Before we proceed, I would like to make something clear: this article was not written with the intent to harass Vivienne Medrano, the crew of Spindlehorse or anyone who enjoys Hazbin Hotel. The purpose of this article is to critique it and explain the issues with said media. Please do not use this article as a means to harass anyone.
Hazbin Hotel is an adult comedy cartoon created by Vivienne “Vivziepop’ Medrano. The idea and a few characters were rehauled from her now abandoned webcomic, Zoophobia. The pilot was posted to YouTube on October 28, 2019, and in 2020, the show officially got picked up by A24. While the show has its fans, not everyone shared their enthusiasm.
Why? The video has millions of views, it should be good right?
Well, not really.
The animated pilot, while well animated, is rather mediocre in regards to plot, character, and humor. While art is subjective, there are some things that bring Hazbin Hotel down.
So what is the basic plot of Hazbin Hotel?
The princess of Hell, nicknamed Charlie, wants to make a hotel that rehabilitates sinners. The reason for this is because in hell, there are yearly exterminations due to hell being overpopulated. After failing at a television interview, she returns to her hotel and the infamous radio demon, Alastor, offers to help. The cast also includes her girlfriend Vaggie and a spider demon named Angel Dust. So, what are the issues with the show? The plot seems interesting, right?
The World and the Lore
The plot of Hazbin Hotel is interesting but the lore and the world-building is jumbled.
1.Is This Really Hell: While we are told what Charlie wants to do, we don’t understand much about the world. This version of Hell seems a bit confusing. If this is supposed to be hell, why aren’t the sinners being punished? We see Angel Dust getting drugs from a vending machine after having sex with a married man. Shouldn’t there be no drugs in hell? The point of Hell is to punish those who sinned while they were alive.
2. The Princess with No Power: There is also a question of who is in charge. Charlie is the princess of Hell, her parents being the demon Lucifer and her mother being Lilith, Adam’s first wife. Charlie is a royal but the people of hell treat her with zero respect. Instead, she’s seen as a joke. When she goes onto Katie Killjoy’s show, she’s belittled before the interview started and when she starts talking to Katie, she’s being talked down too. Katie even states she doesn’t care that Charlie is the princess of hell. Why would the denizens of Hell treat Lucifer’s daughter this way? Even if people didn’t care about royalty, shouldn’t they at least be afraid of Lucifer’s wrath? Lucifer is a famous fallen angel from various mythologies and he rules hell. Why treat his daughter in such a manner?
3. Again, Who is In Charge?: Along with having a king and queen, there are overlords of Hell. What do they do exactly and why are three overlords being introduced so early? Does the pilot need to have Cherri, Alastor, and Sir Pentious? We know that Charlie needs to fail and be humiliated on television but couldn’t Angel have gotten in trouble in a different way? Did we need two characters that barely add anything? We know that Alastor is one of them but we don’t know what he does. The pilot also opens up with a turf war between the characters of Cherri and Sir Pentious. These two characters don’t seem to be that important to the main plot. After the war is over, we don’t see Cherri again and we only see Pentious towards the end. If they’re so important to the show that they’re in the pilot, shouldn’t their power and control be explained?
The Characters
Charlie: The Main Character
- Painfully Naive: The main character, Charlie, comes off as somewhat naive and she doesn’t seem to listen. When she goes to the studio, Charlie ruins her own pitch (which Vaggie told her not to do) and ends up humiliated. She also promotes her well-intentioned project but has no proof to back up that it will work. She has no credibility, no data and she doesn’t present how she’ll go about rehabilitating demons. Now, she’s supposed to be our main character and therefore, we want her to succeed. However, Charlie isn’t all that likable. While we feel bad for her, the reason things go belly up is her fault. Let’s compare her to Aang, the lead character of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Aang is naive but that’s due to his upbringing and also being a child. We see him go through growth and watch him become more mature. Even though this is a pilot, it seems as if Charlie doesn’t learn from her mistakes or realize she’s the one who messed up.
2. Bland Design: Also, as our main character, she doesn’t stand out. Her design is rather boring and she gets lost in a crowd. In fact, she shares her color scheme with five other characters, two of which are in the pilot. There is nothing unique about her and while she is supposed to be the daughter of Lucifer, she doesn’t look demonic compared to the characters around her. Of course, a demon’s design can be simplistic but Charlie has nothing to indicate she’s a demon when she’s not in her demon form.
Vaggie: Charlie’s Girlfriend?
- Relationship? What Relationship?: Vaggie is apparently Charlie’s girlfriend but we don’t see them acting like they’re in love nor do they mention that they’re dating. Now WLW don’t have to constantly talk about being in love or make out in order for us to know they’re dating but if we’re supposed to see Vaggie and Charlie as a couple, we need something to go on. According to someone on the Spindlehorse team, Vaggie and Charlie were put together as a couple because people thought they were cute together yet in the final product, we don’t see them really acting like they’re dating. Show them holding hands and maybe Charlie gets a good luck kiss from Vaggie before she goes live. We could even have them calling each other cute pet names.
