TV Review: "Hazbin Hotel" (Season 1)
The first season of the Amazon series is an exuberantly queer delight with a hellish heart of gold.
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Warning: Full spoilers for the series follow.
Hazbin Hotel is one of those series that’s been on my to-watch list for quite a while, but I just recently got around to actually seeing it. Once I sat down and started, however, I found it nearly impossible to stop! I think it’s safe to say that this is one of those animated series that I am going to watch repeatedly. As Amazon has shown time and again–most notably with The Legend of Vox Machina–it really is the studio to beat when it comes to adult animation that is smart and funny and poignant and vibrant and, dare I say it, brilliant.
The very first episode introduces us to the character Charlie Morningstar (voiced by Erika Henningsen), the daughter of Lucifer and Lilith. Though a princess, she is largely powerless to stop the ruthless extermination of the damned that the angels of Heaven periodically inflict. Not content to accept matters as they are, Charlie decides to set up the titular hotel, which serves as kind of a rehabilitation center for tortured souls, in the hopes of rehabilitating them so that they can avoid the genocide and perhaps even find their own path to redemption and eternal blessed life in Heaven. As Charlie discovers, however, there are many forces in Heaven–not least Adam himself (first man and now one of Heaven’s chief exterminators–who will do anything in their considerable power to make sure that her plans come to naught and that, indeed, they are allowed to slaughter with impunity. She’s joined in her efforts by girlfriend Vaggie (Stephanie Beatriz), bartender Husk (Keith David), chaotic radio demon Alastor (Amir Talai), porn demon Angel Dust (Blake Roman), serpent demon Sir Pentious (Alex Britghtman), and sadistic housekeeper Niffty (Kimiko Glenn), even as there are those in Hell itself who want to see her fail.
This is one of those shows that really does wear its heart on its sleeve. From the very beginning we as viewers are asked to care about Charlie Morningstar and her efforts and to want them to succeed. It certainly helps in this regard that the representatives of Heaven are either giant assholes (Adam) or willing turn a blind eye to the genocide inflicted on Hell’s residents because it’s easier to do so (the Seraphim). Indeed, what’s most striking about the back half of the season is the extent to which it throws a pretty big wrench into the received wisdom of how the cosmos works. We’ve already seen what an inveterate and unapologetic jackass Adam is, but now we learn that even the more benevolent and well-meaning angels of Heaven are little better, content to simply let things go on as they are simply because they can’t imagine doing anything differently. The fact that they are inflicting horrifying punishments on the undeserving doesn’t matter to them.
While I love Charlie’s eternal sunny optimism and Vaggie’s steadfast loyalty and snark, I have to say that my two favorite characters are Angel Dust and Alastor. The former is a deliciously libidinous porn star demon who is arguably the show’s most tragically complex character, his outward insouciance revealing a deep well of self-loathing. Alastor on the other hand…whew, lads. Where does one even begin with a creature like this one? Of all of the residents of Hell that we meet, he is the one that we understand the least, precisely because he’s so terrifyingly unpredictable, prone to bursts of rage whenever his sense of dignity is infringed upon by other unsuspecting demons (to say nothing of the fact that he’s managed to destroy several demons who should be more powerful than him). He remains a sinister mystery right up until the very last episode, and though he took a drubbing at Adam’s hands during the latter’s botched Extermination, it’s clear that we’ll be seeing a lot more of him in the future.
And then there are the numbers. Even if I didn’t love the rest of the show, the music would have made me fall for it. I think that the fourth episode is arguably the best when it comes to finding the series’ overall emotional heart, with Angel’s heartbreaking and soulful “Poison” allowing us to see just how much he’s endured and how deep his hatred of himself goes. Keith David gets to show off his magnificent pipes in his performance of “Loser, Baby,” which has the immortal line, “You’re a power bottom at rock bottom,” a line that made me sit up and say, “Holy shit this is a great show.” The fact that this is a show that foregrounds its queerness in almost every episode makes it even dearer to my own queer heart.
Visually the series is also a feast for the eyes. It has a unique and exuberant animation that is unlike almost anything I’ve seen on television in recent years. It successfully captures the macabre strangeness that one can’t help but associate with Hell, giving us characters who manage to be both entrancing and also more than a little menacing (this is true even of Charlie, the most straightforwardly heroic and golden-hearted of the major characters). It can take a bit of getting used to, but once you do the animation sweeps you up and immerses us in this delightfully bonkers world.
I’ve seen some reviews take the show to task for what some perceive to be flawed writing, but the show’s admittedly rather scattered approach to storytelling is, to me, a key part of its charm. This isn’t the type of show that takes forever to introduce you to its characters and the stakes of the story, instead preferring to just throw you in at the deep end of the pool and let you figure it out for itself. Besides, it does have the throughline of Charlie’s efforts to help our sinners, a story which helps to anchor all of the other drama that unfolds.
There are also quite a few critics who struggled to get their heads around the series’ admittedly rather strange cosmology. Sure, there are a few inconsistencies here and there, and yes there are some things about the nature of Heaven and Hell that remain ambiguous or thinly-sketched, but given that we only have 8 episodes of roughly 20 minutes each, it would have been impossible to explicate every single detail without getting absolutely lost in exposition. I thus think it was probably a good choice to leave some elements of the world unexplored and unexplained until the second and subsequent seasons. As far as viewers go, I also think it’s rewarding to just submit yourself to the madness of it all and not think about it all too much (except for the philosophical and moral questions, of course).
If I had to compare Hazbin Hotel to any other pop culture phenomenon of the last few years, I’d say that it shares more than a little creative DNA with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Like that show, Hazbin is a mix of genres that shouldn’t work but somehow, thanks to its sheer commitment to the bit it manages to be utterly enchanting. These characters are both endearing and often aggravating, and they are as flawed as one might expect from people living in Hell. Contrary to what some reviewers seemed to think, I actually found myself falling more than a little in love with all of them, even the eternally perilous Alastor. Everyone has their own journeys and their own histories and mysteries, many of which we have only just begun to explore.
Fortunately for all of us the show has already been renewed for several seasons on Amazon, which means that we’re going to get to see more of these characters and their various exploits. After all, by the end Adam has been killed, and it remains unclear just what Heaven’s going to do about the ability of Hell’s residents to fight back against their own doom. In the world that Hazbin Hotel presents, good and evil are not quite what we expect, and therein lies its brilliance.