Hazbin Hotel Episode 8: The first finale

SPOILERS for HAZBIN HOTEL episode 8.

For the reader’s convenience, I will discuss this episode in parts with titles for them to navigate to whichever topic interests them the most.

The action

While the final episode’s events were riveting, I was a little disappointed about the action scenes not reaching the same calibre as the creator’s other series, Helluva Boss. Though you could say, they made up for this with the characters’ battle outfits. I can say that the action scenes for Hazbin Hotel were at least more than competent, and some pretty effective cuts between fights amplified the intensity.

There’s this one moment where Adam is charging at Charlie and Lucifer, and Charlie punches Adam with a mysterious power. I’m a little annoyed by this because it came out of nowhere. There was no prior setup or foreshadowing about Charlie having this super-strength.

It brought to my mind something Bradon Sanderson was self-critical about at some point in his lectures on creative writing. He said that he resolved the story in his first published novel by giving his character a new power out of nowhere, meaning it felt unearned. If I recall correctly, he said he is gradually fixing this mistake with each new edition.