REVIEW: ‘Hazbin Hotel’ Season 2 Is All About The Complexity of Redemption

Created by Vivienne Medrano, Hazbin Hotel is based on her popular animated pilot she released on YouTube in 2019, which quickly built a fanbase. Produced by A24, this Prime Video Original series is back, and Hazbin Hotel Season 2 is even more endearing than the first season. 

If you’re unfamiliar with the series, Hazbin Hotel follows Charlie Morningstar (Erika Henningsen), the princess of Hell (daughter of Lucifer and Lilith), as she pursues her seemingly impossible goal of rehabilitating demons to reduce overpopulation in her kingdom peacefully.

If Charlie can help the sinners of Hell find redemption, then that means that Heaven won’t have to keep sending down angels to smite them as a part of their extermination plan. To do this, Charlie and her partner Vaggie (Stephanie Beatriz) run the titular Hazbin Hotel, with the hopes that the only time the patrons check out will be to go to Heaven.

Last season, Charlie and the crew, Angel Dust (Blake Roman), Husk (Keith David), Nifty (Kimiko Glenn), the radio demon Alastor (Amir Talai), and Sir Pentious (Alex Brightman) fought back Heaven’s Army, killed its leader, Adam, and now the hotel is filled with new residents. Only, the success they’re having feels slightly empty since Sir Pentious had to give his life to pull it all off. 

Sir Pentious is in Heaven, but at what cost?

Their grief is cut short when they learn that Sir Pentious is living a good life in Heaven, having found redemption from his past, even if they don’t really know how it happened. With a proof-of-concept secured, Charlie is sure she can save even more sinners, but Vox (Christian Borle) and The Vees have other ideas. And becoming the most powerful sinners in Hell is one of them, to Alastor’s frustration. 

Having batted Heaven back, resentment against Heaven is stronger than ever before, and now, the sinners realize they can fight back. Whilst Charlie struggles to maintain the Hotel’s goals and protect her public image, the Vees make a plan to take over Heaven, placing themselves at the top and doing everything they can to drag Charlie and the Hazbin Hotel as far as they can in the process.

The most important element of Hazbin Hotel Season 2 is that Hell and its Sinners aren’t the only ones struggling with the revelations of redemption. This season, we see more of Heaven than ever before. Where Adam and Lute (Jessica Vosk) carried forward the extermination of Sinners, Sir Pentious’s redemption highlights how wrong it all was. 

In Hazbin Hotel Season 2, we get even more of Heaven and the complexity of redemption.

But that’s not all: Hazbin Hotel Season 2 also allows the series to take comedic aim at more angelic figures, including Peter, the mascot of Heaven, and the mild-mannered, kind Abel, who finds himself taking up his father Adam’s old job. In Heaven, the angels must deal with the repercussions of Sir Pentious’s redemption and their own part in the previous atrocities committed against Hell.

While Lute pushes the Speaker of Heaven to keep eradicating sinners in Hell, she instead has to listen to Sir Pentious himself. Lute is literally going crazy as she tries to get everyone to keep killing sinners and is ignored. Not only that, but Lute was also passed over in favor of Abel. Sure, he’s Adam’s son, but he’s too soft, isn’t he? But that’s not the end of all things. Instead, it’s just the beginning. 

Hazbin Hotel Season 2 deals with two main conflicts. The first is Heaven’s struggle to accept that Sinners can be saved, and the second is Angel Dust’s path to redemption that can’t help but stall out, thanks to Valentino (Joel Perez), yet again.

Like last season, Angel is a character that has my heart. He’s struggling to understand his place in the world, and as much as he wants to live in the hotel with his friends, he also doesn’t feel like he deserves it. Where last season let Angel Dust embrace his found family and fight for a life away from Val, this season pushes him back into his trauma. 

Angel Dust remains one of the series’ best characters in Season 2 of Hazbin Hotel.

It’s a hard pill to swallow when it comes to Hazbin Hotel Season 2, but Angel’s complex relationship with redemption—and ultimately his belief that he deserves it—is the most human element of the entire season. Angel is a good person and a hurt person.

