A24 and Prime Video’s latest adult animated series Hazbin Hotel tells the story of a bright-eyed princess (of Hell) seeking salvation for her people. It’s twisted, Liam Maguren writes, but it comes from a loving place.
Hazbin Hotel: Season 1
Putting dirty twists on classic Disney flicks doesn’t require any sort of cleverness to turn heads. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, with its make-animated-bear-a-costumed-psycho set-up, proved eye-catching enough to warrant Bambi: The Reckoning.
These kinds of piss-takes tend to come from a disdain for, or jadedness towards, anything that dares to be tender and wholehearted. Hazbin Hotel isn’t that kind of piss-take. Sure, it’s a Disney musical possessed by a trash-talking horny demon, but all its twistedness comes from a loving place.
The series centres on Charlie, the bright-eyed and plucky Princess of Hell who wants her people/creatures to thrive. It’s a tough job, not just because they’re all varying degrees of shithead, but those douchebags in Heaven also conduct an annual purge as a means of population control. Her solution: a rehab hotel that will get people out of Hell through salvation rather than a second death.
In true Disney princess form, Charlie walks the tightrope of naivety and determination, trying to smile her way through the worst of times while occasionally letting the mask of positivity slip. There’s never a more earnest moment than when she ends the show’s opening musical number with: “Today is gonna be a fuckin’ happy day in Hell!”
This satanic sing-a-long for sappy sickos comes from the mind of creator Vivienne Medrano, who freely admits: “I adore musicals and villains and animals, can you tell?” You’ll find that line in the YouTube bio of her animation studio SpindleHorse, right next to the gargantuan subscriber count reaching close to nine million as of writing.
The channel ushered in its following largely through the fantastic animation on display, Medrano’s major in traditional animation from NYC’s School of Visual Arts being a clear focal point in the studio’s work. While it shares the same world, striking designs, and vicious sense of humour as SpindleHorse’s incredibly popular web series Helluva Boss, Hazbin Hotel lifts its game with notable storytelling refinements that help it stand with Prime Video’s other AAA adult animated shows like Invincible, Undone, and The Legend of Vox Machina.
Like its peers, Hazbin Hotel finds its heartbeat and edginess through its characters. One of the more inspired demons, Alistor, speaks with a sinister old-timey radio voice through a blinking mouth that never opens. His nemesis, naturally, is a media mogul with a TV for a head—a bit like seeing Orson Welles take on Logan Roy.
The hotel’s first resident, aggressively sexual porn star Angel, can sometimes feel like the most grating character of the lot, piling on the innuendo to breaking point. Fortunately, it serves a storytelling purpose, with episode four revealing a pretty intense exploitation side to his backstory through the stadium-filling pop banger ‘Poison’.
That number’s only slightly outdone by the episode’s jaunty second song ‘Loser, Baby.’ While you’re always going to win with the great Keith David, as grumpy bartender Husk, sweetly singing the line, “You’re a fucked up little whiny bitch,” the song also makes a genuine statement about acknowledging your faults and moving on: “It’s time to lose your self-loathin’. Excuse yourself, let hope in.” Catchy, funny, and sweet, the track encapsulates Hazbin Hotel’s best quality: an ability to be both edgy and tender.
By comparison, Charlie’s ever-supportive girlfriend Vaggie has yet to leave a big impression. Judging by the first four episodes released so far, the character’s role as Charlie’s more cynical counterweight feels featherlight, her insecurities about taking charge seem more like high-school issues rather than a massive flaw plaguing a resident of Hell. As a result, her track in episode three, ‘Whatever It Takes’, ends up being the least memorable.
Still, Hazbin Hotel achieves that delectable sweet-n-salty balance that a lot of modern adult animated shows fail to pull off. Medrano’s characters might be pieces of shit, but she clearly cares for these turd-slices, rolling them in glitter and love under the admirable believe that the worst of us have the capacity for change. It’ll be exciting to see what else she and SpindleHorse will produce in the future.
