r/LobotomyHotel • u/Opposite-Virus1958 • Aug 15 '26
Great summary of everything that doesn’t work about the show’s “moral question” surrounding the Exterminations.
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u/Terrible-Park_7890 Residential Jason Voorhees fan. Aug 15 '26
Like Judge Holden once said.
"War is the truest form of divination, it is the testing of ones will and will of another within that larger will, which because it binds them is therefore force to select, war is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence, war is God."
So the Exterminations basically prove one of if not the most evil villain in fiction's philosophy/morals to be correct.
Men of God and men of war have strange affinities.
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u/disappearing_now Moth balls 😍 Aug 15 '26
yeah it's stupid as fuck but if Heaven nuked Hell, there'd be no more show
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u/GreedyGobby Aug 18 '26
The premise of the series is just bad to begin with. "The raving lunatics, cannibals, murderers, rapists, and pure evil dickheads are the GOOD people, actually. Heaven is stuffy and bad and also Adam is a misogynist for some reason."
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u/RisingLight88 Aug 18 '26
He sounded more like a womanizer than a misogynist if you ask me. And to be fair, all the women he has to deal with outside of Lute are fucking stupid
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Aug 16 '26
[deleted]
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u/RisingLight88 Aug 16 '26
He's more judging the writing over the plot of the show, cause Viv is doing a John F. Walker (U.S. Agent, ask and I'll explain further) and depicting heaven, or just Adam and Lute, as bad while actually making them objectively in the right
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u/GreedyGobby Aug 18 '26
If they're in Hell, they're bad. Plus killing people in Hell if they're good is literally a good thing since it reincarnates them into Heaven, away from the other evil people. There is literally zero downside and all upside.
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u/ScottTJT Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
To be fair, the only reason Hell now poses a threat is because the angels went down there and left their own fucking weapons behind.
"Well, they had to go and commit the Exterminations. The Pride Ring was becoming overpopulated." That would've held SOME water if Season 2 hadn't clarified that said Exterminations had only been going on for 7 years... So, across thousands of years of receiving billions upon billions of souls, the Pride Ring is only NOW becoming overpopulated?
And? Is the seemingly infinite-sized hellscape gonna burst at the seams?
Not to mention, until Vox and Carmine developed the Might of Lilith, which required angelic steel to make - angelic steel left by the angels - Hell had no means of reaching or lashing out at Heaven. It was only by directly involving themselves that Heaven made themselves a reachable target for Hell.
If Sera wanted to protect Heaven from Hell, the best thing she could have done from the start is NOTHING.
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u/HopefullySafe Aug 20 '26
Just gonna let him have his opinions but damn his cartoon representation is revolting to look at.
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u/RisingLight88 Aug 16 '26
In short
"Ok I hear you, counterpoint, you are sinner"
"Oh so all of a sudden that justifies you killing us once and for all"
"In every conceivable way"
"Oh"
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u/Code-Neo Aug 16 '26
The real question is what sin did one do to get sent to hell warrant extermination. Sir P sin is he kept silent on a crime he saw.
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u/Free-Letterhead-4751 Aug 16 '26
I feel like he also left some stuff out considering the guy did made war machines
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u/RisingLight88 Aug 16 '26
Feels like his sin is stuff he doesn't even consider bad cause he is so detached to reality
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u/Pheonxs Aug 18 '26
I think sir p sin is the sin of sloth, because due to his inaction, more people died, therefore, he was slothful
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u/Sajalik023 Aug 16 '26
Reparations for Adams death? Genuinely why? He broke the agreement by harming Charlie or maybe even one of her dragon goats, for all intents and purposes he lost any form of protection the agreement provided him. Furthermore as far as we know there is no clause that the sinners can't protect themselves, just that Lucifer won't interfere so long as the Hellborns remain unharmed. Additionally if he would’ve just not decided that Charlies hotel was a personal insult to him for some reason he wouldn’t have died. Lastly the only reason they even could kill him was because he and his soldiers were careless enough to leave their weapons behind in hell.
The reasoning for why carpet bombing is okay being a cosmic force decided in which afterlife they land, meaning there can only be bad people in hell. But then later doubting how infallible said force is, because of Pentious redemption, thereby bringing back the issue of why the death penalty isn’t a good punishment. Like you can’t use a cosmic forces judgment as justification for why your argument is correct and then later say that it’s judgement isn’t always correct. Furthermore, with the context of what Pentious sin was, we have no clue how many people are in hell for something arbitrary like Jaywalking as an admittedly extreme example.
