Today at San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC), Vivienne Medrano, the creative force behind Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss, offered insights into the development, future, and cultural impact of her animated series.

Vivienne Medrano created Hazbin Hotel, building on her popular 2019 YouTube animated pilot. It quickly garnered over 117 million views and a fervent global fanbase. The series blends adult humor, unforgettable characters, and catchy musical numbers. Medrano executive-produced and directed all episodes.

San Diego Comic-Con Interview With Vivienne Medrano, the creative force behind Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss

Medrano was at San Diego and spoke to journalists about what’s coming next and what the journey has been like leading up to today’s panel announcements.

Balancing Narrative and Experimentation in Animation

During these interviews, Medrano revealed that the overarching story arcs for both Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss are meticulously mapped out. This foundational planning provides a clear direction for the main storylines, preventing creative impasses. In contrast, the Helluva Boss shorts serve as a vibrant experimental playground. This is where the team can explore more outlandish and chaotic ideas, allowing for a freedom not possible within the main show’s intricate lore and narrative. For Hazbin Hotel, while the season and episode premises are established, the writing room thrives on spontaneity, allowing for the organic development of musical numbers, character plot twists, and even new locations for story beats.

With both shows—both shows. Well, they’re mapped out, so it’s actually really fun because I know what the arcs of the stories are, and I know where they’re going. The shorts for Helluva Boss are, “What do we do now?” Uh-huh. “Who’s someone we haven’t had them kill yet?” Which is really fun, though, because the shorts have actually become our experimentation. So when we’re like, “That’s a f—ed up joke, let’s make a short about that.” Or, “That’s stupid. I love it.” That’s the shorts.

So I feel like coming up with fresh ideas is both hard, but also we’re letting ourselves just have fun in a way that we can’t do on the main show. On the main show, we have a very intrinsic storyline. There’s lore, there’s a map, and we have to be very specific, and we have to put a lot more effort and a lot more focus into the main show. Coming up with fresh ideas is not hard for the main show because we already know what they are, and we already know what makes them fresh to the season. But doing it for the shorts, we are having to manifest new storylines as much as possible. But they are really fun, and I’m excited for people to see more of the chaos we’ve come up with with those.

But with Hazbin… Hazbin is fun because I have the whole season mapped out, and the episode premises are kind of set. But then in the writing room, we kind of come up with cool, like, “What will the song be?” Or like, “What will be the hook of the character’s plot?” We know what they need to accomplish, but we don’t always know how or the setting. And so sometimes it’ll kind of manifest in the room of like, “Wait, we’ve never gone here yet. Maybe this plotline happens in this location that we’ve talked about, but we’ve never been.” And so that’s what’s kind of fresh and fun. But yeah, it’s not too hard to come up with fresh ideas for the main show. But yeah, for the shorts, entirely different story. -Vivienne Medrano

Prime Video Unleashes Hellaverse at San Diego Comic-Con

At a packed San Diego Comic-Con panel, Prime Video made several exciting Hellaverse announcements, celebrating the shared universe of Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss.

Hazbin Hotel Season Two will premiere on Prime Video on October 29.

Fans can also look forward to Helluva Boss joining Prime Video. Seasons One and Two, previously available on YouTube, will arrive on the platform on September 10. It will do so alongside an exclusive new special episode. Titled “Mission: Zero,” follows I.M.P. on their inaugural assassination mission and will be available on Prime Video for 45 days before its YouTube release. Both Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss will stream on Prime Video in over 240 countries and territories worldwide.

New Cast for Hazbin Hotel Season Two

Helluva Boss‘ Richard Horvitz and Brandon Rogers, and Hazbin Hotel’s Erika Henningsen and Amir Talai, announced new cast members for Hazbin Hotel Season Two:

• Patrick Stump (Fall Out Boy) as “Abel”
• Kevin Del Aguila (Some Like It Hot The Musical) as “Baxter”
• Alex Newell (Another Simple Favor) as “Zeezi”
• Liz Callaway (Anastasia) as “The Speaker of God”
• Andrew Durand (Dead Outlaw The Musical) as “Prick”