Hazbin Hotel's Showrunner Unveils Rosie and Alastor's Backstory Is a Major Season 3 Tease
Dedicated viewers of the series finally got a long-awaited backstory in the second season's episode 4, titled “It's a Deal.” This episode is likely to prompt extensive conversation and raise many questions about the essence of a certain demonic Overlord who seems far more powerful than anyone before realized. These fresh disclosures feature a glimpse into the mortal existence of a fan-favorite character prior to his demise and sentence to Hell.
A Major Tease for Future Seasons
The series creator shared a secret about “It's a Deal” – it serves as a major tease for season 3. She also offered more insight into the methodology of designing the human versions of her infernal cartoon figures.
Warning: Spoilers for episode 4 of Hazbin Hotel, the show's second season.
In the episode, a look back discloses that fan-favorite character Alastor the Radio Demon was a serial killer in his human life. Being aware he was destined for Hell, he made contact with the afterlife beforehand to secure a powerful role in Hell. The charismatic leader, who leads the cannibal faction in Hell, vowed Alastor he would become “the most powerful Condemned Soul in Hell” in return for his soul.
This prompts the question: In what way is this character powerful enough to elevate Alastor over all other Sinner Demons?
“The Rosie and Alastor deal is the initial building block in a larger narrative that encompasses a great deal, moving into the third season,” the creator explains. “Clearly that is a perfect question: How is she so strong? The answer might be many things, but the answer is in season 3. I'm very excited for fans to see it.”
There’s no telling how long the audience will have to remain for Hazbin Hotel’s next season. The studios have green-lit the third and fourth seasons, but the creator often remarks that animation is a time-consuming endeavor, and later seasons are undated. Still, she states holding off on those details is an important part of maintaining season 2’s attention where it belongs.
“The challenge of any kind of deal with demons, or narratives that have mysteries, is giving people sufficient clues to be like, Something's up here, and then revealing that as we go, and letting that be gratifying,” she says. “So I'm very excited.”
Questions Answered in Season 3
The creator promises that the upcoming season will tackle the queries fans have been posing, such as why the cannibal leader commanded Alastor to vanish for seven years, which diminished his power in the infernal realm.
“The entire seven-year span, and the pacts these individuals are making, and everything — it's feeding into a bigger narrative,” she says.
Meanwhile, the origin story episode offers a further look into what the main characters of Sinner Demons appeared as as mortals, the second after viewing another character's Victorian-era human form in the second episode. The creator says that significant consideration was put into these character designs.
“The mortal forms of these personas carry so much weight,” she says. “They vary from looking quite distinct from their demon form to looking almost identical. With the first character, the first one we see, there was a little bit of a debate internally between choosing something that represents the personality, as opposed to going with an option that's very time-period accurate. We leaned toward making something that just felt like it was him.”
She says the primary controversy over Pentious’ human design was his long hair: “We were like, ‘Nobody really had long hair of that style in Victorian-era London.’ But simultaneously, we believe the outline is so important, and we also just thought he appeared attractive. We were like, ‘This seems correct.’ We sort of gave the excuse that he lived in seclusion, so he just allowed his hair to lengthen. So there's always a way. As we design the human versions of these characters […] it is a very enjoyable process to investigate and determine. I am looking forward for people to view additional of what the human forms look like.”
Fresh installments of Hazbin Hotel the second season drop on midweek on Prime Video.
