The Big Picture

Welcome to a new episode of Collider Ladies Night with
Hazbin Hotel
creator Vivienne Medrano.
In January 2024,
Hazbin Hotel
became Prime Video’s largest global debut for a new animated series.
During her chat with Perri Nemiroff, Medrano revisited her road to
Hazbin
, discussed making Season 1 with A24, and teased what to expect from Season 2 and beyond.

While celebrating Hazbin Hotel on Collider Ladies Night, creator Vivienne Medrano said she wouldn’t mind seeing the show run for six seasons, like her favorite show of all time, BoJack Horseman. “My favorite show went to six, so six would be cool!” However, she also noted, “The real answer is as many as they’ll give me, forever — forever and ever because there could always be more.” Given the monumental success of Hazbin Hotel Season 1, I’m a big believer Prime Video and A24 should defer to Medrano on this one, and give her whatever she wants!

Hazbin Hotel is something Medrano’s been working on since middle school. After years of honing the characters, she created an independently made pilot episode, after which A24 swooped in to help turn it into a series that Prime Video distributed in January 2024. Not only did the show premiere to glowing reviews, but it also became Prime Video’s largest global debut for a new animated series. But, perhaps most impressive of all was the fervent fanbase the show quickly amassed. Yes, Medrano and Hazbin already had quite the following via the pilot, which crossed 100 million views on YouTube in February, but the debut of Hazbin Hotel Season 1 on Prime Video undoubtedly increased that following exponentially.

The show puts the spotlight on Charlie Morningstar (voiced by Erika Henningsen), the princess of Hell. Due to overpopulation in Hell, angels swoop down from Heaven once a year to conduct a purge, wiping out as many sinners as possible. Charlie’s had enough of seeing her people perish and strives to change the system via her Hazbin Hotel, a hotel designed to rehabilitate sinners and get them into Heaven. Not only is Hazbin Hotel brimming with curious characters, wildly creative world-building and thematic heft, but it’s also a musical — and every single song on its soundtrack is a true banger.

The competition in the Animated Program category at the Emmys is fierce courtesy of iconic long-running series like The Simpsons and Bob’s Burgers, and new standout programs like X-Men ’97, but given the quality of Hazbin Hotel and the colossal passionate fanbase it’s ignited, it deserves to be in the mix.

How exactly does one get from middle school doodles to spearheading an Emmy-worthy animated musical? That’s exactly what I covered with Medrano on her episode of Collider Ladies Night!

How Vivienne Medrano Found Her Animation Style

Yes, Medrano knew early on that she loved cartoons, but that passion intersected with another, a love of animals, and that combination gave her an increased awareness at a very young age of what one can accomplish via animation. She explained:

“I’ve always been fascinated with how animal behavior is, so I was thinking about maybe going into zookeeping or animal training, or something like that when I was really little. But, I also loved cartoons, and I would draw constantly. Having ADHD as a child, it was my constant thing of not paying attention and drawing. Very early on, when I would watch the animated movies that I had on at home, the VHSs, we would pause them and I kind of started to notice, ‘Oh, this is different.’ I knew what drawing was because I was already drawing as a kid, but
I kind of started to notice that it was a new drawing every time, and I kind of pieced together what animation was very early on
.”

Even if you’ve only seen one Vivienne Medrano-crafted piece, you’d likely be able to quickly identify her other work courtesy of some signature design flourishes, and her love of horror and fantasy. How exactly did she zero in on what she’s so well known for now? She broke down all of her influences during our interview. Medrano began:

“I feel like my style kind of grew very organically. I know it’s DNA, and then based on the DNA, I know what kind of flourishes I’ve added to it. But I remember my earliest styles that I would draw in, funny enough, was a combination of the comic book style of Garfield because I really loved the
Garfield and Friends
cartoon, and just the comic books and stuff with
Invader Zim
[laughs], which is the weirdest combination ever.
Invader Zim
is still one of my favorite animated shows ever, and it had a huge influence on me in terms of style. So then there’s a while where that was one of my biggest sole influences, was Jhonen Vasquez’s style from
Zim
and
Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
. And
I had this conscious moment where I went, ‘I’m just drawing in his style. I need to do more to my style to make it not just an offshoot of Jhonen Vasquez
.’ So I purposely started to inject other styles that I loved.”