2. No Respect: Vaggie also doesn’t seem to be respected by anyone. Before the interview, Vaggie is trying her hardest to get Charlie to focus and as mentioned before, asks her not to sing. Charlie ignores this and ruins the interview. When they confront Angel Dust, their only patron at the hotel, she’s the only person who seems rightfully angry. Angel Dust was exposed for getting into a turf war and because of that, the hotel’s credibility went down even more. Vaggie is angry but no one seems to be taking her anger seriously. Angel brushes her off with a comment which is both sexist and racist towards her. Charlie doesn’t even defend her or ask Angel to be respectful. Out of all the characters, she seems to be the only person who cares about Charlie’s dream yet no one cares. It feels like the writers are playing favorites when it comes to their characters.
Angel Dust: Angel Dust is Viv’s favorite character and is popular with the Hazbin fandom. He even got a music video in the MV Addict. He also happens to be one of the worst characters in the show.
- Gay Men are “Predators”: Angel is the only gay character in the show so far and he’s nothing but a stereotype. He’s flamboyant, obsessed with sex, crass and whenever he sees a male demon, he makes an unwanted sexual comment. Angel Dust plays into the idea that gay men are predatory towards straight men and that they only care about sex. On top of that, he’s a sex worker.
- That’s Not How it Works: Now gay sex workers exist but that isn’t the problem. From what has been shown in the pilot, Angel is a streetwalker, a porn star, and a stripper. Most sex workers choose a certain type of sex work they do and then focus on that instead of being a jack of all trades. While there are sex workers who have multi-talents, it takes years of work in order to perfect them. You don’t just automatically become a stripper when you decide to do sex work. Could Angel have learned all of this? Yes, he could have but it doesn’t seem like the writers planned that out. It seems like they didn’t do any research or even reach out to sex workers, asking them for their input.
- I’m a Jerk to Everyone: To make matters worse, Angel Dust is rude to everyone, including Vaggie and Charlie who are giving him a free room. Yes, the show does take place in hell but in order to enjoy the show, we have to enjoy the characters. If the characters aren’t appealing, then the audience won’t stay. While a character doesn’t have to be perfect and flawless, you still need to give a character some depth. Angel Dust feels like a poor man’s Deadpool. Deadpool is crass, crude and perverted but what separates him from Angel? Deadpool genuinely cares about the people close to him. I Deadpool aka Wade Wilson got diagnosed with cancer. When he got diagnosed, he decided to leave his longtime girlfriend, Vanessa. Deadpool didn’t want to drag her down and wanted to return when he was better. In the second Deadpool movie, Deadpool comes across a young mutant named Firefirst. He finds scarring on Firefist’s neck and he realizes that this young boy is scared and traumatized. He immediately murders one of the staff members trying to return Firefist to the ‘Mutant Re-Education Center.’ Angel, on the other hand, just seems to disregard everyone save for Cherri. Charlie and Vaggie are letting him stay at the Hotel FOR FREE but he treats them like garbage and he doesn’t seem to care that he ruined their reputation. There is a small second where he looks at Charlie and seems upset that she’s sad but it passes as quickly as it came. He’s obviously going to be playing a large role in the story but he has little redeeming quality that makes him likable. I also hate how this is another stereotypical gay character. Gay men deserve good representation, not another over the top gay man that only talks in sex jokes
4. Alastor: Alastor doesn’t appear until towards the end of the pilot but despite his short appearance, he’s the fan-favorite. There are various fan songs inspired by him along with cosplays, fan art, plushies, and even TikToks.
- His Motivations Make No Sense: He’s known as the radio demon and he is powerful, having slaughtered various demons within hell. He arrives at the hotel, saying he wants to help Charlie with the hotel. The reason why? Because he’s bored. He doesn’t believe in Charlie’s goal or dream at all, he thinks she’ll fail. Is he supposed to be a villain? Well if he was, why would he tell Charlie straight up? It would make more sense if he lied to her and then started ruining things for her.
- He Condescends to Vaggie: Vaggie tells Charlie not to trust Alastor but she ignores her and accepts his help anyway. He then tells Vaggie to smile in a condescending manner. Then, as if he wasn’t bad enough when he starts a song and dance number, he then sexually harasses Vaggie by slapping her ass and it’s played off as a joke. Sexual harassment is not funny. It disregards the violation, pain and humiliation of the victim. In 2018, it was revealed that 66% of women have been sexually harassed in public spaces. We also see him pinch Charlie’s cheeks as if she were a child.
