Is redemption possible for Hazbin Hotel? Season 2 (and Helluva Boss) review

To put it mildly, I did not like the first season of Hazbin Hotel. Almost two years ago now I wrote a scathing 13,000 word review on the many issues I had with it—not just the surface level stuff people online always make fun of like the samey character designs or the juvenile dialogue, but foundational problems like an underdeveloped cast, its inability to properly pace an episode to make its emotional beats feel earned, or thematic undertones that it felt like the writers hadn't fully considered. It was a series eager to showcase an overstuffed roster of characters its creator had come up with so that the pre-established fandom could take them and run, but the storytelling around those characters left a lot to be desired.

Hellaverse stans, if you're still mad at me for that review, please take solace in knowing that my own best friend who I've known since high school is one of you. He watched the first season a second time after my review was posted and decided that he actually likes the show now. He has since done a couple cosplay with his wife and foisted multiple pieces of Alastor merch upon me as gag gifts. Thanks, Jake.

Still, while not everyone believed me when I said this, I did genuinely try to give the show a fair shot, and some of its problems could potentially be chalked up to first season weirdness, or struggles to adapt a story that had been in the works for years into a short eight-episode streaming season. Series creator Vivianne Medrano even told Polygon:

“Season 2 is what the show was meant to be. Visually, pacing-wise, scale-wise, narrative-wise, it's just a level up from season 1. I love season 1 to death, but season 1 was made in a vacuum. We weren't sure if the show would continue. We had a limited amount of episodes, and a very limited amount of runtime. I knew exactly what I wanted that first-season story to be, and it was very, very hard to cram it all into that first season. I'm very proud of what we did — we pulled off something borderline-impossible. But what's nice about season 2 is, it's allowed to be a full season of television. I feel like this season is really impressive compared to season 1.”

So it's only fair that I give the show a second chance, especially after my season one review ended up being so widely circulated. It is, after all, a story about redemption. And there were some elements I liked in there last time, like Angel Dust's personal arc, or some of the songs, or the impressive animation quality. It was possible that the show could improve. (And also, Jake thought it would be entertaining to make me write about the show again, so he egged me on.)

Sure enough, with season two now complete, I'd say it's a marked improvement over its predecessor in several regards. It practically feels like they went down my list of complaints and tried to directly address many of them. The general quality of almost every aspect of the show has gone up, and on a basic storytelling level this is a much, much more cohesive season of television. However, I still feel that the show has some serious problems with its tone and themes, when I stop and think about its central conflict about a genocide in Hell for more than a few seconds, and the note the season ends on doesn't help. I'd like to give credit where credit is due and detail the things season two got right, as well as explain why those mixed messages ultimately leave me feeling unsatisfied.

This post will contain full spoilers for seasons one and two and discuss many of the adult subjects that come up in the show.

First, before we talk about the new season, I have to take a little detour for additional context. In the time between seasons, I also watched the other show set in this universe. Half the reason why I was even willing to give Hazbin Hotel season two a shot was that it turned out they'd already proven they can make a decent show.

Helluva Boss is okay

Yes, I'm sorry to all the haters out there who were hoping I would tear this one apart. I certainly still have my complaints that we'll get to, but overall Helluva Boss is decent.

For the uninitiated, yes, these are two different shows. They made a whole 'nother spinoff cartoon on YouTube in the time between Hazbin's pilot and the release of its first season. Now they're making both for Prime Video simultaneously. Apparently they thought that Hazbin could only be pulled off with studio backing, so they started making a "smaller scale" spinoff show on their own in the meantime. And then the small scale YouTube show still managed to pull in guest stars like Kesha.

Helluva Boss stars the team of low-level imp assassins at I.M.P. (Immediate Murder Professionals). Unlike the first season of Hazbin, which seemed allergic to actually doing anything with the hotel, Helluva actually uses its premise as its story engine. Most episodes, especially early on, have the crew being paid by dead sinners to go get revenge on their enemies back on Earth, being hounded by Men In Black-style agents investigating them like they're aliens, or fighting rival forces in Hell's criminal underworld. Even when an episode isn't about some kind of hitman business, it's usually fleshing out one of the already established characters in a way that feels earned, expanding upon things that had already been hinted at. Every episode begins with a premise that feels like a logical extension of the story so far and has a beginning, middle, and end. This is TV writing 101 stuff, but it's a bar Hazbin's first season failed to clear with its scattered focus and awful pacing, so in comparison Helluva feels vastly more competent.

I generally also find the character designs stronger and a bit more varied in Helluva Boss, which is ironic when three of the main characters are little red imps. The characters don't have that problem where they're all covered in superfluous little details that add visual noise, with the exception of the protagonist Blitzø (the ø is silent), whose clown makeup-like burn scars tie back to both a pivotal incident from his childhood and the fact that he literally used to be a circus clown. Story details informing the designs! Wow! Unlike in Hazbin, you can usually tell at a glance what species a character is—the imps look like imps, the hellhounds look like dogs, the owl-like Goetia demons tower over the rest, etc.—which is important when the story partially hinges on Hell having a species-based caste system. And while the show still strongly favors its color scheme of reds, blacks, greys, and whites, the arrangement of the colors on those designs feels a bit better balanced so that characters don't blend together quite as much in a group shot. (It also helps that there's a wider variety of background colors other than red.) This all allows the charm of the animation to come through much more strongly, so that I can appreciate the way everyone squashes and stretches to fit their exaggerated poses and expressions. I like Blitzø's very Zim-like head shape, and the way his mouth is positioned, and the way they play around with his shaping for visual gags.

(Speaking of Zim: Richard Horvitz himself is in this, on top of serving as the voice director for both shows. He plays Moxxie, the timid imp with the bowtie, using more or less his normal speaking voice, which makes him sound exactly like Raz from Psychonauts.)

