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I agree. If the pattern stays the same, it'll play out exactly like that.

Maybe the point is to show that people in greater power will take longer to reach rock bottom and they inevíteably fall harder. But fall they will and even then they will get another chance if they want to. I've seen a theory recently where someone speculated that Alastor will possibly be humbled into oblivion in the coming series. (Actually he is currently in the process of digging himself into a hole he cannot possibly get out of without the help of others)

I also kinda think that the main cast will all stay in Hell for one reason or another. For one, I think it's mainly because of the broken power balance between Heaven and Hell. The system currently is setting everyone up for failur. Including Charlie. Redemption as it stands now, can only ever be a stopgap measure. Charlie needs to realise that the system itself will need changing. Both realms need to become more equal to another. Heaven needs to be checked on their bullshit and Hell needs room to breathe so that Sinners will have the chance to strive for betterment. I personally believe that Charlie and Emily will be keys to that. So that both worlds will reach equilibrium between each other. There has to be room for Sinners to be redeemed but also for Winners to fall.

Running the Hazbin will always require a team of people. It can never be only Charlie and Vaggie. So my personal hope is that the crew will stay together and be the people that guide others on the path of redemption without ever taking it themselves (for various different reasons, of course) - The themes of found family are very strong in this series.

Think about it: you make the best friends in your unlife. They become your family. For the first time since arriving in Hell you feel like you belong somewhere only for you to suddenly redeem yourself and be fucking alone in Heaven again. That makes me sad just thinking about it.

So yea. Redemption needs to be a choice that can be achieved on a technical level with the choice of rejecting ascension if the person so chooses.

Sry for the wall of text but I kinda feel strongly about this.

Of course, I will accept whatever the showrunners present to us. It is their show, after all!

I think Rosie is a key factor to understanding Alastor's outlook on friendships.

The show all but spells out that Alastor sees attachments as a weakness, from the "Great Alastor, altruist, died from his friends" line to the hints about his failed friendship with Vox and to the way the narrative immediately punishes him when he admits to Niffty that "One could get accustomed". However something sets Rosie aside from all of this. With her, Alastor is open about scheming, he allows her to touch him and even seems to bleat like a fawn when she grabs him. Their friendship seems oddly healthy for a guy who seems to think that letting people even peek through the twenty meter wall he's built around himself is a fate worse than death. So what makes Rosie different? I think what sets her aside from other attachments that Alastor might view as dangerous (such as Vox, maybe?) is that no matter how close they might be, she still has her own world and he has his. There's a safety in knowing your life won't have to change and that you're free to take any risk, ruin any bond because you're not directly putting this person in danger. Rosie is Alastor's friend, not his responsibility. That's why she's not as affected by Alastor's disappearance and welcomes him back as if he had been gone for a week. Their lives are completely separated, but they choose to meet at the borders.

I think that someone like Vox doesn't do that. Vox lives with Velvette and Valentino, they share everything, success, plans, even a living space. Heck, Velvette can go to the Overlord meeting representing the other two because that trio can speak as one. When Vox asked Alastor to "join his team", he was basically asking Alastor to remodel his life to make space for him as well. If one of the Vees fucks up, all of them fuck up ("Our model is perfection"). Alastor has his own plans, his own messes and cannot by any means be tied down to someone else. Even if he did care for Vox, in order to really be on a team with him or anyone else, he would have to drop his creepy persona which keeps him safe, he couldn't just kill people and betray others however he wished, let alone make sketchy deals with much more powerful entities. His actions would impact the ones he kept close. Vox and Alastor couldn't join forces because they have fundamentally different goals and outlooks on attachment. Vox wants codependency, Alastor has conjured up indestructible walls just to survive.

So, tl;dr: Rosie and Alastor work as friends because they seemingly agree to keep their lives separate. Vox wanted to carve a niche for himself in Alastor's life just like he had done for him, but that's just not what Alastor wants nor is able to give.

THIS.

There is that undercurrent of ANGER that Charlie harbors all the time. She keeps a lid on it as best as she can and it kinda looks to me like she feels the need to be in 100% control all the time.

Which, incidentally, is a trait that Alastor values very much. This may indicate why he (and other characters) find her endearing. Rosie mentioned how Charlie has "moxxie" about herself and it may hint at this.

When Charlie DOES lose it; oh BOY does she ever lose it. Fisticuffs with Killjoy on live TV. Getting angry at Valentino before Angel stepped in. Adam.

Those were just a few glimpses because as soon as it flares up, the emotion turns into something akin to fear and she presses it back down immediately. I feel like that is connected to some traumatic event from the past.

I also kinda think that Alastor might know or suspect something pertainint to that. Either because game reckognises each other or because he actively knows her past somehow. He kinda poked the dragon in episode 7. Seeing how far he could go. Needling her just enough. As soon as she went "Oh fuck you, Alastor!" - he backed off immediately.

