‘Hazbin Hotel’: Heaven, Hell, and Adult Hilarity

In my recent review of Lesbian Space Princess, I alluded to the bland corporatization of adult animation and the genre’s loss of status as outsider art — even if the content is bizarre. Few shows quite so perfectly capture this contradiction as Hazbin Hotel, which begins its second season on Amazon Prime on Oct 29.

Hazbin Hotel takes place in a gloriously queer version of hell, starring Erika Henningsen as the voice of Charlie Morningstar, the chronically insecure proprietor of the titular hotel, which is designed to try and help redeem sinners so they can get into heaven. No resident of heaven or hell really believed the hotel can work — then, the climax of the first season ended with a pitched battle against the reactionary elements of heaven, causing the “death” of Sir Pentious, voiced by Alex Brightman, which actually just resulted in him reappearing in heaven. This proved that Charlie’s revolutionary idea of redemption for the sinners of hell is possible. For those in heaven anyway. Much of the second season’s conflict revolves around the fact that it’s impossible for Charlie to prove this concept to anyone in hell, partially because Sir Pentious is in heaven, but also because hell’s mass media magnate Vox (voiced by Christian Borle) gleefully sabotages Charlie’s communication efforts.

If this sounds extremely serious, it is, in the sense that Hazbin Hotel has pretensions of theological discourse. Probably the single best known song of the series, “If Hell Is Forever Then Heaven Must Be A Lie,” depicts a crucial contradiction of Christian theology. Theologians have debated for centuries whether hell is reformatory, punitive, or merely annihilative. Heaven inspires similar debate. Much of the New Testament (especially Corinthians) features Paul trying to describe Heaven and not always doing a great job — the main gist of it is that everything that is perishable now, will became permanent and good.

Hazbin Hotel is less biblical than pop culture in its depictions of heaven and hell, though, insofar as it tries to develop narrative principles from these complex concepts. In this way, it reflects the way many, especially younger people, tend to understand religion in the 21^st centur: so thoroughly distorted by mass media and reactionary Bible thumpers that it’s a cartoon.

And Hazbin Hotel is hardly the first show to go down this route. Even in the past decade, The Good Place received plaudits for its philosophical pretensions, and while Good Omens didn’t have much in the way of pretensions, it was definitely a self-consciously clever concept about angels and demons not being much different from the rest of us. Not to imply this is an especially new trend, of course. Good Omens itself was based on a novel published in 1990 and, further back in that century both C. S. Lewis and Wyndham Lewis wrote novels of a mundane afterlife. As for popular heterodox beliefs, just check out those from 16th century Italy described by Carlo Ginzburg in The Cheese and the Worms. And as far as just general anthropomorphization of divine Biblical entities goes, Paradise Lost is a clear influence on Hazbin Hotel too simply by depicting the forces of heaven and hell in literal war with each other.

Granted, it feels absurd to compare Hazbin Hotel to genuine works of literature like that, as aside from being a literal cartoon, Hazbin Hotel displays classical Disneyesque cartoon aesthetics, adult trappings notwithstanding. Every episode features characters doing identity-themed songs, often accompanied by outrageous, extravagant visuals; And, reasonably often, Hazbin Hotel also descends into epic, anime-style battle scenes. Beyond what Paul proposed, the new bodies manifested in heaven and hell feature straight up superpowers.

There’s also the matter of characterization, with most of the cast — especially Lucifer —being surprisingly immature. At one point this season, one of the few characters who actually acts like an adult instead of a teenager, the magician Husk (voiced by Keith David) loses his patience and quits his job because of what he accurately describes as obnoxious high school drama. Then he goes into a character song about how much he loves and finds comfort in gambling; it’s a showstopper with the toxicity of rejecting friendship for vice. These ironic songs are effective because, as ridiculous as nearly every idea in Hazbin Hotel is, showrunner Vivienne Medrano frames them with the utmost sincerity.

Indeed, Hazbin Hotel’s chief strength is Medrano’s clear, sincere dedication to this concept, her vision of “olde tyme Hell” with distorted radio transmissions and guitar riffs belying spiritual anguish. Medrano has been working on this idea for awhile. Originally appearing as a webcomic in 2019, Medrano released a pilot episode in 2020 as proof of concept for a full animated series. This pilot got enough viral attention that A24 got involved, leading to a 2024 premiere on Amazon Prime. And, over the past two years, Hazbin Hotel has become the most popular animated show on the platform worldwide. This explains why Hazbin Hotel has already been greenlit for third and fourth seasons. There’s even a temporary Hazbin Hotel-themed cafe in Osaka!

But how subversive is this show about the immutability of judgement? Any show funded by Joshua Kushner’s investment firm and platformed by Jeff Bezos is unlikely to be truly edgy and, though the vibe is indeed provocative, the text of Hazbin Hotel isn’t especially countercultural. Distinctively queer flavoring notwithstanding, Hazbin Hotel is prudish about sex — the characters who talk about it the most are villains using the language mostly as a slur. Angel Dust (Blake Roman) is a sex worker played as uncontroversial at worst and vaguely supportive at best. Even the main question prompted by Angel Dust is scientific, not sexual: How does hell even have any economy at all when any desire can be satisfied by magic?

While Hazbin Hotel is loaded with adult signifiers like explicit mentions of sex, the narrative relies surprisingly little on it. Like a teenager cursing to prove his adult bona fides, these signifiers mainly work to counterbalance the Disney aesthetic. Without the offhand sex mentions, it’s too similar to a regular Disney cartoon just in a weird setting with unusually metaphysical philosophical undertones. Ironically, the occasional scene of unexpected, intense violence is way more triggering than anything to do with sex. And it’s telling that the single most intense scene of the second season is basically a rape scene except with everything that could literally be interpreted in a sexual way carefully omitted.

Between the carefully developed characters and enticing lore Hazbin Hotel is legitimately great television. But it is no Paradise Lost. Indeed, far from valorizing revolution, Hazbin Hotel earnestly believes that if only we could get people to stop listening to fake news, and trust the system no one actually understands, everything would be OK.