Hazbin Hotel review: Vivid and stylish animated series lacks writing flair

The age of the scripted web series, when DIY projects like Broad City, High Maintenance, and Insecure leaped from a browser window to TV, has long passed. That is until Hazbin Hotel. Conceived by Salvadoran-American cartoonist Vivienne Medrano (aka VivziePop), Hazbin is an adult animated musical set in a technicolor vision of Hell where the demons are as likely to break out into song as barter for your eternal soul. It started as a YouTube pilot released in October 2019, crowdfunded via Patreon, and created by freelance animators. The video went viral overnight (it currently has a whopping 93 million views), winning Medrano a devoted fanbase.

In spring 2020, A24 picked up the show, marking the trendy indie distributor’s first foray into animation. Armed with a bigger budget and an all-new voice cast, the premiere season hits Prime Video on January 19. Medrano’s is the kind of Cinderella tale that’s vanishingly rare in the TV biz these days: Scrappy, talented creator makes good and hits the big time. Hazbin Hotel’s first season, based on the five episodes screened for review, has a lot going for it, like a compelling premise, stylish animation, killer song-and-dance numbers, and a voice cast to kill for. But the series falters with its writing.

Let’s crack up the Old Testament to get into the plot. Set sometime after the Fall of Man and the War in Heaven, Hell is filled to the brim when a host of angels descend to exterminate vast swathes of the demonic population. Charlie Morningstar (Erika Henningsen) is the only one determined to curb the purge. She is the bright-eyed, strangely naive daughter of Lucifer and Lilith, and long estranged from her absentee parents, In a bid to save her people from the chopping block, Charlie opens the titular hotel as a sort of moral rehab for sinners to cleanse their souls and escape Heaven’s wrath.

She’s joined by her world-weary but supportive girlfriend, Vaggie (Stephanie Beatriz); a mysterious fiend named Alastor (Amir Talai), and a band of misfits including self-destructive porn star Angel Dust (Blake Roman), sadistic maid Niffty (Kimiko Glenn), misanthropic bartender Husk (Keith David), and foppish cobra demon Sir Pentious (Alex Brightman). There’s also an array of underworld bigwigs like porn magnate Valentino (Joel Perez), a guy with a TV for a head (Christian Borle), and Lucifer himself (Jeremy Jordan). That’s just the tip of the pitchfork. They’re vying for power while possessing killer pipes, super-cool character designs, and completely opaque backstories. And therein lies the problem.

Since the show tosses us right into the middle of its sprawling story with little context, it’s pretty hard to get invested amid the open questions. How did the literal spawn of Satan turn out to be a bubbly, Disney Princess-esque naif who’s shocked every time a demon does something, y’know, demonic? Why did she decide her best option to save the denizens of Hell was to open a hotel? If she wanted to attract guests, why did she call it the Hazbin Hotel? Why is Alastor bankrolling it? Why are there demons associated with various 20th-century media technologies? Why does Vaggie come off as a carbon copy of Lake Bell’s deadpan Poison Ivy in Harley Quinn? And is her full name, in fact, “Vagina”?

But like a good stage magician, Hazbin is adept at distracting viewers from how it’s all smoke and mirrors. It’s largely thanks to a dynamic, innovative animation style, which recalls classics ranging from Betty Boop to The Nightmare Before Christmas without ever feeling derivative. Lead animator Lorenzo Estrada (Animaniacs) and his team envision Hell as a teeming, seedy city circa the roaring ’20s, its Seussian skyscrapers concealing speakeasies and shady backrooms.

The most credit goes to the irresistible musical numbers, penned by songwriter Sam Haft. They’re sung to perfection by a voice cast of Broadway greats, including Mean Girls breakouts Henningson and Krystina Helena Alabado, Beetlejuice’s dynamic Brightman, Waitress and Centaurworld star Glenn, Newsies heartthrob Jordan, and legends like David, Borle, Patina Miller, and Daphne Rubin-Vega. Though Talai, Roman, and Perez are relative newcomers, they more than rise to the occasion. And then there’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine fave Beatriz, who showed off her pipes in In the Heights and Encanto. Though it’s hard to figure out Rubin-Vega’s character and how she fits into the story, her duet with Beatriz, in which Carmella and Vaggie lament their inability to connect with the people they love, will leave you rapt.

The show’s moving arc—and two of its best songs—come in the fourth episode, “Masquerade,” which digs into Angel Dust’s abusive sub-dom relationship with Valentino. Roman shines in the sexy but unnerving banger “Poison,” and the episode culminates in a sweet duet between Angel and the normally closed-off Husk. Whereas most of the darkness in Hazbin is superficial (the dialogue is so shot through with cuss words, it practically feels like a mandate), “Masquerade” tackles its tricky subject matter with unflinching honesty, truly putting the “adult” in “adult cartoon.”

On the whole, Hazbin doesn’t give its gang of down-and-out demons enough breathing room for us to get invested. They’re muffled beneath the growing pile of new characters and twisty political alliances that make House of the Dragon seem easy to follow. The ambition and inventiveness Medrano brings to the series is commendable. Perhaps in the already greenlit second season, Hazbin will slow down and find its groove—that is, if viewers aren’t too put off by the firehose exposition of the first few episodes. But between the sprawling fandoms for both Broadway and Medrano’s web series, the show will likely find its audience regardless.

Hazbin Hotel premieres January 19 on Prime Video