Camille Pfister
Editor-in-chief
Do you love quirky characters forced into a building together? How about unnecessarily catchy songs sung by Broadway and Disney superstars? Got any religious trauma you feel like confronting? If any of this applies to you, may I invite you to check out Hazbin Hotel!
The world of this show has so much to offer, with dense lore and characters to analyze. Available through Amazon Prime, Hazbin Hotel’s pilot episode aired on January 18, 2024 and instantly captured the hearts of millions of viewers. The show’s protagonist, Charlie Morningstar, began the show reading the story of Hell aloud, giving viewers a quick rundown of the story they were about to waltz into.
The shortened version of Hell’s origin story is as follows: Once upon a time, there was a beautiful city known as Heaven, ruled by beings of pure light. Lucifer was one of these beings, an angel, with dreams of creation and beauty. Lucifer was seen as a troublemaker by the elders of Heaven, and was shunned from creation. From the dust of the Earth, the angels created Adam and Lilith. Adam demanded control over Lilith, and when Lilith refused, she fled and met Lucifer. The two rebellious dreamers fell in love and shared the magic of free will with humanity, in the form of the fruit of knowledge given to Adam’s new bride, Eve. With this act, evil found its way into earth, and with it, a new realm of darkness and sin was created: Hell. As punishment, the angels cast Lucifer and Lilith into Hell, never allowing them to see the good that came of their act, only the cruel and the wicked. Devastated, Lucifer lost his will to dream, but Lilith thrived. Threatened by Hell’s growing power, Heaven decided to enact a yearly extermination, sending down an army of angels to destroy Hell’s numbers in a final death. Lilith kept wishing for a brighter future and passed on her dreams to her daughter: Charlie Morningstar, princess of Hell.
The audience discovers that Charlie’s new dream is to rehabilitate sinners so they can get into Heaven and are no longer exterminated. She wants to house these sinners in her new hotel: the Hazbin Hotel. She is currently supported financially and with staff by the Radio Demon, Alastor, and supported emotionally by her girlfriend, Vaggie. At the start of the series the hotel has only one resident: Angel Dust, a renowned porn star, who doesn’t seem very interested in being rehabilitated, but just wants a place to crash. The staff is composed of two demons whose souls are owned by Alastor: Husk the bartender, and Niffty the maid.
The show was originally created all the way back in 2019. YouTuber Vivienne “VivziePop” Medrano created the pilot with funds from her Patreon, and it was made by freelance animators. Despite its popularity on YouTube, Medrano didn’t continue the show, unlike her spin-off series Helluva Boss, which focuses on a completely different cast of characters, but also takes place in Hell. Helluva Boss aired on YouTube in 2020 and now has two seasons, all available for free on YouTube. The pilot of Hazbin Hotel continued to gain traction and eventually surpassed 100 million views on YouTube, so it’s no surprise that the film and television studio A24 collaborated with Amazon Prime to pick up the show and have Medrano create a full first season.
The show is beautifully animated, with each frame offering something different and specific to notice. The characters are well developed and complex, and throughout the show you get pieces of the backstory, informing why they act the way they do. Despite being forced into the hotel with the pipe dream of rehabilitation (or due to a demon owning your soul) the characters form special and loving relationships with each other.
Then there is the other reason the show has gained as much traction as it has: the music. There are eight episodes and each episode has two musical numbers, totalling sixteen musical showstoppers. The cast is largely comprised of Broadway and Disney legends including Jeremy Jordan (Lucifer), Stephanie Beatriz (Vaggie), Keith David (Husk), Alex Brightman (Sir Pentious), and Erika Henningsen (Charlie). Each song offers something different, from the insanely boppy and catchy “Happy Day in Hell”, to the rock number “Hell is Forever”, to the cheesy, jazzy, “Loser, Baby”, to the emotional ballads that are “Whatever It Takes” and “More Than Anything”. (I’m 99% sure “More Than Anything” healed something inside of me).
Hazbin Hotel is a beautiful show that has the viewers confronting who the “good guys” and who the “bad guys” are in each situation, and feeling for the sinners, who have problems but often don’t deserve the way they are treated. The show has also blown up on TikTok and in the Gen Z community. Videos of creators using songs or clips from the show to confront their past traumas, or continue the process of healing, or even to just get a giggle out of the viewers, are extremely common on my FYP. The videos of talented cosplayers have also been extremely entertaining and stunning to watch.
So my recommendation, dear readers, is go watch this masterpiece (not in one sitting unless you want to be an emotional wreck for the following week), maybe check out Helluva Boss on YouTube, and wait patiently (or impatiently, your choice) for season two which is already in production!