Top Posts Tagged with #radiotrio

"Here I am with the scars"; "I have lost so much. I have endured" -> "Quid Pro Quo, Blood Demands Blood" – an analysis of isolation as Alastor and Lute's self-destructive trauma response

-> "It'll only work if the right people are in the right place" – speculation on RadioJoy's arcs of learning when to let people in and when to enforce boundaries (i.e. being "messy" & "gatekeeping")

-> "Ace in the hole" – speculation on Alastor, Baxter and Emily's future storylines being a commentary on amatonormativity and an exploration of the A-spec experience

Had to triple up on this one, it's so long, but they're all so tied up that they just flow into each other.

TLDR: Alastor needs to be a better friend to Husk and Niffty (+ 'Losin' Streak' & 'Welcome To Heaven' are about him), Emily needs to be a better friend to Peter, and Lute needs to stop projecting her romantic feelings for Adam onto Abel. Amatonormativity is scary for us all!!

[Previous part] [Next part]

As I mentioned in my last analysis comparing RadioStatic to RoyalHalo, Sera's arc in S2 largely acts as a thesis statement for the show, particularly through the revelation in 'Live to Live' that fear – trauma responses – is the main driver of damaging behaviours.

Humans are afraid All of us, all the time Mortality's a blade Swinging with no reason, no rhyme [...] Praying you find a way, make it another day [...] Some would kill to live to Live again tomorrow

Trauma responses are literal survival tactics, and season 2 focuses on Vox's fear of being alone, moving him to extremes for acceptance. Pentious acts as the counterexample, demonstrating how one might overcome that fear in a healthy environment – by maintaining hope in making connections rather than being a hermit (as Pendleton was in life), by continuing to participate in community, while accepting that rejection is a possibility, but not letting that cloud gratitude for the few connections that we do manage to make, or pushing us to apathy/bystanderism. This is what Pentious' self-sacrifice in the battle with Adam represents, versus Vox's willingness to forsake his home and his loved ones because he couldn't get over his fear of rejection (from Alastor). Pentious, having had the encouraging environment of the hotel to grow in, demonstrates the healthy outcome, hence his ascension to Heaven.

In the battle with Adam, you feared your death But fear didn't drive you to wickedness And you were brave; you sacrificed Yourself to save another's life Something had changed in you, deep within

However, Pentious is not the only major character who lost something in the battle with the exorcists: both Alastor and Lute suffered irreversible damage, and have also since been changed "deep within".

Lute has lost someone she loved. She blames herself for not being able to save Adam; she rationalises her trauma as a result of inaction, thus making peace and passivity terrifying for her.

Take the one you need, make you watch ’em bleed Will you break thinkin' how you couldn’t save her? Wishin' you were there when they needed you The only soul who's ever completed you Maybe then, you'll get a little heated too And understand why this is what I need to do

In Alastor's case, like Velvette at the meeting, the dead exorcist made him believe that he had a chance to change the world order to accommodate him.

This isn't only a sore spot in the context of sinners facing exorcist genocide without recourse; in life, Alastor suffered the oppression of Jim Crow and was desperate to operate outside of society's constraints. He gave up his life as "the Toast of New Orleans" and moved to the sticks so he could murder those who made him feel inferior (whether purposefully or merely as a matter of Alastor's perception), such as the guy who laughed after spilling a drink on him instead of apologising.

Alastor is so fearful of being stuck at the bottom of the hierarchy, powerless to his subjugation, be it unfairly due to racism, or deservedly as a prisoner – behind bars or in hellfire – that he throws himself into the occult in search of a way to escape the demonic food chain he anticipates he will be the bottom of. Alastor cannot bear to eternally be a "tortured soul", never free to do as he pleases, never able to have his needs met or even considered.

While Alastor's staff and scar can be treated and fixed, his confidence in his ability to "take charge of [his] own fate" has been completely thrown out the window. Alastor rationalises this trauma as being his fault for caring so much about his friends that he sacrifices his wellbeing for them. We saw with Mimzy before this that he has shrunk his needs to attend to her and been burned by it before, hence why he is so hesitant to call her, or anyone, his "friend".

The trauma from Adam's strike pushes him to believe his care for his friends is weakness, which causes him to isolate himself.

In S2E1, Vaggi, Husk and Lucifer ask him to help around the hotel, since it's extremely busy, and Alastor chooses not to participate. In S2E3, when Charlie calls him before Vox and Velvette appear, he looks extremely agitated to be called upon, and leaves Charlie hanging by disappearing. We also saw in S1 that when Husk told him to send Mimzy away, Alastor ignored this advice, revealing that he used to be the opposite way – overly vulnerable, rather than overly shut. In S2E4, we also see Niffty try to stop Alastor from trying to fight the Vees on his own, which was the right call, since Vox opening the wound from Adam was possibly going to kill Alastor. Husk also tells him to stop fighting with the Vees, but Alastor ignores their advice to disengage and come back to the hotel. And we know how all these things turned out for him...

Lute, on the other hand, crashes out in the Room of the Speaker, is a massive dick to everyone, and nobody tries to rein her in until she's already flipping out on the Speaker.

When Lute says to Adam's ghost that nobody cares that he is dead, this reveals to us that she has been grieving alone, while the other angels pretend that nothing happened at all. I'm not writing this in order, so I'll say it again later, but Heaven as an environment represents sweeping trauma under the rug until it's too late, instead of trying to address them like the Hotel (in a healthy way) or like V-Tower (in an unhealthy way).

She has been talking to Lilith to try and do... something? There's no telling what exactly what she expected Lilith to do, but as I said, Lute's trauma has registered with her as a result of her inaction, so naturally she does want to "do something", as she frequently repeats in her dialogue. Talking to Lilith is implied an extreme and dangerous action, for whatever reason, and Sera advises her to take it easy... But of course, because of Lute's isolationism, her closed-ness, her sharp tone is met with sharpness from Sera.

Because of this, instead of coming off as advice, it comes off as an attack – an act of oppression. Meeting Lute's furious tone, Sera coldly tells her:

"The decisions are mine and mine alone to make"

Which is also what Rosie tells Alastor when trying to get him to go back to the hotel.

"The moves you make are mine and mine alone"

Rosie in this scene is not very sensitive to Alastor. She's upset with him for quitting rehab at the first bump in the road, and trying to rush things along, and like Lute, Alastor gets pretty sharp and lippy with her when demanding that she fix him post-haste. Naturally, Rosie takes the gloves off, and like Sera, meets his disrespect with disrespect, especially irritated because she is trying to help him by telling him to go back to the hotel.

She is telling Alastor not to be discouraged that something traumatic traumatised him, that it's normal, and to accept that healing takes time. The strength being talked about in regard to "the strongest sinner" is a metaphor for mental fortitude – of how much one is able to endure. And this is why Vox became the strongest sinner based on popularity – it gave him the confidence to do absolutely anything.

But, as I'll talk about later, Alastor is sensitive to criticism, especially being laughed at, and he, like Lute, is lashing out because he is scared because he feels powerless and extremely vulnerable. Both Rosie and Sera don't understand this, but that's because Alastor and Lute's isolating tendencies cause them to conceal their true pain.

Yes, Lute cries, but she uses the pretence of demon uprising, when what she really needs is someone to comfort her about Adam's death, the fact that she never got to tell him how she felt about him, and the fact that she feels personally guilty for his death.

Alastor's version of this is that Alastor doesn't actually ask Rosie for the help he needs most – healing the wound, which we see him agonise about as he stitches himself up at the start of S2E4, and we hear the radio chatter, and see him truly sweating when Vox snaps the stitches, re-opening the unhealing wound. Instead, Alastor emphasises his broken staff, his lack of power, and refers to his wound as a scar, i.e. a cut that is healed, trying to play it cool and pass his request off as power lust, rather than a truly vulnerable cry for help. I think that, Alastor believes that if he gets his powers back, he will be strong enough to properly heal himself. But he doesn't say any of that – that's too vulnerable.

This plays into his argument with Lucifer that gets him to quit. The reason Lucifer is sharp with him is because Alastor specifically aggressed the king, due to his trauma with power structures. Because of it, Lucifer is a major asshole, when advising Alastor to engage with the hotel more.

The crux of the tension between Lucifer and Alastor is that Lucifer believes one's purpose is to serve and consider others, and he shies away from his responsibility because he's ashamed of his mistakes, to not do it perfectly. Lucifer has been there, done that, and got the T-Shirt when it comes to self-isolating, and he knows more than anyone how damaging it was for himself and the people he loves (Charlie).