Now, that's not to say that none of the issues with Hazbin are present in this other show. Because they are. First and foremost, the dialogue can still be very grating, full of just as many forced obscenities and bad sex jokes as on the other show. I always think back to Blitzø barging into a hospital waiting room and venting his frustration over how his day is going by shouting "FUCK ME in my little red HOLE!" Early on the series is quite eager to flaunt how superficially edgy and mean-spirited it's allowed to be—the original pilot literally ends with the main cast murdering a human child, chopping him to pieces with saws on screen, stuffing his parts in a trash bag, and then handing it to his concerned mother. Charming! Yes, yes, I know, "They're literally demons from hell! Of course they swear and kill people!", but this is a Watsonian response to the Doylist criticism of "random murder and characters screaming 'FUCK' all the time are not inherently funny on their own." The problem isn't that these demons are violent and crass, it's that they're annoying.

Over time, though, the show finds its voice and learns how to balance its over-the-top raunchy comedy with the queer demon soap opera it actually wants to be. Or maybe I just got used to how annoying some of the jokes were because I actually kind of liked the soap opera stuff.

A key part of Helluva Boss's story is that the I.M.P. crew is able to travel to Earth for their mercenary missions because they're borrowing a special spellbook from a high-ranking Goetia demon named Stolas. The original pilot played it for laughs that Stolas was Blitzø's needy sugar daddy and that Blitzø was exchanging sexual favors for use of the book, but the full series takes their relationship more seriously and turns it into the emotional core of the show. Stolas is gay, but he was forced at a young age into a loveless political marriage with an abusive wife, and his affair with Blitzø is his main reprieve from that. But this also leads to tension with Stolas's daughter Octavia, as Stolas's unhappiness with his marriage and eagerness to run away to Blitzø also makes him a more emotionally distant father. The moments we see of how Stolas treated her when she was younger are genuinely extremely sweet, and it's a little heartbreaking to see how depressed she is as a teenager whose family is falling apart.

And then there's Blitzø himself. Early on he's... a lot. He's the annoyingly clingy boss who makes tons of inappropriate comments to his employees and also a loudly sarcastic, vulgar hitman—basically Michael Scott and Deadpool rolled into one. I know some of you just retched reading that. I do not blame you. But while Blitzø's constant sexual remarks towards everyone are grating early on, much like Angel Dust, as we learn more about him and his past it becomes clear that he's just repressing his deep self-hatred with his in-your-face, flippant hypersexuality and a devil-may-care attitude. But then his arrangement with Stolas develops into genuine affection, and he worries that Stolas is only seeing him for the kinky sex and that there isn't any real emotional connection there, because why would Stolas even like a loser like him in the first place? It's part of a vicious cycle where he acts like an asshole to push people away so he won't get hurt, but then gets hurt because he's pushed everyone close to him away. (And then he'll still go back to having really obnoxious and lame dialogue where he calls random women "titty haver" or whatever. But at least there's more to him than just that.)

Some fans seem to be annoyed that the show has come to focus so heavily on the romantic drama over the hitman missions, but frankly I find the romantic drama way more compelling than the missions or the comedy, so I'm not complaining. There's actually some nuance and layers here! I'm actually rooting for Blitzø and Stolas to find happiness!

Not all of the main characters get this much attention or interiority, though. A common complaint with Hazbin Hotel is that the female characters don't get nearly as much attention as the male characters and their potential for yaoi. At the time of my previous review I didn't really focus on this because I felt like the time spent hyping up Alastor and other tertiary characters in his orbit was to the detriment of the entire main cast, not just Charlie and Vaggie. But this pattern is very easy to spot when you've seen both shows.

Millie is ostensibly part of the main trio in Helluva Boss, but while she's generally likeable she doesn't get anywhere near the amount of development that Blitzø or her husband Moxxie get. She's always around on missions, but she's supposed to be the comparatively "perfect" one since she's generally the most upbeat, positive, and competent member of the team. But in a soap opera melodrama series like this, her lack of flaws and emotional baggage generally means she's less interesting. At worst, she can have a bit of a temper, but it's usually aimed at villains who deserve a beating, so a rich vein for drama this is not.

The few times they do try to give her some substance in season 2 land so flat that it's kind of hilarious to me. There's the episode where she and Moxxie are on a mission where they have to infiltrate a summer camp ("Camp Ivannakummore." Ha ha.) to figure out which of the counselors is secretly a murderer, and they both dress in drag to disguise themselves. Millie's cool teen boy persona proves vastly more popular among the kids than Moxxie's shrill valley girl persona, and Moxxie is sad about this because Millie is so much better than him at everything. We're supposed to take this seriously, I guess? This seems to be what fans consider the worst episode of the show, if the IMDB ratings are anything to go by, and it's one of the few episodes overtly about Millie.

Then at the end of the season, Millie's big cliffhanger is that she takes a pregnancy test that comes back positive. I was cackling when I saw this. I'd bet real money that she's going to have either an abortion or a miscarriage next season because that's just the kind of thing you do on a sitcom when you're out of ideas for a female character.

There's also Loona. The wolf girl. If you're a furry or follow any furries on social media, there's a good chance you've seen your share of fanart of her, typically in varying states of undress. She's basically become the go-to canine girl for furry pinup artists in recent years, whether they've seen the show or not. Looking at the tag stats on the furry smut imageboard e621, she's the seventh most prominent character on the site with over 27,000 pieces of fanart at the time of writing, right behind Rouge the Bat and Nick Wilde.