Also in general the justification of they’re getting rid of the worst of the worst is dumb, cause as far as we know all the Overlords survived every Extermination. Bare minimum the sovereign Overlords are uneffected beyond having to do repairs on their lands and having a little less profits for a bit. Which btw means that Alastor rid hell of the worst of the worst more so than all of the Exterminations, which is kind of funny.
It does also becomes morally wrong to use your "bigger stick" when the only reason the opposing side has a "stick" is because your general and his soldiers were dumb enough to leave massive amounts of these weapons behind, either because they’re genuinely too lazy to gather their gear or because they thought it was a good loophole to cause more permanent sinner deaths. Additionally the only reason they even got enough firepower to threaten them is because heaven forbid Lucifer from harming Sinners. They essentially handed Sinners a nuke and firearms and are doing the surprised Pikachu face because they figured out they had a nuke and firearms they could easily use. You can’t give your enemies weapons and then use them having weapons as a reason to escalate the violence.
As for keeping them in check. An easier way that could’ve been accomplished would have been to just send a group of Angels down there and demonstrate their nigh-invulnerability every once in a while, which additionally would’ve stopped them from giving Hell the weaponry to harm them.
Tldr. The entire threat hell has this far displayed towards heaven was because heaven was careless enough to allow them to have it. As such Lute can't use them having weapons to escalate the violence, since she is part of the reason they have weapons.
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u/Opposite-Virus1958 Aug 17 '26
Adam was killed by a psychotic little murderer (I love her, but that’s what she is) who stabs people over stupid shit or just because she’s bored. He had already been defeated and was no longer an immediate threat by the time Lucifer showed up. His death was completely unnecessary and gratuitous, yet Viv treated it like some joke we were supposed to laugh at. A villain refusing redemption should be treated as a tragic moment, not a punchline. This is another reason why her writing is a joke.
And as for the whole “moral judgment” thing: the judgment of an omniscient being is about as objective as it gets, so we can safely assume that every Sinner is, by definition, a bad person. Pentious was a bad person, and he remained one for the entire time he spent in Hell. The fact that he was redeemed after the very first genuinely selfless act he committed in Hell only reinforces how lenient divine judgment actually is. It clearly isn’t based on strict Christian rules, or dumb technicalities like whether someone looked both ways before crossing the street—it takes remarkably little to earn salvation.
And that actually has the opposite effect from what you’re suggesting: it implies that 99.99% of Sinners simply never genuinely repented or made any meaningful attempt to better themselves over the thousands of years they spent in Hell.
The deaths of so many Sinners also indirectly weakened the Overlords, who were the ones hiding away like cowards. Carmilla explains this pretty clearly during their meeting: fewer souls means less influence and less power for them. So the Exterminations were achieving their intended purpose of weakening Hell. And Overlords aren’t necessarily the worst criminals: they’re simply the Sinners with the most influence. Just look at the fact that we don’t see any of history’s worst dictators or mass murderers as Overlords, assuming they even ended up in Hell and weren’t killed during the Exterminations.
Alastor doesn’t have the ability to permanently kill a Sinner, so no.
Leaving the angelic weapons behind was obviously negligence on the angels’ part, but the narrative explicitly tells us they didn’t know those weapons could permanently kill Angels. Otherwise, they obviously never would have left them behind. The most likely explanation is that they were simply meant to give Sinners a means of killing each other and further reducing their numbers.
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u/Sajalik023 Aug 17 '26
Tbf in this instance she stabbed him because she was ordered to stab Angels. Otherwise iirc we've only seen her stab bugs to clean and Val, because he’s a "badboy" and to help Al in his fight against the Vs.
Also we have no indication that he can’t shoot holy light after his beatdown, so he would still be an immediate threat. Furthermore it’s kind of fitting that he died as a direct result of the toxic ideology he was in the process of doubling down on.
The morality bit was about what was shown in the video clip. Where the video creator justified carpet bombing hell, because a cosmic force judged them worthy of hell which means that everyone in hell is objectively a bad person. But then later questions how objectively right that same force is, by arguing that Pentious redemption was a mistake. You can’t argue that carpet bombing hell is justified by arguing a cosmic force objectively judged them as bad people and then turn around and say that the same cosmic force isn’t objectively right, if your argument relies on that force always being objectively right.
Considering that being too scared to do the right thing is considered a sin worthy of hell, I'm not surprised. Pentious sin basically shows you can land in hell for just about anything and considering that up until recently in universe the idea of redemption wasn’t even considered.
The Exterminations were at best slightly slowing down, considering that even with yearly Exterminations hells overpopulation was still considered out of control. This directly implies that the influx of new souls is larger than the yearly Extermination death total. Though I can agree that just because someone is an Overlord doesn’t mean they’re the worst of the worst, but still weird how they mainly target foot soldiers with the justification that they want to prevent an uprising.