Alastor, on the other hand, finds the expectation to consider others oppressive because he himself doesn't feel considered. It's a chicken-and-egg kind of thing, but most crucially where Alastor is veering from Hazbin Hotel's philosophy of healing is that he doesn't have hope that someone would give him consideration in kind. And again, this is where he is foils with Emily, who is absolute in her hope, and thus far has had her belief validated (although, this may not always be the case going forward. More later).

Likewise, after the battle in S1E8, Lucifer easily shows mercy to Adam and Lute (it's Niffty who ends up killing Adam). He doesn't use his powers to cook the exorcists or anything; he just tells Lute and would've told Adam that they need to go home, back to their community. Lucifer used to be a seraph himself, and so too knows firsthand what happens when an angel starts bugging out. Again, it comes off as patronising, and Lucifer is provoked to be an asshole because the exorcists have tried to hurt his daughter, her life's work and her friends, but Lucifer is genuinely advising from a place of experience.

Lute takes it as an offensive dismissal of her grief, but Lucifer is primarily trying to say there's a way out (...out, lol), and it's not through continuing to hurt other people, because she will and did get hurt in the process. Lute didn't only lose Adam, but she also, in heavy metal fashion, lost her arm.

Coming back to Alastor, I think in S1E8, Alastor reached his fork in the road. He was on his way to opening up, as he says to Niffty before the battle, but being wounded by Adam scared him. He fears that he is reverting back to that tendency to self sacrifice that we saw he has with Mimzy.

In S1E2, Charlie healed one of Alastor's traumas by making Pentious apologise for ruining his clothes, and Alastor completely lets it go after that, whereas in life the man who spilled a drink on him laughs is implied to be Alastor's first murder victim.

Charlie also defends Alastor to her father, showing gratitude for what he's doing at the hotel, as well as Husk having his best interests in mind with Mimzy, and of course, Niffty not leaving him out when she comes to see him and gives him the roach crown. His appreciation for Vaggi is more symbolic, to do with the eggs, and I'll get deeper into it later, but the point is that the gang have genuinely helped him start to process by the end of S1.

This is why he faced off with Adam, because even if he loathes to claim it due to his past experience of getting used for "always being such a pal", as Mimzy puts it, he does care about these people. In the end, Alastor gets hurt, and doesn't give himself the chance to deal with that pain healthily. He's now terrified to be an altruist, i.e. he does not want to be Emily, who does the same thing he did in S1E8, and not even for a friend, or someone who deserved it or even a situation that really called for sacrifice.

This goes back to my original post comparing Charlie and Emily: Charlie knows when to send someone away (Vox), and even does too much sometimes like with Lucifer. We're shown that Charlie's shield doubles as a hoverboard, but she doesn't go to save Alastor, despite them being 'friends', because... she reveres his right to choose his fate, even if it is self-destruction.

My speculation is that while Pentious in S1 demonstrates the road to redemption for Vox (and I'm going to write an analysis comparing them, too), Baxter's backstory with Pentious is going to be the basis of RadioJoy's arcs where they stop self-destructing via their extreme closed-openness.

One huge hint at this, I believe, is that they are the three characters to give Pentious eggs: Baxter created the Egg Bois, Alastor brings them back to him, and Emily creates the Golden Eggs.

I think the eggs represent trauma, not for Pentious, but for the givers. The platonic breakup is the inciting traumatic incident for Baxter; Alastor can't let go of his trauma; Emily turns it into gold.

Going back to my comparison of RadioJoy of approaching healing through dwelling on the past vs looking to the future in the last analysis, the fact that Alastor tells the eggs/his trauma to follow him everywhere he goes in silence, to act as a guard, finds them "useful", and that the Egg Bois are depicted as playing in the garbage really says it all. He clings to his trauma, thinking it will protect him and lets it act as toxic waste within him. That's kind of Alastor's problem in a nutshell (eggshell, heh).

I also think the fact that Zestial bizarrely didn't pay any mind to the eggs, Rosie only glances at Frank, and that only Vaggi actually acknowledges that Alastor is hauling them around also speaks volumes.

While it's not literal, I think it's wholly meaningful that instead of dragging Alastor into the trust exercises with the others, Vaggi shows consideration for his emotional needs and instead tasks him with trying to rid himself of his trauma in a healthy way (= get rid of the eggs humanely).

When he's not able to, she doesn't criticise or rush Alastor, but comes to appreciate that there is some catharsis to be found in reflecting on our trauma (e.g. Alastor realising they don't need to be so afraid of the angels), as long as it's not destructive, which is why she lets Pentious have them, as long as he doesn't build weapons.

This is what I was referring to earlier as the dynamic between Vaggi and Alastor that made him grow fond of her. I'll need to go back and check the Angel Dust scenes for what RadioDust's dynamic is, but with that in mind, all the other characters that he tells Rosie that he's willing to sacrifice (Emily, Vaggi, Charlie, Husk and Niffty) have been shown to prove that healing is an option, even for him, if he chooses it. He cares about them, but his trauma pushes him to forsake them – i.e. self-isolate. He explicitly references the hotel crew as "finding connection" in S1E7, which ties into the themes of reaching out vs letting people in, transmission vs reception that are all over the gaff.

Back to the eggs, Emily, on the other hand, tries to deal with trauma by distracting herself with stimulus overload ('Like You'). When she realises it's not working (like Vaggi came around to), she cracks her knuckles and puts a lot of effort into turning it into a golden memory, which I think represents a lesson, rather than carrying the unproductive pain all over like Alastor does.

I think this is also why there is still one egg remaining at the hotel, and it is Frank, I believe: as Alastor taught them, it's useful to reflect back a healthy amount. That one egg is all they need, and we literally see him helping Charlie mourn Pentious in S2E1. The others, playing in the garbage, were truly irritants for Alastor (eye-twitching and all lol), but Frank was an immense help, and in large part, the info he got from him is the reason he had the courage to face Adam.

The eggs are representations of trauma, and I've discussed how Alastor's response is to self-isolate, to shut people out of his inner world by constantly smiling, never losing composure.

But this isn't sustainable – of course, Alastor can try as much as he likes, but he still has feelings. I think this is what Lucifer points out that triggers him so much when he spills the blood. Alastor is not actually perfectly prim and proper all the time, and his crutch to offset that, in lieu of healing, is his relationship with Niffty, who loves to "clean it up", where Alastor is "sloppy". Significantly, she's the one to rush to save him when, due to his isolationism, he recklessly picks a fight with the Vees that he honestly cannot win, instead of coming in peace to make amends with Vox.

Even more than that, Niffty is the one to slay Adam in the end. This goes to show that she has the traits that Alastor lacks in order to truly stop being held back by his trauma, since he, too, tried to single-handedly defeat Adam. Alastor's problem is that he was so caught up in being a cool "edgelord", stylishly taking out Adam with his tendrils, whereas Niffty was willing to get her hands dirty and crassly just stab Adam through the chest with her angelic knife.

I think this is also why Vox is so excited in particular; he admired Alastor, but his fear of vulnerability limits him and turns him into little more than an avatar of pain for Vox. Had he been more open with his feelings, Vox wouldn't have his trauma, and Niffty confirms to him that his emotional vulnerability, not being afraid to get "messy", truly can be a great strength and manifestation of mental fortitude, which we see the dark side of in the S2 finale.

Alastor specifically tells baby Vox that his vulnerability is "weak", and likewise, Lute accuses Emily of "infecting [Sera] with [her] weakness" for being so open to making peace with the sinners. Opposite to Alastor as ever, Emily's issue is foreshadowed as an inability to evaluate who is safe to 'let in' vs those with ill intent that she needs to enforce boundaries with – "the separation between the righteous and the wicked" (as referred to by Sera).

And just as Alastor relies on Niffty for his vulnerability, we have a character whose role is to discern who to let in, to "watch the door": Peter.

We haven't got much Peter so far, so I think it's easy to think of Abel as more tied to Emily, but I think there are a lot of hints in the angels' character designs that suggest Emily and Peter are a pair.

Between the six main angels, they can be paired up aesthetically: Sera and the Speaker have visuals based on birds and are associated with orchestral music ('Sera's Confession', 'Live To Live'); Lute and Adam/Abel are designed to look human, with Lute even having five fingers instead of the Hazbin-4, and are associated with rock music ('Hell Is Forever', 'Gravity', Abel's verse in 'Hear My Hope'); Emily and Peter have sci-fi, 'featureless' alien aesthetics and are associated with electronic music ('Welcome To Heaven', 'Like You' = electropop, Emily begins 'Hear My Hope' with electronic ambient).

