Amazon’s Animated ‘Hazbin Hotel’ Series Stirs Up “Satanic Panic” Cries From The Religious Right

Hazbin Hotel is one of the most exciting animated shows to premiere in years, and the strong and vocal response to it — from all sides — proves this case. Created by Vivienne Medrano and based on her viral YouTube pilot, the show follows Charlie (voiced by Erika Henningsen), the Princess of Hell, as she opens a rehabilitation center for sinners in the aftermath of Heaven’s annual purge, which sees angels descending upon Hell to slaughter demons. Advertised for a mature audience, the show is dark and gory, and shamelessly uses the likeness of infamous biblical figures.

Within two weeks of premiering, Hazbin Hotel set a new streaming record for the most-watched new animated title on Prime Video, according to a press release from the streamer. The show is also “Certified Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes with an 85% approval rating, despite the divisiveness surrounding the animation genre and, specifically, the show’s subject matter. 

With the series bursting in popularity, there is bound to be a few haters. But who could’ve guessed that a 2024 animated musical comedy would stir up memories of the “Satanic Panic” movement from the ’70s and early ’80s, forty-plus years later?

The term “Satanic panic” refers to a period of time in the 1980s when baseless accusations of the rampant abuse of children in occult and satanic rituals spread across the United States. According to NPR, who noticed a resurgence of the conspiracies in 2021 through QAnon, the panic originated in 1980 through Canadian psychologist Lawrence Pazder’s memoir Michelle Remembers, co-written with his patient Michelle Smith. In the novel, Smith makes exaggerated claims of satanic ritual abuse that she allegedly suffered as a child and unpacked through recovered-memory therapy sessions with Pazder — a practice that has since been discredited. Similar allegations date back to the witch trials of the early modern period.

In anticipated of the Hazbin Hotel premiere and immediately following, conservative Christians began mass accusing the show of exposing innocent minds to Satanism and spreading hate about the traditional Christian religion.

“The propagandists are now actively making movies to promote the veneration of powerful demons, in this case Lilith, the patron demon of feminism.  Corporations like Amazon, and its media arm Prime, are working with the devil. They are the enemy,” Kruptos, a Christian writer, wrote on Twitter.

Conservative podcaster Timothy Daniel Pool, known as Timcast, alluded to Krupto’s tweet in his YouTube video called “Outrage Over Amazon Show Praised Lucifer, Making Heaven Bad Guys, Hazbin Hotel Sparks Controversy,” which has amassed over 172K views. “Christianity is having a hard go of it when shows like this misrepresent what the bible is actually trying to teach people, and this [Hazbin Hotel] will be the basis by which many people form their beliefs around these religions,” Pool says in his 23-minute video.

Writer Anthony Gramuglia responded to Pool’s video on TikTok, saying, “Are we seriously doing Satanic Panic B.S. in 2024? … Not surprising because these reactionaries will grab on to anything, especially if it has queer themes in it, in order to say this is somehow proof of the decay of moral civilization.”

The Michael Knowles Show, produced by Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, even chimed in. “Amazon Prime paints Satan as the hero in the new cartoon, Hazbin Hotel. As horrible as this is, it’s nothing new,” captioned a tweet promoting an 8-minute video where Knowles slams the show for its mixture of “Satanism and feminism.”

The conservative daily newspaper Washington Times published a scathing op-ed that includes the quote, “Hazbin Hotel is not only completely unbiblical but an attempt to desensitize the masses to the evil that seeks to oppress and/or possess souls.”

The examples are endless, and quite frankly, ridiculous. Satanic panic controversies from the past have long been disproven by lack of evidence of widespread abuse and substantial correlation between things like rock music and video games, and Satanism. However, dare I suggest that conservatives should be afraid of this show, albeit for a different reason than the devil.

Medrano has created an escape into a world absent of the gender binary, and archaic beliefs of purity and predisposed fates, both of which go against traditional Christian beliefs. Not only does Medrano accomplish that, but she does so in a smart manner. Hazbin Hotel doesn’t present all of the characters in Hell as innocent; in fact, Lucifer (voiced by Jeremy Jordan) himself states in Episode 5 that he gave people “free will” and many of them took advantage of it. Additionally, various characters in Hell are depicted doing horrible things and being condemned for their actions in the first half of the season, which introduces viewers to the netherworld’s evil overlords, cannibals, and situations of sexual abuse.

The right wing also appears to be upset over the angels in Heaven also being portrayed as imperfect. A key plot point in the show is that in order to maintain moral superiority, the angels alienate — and execute — those who don’t align with their values. Sounds familiar, huh? The show plays with the hypocrisy with tongue-in-cheek, introducing first human Adam (voiced by Alex Brightman) as a raging misogynist, which doesn’t seem so far-fetched given the countless bible passages that subjugate women and refuse to view them as equals to the male counterparts.

Like such, Hazbin Hotel highlights many of the major critiques of Christianity that have existed long before the show and will continue to do so. Despite the moral panic, the show remains untouchable. A peek at the over 5K reviews on Google proves it: an overwhelming amount of the ratings are 5-star, with little action between 4-2 stars. Then, there are the one-star reviews, filled with comments like, “This show is immoral and teaches untrue facts about Adam & Eve and God,” there is no Joy or peace in hell, only pain and suffering,” and “Lucifer is a good guy?! Crazy. A fine example of why our world is upside down.” The conservative Christian community is clearly trying to bring the show down, they’re just not successful at it.

Amid the outrage is the ignorance of the show’s key message: the great value of redemption and second chances, and seeing the inherent goodness in people as they are. Before getting upset, I wish these reactionaries would sit down and ask themselves, “Why is any of this so bad?” because when they don’t, they’re behaving no differently than the angels being negatively portrayed in the show. 

The show touts this inclusive perspective as shown in the final musical number of Episode 6, which sees the introduction of a protagonist angel who asks a seraph after finding out about the Extermination day, “Was talk of virtue just pretension? Was I too naïve to expect you to heed the morals you’re purveying?” She vows to help Charlie and her misfit crew after their lives are threatened by Adam.

Overall, arguing with close-minded individuals rarely ever yields positive results, so to quote Jessica Vosk, who appears in the series as Lute, “To the people who are saying Hazbin Hotel is ‘satanic propaganda’… I’ve never been more obsessed with anything in my life.”