On the Good Mythical Tour, Rhett & Link’s comedy chops steal the show

On June 2, 2024, a standing-room-only crowd packed into the 2,695-seat Palace Theatre in Columbus, Ohio. The headliners of the event were Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal, who had arrived in Columbus for the fifth date in a nine-city springtime swing.

The Good Mythical Tour, as the event series is known, is the first-ever live tour for the duo known as Rhett and Link. The lifelong friends embarked on their journey to capitalize on the success of Good Mythical Morning, the live show that arrives on YouTube each weekday around 6 AM ET.

As far as YouTube morning shows go, Good Mythical Morning is an unparalleled success story. When Rhett and Link got their start on YouTube in 2006, their initial output consisted of comedic fare, including sketches and music videos. Their clever, polished productions drew attention from brands, but they soon found a format that offered even more creative potential.

The first episode of Good Mythical Morning aired in 2012. Nine years later, the show aired its 2000th episode. The channel that hosts Good Mythical Morning has brought in more than 9.4 billion lifetime views, with fans (or “Mythical Beasts,” as they’re known in Rhett and Link parlance) flocking to recurring segments like taste tests, challenges, and the whimsical Wheel of Mythicality.

“It’s not like a typical YouTube upload schedule, which is whenever the video’s done, it gets posted,” Rhett and Link told Deadline in a recent interview. “We see it as something you can incorporate in your life and depend on, in the way that people could depend on their favorite TV shows in history.”

The Good Mythical Tour takes viewers into the production of an episode of GMM. Rhett and Link welcome guests to the stage while their longtime partner-in-crime Stevie Wynne Levine takes on the same “voice of god” role she occupies on YouTube  (except this time, she’s behind the stage, not behind the camera).

The Columbus show included localized versions of longtime GMM segments, including a taste test of multiple buckeye candy-flavored ice creams. In other cases, the stars of the tour had to carry the show themselves. At one point, Neal gave Levine anxiety by playing with a knife on stage. A few minutes later, McLaughlin debuted his solo act, in which he turned the act of eating a single bean into a piece of high art.

As silly as those segments may sound, they were huge hits with the crowd and testaments to Rhett and Link’s creative ability. Throughout the show, the duo showed off spur-of-the-moment inspiration to breathe life into their bits. In some moments, like when they wrote and performed songs based on common pet peeves for dads, Rhett and Link seemed more like improvisational actors than YouTubers.

That off-the-cuff spirit is one secret behind the success of GMM. Rhett and Link’s previous output relied as much on visual flair as it did on hilarious lines. That formula worked, at least on YouTube, but the pivot to a morning show fully focused the spotlight on the two titular stars — and they were clearly ready for their close-up.

A trio of R-rated live shows gave Rhett and Link a chance to prove that their more personal approach to YouTube could translate to an in-person format. The success of those live events led to the Good Mythical Tour, which is adding two more dates after completing its initial nine-city run. Mythical Beasts in Dallas and Houston can get tickets for shows in November on the official Mythical Entertainment website.

As they hit the road once again, Rhett and Link will continue to expand the company that launched out of their shared morning show. Mythical has served its Beasts with a gathering called MythiCon and plenty of merch. Rhett and Link are also lifting up their fellow creators with an investment program that has backed videomakers like Daniel Thrasher and The Sorry Girls.

The end result of all that development is a media company that builds TV-quality programming around its two founders. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan thinks that Rhett and Link deserve an Emmy. If you disagree, check out the Dallas and Houston legs of the Good Mythical Tour. At the end of the night, you might be singing a different tune.