Not relevant to RadioJoy, but if you want more on the genres in 'Hear My Hope': Charlie & the hotel crew adding more orchestral elements from Charlie's association with musicals, and some of the other overlords adding elements from their own associated music genres: Carmilla = flamenco guitar, Zestial = harpsichord, Maestro-Zeezi-Hatchet = drums/timpani, Prick = banjo.

+ I'm not saying these are definite inspirations, but the links I see are: Sera = great egret, Speaker = phoenix, Emily = DC Starfire (personality), Peter = Pleakley from Lilo & Stitch, and the two of them resemble the very generic, nothing but eyes + mouth alien depiction -> 👽 .

I also feel like Lute is meant to be evocative of a hawk, with all her squawking, crying, and perching, but her visual design is squarely human (in contrast to Vaggi as an exorcist), and I think it is to purposefully emphasise the factions here, i.e. Peter and Emily.

Furthermore, we are actually only introduced to Abel in season 2 as a continuation of Adam's storyline; Peter came first and, as the gatekeeper, is the one to sing 'Welcome To Heaven'.

In season 2, we get Niffty, the hotel maid's equivalent in 'Clean It Up'. Both characters use these songs to explain to us why they enjoy taking on this role in their relationships – though they are largely seen as powerless, with Lute calling Peter little more than a "mascot", and Velvette trying to belittle Niffty as "the maid", their roles give them control over the state of Heaven and the hotel. They take on their roles as coping mechanisms. This is also hinted at in Niffty's eagerness to be a dominatrix to "bad boys" at the BDSM club Angel takes the gang to.

When standing beside the Radio Demon and a seraph, they are especially seen as powerless, much like Pentious was overlooked when standing beside Baxter. This is even more so because, in Niffty's case, she is cleaning a hotel with hardly any guests, and in Peter's, the powers that be decide which humans "go up" – far fewer than the number of humans who are damned, as Vox reveals to us.

But now that sinners are pursuing redemption at the hotel, and with the holy gates symbolically blown off (with them putting new ones on, it's more accurate to say the 'floodgates' have been opened), Niffty and Peter will have their work cut out for them, becoming extremely important figures at the hotel and in Heaven respectively.

Additionally, Peter is no longer dealing with such easy-going winners, as 'Like You' and the epilogue suggest – while the winners are easily satisfied with shrugging off Vox's terrorism, sinners-turned-winners, like Pentious, are a tough crowd. Year-round Christmas romcoms at the multiplex are not going to cut it!

With Niffty and Peter being so occupied, Alastor and Emily will be left to their devices without their companion to rein them in and balance them out. Their crutches are getting kicked away suddenly, which is going to be deliciously ironic when it comes to Alastor, as he was getting on Vox's case for relying on the Vees.

I think we all identified that Alastor is projecting in those moments, but for me, this would explain why Alastor's dialogue is so filled with these comments, despite Vox not directly addressing them. I talked about it in my Alastor apologia post, but when Alastor initially tells Vox, "you'd be nothing without those two", Vox shuts down this train, and Alastor moves us along to the break-up scene. Those two things are not related, and Alastor's line feels so random because I think it's poorly executed foreshadowing and set-up for the irony.

Likewise, when Alastor tells Vox he isn't pulling his weight at the rally, Vox's response isn't to prove Alastor wrong by doing more; he, instead, asks Valentino and Velvette to make sure everything runs smoothly backstage, after his exchange with Valentino suggests to us that Valentino and Velvette arranged absolutely everything in regard to the show (with Vox not even knowing what the dancers look like). Vox acts on his own insecurity – people's perception of him, rather than responding to Alastor's attempt to drag him down into true isolationism, which he is only successful at by S2E8, where Vox finally breaks and expresses that he doesn't care if the Vees die.

So Alastor's commentary is irrelevant to the story at hand, because the story isn't finished and this is the Vox-Pentious-Charlie arc. As I said in the apologia post, Alastor has only just started, but unlike those three, we are watching his (and Lute's) trauma play out on screen, rather than the incident being relegated to an off-screen past. The same is true of Emily, who we know has lived a trauma-less existence; we have witnessed her defining trauma coming from Vox in S2E5, E7 & E8. The revving without payoff is the issue people cite with Lute singing 'Gravity' also. (This is an example of what I mean if I ever say Hazbin's execution being pretty shoddy, but the ideas are incredibly sound)

This comes back to Baxter through the very random scene in S2E7, which everyone says makes no sense: Baxter is welding the hotel's front door shut, Cherri and Husk tell him not to, because Angel is still out there, and he says it's logical to save those of them still present. He then goes on to explain to us that he's willing to risk his living (job) and literal life to reach out to Pentious, because he felt his needs were taken seriously and given consideration at the hotel (the blankets folded at a 45º angle to make more tuck-able to his liking). Baxter says he knows how to broadcast to all of Hell, and then goes onto tell Emily that her security system is a joke. What makes no sense in this dialogue is that he says that he designed Heaven's security system, which alerted me to this scene not really being about the actual lore/events.

As I mentioned in the last post, Vox making a one-way connection to Heaven for pirating is not just a piece of lore, and that's why the "and Earth's too" is tacked on, even though Peter's year-round Christmas romcoms suggest that Heaven's cultural palette is not all that engaging, and the more likely thing for a human to do is pirate Earth's content. This is representative of Vox's one-sided dynamic with Alastor, and in RadioJoy's yin-yang relationship, Emily being faced with the same stimulus, so she can demonstrate the opposite response. Where Alastor jams Vox's signal when he realises Vox is still watching him, trying to reach out, which causes the static when he's on camera, Emily, on the other hand, is immediately determined to reach out in kind.

Specifically, what Baxter's dialogue does is reveals to us Alastor's feelings, and what he would be doing if he wasn't isolating in response to his trauma from the battle with Adam: Alastor also, extremely significantly as the Radio Demon, knows how to broadcast to all of Hell. As I mentioned earlier with the ways in which the hotel crew demonstrated sensitivity to his particular situation without necessarily realising it, Baxter's version is the folded blankets. Adorably, Baxter's dialogue reveals that, deep down, Alastor considered the gang his "best friends", and again, we do see this in season 1 with him doting on them from a distance, and outright admitting that he's fond of them.

The difference, of course, between them is that in S2, Baxter checks into the hotel, while Alastor checks out, and goes to V Tower, which represents a toxic environment, in which unhealthy coping mechanisms are encouraged, as opposed to the hotel as a safe space. Heaven represents an environment where trauma is largely ignored and pushed under the rug, rather than coped with at all, meaning that the angels are an oscillating spectrum of how they deal with it.

Because Alastor did not heed his friends' advice to have patience and keep putting effort into healing, rather than trying to rush the process along, he runs to V Tower, to represent his isolationism, and his conflict with Vox only worsens and brings out the worst in both of them.

Meanwhile, Baxter has left VoxTek/V Tower to come to the hotel, and is now willing to put his issue with Pentious aside to make a mutual connection, not as friends, but for the sake of peace. This is what RadioStatic would do if they had healthy coping mechanisms.

Following on from what I said in my previous post, Alastor effectively apologised to Vox by offering 'eye for an eye' on public humiliation, and thus he had done all he could do make their toxic peace. This is why we see Vox shoot a beam through the server room, taking the ability to make the two-way connection out of Baxter's hands, and leaving it all to Pentious. Because in the end, Vox needed to let it go for them to bury hatchet, heal and move on with their lives. This is also why Pentious wasn't able to make the connection until after 'Hear My Hope', because Emily is the Baxter-Alastor that went above and beyond in reaching out to the entire community to heal the damage done by Charlie-Pentious-Alastors' inability to accept rejection.

Back to the Baxter scene in S2E7, I think the door welding and the warning to Emily about her lack of security reveal that, while Baxter has struck a good balance of vulnerability and reasonable boundaries to protect himself, RadioJoy are going to have to learn their lessons through fire; they've been relying on Niffty and Peter, who won't be able to keep them afloat forever, because they're their own people, with their own needs.

With Baxter specifically saying he invented Heaven's security system, while this line makes 0 sense lore-wise, this may be foreshadowing that Emily will learn her lesson the hard way via Radio Demon.

This line is actually not the first hint at Emily's reckless lack of boundaries. As I mentioned earlier, her swooping in to save Alastor like that was notably such a dangerous case. The show touched on this already with Husk and Angel's argument in S2E3. In that scenario, it was more easy for us to see how Angel jumping in front of the train was a useless act, and we understand that it was a bad decision, even if Husk's outrage afterward was disproportionate, due to being coloured by his self-loathing, compounded by his love for Angel.

