeral, and I believe him.)
But as we all know, Caduceus came in clutch with his Divine Intervention and his request of, “Whoever it was, just put it back. I think they’ve earned it. Put it back.”
Which brings me to the second reason for my conclusion- the ending of the Lucien novel itself.
Throughout the second half of the book, Molly tries to convince Lucien to give up on his plan, that he can still change the world but only if he does the hard work involved. Lucien naturally tells him to shove off, but little by little Molly and his encounters with the rest of the Mighty Nein wear him down. Finally, in the last full chapter, Lucien realizes he’s tired, he wants to rest, and that, so quickly, his reign is at an end...
“Unless.”
That’s the key word there. It gets repeated a few times, the most poignant being after Jester says Lucien doesn’t deserve Molly. Lucien thinks to himself-
Lucien: I don’t.
Molly: Unless....
Lucien: Unless.
Molly: When a hand reaches out to you in accord, you take it.
Lucien: Yes, I’ll take it.
This was the moment Lucien finally stopped fighting Molly, and as such it was the moment Lucien dug his hands into his own chest and ripped himself in half.
The story then cuts to the Moonweaver (who had appeared in the book every time Lucien/Molly came back, and is hinted to be the woman in the red coat that Kingsley mentions) and she does a card reading for a nonspecific “you”, who draws the Love Card- Yasha’s card. She notes that “fourth time’s charm” and “one might call that a miracle.”
(“Fourth time” in that the first time was Lucien, second was Molly, third was Lucien with Molly in the backseat, and the fourth is Kingsley.)
I think that by accepting Molly’s hand in accord, Lucien accepted an invitation to move forward with Molly, instead of the unbalanced state of being they had in the second half of the book- to finally be equals and starting smoothing over the fractures in their soul. When the Wildmother was asked to “put it back,” she performed her miracle and did just that. She didn’t put just Molly back because it couldn't be just Molly anymore.
So what is Kingsley? Kingsley is a second chance- a chance for both Molly and Lucien to live, free from the chains that bound them. To do better and get things right this time around.
He is both Molly and Lucien (maybe a little bit more Molly, and I’ll explain why in a moment), but also someone new. In Mighty Nein Reunited, Kingsley notes that Lucien and Molly could be viewed as parents, and one should endeavor to do better than their parents. What is a child if not someone who is a little of one parent, a little of another, but ultimately their own individual due to their own memories and life experiences? Lucien had his whole sad and kind of fucked-up life before his shattering. Molly woke up in grave dirt, was found by a circus, and slowly came to himself over time. Kingsley woke up in a bed of decayed plants, was surrounded by friends, and had his mind restored by magic. Molly had his name chosen for him by Gustav- Kingsley got to choose his own, based on his own feelings and what he had experienced up until that moment.
When Kingsley looked at Caleb’s illusion of Molly, he said that wasn’t him and he was right. He’s not Molly anymore- not entirely anyway. Maybe he could have been someone similar under the right kind of circumstances and with similar experiences, but after what he went through and did experience? He never would have been the same Molly we knew and loved and mourned. I don’t think he would have even wanted to go back.
Does that mean Molly is just gone, lost in this fusion with Lucien and being reborn as Kingsley? No. For starters, in the future he starts to regain some of Molly’s memories and feelings, such as remembering being trapped in Lucien’s soul and breaking the chains of Cognouza. But aside from that...
Kingsley is his own person, but I think he has Molly’s heart in respect to the fact he was the one the Nein was trying to revive. Kingsley was reborn with no memories, but his heart knew the Nein. He found Yasha familiar, and had a feeling about the rest of the Nein (which I think led him to naming off their tarot cards in what I call his “newborn state”- his head was a mess but in his heart he knew his friends). He grew to trust them fairly quickly, and knew after a week with them that he wanted to be worthy of waking up to such people.
I think it was the film Spirited Away that said, “Once you meet someone, you never really forget them.”
I offer a slightly different version of that quote.
Once you love someone, you never really forget them.
After everything his soul went through- being broken, being forced back together, and finally healing the fractures by taking a hand reached out- Kingsley was reborn without memory, just as he had in his previous life as Molly. But that previous life had so much love for this group of assholes that it bled into the next one. That was why he drew the Love Card from the Moonweaver’s deck, because even if he forgot everything else he once was, that love would remain and help build him back up as he started his new life. (Perhaps that was even by the Moonweaver's design, so he could truly start anew without losing everything his previous life fought for.)
Molly’s not gone, he’s just someone new. And he brought Lucien, the stubborn fucker, along for the ride. They were reborn as Kingsley- not dug out of graves in cursed forests or roadside hills, but among wildflowers on a floating city and quickly brought into the loving arms of the family he would grow to adore all over again. And one day, when he’s ready and sure of himself, Kingsley will ask his family about the man he once was, learn about him and where all this love originally came from- something the previous two could never do. Accept the past, learn from it, and go forward into the future.
And ultimately?
I’m okay with that.
I pretend that I'm queen of a castle tumbling around my feet.
And in my heart, it’s there.
Standing tall enough to fix it all,
It’s just a new beginning.
It’s just a different ending.
- “The Edge,” by Casey Lee Williams and Martin Gonzalez