Animated Comedy ‘Hazbin Hotel’ Set to Premiere on Amazon Prime Video

The highly anticipated animated comedy ‘Hazbin Hotel’ is set to premiere on Amazon Prime Video, marking the culmination of its feel-good backstory and grassroots success. Created by Vivienne Medrano, the founder of YouTube channel VivziePop, ‘Hazbin Hotel’ initially started as an independently produced pilot funded through Medrano’s Patreon. Since its release in 2019, the concept has garnered attention and has now been picked up by the prestigious studio A24, expanding it into an eight-episode season.

‘Hazbin Hotel’ takes place in a world where a legion of demons faces eternal damnation in Hell. Periodically, they face mass exterminations led by armies from Heaven. The exposition is delivered through a montage in which Charlotte Morningstar, the Princess of Hell (played by Erika Henningsen), sets the stage. Charlotte’s parents, Lilith and Lucifer (Jeremy Jordan), accidentally unleashed Hell when they introduced free will to mankind via the tree of knowledge. Despite Lilith and Lucifer’s absence, Hell must endure annual assaults from Heaven to keep its potential power in check.

The visual style of ‘Hazbin Hotel’ is a testament to Medrano’s background as an animator, with its Gothic maximalism and striking color palette. Characters like Charlotte’s girlfriend, Vaggy (Stephanie Beatriz), and the hotel’s bartender, a winged talking cat voiced by Keith David, are carefully designed with creative flair. However, the series struggles to translate its big, abstract ideas into a clear and cohesive world with a consistent tone.

The show revolves around Charlie’s (Charlotte) efforts to help the denizens of Hell by founding the eponymous establishment, which serves as a halfway house for rehabilitating wayward souls, with the ultimate goal of earning entry into Heaven. While this may seem like a solution, considering the annual assaults from Heaven, the series fails to explore potential criticisms or dissenting opinions. The details of the show’s cosmology and characters’ motivations remain hazy as terms like ‘demon’ and ‘sinner’ are used interchangeably, yet they seem to connote different things within the context of the story.

Overall, ‘Hazbin Hotel’ aims to be a comedy, but its musical numbers and narrative choices sometimes leave viewers unsure of how to feel about the events unfolding onscreen. Additionally, the show’s conventional and slightly retrograde morality is questionable given its setting in Hell. Certain tropes, such as the redemption of a wayward sex worker, are recycled without providing any substantial commentary. Despite these challenges, ‘Hazbin Hotel’ showcases the potential for a more nuanced exploration of the human condition and its judgments, akin to the popular series ‘The Good Place‘.

Four episodes of ‘Hazbin Hotel’ are set to stream on Amazon Prime Video on January 19, followed by the release of the remaining episodes in pairs on subsequent Fridays.