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In Knives Out, a compassionate, ethical young woman treats everyone around her with generosity, and the people around her repeatedly try to take advantage of her kindness to force her into losing the fortune that was gifted to her by a dear friend. There, justice means that she keeps the fortune and decides that actually, she doesn't have to be kind and giving to people who've proven themselves assholes.

In Glass Onion, a woman loses her sister to a gang of wealthy, successful people who've sacrificed their principles for the sake of ambition and ego. There, justice means that everyone involved will be made notorious: whatever their other accomplishments, they will forever be known for being complicit in the burning of the most famous painting in history.

In Wake Up Dead Man, the church takes advantage of a young girl's loyalty and faith to place her under a lifelong burden and fill her with guilt, shame, and hatred. Justice means helping her understand what was done to her and the women around her, and giving her compassion so she can find peace.

This is cool because it means the movies contradict each other! The compassionate justice of Wake Up Dead Man would be totally misplaced in Knives Out, and so would the toppling-monuments justice of Glass Onion. And because each movie has something different to say, they all stand on their own and feel fresh.

// Heavy is the Burden //

~ Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive?

Do y'all notice it? How Dick started with "you are an hypocrite because you don't follow the rules you made me follow" and shifted to "you are hypocritical because you get to protect me but you don't let me protect you"?

It started with "Why do you get to be Batman when I couldn't be Nightwing?" but becomes "Why don't you let me protect you?" because that's the thing Dick is mad about, not Bruce still being Batman when Dick had to make a new identity when he was suspected of murder.

Tim just chased the criminal all the way to Blüdhaven

he understands and forgives greed and anger and fear and desperation as a reason for killing but the second you try to smear a bit of righteousness over that death he is disgusted, he is actively less empathetic, he wants nothing to do with you personally

her hair probably full of secrets but also friendship and love

But thankfully, that is not what happened and there’s actually a lot that I like about what the writers are doing with Charlie, particularly in the potential future development and reveals they seem to be setting up.

First off, I like how Charlie generally comes off more like an over-the-top caricature of that ‘Disney-Princess-in-Hell’ vibe, ie; SUPER energized, enthusiastic, affectionate and emotional, often to overbearing degrees that get on everyone’s nerves. It’s generally funny, or at least amusing, and lets Charlie stand out alongside the other big personalities in the cast. Funny enough, she’s actually a lot like Blitzo in this regard, minus the seesawing into extreme abrasiveness.

And more importantly, we’ve already gotten major hints all but confirming that this over-the-top personality is largely a façade, and that Charlie actually has some very clear issues and baggage that she’s working VERY hard to keep buried beneath the surface. Again, much like Blitzo.

Like how in the trust-fall exercise in episode three, despite asking everyone to reveal something personal, Charlie actually bullshits just as hard as Angel Dust and Sir Pentious with her whole ‘I love you all!’ bit. Sure, it’s not like she was lying or being insincere, but it’s clear that was NOT something truly personal for Charlie. And in episode 4 we have Husk straight-up calls out Charlie as ‘wanting to solve everyone’s problems but her own’.

Then of course we have the brief glimpses we’ve seen of Charlie getting angry. Both the times we’ve seen Charlie dealing with some truly despicable and horrendous characters, we’ve seen that rather than lacking the ability to get angry, Charlie is often working to hold herself back. In both her encounters with Adam and Valentino we see points where Charlie is clearly NOT intimidated or afraid of them at all and seems fully prepared to throw down, only being stopped by reigning herself in or by someone else (in this case Angel) stopping her.

Again, it all paints Charlie’s big, bubbly, hyperactive exuberance as something of a front, a way for her to bury a lot of thoughts, feelings and general baggage she doesn’t want to face. Just like what the show has already explored with Angel and Husk.

It actually raises some interesting questions as to what’s REALLY driving Charlie in running the hotel and trying to help Sinners. For one, Husk has already pegged Charlie as ‘wanting to solve everyone’s problems but her own’. And going back to thematic crossover with Helluva Boss, I can’t help but see some potential parallels between Charlie creating the Hazbin Hotel, and Blitzo creating Immediate Murder Professionals.