Loona's so insanely popular that, until I actually sat down and watched the show, I kind of assumed she must be the protagonist. The titular helluva boss. Nope! She's the receptionist, and actual main character Blitzø's adopted daughter, and she's barely in the damn show. It really feels like Viv just wanted to have a scene wolf girl in the show (valid) but then didn't know what to do with her. On the rare occasions when Loona does come along for a job, they typically have her shapeshift into a human disguise so that she can blend in on Earth. The rest of the time she tends to stay behind at the office. Her father-daughter relationship with Blitzø is initially a joke, as he apparently adopted her when she was a month shy of 18 and yet he still acts like he raised her, but they do at least wring a bit of genuine drama out of the dynamic later on. The few episodes that do focus on Loona are about her having a crush on another hellhound named Vortex. All the fanart depicting her as this bad-tempered dommy mommy mean girl who'll bully you (sexily) is really funny when you realize that in the actual show she turns way more sweet and shy and awkward around her crush. She's pretty normal, she's just a jerk at work because she's 22 and hates her job. Also she has a running gag where she calls Moxxie fat, even though he's just as much of a twig as most of the other men on these shows. It's not funny. Again, the drama is more this show's strong suit than the comedy.

But anyway, yeah, overall I think Helluva Boss is okay. It still has its weaknesses and stuff I roll my eyes at, but it also has some elements that I find compelling and worthwhile, so I don't regret checking it out. It helps that the show has much more humble aspirations, simply trying to tell the story of some demon characters in Hell rather than trying to make any sort of grand statements on heavy subjects like redemption or genocide. You don't have to worry about whether or not Millie's soul can be redeemed in the eyes of God in spite of all the killing she does as an assassin, because the show doesn't give a shit about that question. And it's all the better for it. (This is foreshadowing.)

So, with that out of the way, let's get back to the show I was actually supposed to be reviewing. How does Hazbin Hotel season two fare?

General storytelling improvements

I am relieved to say, at the very least, this season is better at being an actual TV show than the first was.

Where season one episodes would often set up one main story and then get hopelessly sidetracked establishing tons of side characters, leading to plot developments and emotional beats that felt comically rushed and unearned, episodes in season two generally focus on one main thing and tell a chapter of the story with a beginning, middle, and end, with setups and payoffs that make sense. Episode one, for instance, is about the newly rebuilt and reopened hotel seeing a ton of attention after Charlie and co. beat the angels at the end of season one, with Vox gladly weaponizing the public's desire for more bloodshed for his own gain, setting him up as the season's big bad. Then episode two focuses entirely on how things are going in Heaven, with Sir Pentious adjusting to his new life while the angels try to wrap their heads around the fact that he redeemed himself in the afterlife, a thing previously thought impossible.

I also complained last season that the titular hotel felt woefully underutilized as a vehicle for storytelling, with no guests staying at the hotel other than Angel Dust and Pentious and the main cast rarely doing any actual hotel work. It just felt like an arbitrary backdrop for them to hang out in front of. (The episode of Helluva Boss that takes place in a haunted hotel honestly did more with its setting than the entire first season of Hazbin.) This is now somewhat improved. Charlie still has a hard time attracting guests who take her talk of redemption seriously, so the hotel isn't exactly bustling. But there are at least extras hanging around as guests that they're giving group counseling, and we do see the crew doing their damn jobs running the hotel. It's something!

There's only one new guest at the hotel of any significance, a mad scientist named Baxter who looks like an anglerfish. Baxter seems to exist mainly for three reasons. One: They can make jokes about how he's the "new Pentious." Two: They can say he used to work with Pentious, so that they can go back and retroactively give Pentious more backstory to make him feel like more of a character after he's already had his redemption arc. And three: There's a heist in the season finale, and they need a character who could feasibly hack a computer. That's about it. He doesn't do much and feels pretty one-note, but at least his character design stands out in a crowd because he's not all red, black, and white and he isn't wearing a suit.

In general, however, I would say that the lack of focus on new characters is a very good thing this season. Season one barely had any time to flesh out its main cast with how many character introductions it had to cram in, so this season is mostly spent further exploring the ones we already have rather than piling on even more.

The only other new character of any long-term importance is new Exorcist leader Abel, Adam's anxious heckin' wholesome smol bean son played by none other than Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump. (It's probably only a matter of time until they get Billie Joe Armstrong, Gerard Way, and Brendon Urie on one of these shows, too.) He doesn't do much aside from annoy Lute with how different he is from Adam, but he does get to sing a bit, and at one point the writers make Patrick Stump sing "I'm gonna shit my pants." So there's that.

Setting the entire second episode in Heaven was kind of a breath of fresh air for this show because it meant an episode that wasn't constantly forcing over-emphasized swears and ham-fisted sex jokes into the dialogue. Past the first episode, though, I felt like the dialogue was a bit better overall? Maybe I'm just desensitized to it at this point, but it felt like the writers were a bit more judicious in their profanity, so that the instances where they did use it felt more natural as opposed to acting like they had a quota to hit. Again, maybe it's just me, but I groaned at the dialogue less this season. While I still have complaints we'll get to, this season is overall much more watchable.

You know what else I groaned at less this time around? I can't believe I'm saying this, but...

I actually didn't completely hate Alastor this time???

No, I have not been replaced with a pod person. Nobody call for a wellness check. I absolutely tore into this character last time and found him to be unbearably annoying. And, yeah, I still think he's kind of annoying and lame, and he's trying way too hard to be the ultimate Tumblr Sexyman. I have my criticisms, but season two has figured out how to utilize him better.

For one: he's barely in the season! Thank fucking god!!

I compared Alastor to a Bill Cipher gijinka in my previous review, but the thing is that Gravity Falls understood that a little Bill went a long way. He didn't need to be a constant presence just kind of hanging around and hogging the attention and having every other character hype him up. In fact, he's more threatening and mysterious if we only rarely get a glimpse of what he's up to. It seems like the writers' room of Hazbin Hotel has figured this out, too.

