Well, it is a show that is no stranger to many on the internet as it is a groundbreaking show that attempts to combine adult comedy with musical theatre. However, this isn't just your regular vulgar comedy with a few music notes in the mix like Family Guy. This is a plot with an emphasis on the location being in Hell and the factions involved include that between Heaven and Hell in a story of corruption, redemption and songs that will play once, but several people are going to have them stuck in their head and singing often like when Frozen released "Let It Go."
Hazbin Hotel has come out as a show that, like I mentioned, is a mix of musical theatre and comedy where sexual jokes and profanity is going to be all over the place. This has led some criticism to the writing on the part of the creator, Vivienne Medrano. The show was originally released with a pilot episode on YouTube on October 28, 2019 and it took the world by storm with this being a full animated work with an independent animation studio behind the scenes. It managed to get A24 to produce it before it's release on Amazon Prime.
I actually got a chance to watch this series out of a curiosity that arose when I kept seeing the interesting criticism leveled at the show like "this show proves that the creator grew up an edgy teen who just wanted to mock Christianity." I also noticed something like "I am disappointed. I was going to watch this show, but it gets the Genesis creation account wrong. Do not watch this show!" It made me go "that was your problem with it? Just the Genesis account? Did you not read the plot?" For those wondering what the show is about, I am going to post it here and there will be spoilers for the show. Probably a good thing for those who haven't seen this show and aren't interested in watching it.
The plot is described as the following on the Hazbin Hotel IMDB: "In an attempt to find a non-violent alternative for reducing Hell's overpopulation, the daughter of Lucifer opens a rehabilitation hotel that offers a group of misfit demons a chance at redemption." This is certainly an interesting summary. Let's start from the beginning, which explains that in the beginning God created Adam and Lilith. Yes, you heard that correctly. The opening has a sort of alternative history added with using Lilith, a character who appears in works like the Alphabet of Sirach and other Jewish works that come much later after the New Testament. Especially among the interpretation texts of the later rabbis. There is even discussions about it among Ancient Mesopotamia scholars. Before this though, we get introduced with Lucifer before the fall where he is introduced as an angel with imagination and creative ideas for creation. This leads him to being shunned by the higher powers in heaven, thinking that his way would be dangerous to the ways that the elders had in mind for the world.
After Lilith refuses to submit to Adam's demands, she retreats from him and soon encounters Lucifer, where the two fall in love. After Eve comes into play, Lucifer and Lilith wanted to share the magic of free will with creation and Eve receives this through the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. However, this act caused evil to find it's way into the earth and this leads to punishment for Lucifer and Lilith as they descend into Hell. Heaven doesn't want a rebellion to come from hell and destroy the good, so they created an annual extermination day where they can deal with any overpopulation issues from the demons in hell. This then leads to the story where the daughter of Lucifer, Charlie Morningstar, comes into play. Where she wants to help create a hotel to rehabilitate sinners so that they could enter heaven as good beings while keeping the population low enough to ease the minds of the angels in heaven.
Now, the idea seems interesting enough and sounds like a desirable idea. However, the demons in Hell laugh at this idea, mocking it as stupid because what demon would ever want to be good and go to Heaven, right? However, Charlie receives help and support for the hotel from her girlfriend named Vaggie, an adult filmstar who is the hotel's first client named Angel Dust, the bartender named Husk, a one eyed maid demon named Nifty and the notorious radio demon that is Alastor. This essentially helps sum up the plot and introduces our characters.
When I watched it, I went into it with the mindset that it wasn't going to be biblically accurate since I never think of any Hollywood produced media touching on Christianity or religion is going to be accurate at all. I will say that the lewd scenes were definitely not to my liking and I was a bit uncomfortable with it, but that normally happens with me being asexual and seeing any sexually provocative scenes. Also, wasn't as big of a fan of the language and I do wonder if eventually the series gets to break a record similar to Wolf of Wall Street for profanity in a series. That being said, I do want to at least offer some interesting thoughts and critiques.
When it came to the animation, this is an age where the animation series are seeing a unique flavor of wonderful character designs and animation for movement. Sometimes, even the movement of the characters and their expressions helped with some of the comedic effects of the show. I find it fascinating that it didn't look that much different animation style wise compared to the pilot, despite the character costume and voice actor changes between the Pilot and the final product.