Medrano went on to highlight Bruce Timm’s approach to drawing women in Batman: The Animated Series, Jorge Gutierrez’s work crafting “amazing eyelashes and these huge, intricate designs,” the “shape language” in Tim Burton’s work, and the expressive style one finds in Looney Tunes.

“If you put all that stuff in a blender, I think it turns into kind of what my style looks like. And I did that intentionally because
I wanted as many things that are so vastly different as possible, but those are all things that mean something to me and that I love
, and there’s something from there that really influences me, and I think that’s what can create my voice and my style. And then a
little
bit of stuff is just the other self-indulgent things I like, just my design sense and my color sense, and things like that, and I think that turned into what the style is.”

Lessons Learned Studying Animation in College
Image via Prime Video

Related ‘Hazbin Hotel’ Review: Prime Video’s Adult Animated Series Is Sinfully Good After four years of development, ‘Hazbin Hotel’ was well worth the wait as the adult animated musical arrives on Prime Video on January 19.

As we often highlight on Collider Ladies Night, studying a craft like acting, or in this case, animation, in a formal school setting isn’t a necessity, something Medrano emphasized during our conversation. “In the world we’re living in now, with how expensive school is and how accessible the internet is with lessons and with tutorials, and there’s access to more programs and things like that, so I don’t feel like it’s crucial.”

However, she did find studying at the School of Visual Arts in New York City to be the best path for her. “I’m very happy I went to school. I think it gave me an enormous amount of time and access to professors whose goal was to try to get me better and to challenge me.” She added, “School teaches you a lot of amazing things — or at least where I went and for animation specifically. [It] teaches you how to make a film.”

Making a film in a school setting is one thing, but making one on a professional level can prove to be a completely different beast with a wealth of other requirements — ones many school programs don’t teach. “What it doesn’t really teach you is how to do a bigger independent project. Like, you know, have contracts, have NDAs, deal with the union for voice acting, things like that.” She went on to admit, “Not knowing some of those things led to very early mistakes.”

When Medrano attempted to make her very first independent project, she teamed up with a production company that proved to be a scam. She recalled, “I fell in with a scam production company because I was like, ‘I just need someone to set me up with SAG so I can have certain voice actors in the show.’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, we can do that,’ and then just siphoned off money from me for an entire year.”

But, wait! There’s a silver lining. Medrano says that experience is what paved the way to Hazbin.

“That’s actually what led to
Hazbin
, so it’s a very happy accident because I was trying to make something else. I was trying to make a different little thing and then I fell in with that company that I will not name, and it went really bad. And then I was left with all of my savings and I went, ‘You know what? I’m just gonna put all this towards …’ Because I think that project was more me trying to do something out of school.
I was like, ‘I’m gonna make an artsy thing.’ And then I was like, ‘You know what? I’m just gonna make something with these characters that I love that I’ve always wanted to,’
and obviously that worked out! So I feel like everything happens for a reason in a way, and so I feel like me learning that lesson made me more, ‘Okay, I’m gonna go through the right channels and I’m gonna learn about this process, and about this industry more.’”