RadioJoy obviously don't have HuskerDust's dynamic, nor do they even know each other, and I will touch on why I think this won't really impact their view of each other, as word of god has suggested.

So my theory is that Baxter's backstory will be replicated with them: losing a friend because they have gone too far with their open-closedness, to the point that they are putting extreme strain on their friendships. Like Baxter with CherriSnake, they will experience their friends prioritising a new relationship that is more fulfilling.

For Emily, I believe what has been foreshadowed is that Alastor will be the person that she fails to gatekeep to the point that it causes a rift between her and Peter.

In 'Welcome to Heaven', Peter gives us the traits that he uses to decide who gets in and who doesn't:

We've got the best and brightest, the politest of the lot And everyone is hot!

In S1, Lucifer triggers Alastor into the "fuck you" that broke the hazbin-ternet by saying his idea is "not very clever"; the visual of the "best and brightest" calls out science, and Alastor denigrates picture-box "technology"; Rosie tells Alastor he should learn a thing or two from Charlie because she's "so polite"; Angel calls Alastor "freaky face", Alastor says his "face was made for radio", and Mimzy refers to Alastor as "tall, dark, and creepy". In season 1 alone, Alastor has ticked all of Peter's yuck boxes.

And yes, I am arguing that the constant references to Alastor's appearance are meant to be a direct reference to him canonically not being hot, I'm afraid. I don't like what I'm about to say, because it doesn't align with my personal tastes, but I cannot ignore all the beeping on my radar from the dialogue.

I noted in the post where I talk about how I don't think Alastor sees Rosie as a mother that her dialogue features a suspicious amount of commentary on his appearance. I'm now thinking the ramped up appearance commentary in S2 may be related to this.

While the 'How To Draw' video suggests Valentino does not view Vox as a 10, that is supplementary material. Within the show, Katie's unchallenged fan-girling suggests that Vox is viewed as attractive. Valentino compliments Vox "[cleaning] up good for a TV" before suggesting that Vox is suited among "10s and an 8 for diversity". After this, Alastor makes a comment that sounds like he is criticising Vox's appearance: "Are you sure you want to go out looking like that?". We also, of course, have the background dialogue of Vox being voted hottest sinner.

This has got me thinking about other instances of this in the show:

Vox calls Velvette "lovely", and Niffty tells us that Velvette is "really pretty".

If I'm remembering correctly, Lucifer and Valentino are portrayed as being hot daddies (lol) by Katie, which is perhaps why Valentino and Velvette look excited when Lucifer says he's going to "fuck" Adam. In S2, we also see that Lucifer seems to be a hot commodity, with him bristling at hearing about the cocktail "Harder, Daddy", being careful about going by "Daddy" (with Vaggi), and trying to let Vox down easy when he perceives the kidnapping as sexual.

Valentino implies Charlie is attractive by calling her a "bimbo", Rosie tells us she's skinny (not in a disparaging way, like Val about Angel), and Adam implies that Charlie is attractive by saying Chaggie is "hot as fuck". While Niffty disparages Vaggi's physique and Vox seems unimpressed in S2E8, Lucifer calls Vaggi "pretty".

Pentious refers to Angel Dust as having an "aggressively average body", Valentino calls him "lanky" in S2E2, and flat-assed in a text message. Vox, too, clearly isn't impressed (but it's Vox, so... grain of salt lol). Meanwhile, Husk ogles the chest-fluff tits in S2E6, before Angel leaves the club.

(I'm getting the vibe that Vox and Niffty are just really tough crowds when it comes to appearances. We see how Vox violently kicks away the "8" in 'Vox Populi', as well as the swooning female anchor in 'Brighter'.)

Then, let's return to Alastor. In 'Scream Rain', Valentino says in Spanish that he doesn't get what Vox sees in Alastor, since he (Val) is gorgeous and Vox had him right there. Velvette criticises Alastor's objectively tragic hairdo in S2E4, and her commenters also disparage Alastor's appearance. Coming back to Rosie, before going to see her, Alastor pretties himself up in a pink number to appeal to her, and this time, Rosie explicitly tells us he was a "handsome, young man, such a charmer" as a human.

In light of this, I think it's possible her saying Charlie is "much too young for [him]" is meant to tell us that Alastor looks like a creep. So my conclusion here is that Alastor is not hot in-verse, and we are being explicitly told this to set up how he does not meet Peter's standards.

Coming back to the "best and brightest", references to intelligence recur in S2. In episode 4 alone, Alastor calls his plan to go to bad coping mechanism land (a.k.a V Tower) "clever", and then he berates Vox for his "incessant slander; it's not even clever". As I said, this is specifically repeating Lucifer's criticism of him in S1E5 that ramped up to the first Alastor F-bomb, and we were shown in S1E1 in Alastor's commercial that he was pretty proud of naming the hotel. I think Vox touches on this by having Katie call it the "Hashbrown Motel", his art referring to it as the "Assbin Hotel", and Vox's outrage at Alastor breaking out of their deal via wordplay (which is also something Alastor prides himself on in 'Hell's Greatest Dad', by saying he "makes you chuckle with an old-timey pun").

Unfortunately for me, the "Alastor pulled a few strings [to get the commercial made" – "I pulled a few limbs, too, hahahaha" exchange very much does make me laugh every time (I'm literally laughing as I write this lol), but I think what is being conveyed here is that intelligence, wit, and lack thereof is a sore spot for Alastor. I'm thinking the fact that Alastor sold his soul to Rosie without knowing the full charge of the deal in life, in addition to him fighting an archangel, which Zestial implies is acting without adequate "intelligence" in 'Respectless' are supposed to be the pain points here.

Here is where it gets spicy. The other direct reference to intelligence in S2, and the most repeated, is obviously Baxter. He is constantly sounding off about his "superior intellect", is heavily associated with science, specifically biochemistry, as appears on Peter's poster, and we see him collect a list of ways to call someone stupid that he plans to use from going to Husk's "therapy".

And very glaringly, after Vox blows through the server room, Niffty drops a new nickname, parting from her obsession with Bad Boys...

"Smart Boy, are you okay?"

We'll revisit this intelligence point when we talk about Alastor's version of this Baxter rerun.

Back to the idea of Alastor being Emily's rude awakening, while Peter uses his song to say that he likes smart people, Emily spends 'Like You' completely ignoring Pentious' engineering.

It blipped very loudly on my radar that when Pentious is trying to make his ship, the angels are flitting around, still talking about how he is a snake, rather than complimenting him on his interest in engineering. I initially thought this was related to Lucifer in some way being a snake, but what I think is actually happening there is that it is being set up that Emily and Peter have opposing tastes in people.

No one here is like you Not one remotely like you You've got mystique; you're strange and unique

Alastor certainly fits that bill, too. And what has already been displayed is that Emily is a tragically bad judge of character.

To begin with, while Peter tries to enforce that Chaggie do not belong in Heaven in S1E6, Emily is literally squealing with delight. In 'Welcome To Heaven ', she jumps in when Peter's talks about how everyone in Heaven is hot by saying that Chaggie should stay in Heaven, despite Charlie being a Hellborn and the fact Vaggi is actively choosing to stay in Hell, as well as not even wanting to be there.

This gets followed up in S2, where she has installed Abel as head of the exorcists despite him, quite obviously, being incompetent. She further abuses her power in the meeting Sera calls for "only the highest angels" by inviting Pentious. While her intentions are good, and her openness is usually touted as a strength, her installation of Abel and inviting Pentious unfairly tip the vote of the room in her favour against Lute and Sera's logical scepticism about the gift baskets.

While Lute is violently anti-demon, she actually does suck it up and go to give the gift baskets, and does not bring any violent ideas to the table. Had Abel and Pentious not been there, it's highly likely that she, Sera and Emily could have come to a reasonable decision together, especially since Vox was yet to declare war on Heaven, so it wasn't an urgent matter – they could've taken their time and back-and-forthed.

Emily's lack of quality control results in her bringing the gift baskets to Vox's rally, which, as I mentioned in the last post, the awful optics of, levels Vox up from "the people's voice" to being a god-lite, as he extensively lists in 'Vox Dei'. As I argued earlier, Heaven is the rug-sweep place, so nobody calls Emily out for this, but it was, in fact, her fault.

And I find Peter's absence to be interesting, considering he probably should have quite a say in anything to do with the permeation of Heaven's border. I'm not sure if we will get a follow-up on his absence, or whether his absence is simply a requirement for Emily to make such a heavy-handed lateral decision.