Other Characters Drown Charlie Out: We haven’t even gone over the other characters such as Cherri and Katie Killjoy who aren’t really needed in the pilot. They add very little to the story and they bog down the pilot. This is a pilot, we don’t need to know about all of the characters. Remove Cherri and Katie, you lose nothing. They have so little impact on the episode itself. There are so many characters introduced that Charlie doesn’t get enough time to shine. Even though she has two songs, we don’t see that much of Charlie’s personality and her history. We’re TOLD that she feels like a failure but we’re not shown WHY. We see a scene where she tries to call her mother and she leaves a tearful voicemail but we’re still not given insight to why she’s always felt like she has failed people. Why does she feel like this? What led her to feel this way? Let’s compare her to Twilight Sparkle of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. One of Twilight’s main fears is disappointing other ponies, mainly her mentor and idol, Princess Celesita. Twilight’s fear of failure stems from her perfectionism and also feeling, as the student of Princess Celesita, she must appear a certain way. Her fear of failure makes sense for her character.
This is a pilot for Hazbin but showing us Charlie’s life and how she interacts with the world would give us more insight into her as the main character. While she’s the main character, she doesn’t really feel like it and she gets overshadowed by other characters. Everyone else has so much personality to them but Charlie feels bland next to them. Charlie doesn’t even feel like the hero of Hazbin Hotel. If anything, it feels like Alastor is. He gets to come in, show his powers, save the hotel and even defeat another demon at the very end. Charlie didn’t do anything, she was just there. Will this be a problem when the series has more episodes? Hopefully not.
The Humor
Humor, just like many other things, is subjective. With that being said, there is a right way and a wrong way to tell a joke. There is a heavy reliance on sound effects which distracts the view and has taken many out of the show. There is also such a thing as overdoing your sense of humor. Hazbin is an adult show so the jokes are made for an older audience but they come off as juvenile. Characters curse constantly and it always feels like the cursing is supposed to be the entire joke. Well, you can make a joke about cursing, but Hazbin has the characters swear constantly, losing its shock value.
The characters are also nasty to everyone. Now, while the show takes place in hell, it’s really not an excuse to have every character we meet be awful. The only character that seems remotely decent is Vaggie but she isn’t treated well by anyone, not even by her own girlfriend. There is also a visual gag featuring Jeffrey Dahmer, the infamous Milwaukee Cannibal. Can people make dark jokes? Of course, they can but this joke is in bad taste since it features a handsome-looking Dahmer.
Dahmer never looked this good and it feels insulting to the people who were victims of Dahmer. What is the point of making a serial killer/sex offender handsome anyway? Also, this is hell. Why would hell give one of the most infamous American serial killers a cooking show?
A lot of humor also comes from Angel Dust and his stereotypical behavior. When Alastor asks him what talents he says, “I can suck your dick.” While he may be offering up his services, it’s obvious that Alastor isn’t interested. It’s also not proper to say something like this to someone you’ve just met. Then, when Husk appears, he flirts with Husk and it's obvious Husk isn’t interested. Even when rejected, Angel doesn’t stop. So not only is this is not funny but it plays into the idea that gay men are predatory. So far, Angel Dust is the only openly gay character in Hazbin and it’s not a flattering portrayal of gay men at all.
Use of Cultural Characters and Symbols
In the past few years, there have been large pushes from people of color in regards to how their cultures are portrayed. One such push is from people who practice voodoo. For years, voodoo has been vilified and seen as something evil when in reality, it’s not. It’s a religion, a closed one, and those who practice it have been vocal about how they’re sick of seeing it portrayed. When Alastor appears, there is a scene in which ‘spooky’ symbols start to float up and various people have pointed out that these symbols were used in the practice of Vodou. Now, why would this matter? There are many movies, comics, and television shows that use Christian imagery heavily.
Christianity isn’t a closed religion- Vodou is. This means that you can’t just join a Vodou religion like you can join a Catholic church. There are various reasons as to why a religion is closed but either way, it’s up to us to respect that. It’s also up to us to not disrespect a closed religion and its symbols.
Vodou is a religion that has been misunderstood for years and has been used as an aesthetic because it’s ‘spooky.’ This isn’t just disrespectful, but also dangerous. In 2020, Katelyn Restin attempted to summon the loa (spirit) Papa Legba. Despite people warning her not to do such a thing, Katelyn did anyway and ended up dead. She even admitted to seeing him in a tweet and being fearful. Playing around with a religion you’re not a part of and using symbols that aren’t yours to use can have dire consequences.
Why Does This Matter
We know that entertainment, be it a movie or an animated show, has an impact on reality. We also know that showing problematic actions and content in a positive light is dangerous. Also, just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s good and that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be critiqued either. Hazbin has a lot of potential to be something good if not even amazing but as it stands right now, it’s going to need a lot of work.