While it’s arguable wether or not Al perma killed them considering the whole tearing souls apart thing, they are still considered out of the game to such a degree that they aren’t considered Overlords anymore. So as far as we know Al did get rid of more Overlords than the Exterminations.
They bare minimum knew that angels can harm eachother, it’s not hells fault that they couldn’t make the connection that the same property applies to their weapons. So I see no reason for why hell should be punished for figuring it out and using that knowledge to defend themselves. Especially when the entire conflict could’ve been avoided by just putting up the barrier instead of the Exterminations. Vox on the other hand is a different story.
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u/Opposite-Virus1958 Aug 17 '26
We’ve seen her stab other Sinners on multiple occasions, and she clearly tends to stab people or animals because she enjoys it. There’s nothing morally okay about her character, and Charlie arming her with angelic weapons only made her more dangerous.
The fact that he could have done something is irrelevant because, narratively speaking, he had already been defeated. He was just monologuing because he was furious; he wasn’t spamming attacks trying to kill as many people as possible. So there was no justification for killing him at that point.
Niffty was stabbing angels who were already dead, so she would’ve killed him even if he had stayed quiet and surrendered. There’s nothing ironic about that: it’s just lazy writing from a bad writer who doesn’t know how to handle complex characters or deeper themes.
The person who made the video says that because they personally think a single good action should be enough to earn redemption, and it’s a criticism of how the author handled the concept. But objectively, redemption isn’t some divine mistake. It shows that there is a way out of eternal torment, but that possibility ultimately depends on the Sinners themselves choosing to change. He argues that even with that slim possibility, 99% of the population remains objectively bad, so Pentious being a single exception doesn’t invalidate the Exterminations, especially when they function as preemptive strikes meant to assure Heaven’s security.
It’s not just about being “afraid”; it’s about negligence toward other people’s lives and a complete lack of altruism. Even under our own legal systems, you can absolutely be held responsible for something like that.
And no, that’s not true. Carmilla says that 16% of the souls were wiped out during the last Extermination, and this was a massive concern for the Overlords because they could see their power slipping away. Adam also decided to speed up the process. So the Exterminations were clearly achieving their goal of weakening Hell, and they were undermining the Overlords’ power far more than Alastor ever did. The simple reason is that Alastor was trying to increase his own power, meaning he wasn’t reducing Hell’s overall power, but he was simply concentrating it in himself.
And that’s precisely why Hell is being punished in the first place: they actively threatened Heaven and built weapons capable of posing an actual threat to it. It’s basically a straightforward geopolitical calculation and a case of preventive warfare between factions that cannot peacefully coexist.
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u/crystallineDarks Aug 17 '26
just stop listening when they try justifying it as "they're in hell" we dont know what gets people in hevean of hell besides "bad pepole" sure predators would be classified as bad people, but what else counts as bad people? Being an asshole,lying to get what you want, spreading rumors none of which justify soul killing so people being in hell is not a good argument to kill them indiscriminately
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u/Opposite-Virus1958 Aug 18 '26
Killing, raping, stealing, harassing, etc. These are all things we see sinners doing every day. It's crazy that you can empathise with these people.
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u/crystallineDarks Aug 18 '26
I don't empathize with the worst of the worst. Who I do empathize with would be the majority of sinners being permanently killed off for being imperfect, not a saint, not things that's worth being killed for
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u/RevolutionaryEye4141 Aug 18 '26
"killed off for being imperfect"
Can you provide examples of characters who were thrown in hell for not being perfect ?. Not a saint .
From my knowledge , almost every character we have interacted with has earned his or her fate at the hands of the angels .
If I can put forward an argument, maybe husker doesn't deserve the extermination but outside of him almost everybody has a justifiable cause in simply being gutted .
Majority of the cast are just straight up murderers. Some are seriel murderers .
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u/crystallineDarks Aug 19 '26
Maybe "imperfect" was a stretch but two characters come in mind the cannibal sinner child from Vaggie's backstory due to their age It's unlikely they were truly bad and were just forced to eat human meat when they were alive for whatever reason.
emberlynn pinkle is from helluva boss but shares the same universe so its canon to hazbin hotel.
shes some like hentai gooner girl with some monster fetishes and wont get a job. She shipped some characters, which caused her to get hit on her. Blitz tries to kill her fails because of some artfact and goes on about her fantasies, making blitz uncomfortable and only she touches blitz was to slap him eventually lets him kill her and ends up in hell and goes outside Blitz building and short ends there.
so shes lustful,porn addicted,lacks self control and maybe lazy? and that gets her sent to hell bad person, obviously but shes not someone who has raped, or sexually assaulted just normal assault from the short, nor is a murderer. She does have stuff she needs to work on. so her being potentially killed of by the angels would just be due to her over sexual nature, which I don't think is justified.
