Warning: this article contains spoilers for Season 3 of The Legend of Vox Machina.

In season 3, episode 4 of The Legend of Vox Machina, the devil Zerxus Ilerez hinted to his minion Yenk that Pike Trickfoot’s blood was special, and one theory might explain why. Some extent of this power was shown later when she healed her team members and broke them out of Anna Ripley’s hallucinogenic toxin not with the power of her faith in the Everlight, but with her own blood. This is a major change from the original campaign that will clearly have consequences in The Legend of Vox Machina season 4.

In the original campaign, Pike had some character development, and it did involve a crisis of faith. However, due to the professional commitments of Pike’s player, Ashley Johnson, she didn’t get as much screen time as the rest of Vox Machina. With The Legend of Vox Machina now able to use Ashley’s acting talent to full effect, giving Pike a more involved personal arc. With that increased focus comes the mystery of just what this power is and where it comes from – and the answer may be found elsewhere in the Critical Role canon.

Pike Could Be A Descendant Of The Everlight

There Is An In-Game Explanation For It

In Critical Role’s third campaign, a three-part flashback entitled “Downfall” shows a glimpse of the gods of Exandria at the beginning of creation, followed by the efforts of the Prime Deities to destroy the god-killing weapon at the heart of the flying city of Aeor near the end of the Calamity. Specifically, the player characters are mortal avatars of these gods, including Trist, a woman who is an incarnation of the Everlight.

In the campaign, Ashley Johnson also played Trist.

Trist was a mortal human, but also an avatar of the Everlight, and joined with the other mortal avatars of the gods during the Calamity in order to stop the city of Aeor’s construction of a god-killing weapon. Uniquely among the avatars, Trist had lived a full life beforehand and had started a family, having two children by her firbolg husband Amaris. Trist died during the destruction of Aeor, her divine essence returned to the Everlight, but her children survived, and perhaps their bloodline has survived the centuries between the Calamity and the events of The Legend of Vox Machina.

While Trist was human and her husband a firbolg, the vagaries of magic and genetics in any Dungeons & Dragons-inspired setting mean that a bloodline could very well propagate over time and eventually be found among gnomes like Pike. We have no direct family history for Pike beyond her grandfather Wilhelm, who we see in season 1 of The Legend of Vox Machina, so she could very well trace her heritage all the way back to Trist.

What This Could Mean For Pike In Legend Of Vox Machina Season 4

Pike Is More Powerful Than She Knows

Pike’s relationship with the Everlight in The Legend of Vox Machina has been rocky through the first three seasons. Her faith has been challenged more than once, and her attempts to get answers from her deity have mostly been met with stern rebukes, and even a temporary loss of her cleric powers. Yet since she is nominally the deity of redemption, compassion, and healing, there must be a reason the Everlight is so strict with Pike, such as needing to push Pike to be worthy of her destiny.

Mortals with divine heritage are usually seen as what Dungeons & Dragons are represented as aasimar, like Ashley’s character Yasha Nydoorin from Critical Role Campaign 2. While aasimar are considered mechanically distinct from gnomes so far as character creation rules go, there’s nothing to say that Pike couldn’t have a similar spark of divinity within herself. This could also explain Zerxus’ desire to tempt Pike to the service of Asmodeus, as the corruption of such divine power would be a mighty prize for the Father of Lies.

With season 4 of The Legend of Vox Machina on the horizon, there’s a lot of time to theorize about just what new twists and turns the story will hold. Hopefully, Pike will find a balance between believing in herself and her faith in the Everlight – and her faith in her friends in The Legend of Vox Machina.