The music has also accomplished itself to create some classic songs. One of my personal favorites is "Stayed Gone" where Vox, a television demon that is one of the Overlords of Hell, and Alastor have a duet back and forth with each other. Songs like that were always my favorite, especially since another musical, "Les Misérables," gave me "The Confrontation." The songs got catchy vibes and some songs could've done for me without some of the lewd imagery. However, still accomplished the Broadway musical vibes and I feel that we are going to be hearing people singing these songs for a while.
My main theological critiques are going to start now with the idea of the origin story. So clearly, this isn't found in the bible. I was shocked to see some accuracy though to the source material found with at least appreciating Lilith regarding the narrative, at least for the part about why Lilith ran away. Curious if there will be future mention of Senoi, Sansenoi, and Sammangelof. I will point out that the story does take creative liberties with Lucifer finding Lilith eventually.
Lilith in the story of the Alphabet would leave after uttering the Ineffable Name (YHWH), flying away after saying this. Adam told God and God responds that if she comes back, then she is okay. If she doesn't, then 100 of her children must die every day. When the angels found her and told her to come back, she refused. They said they would drown her in the sea before she says the following: "I was created only to cause sickness to infants. If the infant is male, I have dominion over him for eight days after his birth, and if female, for twenty days." Then we read the following conclusion of the story:
"When the angels heard Lilith's words, they insisted she go back. But she swore to them by the name of the living and eternal God: “Whenever I see you or your names or your forms in an amulet, I will have no power over that infant.” She also agreed to have one hundred of her children die every day. Accordingly, every day one hundred demons perish, and for the same reason, we write the angels names on the amulets of young children. When Lilith sees their names, she remembers her oath, and the child recovers."
Well, that is certainly an interesting narrative and I wonder if any part of this comes into play or if perhaps the story I mentioned earlier (which in the show is told by Charlie, likely from her father) is a lie that was created which complicates things much more for the plot. Especially considering we do find Lilith is in Heaven and is told she needs to stop her daughter. Only time will tell though as there is another issue that comes into play, which is the idea of the hotel itself, which sounds like a form of universal reconciliation. If an idea like this was proposed to Origen during the 3rd century, then we probably would've seen a slight endorsement (apart from the use of demons as heroes, the lust, the language, etc.). Although who knows if maybe Sir Pentious
Which also lead me to see that somebody did make an interesting point on Charlie's positive mindset and rather bright outlook on the idea of sensing inner good in demons. I once heard somebody refer to Charlie as a Pelagian, which made me chuckle a bit since I highly doubt many would make this kind of comparison, but is almost true in a sense. Although, the issue of Pelagianism is much more complicated than that and there will be another blog eventually which will go over this topic. Just wanted to point this interesting observation out since that is one of the teachings of Pelagianism.
Another interesting and probably good thing to note here is that there is no mention or depiction of God in the entire show. Even with the trip we get into Heaven where we see angels (including furries), we do not see any mention of the one true God in Heaven. I am curious if there is a reason for this story wise or if he is just going to be absent. It'll probably help remove the stereotype of God being depicted as a white bearded man in Heaven by avoiding another area of controversy.
One of my main takeaways from it is the idea of common grace which is found among people. In other words, there is elements of Christianity found in the show, but doesn't necessarily give credit to the Christian faith for it. I find this happens much more than people think and I will point out a few instances where I see this form of mutual agreement occurs.
When we see the idea of salvation being offered, Charlie wants this idea greatly and is very much interested in tying to get this hotel to work. We see Charlie even acts in a way as an ironic form of Christian evangelism being done by somebody who is really zealous for it. Charlie goes out of her way and tries to encourage people to give the hotel a shot by explaining the good news that comes out of it, which is essentially what Christians are to do when they preach the Gospel by either word or deed.
Another example of Charlie is found in the idea of forgiveness. The Bible commands us to forgive others as God has forgiven us of our sins. We see this displayed perfectly in a scene where Charlie forgives a character named Sir Pentious. Sir Pentious is a character who tries to pick a fight with Alastor, but eventually loses. He then is hired by an overlord demon named Vox to spy on the hotel and pose as a guest. His deception is eventually revealed and we see that several people are upset at this except for Charlie, who instead offers forgiveness. We even get a very interesting set of lyrics from the musical number that follows entitled "It Starts With Sorry." We see an interesting song dialogue between different characters.
