“When we did that original pilot“It was like… I just want to do what I like and just put it out there,” says Vivienne Medrano, the creator of Hazbin Hotel.
That was before Medrano published the first one Hazbin Hotel episode on her YouTube channel in 2019. She assumed that certain followers would enjoy the theater’s edgy, edgy humor and childlike energy. But she had no idea how much it would explode.
At the time of writing, the pilot episode has over 94 million views on YouTube. Hazbin Hotel has a huge, passionate fan base, a miracle for something that only released a single episode. The series follows Charlie, the Princess of Hell, who decides to help rehabilitate demons to solve Hell’s overpopulation problem. The dark humor, bizarre character designs and rousing Broadway-style musical numbers thrilled many fans.
“It appealed to so many different people, even people who don’t normally like musical theater or don’t normally like adult cartoons,” Medrano says.
American adult animation tends to resemble a certain type of show: a stark half-hour comedy with lots of male characters, probably on Adult Swim or Fox. There’s a time and a place for that, but for a while Medrano thought she had to stick to that formula if she wanted to succeed. This wasn’t always a bad thing; she says South Park was a “big turning point” for her when she was younger. But then came BoJack Horsemanthe critically acclaimed adult animated series on Netflix, which Medrano says came at a “perfect time” in her career and changed the way she thinks about her craft.
“Phenomenal show,” Medrano tells Polygon. “[BoJack Horseman] showed me that adult animation can be not only a raunchy comedy, but also a story in which the characters are intensely developed. It can have incredibly flawed characters. It can make you cry. It can get really deep and dark.
“[BoJack Horseman] had just started, around the time I actually did this [Hazbin Hotel] Pilot and it made me want to go, Oh, wow, adult entertainment is starting to change and evolve. I can tell a story in it [medium] – because there is always this worry, Oh, it was just supposed to be a comedy
Since BoJack Horseman Since its release in 2014, adult animation in America has begun to expand beyond the half-hour box comedy. There are science fiction dramas like Scavengers rule and Netflix Love, death and robots Anthology series and serious dramas like Blue-eyed samurai And Reversed; Even the raunchy comedies have started to include different types of characters and play with the genre a bit more, such as the bawdy female fronts Tuca & Bertie and Max Harley Quinn, which mixes stark comedy with superhero antics. Like the last examples, Hazbin Hotel is a raunchy comedy – but also a character-driven musical with an overarching plot and lots of deep world building. There are also several female and queer leads, something that the adult animated comedy space is just starting to feature more of.
“Our society and our culture has kind of changed and there are a lot more diverse stories being told, a lot more LGBT stories and things like that,” she says. “When you just throw these things into the mix, stories naturally start to evolve and change. Different perspectives simply automatically open up to different voices. For a long time, the field of adult animation was predominantly a white male field: very raunchy comedy, something like shock humor. This stuff absolutely has its place, especially when it serves its purpose, but I think change comes from more diverse perspectives when you tell stories in space.”
When a show successfully breaks the formula – or even just slightly mixes it up – it proves that others can do it too. Medrano quoted Rick and Morty as an example of a recent show that is very stark and shocking, but also manages to go deeper. This also led other shows to expand the scope of their storytelling.
“Even some of the classic primetime shows that I really love – which I’m a big fan of, for example American fathersays Medrano. “Even a show like this has come up with more unique things over its long run. We’re in a good time for adult entertainment.”
The first four episodes of Hazbin Hotel are available now on Prime Video, with new episodes released on Fridays.