Coming back to 'Welcome To Heaven', given that Angel Dust's story is going to be explored in depth next season, I think the fact that Molly Dust is so suspiciously prevalent in the visuals is hinting at something. What I'm thinking is that Molly will be the Cherri to Emily's Baxter.

I don't have enough information about Emily, Peter and Molly to predict what I think the particulars will be, but as I've said, it seems like Alastor is being set up as the one to specifically fly in the face of Peter's standards. Which checks out: I think Alastor never seeing the pearly gates was kind of a forgone conclusion LOL.

I also think it's pretty notable that both Emily and Alastor take on the roles of greeting newcomers to Heaven and the hotel, respectively, but that just isn't their job. Alastor bangs on about being the host, but he isn't: he's the facilities manager. Likewise, it's not Emily's job to welcome Pentious; she is meant to keep everyone happy, and it actually is on Peter to be the greeter.

I think the resolution for their stories will be RadioJoy taking a step back from these roles, just as Charlie and Vox step down (by very different means) as manager and VoxTek CEO, respectively: "The right people need to be in the right place" as Charlie says.

So, while I'm not sure on the nature of Molly and Peter's relationship, or what exactly Emily would be getting up to with Alastor that upsets Peter so much, Alastor and Niffty have been rolling with us since S1, and their version is set up in a much more straightforward way: Alastor's Cherri is Baxter. (Before his section of 'Hear My Hope', the shot frames Alastor as lurking on Baxter. I'd add the image but this post is really long and I have to be economic)

I think Baxter's list of ways to call someone stupid is a Chekov's gun, which will be firing at Alastor. The Radio Demon will be scheming against Lucifer – we know this for sure, based on the S2 epilogue – but there will be some huge oversight, and Baxter will unload the list on Alastor. We have been shown since the S1E1 commercial that Alastor doesn't take genuine criticism very well, unless he feels especially superior to someone (e.g. Vox). If I'm not mistaken, he has actually been on the verge of flipping out every time (Chaggie, Lucifer, Husk, Rosie, Adam).

What happened between Baxter and Pentious is that, in pursuit of power and riding the high of Vox taking notice of him, Baxter threw ethics out the window and started running his bio-experiments on the eggs, not caring about how precious they are to Pentious. They go their separate ways, and Pentious finds a more fulfilling relationship with Cherri Bomb. I'll need to go back and rewatch the specifics of their relationship and in what ways that relationship is so fulfilling for Pentious, but in S2, the fact that Cherri engineers her own bombs is visually emphasised to us, so I think there could be something there.

With Niffty, we have already been told where Alastor is failing her in their relationship, and it relates to the roach crown. In 'Clean It Up', Niffty expresses that she enjoys being treated like a queen (which is why she likes to be covered in rat blood lol). She certainly treats Alastor as she wants to be treated, crowning him 'King Roach', which Alastor explicitly states he doesn't understand. I didn't get why either until I made this connection. In S2E4, we're shown that, while Alastor appreciates the crown, he keeps it hanging on his mirror instead of wearing it.

While the crown on the mirror is the most direct and striking visual, I think the worst offence of Alastor's isolationism is that he calls Niffty (and Husk) "nobodies" when making his deal with Vox, and completely abandons the hotel. We know that Alastor cares about Niffty, which is why he finally shuts down the battle when Valentino is about to smoke her, but he can't bring himself to call her his friend, let alone "queen". We also see that Husk perceives their relationship this way through his melee card set, having Alastor and Niffty as king and queen, while he is the jack.

Another reference to how Alastor's isolationism is upsetting to Niffty is the visual we get of the pot he left on the stove with a note specifically telling Niffty she can't clean it up, which we can imagine would be torturous for the woman who was itching to clean the sticky floor at a nightclub.

As much as Alastor projects his insecurity onto others, this and the not using a coaster thing with Lucifer suggest that Alastor is a messy flatmate in an inconsiderate way. Vaggi also comments on his way of eating breakfast being "disgusting" in S1E3. People have also noted how he comes onto Chaggie's bed with his shoes on. And, of course, as I noted a while ago but couldn't quite thread the eye on, the shack he lives in at the end of his days is filled with corpses and in extreme disrepair, with the wilderness breaking through the walls and taking over.

My point here is that he didn't think to take the note off (though he definitely came home to change out of the pink number) before abandoning the hotel. We all know that this would be upsetting for Niffty, and it would honestly be upsetting for anyone lmfao.

Another thing Niffty says in S2E1 is "I like being touched" as she crowd-surfs on the sinners who are praising and appreciating her for slaying Adam. We see her climbing on Alastor in S1E2, where we are shown he usually tries to get her down, even if he relents in the end. Apart from Mimzy, the only times we see Alastor initiating touch with someone are when he is being manipulative (touching Charlie in S1E7, picking up Niffty in 'Hell's Greatest Dad', asking favours of Rosie in S1E7 & S2E4) or picking a fight/trying to demean them (Lucifer, Husk, Vox).

I'm not about to make a commentary on whether Alastor's touch-averse or not, because what matters to me is that we see Baxter properly cuddling Niffty in S2E8 just because he likes her, as well as having played hand games with her in S2E6.

At other points in the series, we see Niffty showing that she wants to cuddle with people, and it seems insignificant, but her desire to hug Valentino is actually what ends up getting Angel in trouble at Consent. It also explains her fighting style and dialogue vs Val in RadioTrio vs Vees: she's saying, "oooh, not there!", because although she's stabbing Val, she started by latching onto him, goes inside his jacket and wants him to touch her lol. This is, of course, Niffty is because aggressively heterosexual and has a taste for "bad boys", which is why she also greets and attempts to flirt with Lucifer this way. There are probably other examples I'm missing, but you get it.

I think by staying at the hotel, her tastes have changed to be healthier, as we see her on Rooster's head (who is sticking out with redemption, despite the VoxTek slander), and she seems to be very fond of "Smart Boy" – a departure from her kicking Pentious and being upset that he's lame for setting on the road to redemption at the end of S1E2.

The third way Alastor is letting her down is the fact that he owns Niffty's soul. While she seems not to have a problem with it, the issue it causes comes from how it makes Alastor behave.

As I've mentioned, the way Alastor berates Vox for relying on his friends is widely understood as projection, but when projecting like that, a person has to have some internal rationality to offset the cognitive dissonance, so that they don't feel the critique applies to them. The difference between Vox and Alastor is demonstrated most vibrantly when Alastor calls Vox asking Valentino for a favour, and trying to please Val to soothe his emotions, rather than "doing whatever the fuck [he wants]" from the start, is because Vox and Valentino are equals.

Alastor says it "seems like begging", because the two people he has help him out are immortally indebted to him, and he just yanks them around whenever he feels like it. I really hope that Alastor and Husk aren't the ones booing Niffty's bug shows that she mentions in S1E7, but what's for sure is that Vaggi, Cherri and Baxter like what she does with 'The Bug Band' in S2E6, with Vaggi complimenting her, Baxter clapping, and Cherri saying "good job, Niffty", which Niffty is very touched by and repeats it to herself with glee, as if she hardly hears it.

She works so hard, but of course, Alastor owns her soul, which is why she is at the hotel, and so why would he thank her? He feels entitled to her efforts. Here Alastor is, spiralling about the fact that Adam almost killed him, that he isn't stronger than an angel, rather than focusing on the fact that his darling friend, Niffty, is literally the Adam-slayer.

The power imbalance Alastor maintains by holding Niffty's chain is what prevents Alastor from treating Niffty like a "queen": while Alastor is so desperate for his needs to be given consideration, he is selfishly unwilling to do the same for others, because he is fixated on his trauma with exploitative relationships, which Mimzy represents, rather than looking to the future, as Emily does, and I talked about in my last analysis. Alastor does not show gratitude to Husk and Niffty, which brings me back to what the crown represents: he cares, but by isolating, refusing to be vulnerable and express that he cares, he is genuinely pushing people away and hurting them.

Where this comes back to the Baxter-Pentious story and the amatonormativity point with Lute is that while Baxter feels the main motivation behind Pentious platonically breaking up with him was because of his romantic obsession with Cherri, it was actually because Baxter had started experimenting on the Egg Bois in ways that killed them, and we know how affectionate Pentious is about them.

I think the fact that Niffty wants to be touched, and perhaps is looking for a romantic-sexual dynamic, is what Alastor will fixate on, and where we will get follow-up on the "ace in the hole" comment, and see Alastor's sexuality get explored as has been forecasted by word of god.