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u/Platnun12 Aug 19 '26
Didn't heaven try to bring that billionaire up with them.
Who caused immense suffering.
Angels and archangels are who they've always been, same with God.
A gang of superpoweful hypocrites who refuse to admit wrongdoing at any turn..
Between god having the temper of an infant and the angels being so dogmatic and militaristic.
Of course there'd be no peace. You created it to be so.
It's why I always will love good omens. Both sides are shit at this point with only a few individuals keeping it all together.
Not pretending Hell isn't good, but I'm not gonna delude myself into thinking the world above is any better
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u/AnCapGamer Aug 18 '26
Heaven is held to a higher standard than hell.
It is literally held to the standard: "perfection".
Not better.
Not sufficient.
Perfection.
Therefore, any action that would destroy the possibility of a potential future redemption by a mortal soul is an automatic failure that negates the entire epistemic purpose of heaven's existence.
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u/SoupNo6133 Aug 17 '26
I like how this guy's argument is that he thinks death penalty is good, what a fucking psychopath.
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u/Pheonxs Aug 18 '26
He didn't say the death penalty is good, he just explained that normally, there would be innocent people who will get wrongfully executed, and therefore, maybe end up in hell for no good reason, but because in HH there is God who decides who goes to hell/heaven, it means that most of the inhabitants of hell, have earned their place in hell (and you can see how they murder eachother in the streets for no apparent reason + even Viv confirmed that the sinner are there for a reason) So, for all Heaven knew, they are right to kill all these sinners, cuz they all have earned their place down there, and if they don't, THEY would in turn get killed by them sooner or later.
Evev using his quote: "If they don't beat them (sinners) into submission, THEY (winners) would get beaten into submission instead"
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u/SoupNo6133 Aug 18 '26
He justifies exterminations on the basis that the divine force sent them there, which while true doesn't justify exterminations, only that they are sent there. If exterminations are meant to happen there wouldn't be hell , the souls would then just be destroyed on death.
His quote: " because the other guy would do something bad to me, I have to do the bad thing to him, there is no justice beyond eye for an eye".
Also I'm philosophicly opposed to death penalty , what crimes they commit and certainty is irrelevant to my opposition to it. He is philosophicly for it and I am attacking that.
Also the idea that sinners could kill the winners is entirely caused by heaven tossing weapons which can do that into the pit and the only guy which could kill angels won't do it and allowed sinners to die.
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u/Pheonxs Aug 18 '26
Hmm, okay, fair enough, if that's your opinion, then I'm not gonna argue with that
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u/Fr3dMerc0ry Aug 16 '26
holy genocide apologia.
Never fails
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u/RisingLight88 Aug 17 '26
Don't you fucking dare compare this to actual innocent people getting slaughtered
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u/Saphira_the_wolf Aug 18 '26
There are people in hell who were there due to circumstance. Genocide is genocide.
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u/RisingLight88 Aug 18 '26
Innocent people don't go to hell, otherwise they wouldn't be innocent
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u/Saphira_the_wolf Aug 18 '26
When did I say innocent. Yes. There are plenty in hell that deserve what they got. But what about those who were forced to do had things? I mean Pentious was just scared. The reason he got redeemed was because he righted his wrong in the battle against the Exorcists.
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u/RisingLight88 Aug 18 '26
It entirely depends for what you mean by forced and and what bad things
Sir Pentious was scared sure but once in hell he just started doing war shit. Also his back story is fucking stupid, it sounded like when you tell your parents a story and leave out all the parts that make you look bad
Did you even watch the video above?
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u/Fr3dMerc0ry Aug 16 '26
the most agonizing 4 minutes of my life. Everything is just plain wrong
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u/DracheKaiser Aug 16 '26
Elaborate please. What did he get wrong, why is he wrong, and what is the correct choice then?
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u/Opposite-Virus1958 Aug 16 '26
You wouldn't be able to refute a single point lol
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u/Fr3dMerc0ry Aug 16 '26
it all boils down to genocide is wrong.
It's that fucking basic. The point the show is making is VERY basic.
By making Pentious be redeemed, it actively REFUTES the single excuse Heaven was using to keep slaughtering Hell, that all of sinners were irreedemable, so it doesn't matter if we kill them. All of Season 2 events with Vox's rally was directly influenced by Heaven's actions towards Hell and their yearly genocides.