I think it’s pretty clear at this point that half the reason for creating I.M.P. was as a coping mechanism for Blitzo, or rather the assassination business in general. Something that we’ve gotten hints to as early as the second episode in Blitzo’s back and forth with the Robo-Fizz (“Does anyone love you, Blitzo?”/“No. But I’m really good with guns now!”). With the other half of the reason Blitzo created I.M.P. clearly seems to be to create a surrogate family, as seen with how much he tries to insert himself in the M&M’s lives. Possibly even a specific attempt to replace the family he unwittingly destroyed fifteen years ago.

So I really have to wonder if we’re going to find out that Charlie creating the hotel and her goal of redeeming sinners is in part likewise a coping mechanism and escape for her own baggage.

It’s actually really interesting how episode two first introduced the idea of people opening up with Sir Pentious, then episode four dived further into the concept of the walls and fake personas people put up to hide from their pain and trauma with Angel Dust and Husk. With those two opening up and starting to let their walls down to each other, and by extension we the audience, I think it makes Charlie’s own façade all the more noticeable. It’ll be pretty interesting if Charlie actually winds up being the toughest nut to crack when it comes to opening up about their real issues and baggage. Yet another interesting trait she shares with Blitzo.

All in all, I’m really liking what the show has been doing with Charlie as a protagonist. And I’m REALLY interested to see where the story is going to take her.

(Throwing my hat into the ring because the smiley fucker has me in a headlock. Warning; long and potentially insane. God I hope the cut works.)

I think something significant is gonna go down with Alastor in the next few episodes. I think the man is slipping.

Something that sticks out to me on rewatch is that Husk isn’t worried by the lights flickering or Alastor’s voice changing (the usual signs of him getting vicious.) He doesn’t look scared when the collar appears; his initial order of reactions actually goes ‘surprised’, ‘bitch please’, and then he starts doing damage control. It takes Alastor pulling on the chain to make him stop and actually look at how angry the overlord actually is. It says a lot to me that Husk’s first reaction is to be pissed off. He looks like he’s recognising that his bitchy demon master isn’t going to take any advice and he’s gonna be made to back off—and he’s angry about that. 

To detail, the fact that he approaches Alastor directly with his concerns and not Charlie (you know; the all-powerful, hotel owning, hell princess whose daddy’s in town), and puts the focus on him possibly getting into trouble means that Husk did all this out of a sense of concern or compassion. Husk isn’t acting purely in the interests of the hotel here, he’s trying to protect Alastor. This is a genuine offer of advice being thrown in Husk’s face for no apparent reason beyond arrogance; he has every right to be pissed off, and he is. He’s angry with Alastor and he shows that even as he’s shutting up. Angry, not scared.

Husk bitching about Alastor isn’t unusual. He cares enough to try and help the bastard out. The way he interacts with the conversation initially indicates to me that means he normally feels safe enough to do things like this. He’s comfortable calling his master out. He’s doing his best to stop Alastor making some kind of mistake. He is trusted with the information that Alastor isn’t a free man himself. When the chain appears, he’s frustrated, he cedes ground… but he isn’t scared. 

I don’t think Alastor manifesting Husk’s chains is unheard of in their relationship—Alastor’s a mean bitch who only tolerates a little bit of poking before he snaps—but I do think that the pulling of that chain is usually as bad as it gets. That’s the point where Husk stops talking but hasn’t started looking worried yet. Husk was probably fully expecting that being knocked to the floor would be the end of the matter. 

He’s scared—the most scared we’ve ever seen him—only after Alastor goes Radio Demon on him, and that’s why I think it’s something he’s never had happen before. Husk wasn’t expecting that degree of reaction at all. And I think it’s a sign that Alastor is starting to lose it.