We see how he only wheeled out the "friends" term for Charlie and Vox when he was trying to make a deal in S1E7 and cashing in his deal in S2E8. We also see with Rosie and Vox that he resorts to being flirty when he wants something – he dressed up in the pink number, brought Rosie roses, partner dances with her, doing the "itty bitty conditions" thing with Vox, which we later see Vox repeat when he's trying to appeal to Valentino with sex.

Initially, I thought this might have been Vox associating this with Alastor, but I now think the reason it gets repeated, along with the parallel of Alastor's stitches and Val's chain, is for us, the audience, to have retroactive confidence that Alastor was flirting with Vox, rather than it being a case of Vox copying Alastor. He is also very touchy with Charlie, even LITERALLY getting into bed with her when he wants to make a deal.

Alastor's self-inflicted fallout with Niffty, I believe, will push him deeper into his isolationism because he already believed in amatonormativity, and Niffty's relationship with Baxter will, in his mind, serve as evidence that it's hopeless to atttempt to make a meaningful connection outside of that framework, other than blood family, as we will see with Angel Dust and the Morningstars. Alastor will go further down his dark path.

Finally bringing Lute back in: she is on the other side of amatonormativity, where she thinks her bond with Adam is more important than the familial relationship between Adam and Abel. This is also why she fixates on killing one of Chaggi in 'Gravity', rather than conserving ire for Niffty, who actually killed Adam, lol.

Mind you, Adam and Lute were NOT a couple, but for the sheer fact that she had a romantic feeling toward him, she is still going to the amatonormative extreme:

Wishin' you were there when they needed you The only soul who's ever completed you

In S2E8, since Chaggi resolved their issues before the finale, we are treated to three examples of how relationships beyond the amatonormative structure are possible and are incredibly powerful in saving people from losing themselves to their self-destructive behaviours in Valentino, Emily and Abel.

Valentino and Vox are not an amatonormative couple like Chaggi: they are explicitly non-monogamous, they are unlabelled, and not strictly romantic-sexual. This is why he is upset to be smacked on the ass and called 'babe' while getting pushed out of the business, and unhappy to be flattened to "partners" when Vox is trying to meddle with his work. Val doesn't just want to be a piece of ass: they're friends, and corporate allies just as much as they are lovers.

Meanwhile, when Charlie tries to convince Vaggi to come to Heaven with her, the "you're my partner" line does the trick. (I'll touch more on the parallels between Vaggi and Val in the moth v moth analysis).

Despite their relationship not being the defined, monogamous, long-term convention, Val still loves Vox. He cares about him enough to forcibly prevent Vox from self-destructing, literally pulling his head back into the game, going as far as to gorily sever it from his body.

This is an absolute last resort for Valentino; for the duration of the season, he has been sitting back and reasonably reminding Vox of the route he's going down, respecting Vox's freedom to fuck up and allowing Vox to save himself.

As I said in the last post, the reverence for agency is what Alastor appreciates so much in his dynamic with Charlie. Though Miss Morningstar would never do it for Alastor, Valentino shows us that, even in a low-commitment dynamic, without any sense of obligation, you can be cherished so deeply that someone would be willing to pull you back from the edge when you really go too far. You don't have to be in an amatonormative relationship for someone to be willing to risk themselves looking for you when you truly get lost.

Initially, Val had the healthy idea to just leave – there was never a moment that Valentino intended to deny Vox agency, nor did he take on Vox's problems as his responsibility.

Even after Velvette knocks Vox off, Valentino first gives Vox a verbal warning. It's not until Val knows for sure Vox is too far gone to save himself that he drags Vox kicking and screaming out of his spiral.

Valentino tries to pull the Vees away from the situation – to leave, and move on, as he has been considering since 'Scream Rain'. Of course, he isn't actually able to get his friends to a 'safe space' because of his baggage from his own toxic relationships (i.e. his abusive possessiveness of Angel caused his brush with Husk and Cherri and resulted in his damaged wing).

But fine, Alastor – they may not be amatonormative, but StaticMoth are still in a sexual relationship. Maybe that's not proof enough that this kind of care is possible without the expectation of sex. Maybe, in his head, it would take a transactional, uncomfortable relationship to receive this powerful, self-sacrificial love.

Except Emily shows us that it's definitely not reserved for romance.

I'm pretty sure that by the end of the finale, Emily and Alastor have never even met each other's gaze, and yet she still cared enough, like Val with Vox's head, to bloodily pull Alastor from the jaws of self-destruction. The only reason he is fighting with Vox at all, rather than fleeing, is that he is detrimentally fixated on proving that he is in control of the situation.

As I understand it, the fight with Adam motivates Alastor's decision not to escape into the safety of the shadows; admitting to himself that he was beaten and not in "charge of [his] fate" as much as he hoped made him anxious. Therefore, as strange as it seems on the surface, Alastor is more afraid of not having the choice of whether he runs or fights than of losing or death itself. Like Vox, who will self-destruct in pursuit of acceptance, Alastor does so in search of freedom.

Emily violently and unromantically pulls him out of his spiral. Unlike Val, though, this is actually her first course of action, as opposed to warning him and letting him disengage himself via the shadows.

As selfless as it is, this behaviour from Emily is dangerous, and she ends up getting hurt because of it. She is a direct reflection of the "Alastor, altruist: died for his friends" that he is fighting so desperately not to become. And, of course, Alastor and Emily are not friends at all. So I think, rather than seeing this as hope for non-amatonormative relationships, Alastor just sees this as evidence that selflessly caring about people will get you hurt.

Likewise, Lute also has an unhealthy takeaway from Abel pulling her out of her self-destruction. Rather than appreciating that Abel is saving her as a comrade and a commander, Lute projects her crush on Adam onto Abel. I'm trying my best not to suggest ships here (RadioJoy til I die), but in Lute's case, I think her seeing Adam in Abel is at least telling us that she views the save as romantic, and so, like Alastor, is not moved on her amatonormative perspective at all.

And in fact, we saw that Lute already completely ignored the fact that Vaggi showed her mercy as an exorcist-sister-turned-demon; all Lute cares about is her romantic feelings.

“Some slimy fucker tricks fate [...] It means NOTHING!”

As I said in my last post, Alastor, like Lute, believes people and the world at large have a fundamental, unchanging 'nature'. Lute's version of this idea is "gravity", i.e. she views the status quo as 'the laws of physics'.

I'm not sure if we'll get backstory, or if we're just supposed to understand the fact that Lute never got to reveal her feelings to Adam is what has her so convinced that romance is this important. In Alastor's case, however, I have recognised a visual parallel that I think kind of demonstrates why he would believe the world of Hazbin is so.

Chaggi and StaticMoth catch each other when they fall, but when Alastor catches Rosie, she drops him, evocative of the asymmetry in his relationship with Mimzy in S1E5. I think the suggestion is that Alastor used to be "a kitten", a lot more willing to give, but has been burned by it, hence the shutting off, only drinking his "few fingers of rye" in private.

I theorised in my last post that this was pre-Vox, also, but the incident with Vox motivates him to stop drinking socially. We see in 'Don't You Forget (Reprise)' that despite Vox making Alastor drop from the ceiling at first, he ultimately does catch Alastor when he actually partner dances with him. Having the strings attached, however, makes that unappealing to Alastor, which again plays into Alastor's lack of a desire for the kind of relationship Vox demonstrates he prefers by forcing Alastor to watch him have sex with Val.

Emily holds Alastor, but you can barely see Alastor in the shot – it's not about him at all; she's saving him for her own sense of righteousness, not out of affection – and she ends up dropping him, not on purpose like Rosie and Vox, but because of her own self-destructive tendencies. Again, this really rings of HuskerDust in S2E3 to me.

So, because Alastor is slipping through the cracks and choosing to suffer in silence all the while, I think this is the kind of thing that sends him further into isolation.

Now he feels he was right to not let anyone know he was wounded fighting Adam, since Emily seeing him in a vulnerable position caused her to get hurt.

Alastor's choice to wear a brave face, while admirable in ways, is a self-destructive behaviour, much like Emily's lack of discernment. In choosing to aggress Lucifer, disengage with hotel duties, and suffer in silence, Alastor has shut down the possibility that Lucifer could help him heal his wound without even asking. In abandoning the hotel, he is rejecting Rosie's help, too, and he knows this; if he hadn't quit, she would be more inclined to help him.

Likewise, Lucifer berates him for running away when the barrier went down in the battle vs the exorcists, and it does look that way, because Alastor would rather not tell his friends that he's hurting than look like an uncaring prick. While Alastor feels he is the only one hurt by that designation (which I think is why he's unhappy with Mimzy calling him a "heartless son of a bitch"), as I discussed with Niffty, it actually hurts the people he cares about that he refuses to express that he cares about them.

