When future historians look back at early 21st century culture, the smart ones will see an interesting thread of media that decided it was time to take on Heaven itself.
It started with The Good Place where the most questionable souls found out that Heaven wasn’t quite right and tried to correct it. Miracle Workers’ first season had angelic Daniel Radcliffe trying to keep God (Steve Buscemi) from destroying creation out of boredom. And a worthy screen adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials novels (not the 2007 movie dreck) came to HBO starting in 2015. That series starts with a child’s decision to fight one authority and work her way to the very top.
Good Omens’ second season sharpened its critique of Heaven’s competence after the lighter first season and original book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Fallen angel and fashion hellion Crowley (David Tennant) has been questioning from the beginning, begging why he created such beauty as the Horsehead Nebula just to have it run 6,000 years as window dressing for humans. Such questioning led to the whole falling thing. His long time friend and earth-bound angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) is more trusting of the Ineffable Plan. The passable book report of a first season ended with the two averting Armageddon on a technicality. The touching and funny second season ends with Crowley and Aziraphale finding a deep institutional problem with the whole system, and painfully diverging on how to deal with it.
This week, the final episodes of Hazbin Hotel’s first season arrive on Amazon Prime. An animated void-black comedy from the YouTube creator Vivienne Medrano, Hazbin Hotel follows a rowdy group of demons as they set up a diversion program for damned souls. Leading the group is Charlie Morningstar (voiced by Erika Henningsen), daughter of Lucifer and starry-eyed idealist bent on singing souls out of Hell. Her partners include villains, porn stars, drunkards, and a radio demon named Alistor.