Only the fourth episode is actually focused on Alastor, and he only makes minor appearances in most of the rest of the season, allowing the rest of the cast to escape his shadow. His spotlight episode actually has him quitting his alleged job as the hotel's host after getting picked on by Lucifer one too many times (yes they're still doing that stupid rivalry), after which he goes to Cannibal Town leader Rosie and we learn about his backstory. Later he goes to fight Vox and lets himself get captured for plot reasons. From there on Alastor is mostly just there to occasionally rage bait Vox once or twice an episode as the devil on his shoulder, which is frankly a role that suits him just fine, until he makes his big move in the finale.

They also seem to have consciously downplayed one of the most troubling undertones of the character in season one, that being that thanks to a soul contract Alastor treated Husk like a slave. Yes, yes, these shows love their homoerotic bondage, but it comes off a little different when it's the one main character voiced by a Black man being chained, thrown to the floor, and told to obey orders. It was clearly something they never considered when they recast everyone with Broadway stars after the pilot. Their relationship isn't really commented on in this season, but the one time Alastor ever needs anything from Husk it's just to summon him and Niffty to help in a fight against the Vees. It comes off less as Alastor owning Husk and more like Husk owing Alastor a lot of favors. Husk is also free to temporarily abandon his job as the hotel's bartender later on in the season, even though Alastor leveraged his debts to make him take the job in the first place. Needless to say, this is an improvement.

How about that backstory though, huh? Alastor was a radio host in the early 1900s who led a double life as a serial killer. He was like Dexter meets Cecil Palmer, I guess. It's a lot. He went so far that he used some sort of satanic ritual to contact the other side, making a deal with Rosie to ensure that he would be the most powerful sinner in Hell so that he could "continue his fun" in the afterlife. Though, in an ironic twist of fate, he was killed in the woods by a hunter who mistook him for a deer the very next day, explaining why his demon form is that of a deer boy.

Alastor's backstory highlights something odd about Hazbin's version of Hell. He was able to reserve a spot as an Overlord of Hell specifically because leading such a sinful and sadistic life on Earth as one of the worst serial killers of all time earned him Rosie's respect. But, like... Hell is supposed to be an eternal punishment for your sins. If anything, it seems like the more sins you commit on Earth in this universe, the more powerful and revered you are in Hell, where you get to commit as many sins as you want with no repercussions. The worst people on Earth turn into legit supervillains when they die, while it feels like the people who are just a regular level of shitty are stuck being the cannon fodder for the Overlord battles. If anything, humans in this universe should be out there sinning more so they can get better superpowers and stand a better chance in Hell. They should be out there sinmaxxing. It doesn't feel like this was thought through all that well.

Alastor's human self is also much more visibly a man of color than his demon self. As fans already knew, Alastor is from New Orleans and is supposed to be of Creole descent. This mostly feels like a retroactive justification for the fact that his dark magicks are sometimes described as voodoo, an attempt to try and get ahead of the callout posts accusing Viv of cultural insensitivity. But then his demon form's design was never updated to better match how he looked as a human, so it's like he turned into a white guy when he died. They did seem to make him a slightly darker shade of grey in season two, at least? But then they do a whole musical number where Rosie treats him as her property and yanks him around on a leash... I'm not necessarily here to tell you whether or not you should find all this offensive, it's just very funny to me how poorly it was considered.

I do have to admit, though. They did something with Alastor that genuinely won me over this season, at least for a scene or two, that felt like a clever use of the character.

While Alastor was hyped up as the most crazy powerful character ever in the first season, that gets walked back a bit. He might be the most powerful sinner thanks to his contract with Rosie, but that still makes him small potatoes compared to someone like an archangel, hence his inability to beat Adam in the season one finale. Wanting to break free from Rosie's control and become even stronger, Alastor hatches a plan that revolves around him surrendering to Vox. I didn't get what he was going for at first (beyond allowing the show to lean into toxic yaoi with him and Vox for a few episodes), but when it clicked I was genuinely kind of impressed.

Alastor surrenders to Vox and becomes his prisoner on the condition that he never lays a finger on Charlie. Simple enough. He then eggs Vox on to become more and more powerful to show everyone who's boss. In the finale, as Vox is gloating about his victories, Alastor uses the favor Charlie owed him from season one to make her declare Vox the most powerful sinner in Hell on live TV. When she does, it raises Vox's level of infamy in an instant, making the statement true. And because of this, Rosie's promise that Alastor would always be the most powerful sinner is suddenly broken. Then, when Vox touches Charlie's shoulder as he's gloating, he breaks his "never lay a finger on Charlie" contract with Alastor on a technicality. And just like that, he's free from two contracts. It's a really cool moment! I have to admit it!

It's one thing to repeatedly say Alastor is some ultimate chessmaster, but it's another to actually show how he leverages the whole contract system to his advantage and stays one step ahead of people. The latter is way more entertaining. He's much better in a role like this, acting as sort of a wild card third party villain who throws a wrench into the works so that he can personally come out on top, rather than as a guy who just hangs around the hotel and aura farms.

Am I suddenly glad that I own a limited edition Alastor desk mat and Youtooz™ figure? No. (I already assume Jake must be sending me another piece of Alastor merch to torment me for my birthday next month.) He still looks like the Once-ler, and I still think his voice is annoying, and I still think he falls flat as The Guy Whose Thing Is That He Smiles Evilly All The Time when every male character on this show has a big evil grin with sharp teeth. He's not my type. But I think the show has figured out how to use him better. Not perfectly, but better. Will this continue into season 3, where it seems like they're setting him up as the next seasonal villain, and therefore his screentime will surely skyrocket again? Who knows. But he was fine overall in this season.

Unfortunately, you can't say that about every character. Let's start getting into the things I'm less positive about.

What to do with Vaggie

Vaggie was probably the least interesting character in the first season, which is a shame when she's Charlie's love interest. And y'all know how easy of a mark I am when it comes to sappy sapphic romance in cartoons! Throw me even a hint of yuri and I will eagerly take the bait. But Vaggie felt like a character with nothing going on aside from being Charlie's supportive girlfriend and the supposed voice of reason of the crew. It's such a stark contrast from the detailed history and many layers of drama we get with Blitzø and Stolas.