Medrano Had Pre-Release Nerves with ‘Hazbin,’ Even with the Pilot’s Success on YouTube
Image via Prime Video

Hazbin Hotel was a hit on YouTube. It was first released in October 2019 and by early February 2021, it racked up 54 million views. Clearly there was an appetite for more, and A24 recognized it. But, even with all the YouTube love and A24 at her back, Medrano still had some nerves rolling into Season 1’s Prime Video release. “I was hopeful, but I was terrified, mostly because the pilot was so beloved.” She further explained:

“I was really worried because
I
felt so

good.
I
was very proud of Season 1. I was like, ‘This music is incredible. We’re putting our all into the visuals. We’re putting our all into making this as tight a story as possible,’ because it was also a challenge to fit that narrative that I wanted to tell in Season 1 into the eight episodes at 22 minutes with these massive songs and everything. So it was a challenge on a technical level, but I was so proud of how it turned out. But, we were all sitting on it.
Nobody had seen it. The fans hadn’t seen it. There was impatience and there was excitement and there was anticipation, and all these expectations, and I was kind of like, ‘Oh my god, please! I hope that this lives up to the hype and the wait and everything.’
And the fact that it did for people, I was like, ‘
Thank you
!’ I was very hopeful because I really was proud of what we made, and I was like, ‘If I was a fan, I feel like this fulfills a lot.’”

Hazbin Hotel Season 1 certainly does give a lot. It’s a winning quality that’s earned Season 1 much fan and critical acclaim at the moment, but it’s also a quality that’s going to come into play big time moving forward. Medrano noted, “It gives a lot of content and meat so that even if the wait for the next season is long-ish or whatever, they’ve got a whole season of the story to really focus on and be excited for what the next stage of the story will be, so it feels better. I’m like, ‘Here’s a meal. You guys have a meal,’ and we’re very proud of it.”

What can we expect after that Season 1 meal is fully digested and it’s finally time for Hazbin Hotel Season 2? How will it deliver more of what we already love while offering something new? Here’s what Medrano teased:

“I feel like Season 2 grows in really exciting ways that I’m personally enjoying a lot. There’s things in Season 1 that I really wanted to build up to and have a little bit more of a presence, but just because of how tight it was and how we really wanted to focus on the story we were telling and make it really satisfying, we weren’t able to start to build some things, so
what I like about Season 2 is that we are more able to build some things up that could lead to bigger payoffs later down the line
. And I think, just in general, we learned so much on a technical level making the first season that going into the second season, we feel a lot more like, ‘Yeah, let’s do this.’”

How Many ‘Hazbin Hotel’ Seasons Does Medrano Want to Make?
Image via Prime Video

When a show delivers such a stellar first season, it’s hard not to get greedy and wonder what the future holds, even beyond Season 2. Oftentimes, creators go into pitching a first season with a full series roadmap, so I had to ask — how long is Medrano’s ideal full series run? How many seasons of Hazbin Hotel would she like to do? Here’s what she said:

“Oh, man. I mean, the real answer is as many as they’ll give me, forever — forever and ever because there could always be more. But I think based on other shows that I love that I feel had a really good run,

Bojack
[
Horseman
’s] my favorite series ever and it got to six, so I’m just gonna go with that as, ‘My favorite show went to six, so six would be cool!
’ But I feel like whatever is possible to tell the story in, which I roughly know. Who knows? I think anything’s possible right now.”

You know why anything’s possible right now? It’s because Medrano is a hugely creative animation wizard, she put together a top-notch team and, together, they whipped up a stellar season filled with characters, themes and songs that struck a major chord with many. After crafting an Emmy nomination-worthy first season, hopes are high that A24 and Prime Video will continue to leave the reins in Medrano’s hands and trust her vision, and that that choice will pay off big time for everyone.

Eager to hear more about Medrano’s journey in animation and the making of Hazbin Hotel? You can watch our full 50-minute conversation in the video at the top of this article, or you can listen to the interview in podcast form below:

Hazbin Hotel In an attempt to find a non-violent alternative for reducing Hell’s overpopulation, the daughter of Lucifer opens a rehabilitation hotel that offers a group of misfit demons a chance at redemption.Release Date October 28, 2019 Creator Vivienne Medrano Cast Erika Henningsen , Christian Borle , Alex Brightman , Amir Talai

Hazbin Hotel Season 1 is available to stream on Prime Video.

Watch Here