Really hoping to see some of that next season *fingers crossed*. We have to remember that everyone at the Hotel is a hasbeen and the more I think about it, the more I think that may actually also include Charlie.

I am on the fence whether she may actually have killed someone in the past, though. However, I am certain that SOMETHING happened.

I bet he's been sitting on his hands for a week. Just bursting to have Vox find out and announce his return to the entire Pride Ring. It's so much more impactful when someone else does it for him.

When SOMEONE ELSE is pointing at the Radio Demon being back like:

Don't get me wrong. Alastor's return could also have been framed/staged in a dramatic manner himself. But the entertainment value, the impact and overall presentation is much much better from Alastor's point of view when it is VOX doing all the work for him and embarassing himself in the process.

"You know me too well." is not just something Valentino can say at Vox. It's also something Vox can say towards Alastor and that makes it all the more delicious.

i choose to believe that alastor didn't really need to go to the tailor in ep 2, his coat was already tattered as hell, he just noticed vox spying on him and needed an excuse to go out and see the drama unfold firsthand bc he knew vox wouldn't be able to resist making it the whole city's business

Thinking about summer in the Pride Ring made me wonder if instead of sunburns, you would get pentagram burns. Either whole little pentagrams or nondescript bars and slashes depending on what side of the Pentagram in the sky you were exposed to while sustaining the burn.

If the newly built Hazbin Hotel has a rooftop spa- and pool-area, I bet Alastor had to put up pentagram(sun)-netting over the pool by himself. No shadow minions can withstand the glare of the Pentagram during the summer. But the netting also can't stay up all year because acid rain season melts it.

Hell is Forever.

Indeed. Coupling this with the notion that Alastor values hard work and an inherent dislike for people in power, you get a very potent volatile mixture.

I imagine Alastor disliking people in power because they will (in his eyes) all ineviteably end up abusing said power against everyone they view as "lesser". It's proably something he learend both during his life and un-life, so he has come to expect it of everybody.

This perception got immediately confirmed when the very first interaction he had with Lucifer was literally a condecending question about whether he was "the help". The man didn't even start with "Hello" 😂 He asked "And you are?" with an expression and attitude to match.

Funny idea about all three of them going out to dinner would be that both Vox and Lucifer have NO idea what kind of a powerderkeg they are dragging along until Alastor loses his patience with either or both of them and either goes sassmaster to the max or full eldritch rampage on them.

Either works and will leave both of them nonthewiser, thus opening up on further possibilities for shenanigans.

lucifer and vox are rich4rich in an entitled royalty x exploitative billionaire way that means neither of them are particularly decent to service workers, and i just know it pisses alastor alllll the way off. they're not outright cruel but they are dismissive and view being "the help" as an inherently demeaning position that's obviously beneath them, while alastor, who knows intimately what it's like to be seen as lesser, resents the fuck out of that attitude. i actually think vox probably worked some shitty low-paying jobs during his early years in hell, but learned 0 lessons in empathy from the experience because he was always hyperfocused on moving up and onto greener pastures. on the other hand, lucifer's been a king for ten thousand years; his ass does NOT give his servants a second glance anymore, if he ever did. considering how he looks down on sinners in general, + all of his condescending little remarks about alastor being the hotel's busboy/bellhop, that implies to me that he considers those jobs to be unimportant and not respectable compared to him, royalty. these three would struggle severely to go out for dinner as a group because alastor would be seething violently the entire time watching vox and lucifer interact with the waitstaff

I don't think people are physically able to break deals that way. If something is magically binding, I think they can't resist it unless they are very powerful (If Helluva Boss lore can be believed here, not even a Sin like Asmodeus would be able to break something like that).

My main reasoning for this would be something very subtle in the very same scene. When Alastor is talking about "why he is here", his answer was initially "for the entertainment." But there was a moment in there where he went "and..." *hesitate* his fist glowed green and both him and his shadow were staring at it and then he continued with "..fail spectacularly." Somehow it feels like he was about to let someting slip and the energy prevented him from continuing. Just my personal thinking, of course.

Also: The deal is between Vaggie and Alastor specifically. It does not prevent anyone else from asking him to "engage with television technology". And let's not forget one essential part of the deal. The wording specifies "asking" him to do something. Vaggie's modus operandi is giving Alastor orders. The deal will not prevent her from ordering him to do something.

All in all it seems like something mild and we really have to see what comes of it in season 2.

The possibilities are very very delicious in any case!

Alastor and Vaggie’s Deal

So I'm having thoughts. I've seen a lot of speculation that Alastor's deal with Vaggie in episode one is going to be his trump card to not fight Vox. However, let me pose a different question:

What happens if Vaggie breaks the deal?

What if she doesn't realize that the deal would apply to Vox? What if she does ask Alastor to fight him? What happens to her?

And what if this is what Alastor is counting on? What if he knows the consequences to breaking a deal and is just waiting for Vaggie to slip up? Look at their deal. Alastor had to do a single favor for her, a one and done, and she is bound to uphold her end for eternity.