Alastor hides behind a wall during 'Hear My Hope', rather than going up there with his friends, who wouldn't begrudge him for being powered down after almost getting torn to pieces by a demon shark. This is where I come back to Lute and the title of this analysis: in isolating himself, Alastor has entirely given up hope on having a reciprocal, equal relationship that takes his needs into account. In lieu of familial ties, romance or sex, we see him relying on deals, "quid pro quo".

After exhibiting self-destructive behaviours, Vox and Emily's families comfort them... in very different ways, of course, lol.

Meanwhile, we saw that Alastor and Lute isolated themselves in the wake of Adam. Alastor ended up coming back to the hotel crew, ultimately, and it actually seems like he always does and considers the hotel home, given the S2 epilogue. I think this is another core difference between them, which will see Lute's trajectory being very different to RadioJoy's.

As I said, Lute isolates herself because she believes romance is king, and she has lost her romantic interest, meaning she has nothing left to lose in her eyes. And certainly, Emily, Peter and Sera are not her 'people'.

We'll have to see how she does or doesn't get along with Abel going forward, but what's for sure is that Alastor actually does have plenty of people who care about him, because of his past participation and contributions to the hotel. In fact, unless they have a change of heart by S3, Vox also cares for him, and it seems even Velvette was starting to develop a Vees-flavoured fondness for Alastor.

While Lute actively shoves Abel out, refusing to mourn Adam together with him, Alastor was more passively keeping his distance, epitomised by him watching the crew have their possible final drinks in S1E7. Though his self-destructive isolationism moves him to do this rather than being down there, Niffty has sought him out and won't let him be alone on what could be the last night of their lives, really distilling their relationship in one short and very sweet scene.

But as I said, Niffty has her own life, will be very busy cleaning at the packed hotel, and has found an intimate partner (romantic or not) in Baxter.

This is exactly why Alastor won't let her off the immortal hook: it's not Vox that would be nothing without Velvette and Valentino; Alastor will self-destruct without Husk and Niffty.

This is where I want to talk about Husk, who will also be busy with the bar, and we already saw he was struggling in S2E1, asking everyone for help, and Alastor didn't come to help him. Again, it's literally Husk telling Alastor to help that makes Alastor drop the "Should I? Perhaps. Will I? No." banger on us.

Husk will be busy again, but he also has found a romantic interest in Angel Dust, and so emotionally preoccupiedalso. Not only will Alastor not be a priority in Niffty's life, but he is going to be on Husk's backburner also.

RadioHusk's relationship seems strange on the surface. Niffty being a maid is doing a very normal job that anyone might hire someone to do, but Alastor keeping Husk around as a bartender when Alastor himself never drinks outside the privacy of his room seems odd.

But Husk leaving the hotel in S2E6 reveals exactly how crucial Alastor and Husk's relationship is.

"Alastor's gone, so I'm gone. I've got no reason to stick around."

The reason Alastor has Husk "still slinging hooch for him" (as Mimzy confirms to us has been going on for a long time) is so that Husk is preoccupied working behind the bar, rather than idle and sitting in front of it. Without Alastor, Husk immediately goes back to gambling and alcoholism.

But the thing is, after a conversation with Angel, Husk decides to put the drinks down and comes back to the hotel. Ultimately, by continuing to engage with the hotel, Husk has made new, intimate connection and no longer relies on Alastor to yank him out by the chain when he's going off the deep end.

In S1, we see Husk's side of this relationship, where he tries to help Alastor from reverting back into being a pushover with Mimzy, but because Alastor is so caught up on trying to peacock his freedom beyond the hierarchy to Lucifer to cope with one trauma, Alastor ends up not addressing his other (being used) and has to learn through fire that Husk was right. I think what happened with Mimzy is similar to what we'll see happen with Emily being too open with Alastor, funnily enough.

Because he didn't heed Husk's warning, because of the imbalance in their relationship that Alastor is so adamant about maintaining, Alastor experiences this trauma again, which unhealthily reinforces his isolationism. He's not going to do an Emily; he's going the complete opposite direction and shutting EVERYONE out. He's not helping anybody – Alastor is all about number 1, and his life depends on it.

If Niffty and Husk drift away from him because of romance, Alastor is going to tighten the soul chain, rather than let them be free, because "quid pro quo, [is] only fair"; the deal makes him entitled to their company, no matter how suffocating it is for them, and he needs it to keep himself afloat.

As I write this, I'm thinking it's possible that Husk and Niffty act as the backstops for the two ends of Alastor's spectrum: Husk keeps Alastor from being overly vulnerable (like Peter for Heaven), while Niffty keeps him from not being vulnerable enough. And I think that Alastor's burning threat in 'Hear My Hope' is another example of him selfishly sacrificing and torturing the people he cares about to keep them as his safety net without him having to be theirs.

Anyway, my point on Husk is that he and Alastor, while not intimate or soft with each other, have a powerful sense of solidarity. They don't ask each other to take responsibility as friends, but they ask that the other stay accountable to the man in the mirror.

But as we see from Mr "Quid Pro Quo", who abandoned the hotel, ditched Husk, his brother in accountability – Alastor is still spiralling in isolationism. Vox and Emily made his fear of vulnerability worse, and Alastor has backslid from being the guy willing to fight an archangel for his friends to abandoning them for his own freedom (the whole V Tower saga) and selfishly sacrificing their needs to get his own met.

Husk makes his commentary on this in 'Love in a Bottle':

Bittersweet, to be so free and so alone It kinda feels like the wrong time to feel sorry for myself Makes you wanna drink 'til you feel like you are someone else

As Husk falls deep into his alcoholism, but has made a connection with Angel, which motivates him to pull himself out, I think this is the siren that Alastor is going to spiral out, as I was saying. The difference being that Alastor, unlike Chaggi, HuskerDust, MadMaid and CherriSnake has not found, what Lute refers to as, "the only soul who's ever completed you", in a platonic sense.

I say it all the time on this blog, but "Love in a Bottle" very easily could be reprised with a song about Velvette's Love Potion, which is literal "love in a bottle". I don't see any connections in the show, since Love Potion has not come up prominently, except for the time Angel's drink gets spiked. However, if I'm really speculating now, I'm wondering if this might be interacting with the theme of amatonormativity in some way.

To get into word of god territory, it has been said that Alastor's sexuality will be explored, and the show has already made his asexuality explicit with the "ace in the hole" comment from Rosie. What I want to mention as very interesting to me here is that, while Alastor has always been depicted as asexual, Emily and Baxter, newcomers to the Pride merch this year, and the other two in this open-closed arc trio, are ambiguous rainbow squad in the 2026 collection.

Because, as a Velvette stan, I know that Velvette was made a lesbian simply because the art director wanted her to be kindred with her, I'm going to offer this theory with a big grain of salt, because in Velvette's case, it obviously was not that deep. So maybe the sexualities are just not that deep.

That being said, she is a less major character than Alastor is. The learning-to-accept-rejection trio of Charlie, Vox, and Pentious are all bisexual, and I'm thinking that this may not be a coincidence. They display a diverse spectrum of bisexuality, with Charlie being in a WLW relationship, Vox being in an MLM relationship, and Pentious being a hetero dynamic. My thinking is that Alastor, Baxter and Emily will be varying flavours of A-spec. I have heard that Emily's voice actor said that she thinks of Emily as being secretly freaky on the inside or something along those lines, and clearly there seems to be something vaguely romantic about Baxter and Niffty's relationship. I'm pretty sure Alastor's VA let it slip that he is thought of as aroace. So if we have aroace, aro and ace, it would be the same spectrum situation as their pals on the bisexual side.

I could also see them swapping where they fall on the spectrum, though, and I'm imagining that Baxter and Emily were kept as ambiguous rainbows to spare us from anti-shippers, just as it has apparently been stated that whether Alastor is aromantic or not has been kept under wraps to not rain on shippers' parade. I have my doubts Emily and Baxter will get hard-confirmed as anything, but the subtext will very much be there, similar to with Vox's romantic feelings for Alastor.

Going back to the text with the Love Potion stuff, as I mentioned in my analysis of the environment in 'Scream Rain', we see two open bottles of Love Potion on the counter beside Alastor and Velvette. Could be nothing, but in my rewatch, I noticed the very enmeshed and mirroring nature of all the storylines.