We know the smile is fake. We know it’s a form of self-imposed self-discipline that’s as rigid as it is insane. And we now have it confirmed that Alastor has some pretty aggressive insecurities that are eating away at him behind the facade. Last time he was seen as ‘less than’ he slaughtered hide way to the top of the Pride Ring

Going episode by episode, there’s a subtle pattern of Alastor getting progressively more snubbed, which isn’t really what you expect when you’re introduced to the character in the Pilot. Vaggie describes him as someone of almost mythic power and, even with Angel’s levity and irreverence, that’s the impression that sticks, cemented by the way he takes out Sir Pentious. You get an immediate impression of what Alastor was like at the very top of his game.

You know: before the Seven Year Absence.

In the first episode, there’s the advert. The video advert. It’s all played for jokes (as it should be) but if you look at it as a first domino it makes sense. It’s our reintroduction to Alastor as a character: he’s made a terrible, unhelpful tv commercial and the ‘good’ one (we never get to see) was made with significant help. He clearly loathes having to do it, and he’s clearly got no real skill in it (if he did, he’d be showing off because he’s unbearably vain, you all know this is true.) He’s out of his element and he’s not adjusting quickly enough; people don’t know him from the radio anymore because Vox has the monopoly in entertainment.

Speaking of, in the Second Episode, we get Vox, aka the first and only person who gives a damn where deer boy went. Vox gives this shit by playing dress up and writing a diss track which Alastor immediately co-opts to make him rage quit. The song slaps—Alastor’s part in the song slaps… but it’s worth pointing out that Vox is the only person shown caring that The Radio Demon is back; the other two V’s are mildly entertained because they have renewed lease to absolutely dunk on Vox, and, while the crowds are drawn to the radio, they don’t look… bothered. There’s no big reaction of ‘dear god, it’s him (the deer god)’. Granted, we don’t see their response to the threat, but tbh if any radio threatens you with a return to The Bad Old Days the only honest reaction is to be a little scared, you don’t need to be in Hell for that.

In any case, regardless of how much he sucked at it, Vox still felt confident enough to make his little coping track public in the first place. He felt certain enough about Alastor’s lack of standing to make his own insecurities into a musical. The cultural idea of Alastor and his mythos has degraded enough for people to take potshots and then broadcast those potshots for funnsies. It’s pretty far from where we started in the Pilot with Vaggie not even wanting him past the door.

Third Episode… people of the conference room, please raise your right hand if you care why this staticky twink has been gone for seven years. *cue the deafening silence of no hands being raised*

Alastor is shut down and dismissed entirely in front of every other overlord at once, and it happens without consequence. He can’t do dick. He can’t play up the mystery, or draw them in to his narrative, or do anything to take control of the room. No one asked, no one cares. The meeting (which, if Carmine’s surprise at seeing him there is any indicator, he might not have even been directly invited to) moves on. I’m almost certain that the only reason he played coy with Zestial was because he thought he could have that Moment with everyone there and listening. He wants so desperately to be listened to.

We know that the hierarchies in Hell are less about who could actually make you eat concrete and more a popularity contest. That’s made explicitly clear in the first episode with low level sinners tearing strips off of Charlie, and clearer still in Helluva Boss where Stolas gets disrespected by the whole club for his messy personal business—in song form. And what I’ve not actually seen anyone else talking much about is how Alastor may be a very physically powerful demon but he’s getting no respect from any of his old peers. Sure, maybe the masses are spooked, but it’s not to the point where it’s making anyone else lose their chokehold. The people huddled around his radio still flick their eyes back to Vox’s screens when he talks. The egg boys ask him inane personal questions the same way they would anyone else. His own peers neither respect him nor care that he’s come back. Nobody has shown (positive) interest in the hotel now that it’s his personal enterprise.

We’re told the time skip was five months. We have no idea if things have changed in those five months, but Alastor starts Episode 5 palpably agitated. I’m guessing things didn’t go up for him. I’m guessing that it’s setting in for him that this is the vibe now, and the only person who actually thinks him untouchable is, well, him.