She especially feels like a waste of a character because of her backstory. She is, after all, an angel, and a former Exorcist at that. In a show all about trying to redeem sinners and send them to Heaven, she should have a lot to say about that. What are her thoughts on what Heaven is like? Does she think the reformed sinners will be accepted there? She was a loyal soldier who supposedly killed thousands of sinners as part of the exterminations before she hesitated when ordered to kill a child (side note what did that kid do to get into Hell lmao) and Lute immediately took her eye and wings and left her to rot in Hell. How difficult was it for her to undo that Exorcist propaganda and start to see demons differently? Does she still struggle with that, even though she's trying to support Charlie's dream? Did it take time for her to warm up to Charlie? Does she struggle with guilt? Does she worry that Charlie isn't as accepting of her violent past as she says she is? Do any of the other characters feel differently about her, now knowing that she's a former angel? There is SO much room to use her as a foil to Charlie!

What does season two choose to do with her instead? Well, for starters, let's have her try to think up a new name that isn't short for Vagina.

Yes, this is Vaggie's most pressing concern at the start of the season, aside from supporting Charlie. The terrible, terrible name Viv Adam gave her. It seems even the show is starting to regret that stupid joke. Throughout multiple scenes she and her friends try to brainstorm new names, but none of them stick. Finally, at the end of the season, her name tag proudly declares the new name she's chosen for herself...

Vaggi.

Yeah, she just dropped the E. I don't know how that really makes it different. I get that she's like "well this is my name and I'm keeping it, damn it." I am literally trans and still go by the same name I've always gone by because it was already gender neutral. I get it! But why drag out the question if she's ultimately barely going to change it, when there's so much else the show could spend that time doing with her?

Wait... Missing e! It all goes back to Tumblr. Of course...

Actually, there is a brief period this season in which Charlie and Vaggi are fighting, and it seems like she might get a chance to be her own character with her own perspective. Unfortunately this doesn't last long, and they were fighting over something stupid to begin with, so nothing really interesting was going to come of it anyway.

See, Vox spends much of the season slandering Charlie and the hotel, finding a way to spin everything she says and does against her so that he can rally the sinners to support him instead. Eventually Vaggi gets sick of this, knowing Charlie's just gonna keep taking the bait and trying in vain to defend herself, and so to end the cycle... Vaggi tells Lucifer to go threaten Vox? Come on. It's so stupid that Vaggi can understand Vox is this propaganda master who can find a way to spin anything, and not think that sending Charlie's dad to threaten Vox will obviously backfire and get turned into more bad press. Charlie understandably gets mad when she finds out about this, Vaggi tries to defend her actions, they have a fight and do that thing TV show characters do where they're like "can you please tell my girlfriend I'm not speaking to her right now" while standing right next to each other, yada yada yada.

But don't worry, they make up when Vaggi starts shaking her hips (drawn thicker than normal so she can have anything to shake) and doing a sexy Latin pop number about how much she loves Charlie.

Yeah, the tonal whiplash when Vaggi jumps right into a song here was so sudden and funny that I burst out laughing at this scene.

Also, remember last season how I thought it was weird that Angel Dust's self-destructive sexuality that needed to be "fixed" could be super explicit, but Charlie and Vaggi had to have this super chaste and PG love life? I guess this is their attempt to balance the scales by showing that Charlie and Vaggi fuck, too. It's still so incredibly tame compared to anything Angel gets, or any of the queer men on Helluva Boss for that matter. Like we literally saw Angel sucking cock on screen in a musical number last season, but Charlie and Vaggi just get a pop love song and then a hard cut to them under the covers in bed after the deed is done.

It really feels like Charlie is in a whole 'nother show compared to much of the rest of the cast, and not in a fun way. Which leads us to Charlie's plan, the main conflict, and the big themes the show is reaching for.

"Sin" and "redemption," part 2

One of my biggest criticisms of season one was its oddly conservative ideas about "sin" and the regressive undertones of Charlie trying to "fix" the sinners like Angel Dust so that they can be deemed worthy of living among their oppressors in Heaven, which directly oppose the show's queer counterculture vibes. As I wrote in my season one review:

To me, the big problem with the pilot was that, when you really get down to it, the emotional core of Hazbin Hotel is about a rich girl from the upper echelons of society — a princess, even! — picking a crack-snorting gay sex worker up off the street and trying to turn him into a “proper” member of society. The villains of the series, the angels, hold the conservative Christian stance that Angel Dust died a sinner, and that he deserves to spend eternity in Hell because of that. Instead of arguing that maybe it’s fucked up to say someone deserves eternal torment for doing sex work and recreationally using drugs, Charlie’s best defense is “But I can fix him.”

No matter how subversive Hazbin Hotel thinks it is with its foul-mouthed queer demon protagonists pitted against an army of angels, the series has been unable to actually say anything critical of conservative Christian values and the idea of sin. At best, season one gives us a message about double standards and forgiving people for past sins, saying that if people can change their ways later in life then they should be able to get into Heaven after all, regardless of their past mistakes. [...] Half the time Charlie just feels like a fucking youth pastor.

Shockingly, the early episodes of season two actually started to interrogate Charlie's plan to send sinners to Heaven, raising questions about if it's even the right thing to do.

During the final battle last season, Sir Pentious heroically sacrificed himself in a scene that was played as an anticlimactic joke. This was apparently enough to make him the first ever sinner to be killed in Hell and respawn in Heaven, his sins redeemed. This season, we see the fallout of that.

