Amazon Prime cartoon sympathetic to Lucifer laden with profanity, depraved sex acts
An adult musical cartoon series that takes place in Hell and recently premiered on Amazon Prime is replete with profanity and vulgar sexual content, including references to BDSM and gang rape.
"Hazbin Hotel," the eight-episode first season of which rolled out on Amazon Prime last Friday, also portrays Lucifer sympathetically and features as its protagonist a character named Charlie Morningstar, who is his offspring, as noted by Newsbusters.
The plot of the show centers around Morningstar's attempts to rehabilitate demons so they can return to Heaven, according to The New York Times.
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One of the show's episodes features a musical number during which a porn star is chained up and gang raped. During a song titled "A Happy Day in Hell," Morningstar traipses through the streets of the underworld and happens upon two figures engaging in anal sex while one of them sports BDSM bondage gear.
The characters in the show are also suggestive, including Morningstar's lesbian girlfriend named Vaggie, a porn star character named Angel Dust, a "sadistic maid" named Niffty, as well as "an array of underworld bigwigs like porn magnate Valentino," according to synopsis of the show by Yahoo. Other demonic characters and Lucifer himself also make an appearance.
The opening scene of the first episode went viral and drew widespread backlash on social media after Amazon Prime tweeted it last week, with some users claiming they would be canceling their subscriptions in response to the show's objectionable content.
Heaven and hell like you’ve never seen them before. Here is the opening scene of #HazbinHotel, premiering Friday on Prime Video. pic.twitter.com/MRkiaCu3bm
— Prime Video (@PrimeVideo) January 16, 2024
The opening scene depicted heavenly angels as the wheel-like beings in the book of Ezekiel, implied Heaven is "heartless," and described Lucifer as "a dreamer with fantastical ideas for all of creation" whose temptation of humanity was presumably benevolent.
Lucifer "was seen as a troublemaker by the elders of Heaven, for they felt his way of thinking was dangerous to the order of their world," the scene explained, which also referenced his mythological lover Lilith, a female demonic figure from Jewish folklore, according to the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
According to the plot of the show, Lucifer and Lilith fell in love after she was created as the first woman in Eden but fled after refusing to submit to Adam's oppressive authority. Both Lilith and Lucifer then conspired to tempt Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit because they wanted "to share the magic of Free Will with humanity," the show claims.
The series was created by animator and YouTube personality Vivienne Medrano, who identifies as bisexual and recently said during an interview with Polygon that "our society and our culture has kind of shifted, and a lot more diverse stories are starting to be told, a lot more LGBT stories and things like that."
The eight-episode first season on Amazon Prime is based on a pilot that became a hit after Medrano uploaded it to YouTube in 2019 and since notched nearly 95 million views.
Independent entertainment company A24 financed and developed the pilot into a series, which Amazon then picked up. Melissa Wolfe, the head of animation at Amazon MGM Studios, said she watched it and got "kind of a goosebumps feeling when you just know it's an amazing show," according to The New York Times.