Add Lucifer. Suddenly, his business partner might not actually need him at all, either as help or an emotional connection, because she can replace them with her father, the actual king of Hell, who doesn’t like him; there’s an infinitely more powerful and capable demon in what is functionally Alastor’s home; said powerful demon has no fucking clue who Alastor even is, the role he plays, or the effort he’s invested (regardless of reason) into Charlie’s project, and there is no Alastor Approved way of making any respect happen on that front. As far as he’s concerned, he’s looking at a brick wall with FUCK YOU PERSONALLY graffitied on it.

Regarding the songs with Alastor in them, both of them are serving two purposes; the first is to piss off someone who slighted him, but I think the second is to reassert to everyone present his importance specifically after an instance of them forgetting. With Vox the primary objective is roasting the other overlord into shut down and the secondary is warning everyone listening that he’s still a viable threat despite what they just heard. With Lucifer, the first goal is to piss harder than the devil, but the second is reminding Charlie that he’s important and he has a place with them. Little as he’d like to admit it, it’s two cases of Alastor demanding a return to the way things usedto be. He wants to be the most terrifying thing on the wavelengths by default, and is willing to short out the power supply to all Hell to get that; he wants to be valued so much by the people around him that the most important man in Hell can’t just supplant him by being there. Obviously it doesn’t work out like that, but a self-absorbed nightmare man can dream.

And then Husk brings up the idea that he might be vulnerable on top of All That. It’s the final straw. He has spent the last few episodes very subtly scrabbling for a shred of acknowledgement and his bitch ass is getting none. 

Mimzy, if I’m allowed to speculate a little, is deliberately thrown into the mix at this juncture because of how she relates to Alastor in juxtaposition to the damage his seven year absence and unspecified deal has done to his reputation; she wants to hide behind his coattails because he’s the big, scary Radio Demon who can protect her from anything, because who in their right mind would cross him? She’s literally a part of his old life. She’s reacting to him the way everyone did seven years ago—with complete and total faith in his ability to be an unholy monster at a moment’s notice.

Being told ‘hey, maybe she’s in deeper shit than you can shovel because someone’s tying your hands’ is, to Alastor, just another snub in a long, illustrious line, and this time it’s personal because it’s coming from Husk. It’s not just a newly popular medium he’s no good with, or Vox with his haterection, or a meeting he can’t derail with his personal life, or a boardroom full of equals he newly means nothing to—it’s his own people thinking he’s not capable anymore. And Husk is happy to say that with literally the most powerful man in Hell right there for comparisons in inadequacy. Going full dial eyes on him isn’t just an over-vicious retaliation, it’s a demonstration and reminder of what Alastor is capable of… and it’s probably done for himself as much as it’s about putting Husk back in his place. 

Because that’s what Alastor used to be able to do; make all the other overlords cower on their knees at his feet while he regaled them with all the ways in which they could fuck off. 

Seven years of possibly not entirely voluntary absence… and this is the closest to that he can get. A guy whose soul he owns, who will be back to snarking in a few days time, having to be dragged into prostrating himself on the carpet. One of the few people who inexplicably give a shit about him promising to shut up only on pain of death.

And at the end of the episode everything he’s done means nothing and he has to tell Mimzy to leave anyway… and he’s subdued and uncomfortable about it. She’s his friend, one of the few people willing to tolerate him, and apparently one of the last people to share the perception he has of himself… and he has to tell her to go because the reality is that he, for whatever reason, is not making choices which are entirely his own. The reality is that Husk may be right; Alastor’s grip on everything and everyone around him is, for a variety of reasons, not as strong as it used to be. The guy is unravelling behind the mask; he’s insufferably proud and it’s starting to strangle him.

The point of all this is, there’s a pattern of escalation here. I think Alastor is out of his depth and it’s going to start showing. I think he’s going to make some sort of desperate bid for control to get his standing back. I think he’s going to have to reckon with his own disappearance. And… I don’t think it’s gonna be pretty.

TLDR: My Beloved is a time bomb and him dominating Husk was just the alarm going off. I believe this with my whole heart because of Reasons.