No matter what he does, he just can’t seem to shake the noose around his neck that a single past decision placed there, and that the Vees control. Where Sir Pentious’s spontaneous act of selflessness was enough to call him to Heaven, Angel Dust, no matter how much the people around him want to help, can’t seem to believe he deserves any of it, or his friends. 

But where Angel feels helpless when it comes to redemption, Charlie feels the same way about helping people be redeemed. As the tensions mount, Charlie has a harder time finding the push to keep the hotel functioning as it is, especially as she still struggles with her mom abandoning her. Still, she has Vaggie, who is there for her, and ultimately picks up her slack, and helps the hotel keep operating. Their relationship in Hazbin Hotel Season 2 is central to helping Charlie get through everything. 

Hazbin Hotel Season 2 highlights that you need to want to be healed for it to happen. 

Where Angel begins to remove himself from his relationships and Charlie begins to rely on hers more, the clear reality that the season speaks to is that the people around us are important. Our friends and our family are central to our successes, and ultimately help us see the parts of ourselves we have a hard time accepting and loving. Charlie has to feel like she can help people, and Angel needs to realize that he deserves a different life. 

The emotion this season is still steeped in the series’ signature humor. Profanity-laced and boundary pushing, Hell’s sinners are cringe, and so, they are free. Yeah, it’s a meme, but it also defines how the series embraces bad jokes and good jokes alike, playing into different characters’ personalities and experiences. The boundaries that the series pushes once again hammer home how offensive humor isn’t always bad. But that’s because every outlandish song and joke comes grounded in equal amounts of heart. 

Hazbin Hotel Season 2 continues the first season’s dedication to not just making sure the dialogue rides the fine line between humor and tragedy, but also to ensuring the musical numbers do the same. This season’s musical numbers do just what every musical does: they pull you in, get in your ear, and never lose the plot along the way.

Charlie has to continue her battle with self-doubt, but now, Vaggie is never letting her go it alone. 

Not only that, but the way that the musical tone shifts the atmosphere of the surrounding setting is a testament to understanding how to use music to tell a story. And sometimes, it’s just there for good fun, and that balance is needed and pays off in spades. 

This season of the series explores the complexities of redemption and the past. Because of that, we see more tragic situations from the past and diabolically evil ones as well. The flashback sequences to the times that a few characters were human offer a great deal of depth in understanding who they are. At the same time, it also provides a solid foundation to build upon, especially as the series’ songs serve as narrative climaxes. 

Hazbin Hotel Season 2 once again strikes the perfect balance between song and speech and doesn’t miss a single beat along the way. There truly is nothing like this series on television right now, and while I do mean this because of Medrano’s love of characters with faults, it’s also because of the caliber of music on display in the season. Not to mention a killer final episode singing moment from Patrick Stump‘s Abel.

Hazbin Hotel Season 2 continues the series’ unique approach to musical numbers that always hits.

As a whole, it’s no surprise that Vivienne Medrano’s storytelling has been the hit success it has, growing from her YouTube days. Hazbin Hotel Season 2 is equally as empathetic and endearing as it is inventive and dark. The vibrant series highlights the depth animation can bring to adult audiences, without relying on the same tropes and approaches as other comedies in the adult animation genre. 

Medrano’s characters are messy, unwieldy, and flawed, and that’s what makes them relatable. Hazbin Hotel Season 2 engages with the series’s larger themes of redemption, which its protagonist has always been concerned with, but digs a little deeper to show how difficult they are. At the same time, the series juggles redemption, atonement, and selfishness in a unique way, with eccentricities that only characters like Sir Pentious and Angel Dust can handle. 

Hazbin Hotel Season 2 is another hell of a good time while still holding onto its emotional spark. Great character designs, thoughtful character arcs, and an approach to trauma that doesn’t ignore how ugly it can make us before we heal make it one of the best series on television. Hazbin Hotel Season 2 is excellent in just about every way. While Charlie may not be the standout right now, her deeds are, and every character pulls the series together into something magical, divine, and demonic at the same time. 

Hazbin Hotel Season 2 is streaming now on Prime Video with new episodes every Wednesday. 

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