I recently noticed how basically every piece of fanart that involves the hotel lobby in some way ineviteably has the old style couches from the season 1 Hotel. Obviously only talking about the comics/situations that are supposed to play after the end of season 1.

I genuinely wonder if they chose to stick with the old designs for them, seeing as they kissed the old art-deco Hotel goodbye as well (rip, it will be missed)

Feels to me like they would change the internal design to match the newer look of the Hotel.

Just throwing some personal headcannon out there because it's been on my mind for a while and since I've never seen anyone talk about it. All of this is just ramblings on my part.

I think Alastor was not as tall as people think he was as a human. I think he was small. As in: Lucifer-sized-small 5'2"ft (158cm)

For starters, people back in the day used to be quite a bit smaller on average than people are today. It does vary a lot depending on way too many factors to take into account and sources do vary a lot the further we go back in history (just by pure fact of different measurments taken and different unit conversions). But right around 1900 the average height for men in the US seems to have been bang on 160cm (yes this is confirmation bias on my part, just let me have this, lol)

Second, I would find it such a delicious irony for Alastor to mock Lucifer's height just because A: he is now in a position where he can do that (7ft tall) and B: he knows what it's like to be demeaned, belittled and generally not taken serious because of physical appearance. In fact, it's the very first thing he's being sassy about towards Lucifer after being asked whether he was "the help" at the Hotel. Low hanging fruit, I know.

There is also something about him being the "small specky git" that is being underestimated constantly. Having a small statue and a generally unassuming personality fits in perfectly with someone who slits people's throats. The silent assassin type. Which, in turn draws a parallel to Niffty who is small, generally unassuming if chaotic and was able to sneak up on (and harm) very powerful people.

Tying in to him possibly miming the social impostor to get close to his targets and then striking when the victim is unassuming and alone would fit very well into this assumption, too.

Lastly and only tangentially related to his possible method of killing. In episode 5 when threatening Husk with the chains in the hallway, he does this move where he pulls the links taut. It's a move that sends chills down my spine every time. It gives distinct "garrote wire" vibes. Whether or not that is related to his former life or just a move he does because it is threatening and best suited to the current situation, I can't really say but it always struck me as interesting. Mainly because it is such a powerful and striking bit of animation. There is a lot of weight behind the movement. Almost as if the animators took care to make this scene look "just right".

(everything of this is conjecture on my part, of course. I make no claims to have any sort of basis in reality for any of this)

FINALLY! Someone says it!

Charlie is overcorrecting on sympathy precisely because SHE HAS NO CLUE HOW TO READ THE ROOM. You can see it throughout the show so often. The way she dismisses Vaggies very real concern about talking to the Angels was our first hint and it happens within the first ten minutes of the entire show.

That's what she ultimately needs high empathy people like Husk and Angel for. I don't know if empathy is a skill someone can learn realistically... Though...looking at Alastor... I think he has learned a fair few things from Rosie in that regard. And he is using that knowledge to his advantage.

Absolutely everyone at the Hotel is not only a has-been but they are all burning trashfires of emotional baggage. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. OF. THEM.

charlie's low empathy/high sympathy desperation to help people without ever really understanding WHY they feel the way they do + vaggie's complex about needing to be useful to the people she loves or else she's worthless = charlie completely mistaking vaggie's self-sacrifical behavior for an expression of love and not the trauma response that it is, because all she's grasping are the literal words out of vaggie's mouth and not the alarming nuances of terrified self-hatred lurking underneath

Alastor just about had the same reaction as I did when I saw the Pilot and watched Charlie have a fist fight with Katie Killjoy on live TV -> "Oh this is going to be a trash fire. I HAVE to get into that." 😂

charlie and vaggie (a hellborn princess and an angel) being possibly the LEAST qualified people to spearhead a redemption project for everyday human sinners continues to be the funniest part of the hotel's conception

SPEAKING FROM MY SOUUUULLLL

There is so much potential.

Think about all the dynamics that just come from being general manger and facility manger of the same hotel. I tell you now, these two do ALL THE HEAVY LIFTING in that place and we get so see none of it!!!

Besides all of that, Vaggie is the only person in Hell currently allowed and able to give Alastor orders. Do people even realise what that means? Not only can she give him orders but he follows them. We also see her enter his room via the skeleton key of the hotel and he doesn't even so much as comment on that. Other people would get their head ripped off for less invasion of privacy.

Also as shown in the Pilot not only does she know what he is capable of but warns Angel and Charlie of it (yes I know it's mostly exposition for the audience) and yet she faces him off anyways. She doesn't take any of his shit and she stands her ground against him like she fears no god.

I am all but convinced at this point that she has earned some form of respect from him by doing exactly that. I can't imagine he is getting much opposition in hell otherwise.

Vaggie has the potential to be included in the exclusive circle of girlboss besties that Alastor has crowded around him.

AND I WANT TO SEE THAT. PLEASE VIV!

vaggie + alastor friendship please please i need it so bad