Aside from Emily, who's basically just Charlie if she was an angel, the rulers of Heaven immediately respond with fear and distrust, confused by how Pentious even got here. Because of course most of the angels aren't going to welcome reformed demons into Heaven with open arms, no matter what Charlie hoped. He's treated as an intruder and put on trial, only letting him stay when a bird-like character referred to as "the Speaker of God" (pictured above) says that God has forgiven Pentious for his sins. For the sake of avoiding a lengthy tangent I'm not going to interrogate God's role as a character in the show, or lack thereof, too deeply. But obviously it would kind of defeat the point of the story if they could just ask God what's right and wrong and get a direct answer. It's not like we can do that in real life. So instead we get a Bird Pope who can convey select messages from God, but none of the other characters can speak with God directly.

As part of Pentious' trial, we also learn about his life on Earth. His backstory is hilarious to me. 

As you could probably guess from his steampunk vibe, he was an inventor in London circa 1888. Pendleton, as he was called then, was a total agoraphobe, so he tended to keep to himself and live vicariously by watching passers by through his workshop window. His grave sin was that he witnessed a murder through that window one night and then didn't do anything about it, which lead to the culprit getting away and killing again. Yes, Pentious' sin is literally that he didn't stop Jack the Ripper. (Don't worry, bud. Jonathan Joestar came to town and took care of him before long.)

Anyway, yeah, Pentious didn't actually directly do anything that bad himself on Earth, so he can still be the audience's sweet little cinnamon roll.

Allowed to stay, Pentious realizes over the course of an upbeat musical number about life in Heaven that he absolutely fucking hates it there and tries to kill himself. Wait, what?

Doing this a mere two episodes into the season definitely made me sit up and wonder if the show was actually going somewhere with all this. I mean, of course Pentious hates it in Heaven! He's a mad scientist! He doesn't wanna hang out with all the goody-two-shoes angels in their tacky, mindlessly cheerful theme park of an afterlife. A bunch of them are judgmental, holier-than-thou pricks, not to mention the Exorcists who have been committing genocide on his kind for years. His real friends are the weirdos he left behind back in Hell! He misses them! Why would he want to spend eternity here? Suddenly, I was fascinated to see if the show would become more critical of Charlie's mission to redeem sinners and send them to Heaven, seeing how poorly her first case study is doing.

If anything, episode three only painted Charlie in an even worse light, making it very clear that she has no idea what she's doing. When Vox and his news crew cast doubt on Charlie's claim that Pentious was redeemed, she blurts out that she can do it again by redeeming Angel Dust. Right there, on the spot, on live TV for all of Hell to see. She has no idea how to actually do this, but she tries anyway in the song "Speedrun to Redemption."

Charlie's haphazard attempts to redeem Angel Dust are perhaps more in line with what I might have expected out of a more flippant, purely comedic take on the show about Charlie's personality clashing with the sinners, but when we're supposed to take Charlie's dreams seriously and root for her it just makes her look terrible. Her first thoughts are to tell Angel Dust to give up drugs and alcohol and dress more modestly, which only reinforce my already held belief that Charlie and her idea of what makes a "good person" are more conservative and puritanical than she realizes. Then she just has Angel do a bunch of random good deeds like helping old ladies cross the street or giving change to homeless people. When this doesn't work, she panics and makes him dress and act like Pentious to try and replicate his success.

As a last ditch attempt, a crazed Charlie decides to tie Husk to some railroad tracks and have Angel save him, making him a hero like Pentious.

It's only after all of that bullshit fails that Charlie finally stops and realizes that maybe Pentious was redeemed because his heroic sacrifice corrected for the sin that got him into Hell in the first place, that being his inaction in the face of evil. Therefore, if she wants to redeem other people, they'll have to address the specific sins that got them into Hell. Yes, Charlie only realizes this midway through the show's second season, after she's already been running the hotel and trying to redeem people for over six months.

She truly has no fucking idea what she's doing! Surely, the show must understand this, I thought. Surely she's being written this naive and annoying on purpose, so that she can take some Ls, learn how wrongheaded she was, and begin to see things with more nuance, learning a better way to help her people. Surely the show must see the flaws in Charlie's current plan to teach sinners manners so they can be shipped off to live with their oppressors for eternity.

Folks, I have bad news about how the conflict of the season plays out.

Vox's war with Heaven

We knew that Vox (and the other Vees, but really mostly Vox) would be the villain this season, and I can't say I was looking forward to this. When it comes to TV-headed guys in suits, he's no Tenna. He didn't do much for me in season one, and as part of the promo cycle for season two they released a song that has a part where he's doing this obnoxious talk-singing thing—the one where he goes "get the fuck out of my building." You might've seen people calling it dogshit online. I was not looking forward to a whole season of that. Thankfully, that is absolutely not what we got, and Vox does get some pretty good songs. Overall, he makes for a decently entertaining villain, one who knows exactly how to get under Charlie's skin.

Let's rewind a bit and talk about Vox's backstory. Vox initially describes himself as a former cult leader when his life back on Earth comes up, but later in the season we get a musical number showing us the whole story, which is just... kind of stupid, honestly?

Vox, then known as Vincent Whittman, was a TV weatherman in the 1950s who wanted to be an anchor, so he murdered the anchor to take his job. And then he just kept killing more and more people at the network so he could hog the spotlight. And then some sort of cult of personality formed around him where people treated him like a literal god because he was the most beloved talk show host ever, I guess? But before he could really do much with that little cult of his, a TV fell on his head and he got electrocuted and died.

I guess they're at least giving some context for why sinner demons look the way they do now, tying it to some ironic aspect of their deaths for Vox and Alastor, but it's just kind of a stupid story. Being a cult leader wasn't interesting enough on its own without also making him a serial killer weatherman? Yeah, yeah, he's a mirror of serial killer radio host Alastor, but all three sinner backstories we see this season involve serial murder. I know we all like slasher movies and serial killers are fun to write about, but there's a lot of other sins too, you know! This story also just feels like a very strange riff on classic Sidney Lumet film Network if you sapped it of all its prescient political commentary about how the news needs to be entertainment and megacorporations are killing democracy, and instead just made it about a crazy murder guy who wants to be famous really bad. Though maybe that's just me.