CHARLIE
The path to forgiveness is a twisting trail of hearts
But sorry is where it starts
SIR PENTIOUS
Who could forgive a dirtbag like me?
I don't deserve your amnesty
ANGEL DUST & VAGGIE
Can't we just kill him?
Shoot him and spill his blood?
Then we receive the interesting response from Charlie with this set of lyrics: "That's an option you could choose... But who hasn't been in his shoes? It starts with sorry." It puts in an interesting lesson of repentance and forgiveness together with the idea of saying it's simply starting with saying sorry in how one can change and be redeemed, but it also rebukes the desire to kill him with the idea of "who hasn't been in his shoes." This is what we see in the Sermon on the Mount when it comes to forgiving others as we have been forgiven as well as to point out that we are not to judge lest the judgement we cast will be met with the same standard against us. It was honestly refreshing to see this during these episodes where there was tons of vulgar and crude jokes involved.
There is another interesting observation that was not necessarily something I realized until I saw a review of this show by Checkpoint Church. It is there where we see that a key figure is left out of the discussions on what exactly is being at work here: God. It wasn't God who decided on the exterminations in Hell, but it was Adam who conceived the plan to kill the demons and it was approved by Sera, a seraphim angel in the divine council. Sera disapproves of Adam's excitement and pleasure he takes in killing the demons, but Sera is willing to do whatever it takes for what she thinks is a necessary action to protect heaven.
What we see is an analogy of a critique of the Church where there are members in it who do not wish to focus on redemption, forgiveness and love, but to focus on condemnation, hatred and violence. You have several "Adams" out there who are very much against teaching love towards other people and in fact, wish for certain people to not join the Church because "it would be much better if they didn't join and just died as heathens." Then you have your "Charlies" out there who wish to offer redemption and have this strong emphasis of hope in salvation. So we see Adams are the people in the church who wish for the Church doors to be closed while Charlies are people who wish to go out and to show redemption is possible by offering that chance to people with love, forgiveness and kindness. Strange how a fictional daughter of Lucifer becomes the role model evangelist in this show.
There is another interesting observation that I want to point out regarding a critique made against the show. There are some suggesting that the show is glorifying Hell as this great place that is so much better than Heaven. There is even claims that the show glorifies child abuse and rape among many other evils. However, nowhere does the show actually do this. It condemns it as evil and is more so used as a means to tell the story and condemn it as evil. Hell is also not necessarily considered a good place itself as you have some truly horrific people in the area and even more terrible people in charge of it as key figures in corruption behind the rule. Especially when it comes to Alastor who seems to have sinister motives and I have a feeling he is going to pull a big plot twist on the viewers.
Heaven is also not necessarily condemned since the only main bad guy seems to be Adam and Lute, his main assistant angel in the extermination. Sera is certainly responsible to a degree, but it's too early honestly if she's beyond redemption as she still does condemn the attitude and cheer behind the extermination by Adam. However, Heaven seems to be still full of good figures who even seem to have an agreement with Charlie's vision, showing there is good and even Heaven is painted with much respect. So it's honestly odd and shows people didn't really pay close attention to all the details of the show.
Is Hazbin Hotel a show for every Christian to watch in order to learn how to be a better Christian? Not really. The benefits I mentioned still are overshadowed by the other elements that aren't exactly that good. However, I think strong Christians who are able to watch the show without being influenced by some of the bad elements can gather good perspectives on evangelism. Plus, I do think God can use the show to enlighten the mind of those outside of the Church to see what true Christian love is like when it comes to the elements of love, forgiveness and repentance. It is certainly good that this show came out and became popular because it will get people being able to discuss certain things.
I do hope for the best that comes from this show for the cause of Christ and for that, let us pray.
O God, who hast made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and didst send thy blessed Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near: Grant that people everywhere may seek after thee and find thee; bring the nations into thy fold; pour out thy Spirit upon all flesh; and hasten the coming of thy kingdom; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
- Book of Common Prayer (1979), p. 58
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light; and
where there is sadness, joy.
O, God, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
- St. Francis of Assisi
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