When I heard 'Losin' Streak' on my rewatch, I was struck by the fact that, at the point Angel sings it, the entire cast seems to really be going through the losing streak together. But particularly, while I didn't mention it because I had no basis, in my theory about Alastor pursuing Velvette to be his "ace" for a royal flush, i.e. takedown of Lucifer, I named it 'Royal Flush' because Angel Dust's song is obviously where this comes to light.

I have, on my rewatch, noted that Velvette and Lucifer are poised as parallels (for example, them both greeting with "charmed", and entering the hotel and being disatisfied with its appearance. I'll save the rest for the Velvette and Lucifer post), and as I've mentioned here with their response to the exorcists, Velvette and Alastor seem to have some striking similarities in regards to wanting to "make a real power grab". Therefore, if Velvette is presented as opposed to Lucifer and aligned with Alastor, it follows that they would team up. I'm going to make another post doing over my original theory with all the new connections I've made, but I'll leave it there for now.

Alastor's downward spiral, as I've described it here, would definitely be another "losing streak". I'm just going to go through the lyrics and tell you what I hear.

It's been so very long Since Lady Luck kissed you Still, you listen for her song And pray that she missed you

Lady Luck's kiss = Emily saving the day with 'Hear My Hope', rallying the community; Alastor is a "soul that needs / Something to believe" and thus is listening for her song – "hope" that he hasn't dug himself a hole of isolation that he can't get out of.

With the "pray that she missed you", I also am thinking about Alastor in S1E2 bullying Pentious by pretending to not know who he is, and saying it was a "another forgettable experience" + Vox's "Did anybody miss him, did anybody care?", "Where's he been? Who gives a shit?" (which is the line that triggers Alastor to hop onto the track), "(While the rest of Hell's pissing,) Alastor's missing" + Alastor bristling at Carmilla saying nobody was wondering where he had been.

If Lady Luck really is Emily here, I can imagine Alastor being a bit demoralised that the person who showed him the most care by risking her life for him actually doesn't care about him in any special way at all. Emily saved so many people in S2E8, and after 'Hear My Hope', we see her talking with VoxTek employees... definitely doesn't give a shit about Alastor, and probably doesn't remember him. This also might tie into the weird depiction of him as an actual deer (and a pink one lol) on the mural she makes for Pentious, which emphasises that she doesn't know what Alastor looks like.

It's not that I'm saying in-verse that's why; in-verse, naturally she has never seen Alastor, and he jams any pictures of himself, so based on a descriptions of a deer demon with a freaky gold smile and a monocle, she did her best lol. But what I'm saying is that potentially this was flagged up to the audience in particular as foreshadowing for this dynamic between them.

Dead inside 'Cause you know it's all pretend

The "pretend" is his post-blow-up dynamics with Niffty and Husk, where the tenderness is gone, and the bind of soul chains are all that remain. I could also see, if I'm right on this Love Potion connection, the "pretend" being a reference to that. And obviously, Alastor using Love Potion on someone would put a serious rift between him and Husk, because Husk is the character we were shown starting a bar fight over someone trying to spike Angel.

You're livin' for the rush, for that royal flush

In S1E7, Alastor refers to being at the hotel as "the thrill of seeing wayward souls find connection". Thrill = rush, and Alastor, though he will not admit it, was among those wayward souls he's referring to. He wants to make mutual connections, and the royal flush here is, as presented through Husk's card set, Alastor, Husk and Niffty.

But you take what you can get You play your final ace for a pretty face

This is where my theory about Velvette comes in: her phone's dimensions + logo looks like an ace of hearts, and Niffty has explicitly referred to her as "pretty". Therefore, Alastor will be taking the "royal flush" of scheming on Lucifer with Velvette (and possibly Vox, though I'll save that for the Velvette-Lucifer post)

It's also possible that the pretty face is Emily, as we see Katie and Tom do a dramatic, coquettish eyelash-batting gesture to represent Emily when hounding Charlie about where she got her info about redemption being possible from.

And going back to my theory about Emily, I think it's possible the "taking what you can get" may be her, where he tolerates her as a platonic rebound or something like that. This is where Emily needing to gatekeep without Peter would come in. Damn that shit's toxic af. (I'm coming up with this stuff live as I go through the lyrics, so I'm scandalised by how low it sounds like Alastor's going to go, too hahaha).

Also, Alastor turning to Love Potion or teaming up with Velvette, the witch, would be antithetical to Baxter and Peter's appreciation for science, which brings it right back to the thing with Emily.

This really threads the eye of the needle for me for the connections I have seen between these three characters, which I laid out in this post. I'm so excited that the Lucifer connection has tied this theory all up.

Additionally on the Velvette being the anti-Lucifer kick, as I mentioned before, Love Potion is philosophically the anti-apple (free-will & suffering that comes with it, vs. mind-controlled bliss), the opened bottles are also apple-shaped, and they typically are depicted as being open, rather than closed. I will get more into it on my Lucifer-Velvette post, but I just suddenly remembered that, and it's really all coming together here,

Tastes like Scotch and cigarettes

These are specifically the vices we see Alastor engaging with in the mirror in S2E4. On the RadioTrio Valentine's Day postcard, rather than whiskey, as Vox calls out, Husk's list specifically only has "scotch" on it, and we see Alastor has ticked it off the list. We also see on that graphic that Alastor is helping Husk with love poems. They're all just alcoholism, but the one he okays is "don't need love when it comes in a bottle, but I still need you"... which feels like it very much applies from Alastor to Husk, as much as it might from Husk to Angel. And that is assuming that it is Husk and Alastor back-and-forthing.

I can't really tell by the handwriting whether it's both of them, or if this is just Alastor coming back to a to-do list type thing he wrote with a red pen. Now that I think of it that way, I think it makes more sense than Alastor drawing a picture of Niffty on Husk's list. As I was discussing earlier, Alastor seems to have an insecurity about his wit, with the wordplay getting flagged in particular. The way I'm seeing this now is that Alastor is writing lines to Husk, who is shown to be heartbroken about Angel in the V-Day collection trading card. The alcohol references are meant to make Husk laugh, and "you, me, and my nicest bottle of cheap booze?" is literally meant to be enticing Husk to hang out. Alastor is getting desperate to have his friend back, so he straight up is fixing to say "I still need you" to Husk.

As I also mentioned being an issue in Alastor's treatment of Niffty and Husk, he is holding a pink rose in the keychain for this collection, which symbolises gratitude. I think some RadioJoyers have assumed that this may be in reference to Emily, but I think this is Alastor's rose for Husk and Niffty. Likewise, on the checklist, we see that he gets cocktail cherries because Niffty likes them. It's a card for them... but it's a to-do list on scrap paper that will be tossed in the bin, not a proper card, which sums up Alastor's whole issue.

We're shown that he ends up not making anything for them in the trading card, instead just making a card for himself, probably feeling demotivated because Husk is agonising about his romantic interest, Angel, with Cherri, and Niffty is spending her time with her romantic interest, Baxter.

And if this is, in fact Alastor's list, rather than Husk's, the reference to scotch only serves to strengthen the connection between him and 'Losin' Streak', which, admittedly, was a super fucking random song in S2E6 that had nothing to do with anything... It's set up!

And I'm not necessarily saying here that the V-Day collection is showing canonical events, but rather it's hinting at the canonical dynamic between the characters that we will be seeing.

'Cause you can't help needin' to believe in Findin' what you seek

Alastor really needs a friend at his low point, basically.

Good luck out there, boys

They have Angel say this, because it's not only about Husk's spiral into gambling and alcoholism in S2E6, which is a temporary lapse for a small portion of the episode, and therefore the recovery does not justify a whole song. "Boys", they make sure Angel says, because it's two boys: Husk, who is sitting there, and Alastor, who needs this luck in the future lol.

I know Lute has gone missing here, but it's largely because I don't have a good read on her dynamic with Abel, since there's such little info. That being said, in 'Gravity' she says:

Eye for an eye says you owe me a debt Blood demands blood, gonna get my hands wet

The evocation of bodily sameness kind of makes me think where Alastor is going to be relying on "quid pro quo" i.e. soul deals in lieu of getting his shit together and being a better friend to Husk and Niffty, Lute will be trying to make Abel be Adam and recreating their dynamic, instead of building a genuine relationship with Abel, i.e. relying on their familial connection – "blood demands blood" – to brute force a connection that doesn't actually apply. And obviously, this is all follow-up to her hallucinating Adam's ghost, and then imposing it on Abel in 'Hear My Hope'.

Imma end it there! Just a theory.

Trending Tags

Last Seen Tags

#radiotrio

Trending Tags

Last Seen Tags

#radiotrio