In the present day, Vox wants to take advantage of the power vacuum in Hell following the defeat of the Exorcists and become the ruler of both Hell and Heaven. He mostly does this by slandering Charlie with his Fox News-esque cable news network, telling the people of Hell not to support her, because they should support him instead. The satire here doesn't really go any further than host Katie Killjoy being homophobic and Charlie repeatedly falling for the "I think Coolsville sucks" bit, which just gets more and more painful to watch every time it happens. You'd think Charlie would figure it out eventually. Nope. And to go with the Fox News schtick, it only makes sense to evoke Donald Trump, a slick-talking TV star populist who will say whatever he thinks will rile up the crowd the most, just like Vox. In "Vox Populi," his big villain song at his political rally, he literally says "we can make Hell great again." It isn't subtle!

And so, at last, here's my biggest problem with this season: Vox, the villain, the power-hungry Trump-esque populist grifter who's full of shit and just wants to bully poor Charlie for his own personal gain, is also the only character in the show who really challenges Charlie's plans and questions whether or not Heaven should be forgiven so easily for years of genocide.

Vox mouthpiece Katie Killjoy is the only one who questions if Charlie's definition of a good person is regressive, saying she's "forcing sinners to change and fit into her restrictive puritanical mold." Vox is the only one who pushes back on her claim that she can redeem anyone, and wonders if she actually has limits to what she's comfortable with. And Vox is the only one who says hey, isn't it fucked up that Heaven can slaughter us for years to keep us in line, and then just decide they're sorry and try to apologize with gift baskets, as if that makes everything okay?

That's not a joke, the angels literally show up with gift baskets. The gift baskets include teddy bears that say "sowwy" on them to apologize for the genocide.

This show drives me fucking crazy.

Last season, Charlie led an armed resistance against the Exorcists to defend Hell from their oppressors. But of course it was a secret genocide that most of the angels didn't even know about, and only Lute still thinks it was the right thing to do, and Sera feels soooooooo bad about okaying a genocide now that she knows those countless sinners she had slaughtered could've possibly been redeemed. (The implicit flip side of this is that if they were incapable of earning God's approval she would have no problem killing them.) So now the genocide is over after one battle and Heaven has prepared some apology gift baskets, so we all have to play nice with Heaven, and the people of Hell fighting back against their oppressors is bad now because their oppressors said they'd stop. We're only allowed to do peaceful protests forever now. And the only person who argues otherwise is the literal serial killer cult leader who's besties with Angel Dust's abuser and is trying to start a war to take over Heaven and Hell, who doesn't actually give a shit about the oppression of the sinners. It's just a psy-op. Vox is like an MCU villain who makes a lot of valid points but then goes and blows up a puppy orphanage, so we have to disregard everything he said because he was just crazy and wanted to take over the world all along.

(I'm trying so very hard to resist drawing direct parallels with any real life genocides, because I know the show isn't supposed to be a direct allegory. But it's so fucking hard when we get stuff like "Well Heaven just committed genocide in the name of defending themselves against the unwashed masses before they grew too numerous and powerful to control, so we should sympathize with Sera." Like. Jesus fucking Christ. Check the news sometimes. Read a fucking history book.)

Vox also has a bunch of built-in contradictions that make my head spin when I try to figure out what they're trying to say with him, if anything. They make him quote Trump, but then he'll also flash up a big "RESIST" sign at his rally and talk about fighting back against oppression. So I guess he'll say either right wing OR left wing shit based on whatever he thinks will land. This drives me crazy when he's right about so many things. He truly doesn't believe any of it. He's just a grifter saying whatever, and none of it means anything. And when he's the only character saying any of this stuff, it means that nobody on the show believes it.

Or how about the fact that he's a queer man, sleeping with Valentino and seemingly wanting to hate-fuck Alastor more than anything else in the world (which probably won't actually happen because Alastor is apparently the show's asexual rep), but he's also a reactionary idealogue running a Fox News-type propaganda network that spouts homophobic bullshit and spreads myths about how Charlie wants to kill your pets? This doesn't have to be an inherent contradiction, as wealthy conservative pick-me gay men who only care about themselves are absolutely a thing in real life, as are closeted conservatives. But it's hard to tell if the show is actually doing anything with that on purpose, or if it's just an odd side effect of them trying to depict right wing propaganda in a show where basically everyone is queer by default and all of the male characters exist for the sake of toxic yaoi. Nobody comments on it, so in a show with writing this blunt I have to assume that means it's not supposed to be something we focus on.

But don't forget to pick up your officially licensed Vees pride shirt from Hot Topic where he waves around a little bi pride flag! Yaaaaayyyyy!!!

I truly had no idea where the show was going with this conflict with Vox. But I reserved judgment until the finale. Maybe Vox would be defeated, but Charlie would still come to see that he had some valid points, even if he didn't mean a word he said. Maybe there would still be room for nuance. They raised so many valid questions earlier in the season! Pentious wants to kill himself in Heaven! The attempt to redeem Angel Dust failed miserably and just ended up hurting him and driving him away! Let's see where this all goes.

Dear reader, I am flabbergasted by how this season ends.

The finale

A lot happens in the finale, but the most important thing is that Vox has a giant fuck-off laser cannon to shoot at Heaven, and he goes berserk and tries to kill everyone with it.

But don't worry, folks. The day is saved... when Charlie gathers everyone, hero or villain, demon or angel, to sing a song about hope together. Which makes all of them shoot personalized Care Bear Stare beams out of their hands so that they can make a big force field around the cannon and poof it away, saving the day with the power of friendship.

Yes, that's Angel Dust's abusive pimp Valentino reluctantly joining in to help with this My Little Pony-ass ending. Minutes after the world is saved by everyone singing a magical song about hope, Angel Dust will tearfully explain that he has to go back to Valentino now because he's too fucked up and broken to be trusted around anyone other than his abuser. I could not come up with a more succinct summation of the tonal whiplash of this show if I tried.

Season two raised many interesting questions, and the finale wraps all of that up with "don't worry about it."

Pentious hates it up in Heaven and wants to go back to Hell? Don't worry about it. He can Skype with Cherry Bomb now so he won't be lonely, and also he helped hack Vox's broadcast in the finale to prove to everyone that redemption works, so he got his big hero moment to make him feel good about himself. So he's cool with all of it now. Don't worry about him trying to kill himself. It was just a joke.

Vox's points about standing up to your oppressors? Don't worry about it. He was just a madman who wanted to nuke Heaven, after all, and Heaven is really really sorry about all that genocide stuff. The genocide is definitively over and will never ever happen again because they promised, and we just have to move on and be friends now and work together with them. Anyone who questions this isn't to be trusted. Oh and the people who signed off on the genocide like Sera and Lucifer still get to be in charge. But don't worry! They say they won't do it again!

Charlie's simplistic, regressive ideas about sin, redemption, what makes a good person, and how to fight back against genocide? Don't worry about it. She was right, after all! She saved the day by making everyone hold hands and sing kumbaya, so clearly peaceful protest is always the answer (except for that one time last season when it wasn't) and she's got her head on right and she doesn't have to learn anything. Let's get back to doing trust falls.

What the hell are we doing here?

Stray observations

• In episode two, Lute gets a big villain song about her desire to avenge Adam, "Gravity," which is one of the best songs in the show. Then she doesn't really do anything for the rest of the season. She briefly tries to swoop in and be a last second threat in the finale, but Abel intimidates her and makes her stand down. A lot of fans are understandably disappointed about this, but with multiple more seasons of the show already in production I'm just going to assume she'll come back as a major villain later. Still, maybe it was unwise to dedicate a whole song to her (and release it early to hype up the season, even!), setting the expectation that she'd be the secondary villain of the season.
• I couldn't find a place to talk about him and it didn't really matter for the points I wanted to make, but Angel Dust continues to be the most compelling part of this show. I also liked the songs he and Husk got in episode 6. Keith David remains a treasure. The dour note the season ends on with Angel feels like a realistic emotional beat for a character struggling to escape a cycle of abuse, even if it completely clashes with the way the climax plays out.
• Also it's revealed that the actual sin that landed Angel Dust in hell was him killing his own dad. Yes, every single sinner backstory we have learned about so far hinges on murder in one way or another. Anyway it's absolutely going to turn out that it was in self defense.
• The fights were pretty cool, although they can be a little hard to follow at times when the show is so visually busy and the characters are the same colors as the backgrounds.
• Zach Hadel of Smiling Friends fame has a bit part as a rabbit demon in the casino in the sixth episode, who gets the best line in the season: "Oh my fucking god, that was my fucking Hell mortgage for my Hell house!"
• Yes, Vox has rectangular nipples.
• Do Vox's rectangular nipples also function as TV screens, like his head?
• Can you play Doom on Vox's nipples?

Closing thoughts

Hazbin Hotel has improved in many ways in its second season. It has a much better grasp on how to structure itself. It's found better uses for several of its characters, even including my least favorite character from the previous season, Alastor. There's stuff here that's pretty good. The animation and the songs are still well done. I still like Angel Dust and hope he can find happiness, even if the path there isn't always linear. It's not terrible, and I get why it has its fans.

But Hazbin has a tone problem. It doesn't know whether it wants to be a glib comedy where everyone sucks, such as when we get a Family Guy-ass cutaway gag montage of all the times Valentino has hit Angel Dust, or if it wants to be a sincere and heartfelt musical drama about feelings and following your dreams. But perhaps most damningly, it doesn't know whether it wants to be a show for adults, or a show for children.

It can say it's a show for adults, sure. It can throw up a mature content warning at the start. It can fill its runtime with swearing, gore, and jokes about daddy doms. It can touch on mature subjects like sexual abuse, addiction, crises of faith, and genocide. It can revel in toxic relationships between serial killer demons who want to hate-fuck each other. At times, mostly when it's focusing on Angel Dust's emotional baggage, it can feel surprisingly rich and layered. But no matter how edgy and subversive it thinks it's being, no matter how much it thinks it's breaking new ground and pushing the envelope, it's all filtered through a painfully naive, sheltered, assimilationist, youth pastor-ass protagonist who feels like she's straight out of a show rated TV-Y7, whose bright ideas are things like "you should say sorry" or "can't we all just get along?" or "maybe Angel Dust should dress more modestly if he wants to get into Heaven."

Actually, that's an insult to kids' shows, because there are absolutely kids' shows out there like Avatar the Last Airbender or Steven Universe that are able to treat their protagonists' desire to see the good in everyone and resolve conflicts nonviolently with more nuance and maturity, that challenge the views of their protagonists in more interesting ways, even though at the end of the day they're morality plays for children. There is so much more going on with Aang's desire to defeat the Fire Lord nonlethally as the last living representative of the pacifist culture he was raised in than anything Charlie's got going on.

This show simply does not have the political literacy to write about subjects like genocide or Christian hegemony on a level that will speak to me as an adult, making me wonder why they're so insistent on trying in the first place. There is absolutely room for stories for adults about clinging onto a sense of hope in a world that seems hopeless, about how it's not actually childish to believe in love and friendship and forgiveness and positivity. Everything Everywhere All at Once won Best Picture! But this just ain't it. The end result is a show that feels like it's more for unsupervised middle school theater kids who want a Disney musical where they can make dick jokes, as opposed to a show for grown-ups it claims to be.

There are still two or three more seasons to go, of course. The story is still being written, and Charlie's arc is not complete. But as she somehow only figured out midway through this season, in order to atone for a sin, you must first understand what was done wrong in the first place.