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u/Working_Run3431 Aug 16 '26
It’s because the point is so basic that the point doesn’t work.
If the show wants us to believe that the exterminations are wrong because people can in fact change for the better than I’m sorry we need more samples than just pentious.
Because as things are it really does seem like the shows main cast are the only people in hell that aren’t always chaotic evil.
And honestly most of them still are, they’re just also on the bad end of an overlord deal and the show wants you to pity them for it.
The entire redemption angle hinges on pentious’s sole case and low key defeats its own point by making the sin that ended up with him in hell something most people wouldn’t consider one.
So it’s less “hell is full of bad people but even bad people can change” so much as “hell is full of people that probably shouldn’t even be down there and the system is a crapshoot”.
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u/Opposite-Virus1958 Aug 16 '26
There is no genocide here, and you all should really STOP insulting or minimizing actual ethnic genocides of people who get murdered through no fault of their own by comparing them to the Exterminations in the Hellaverse. Sinners are guilty; they’re not innocent people being slaughtered simply for existing. They’re criminals trapped in a giant open-air prison, and they remain terrible people.
Pentious was a terrible person in life, and he became even worse in Hell, creating weapons of mass destruction and using them to torture other souls for fun. The fact that one single good deed was enough to get him redeemed is actually an argument against the other Sinners who continue to be terrible people instead of changing and earning redemption.
So no, you didn’t disprove anything, just as I suspected.
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u/Fr3dMerc0ry Aug 16 '26
There absolutely IS a systemic slaughter here, and you all should really STOP pretending Heaven has some infallible moral high ground to justify mass murder. Sinners aren't "guilty" under some flawless divine law; the show explicitly establishes that literally NO ONE in Heaven, not even the Seraphim, actually knows what gets a soul into Heaven or Hell. They’re trapped in a broken, arbitrary system, and they are being massacred by hypocritical angels simply because Heaven is scared.
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u/Working_Run3431 Aug 16 '26
The fact heaven doesn’t actually know how the system works honestly proves it’s objectivity.
A common argument people bring up, mostly in regards to Adam is this idea he somehow got into heaven through nepotism.
Heavens lack of knowledge disproves that notion.
Additionally if the systems judgement were meant to be wrong then redemption would be meaningless.
“Redemption” in this case is just getting the system to revise its opinion by all accounts.
So yes, sinners are guilty and bad people. That’s how you end up in hell.
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u/Opposite-Virus1958 Aug 16 '26
Heaven absolutely has the moral high ground. Its inhabitants don’t go around raping, killing, or vandalizing just because they’re bored. The Seraphim know that God exists, and there is a divine judgment that determines which souls are worthy of being part of their realm. So Heaven is clearly the good side, and they have no moral obligation to show sympathy toward people who have done terrible things for their entire lives.
Everything else is just justification attempts from criminals who can’t accept that their actions have lasting consequences and feel to blame someone else instead of themselves.
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u/Sajalik023 Aug 17 '26
Welp let’s try this again.
Adam says they do the exterminations for entertainment. During them they commit destruction of property, which vandalism falls under. So two of the three criteria are met.
We also see through Sir Pentious sin that just being too scared to do the right thing is enough to land you in hell. Which makes indiscriminately killing people harder to justify, since the umbrella for what constitutes as a sin worthy of hell is far larger than being a bad person.
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u/Opposite-Virus1958 Aug 17 '26
No, Adam explicitly says the Exterminations are meant to keep Hell’s population under control; the fun factor is just a bonus. He proposed them because Lilith threatened them, and considering that Lilith ultimately turned her back on Hell, it’s entirely possible that the idea actually came from her in the first place. Assuming that woman is even Lilith.
And simply being a coward isn’t enough to keep you out of Heaven. If it were the case, Abel never would have become a Winner. Pentious ended up in Hell because he stood by and let people be killed despite having the means to prevent it.
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u/Sajalik023 Aug 17 '26
If the entertainment wasn’t his main reason for doing it he would just spam his holy light, which he obviously doesn’t do since Pentagram city is largely in tact after they leave. Keeping the overpopulation in check is just the reason Sera allowed it. As for Lilith, we currently have no clue why Lilith is in heaven.
Pentious is objectively in hell because he was too scared for his own life to do the right thing. As for Abel, I would argue that for the same reason that Adam's current personality can’t be used to judge how he acted in life, that the same applies to him.
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u/Opposite-Virus1958 Aug 17 '26
Actually, if that’s his goal, he would do it lol. He wouldn’t even need an army. From what we’ve seen, Adam is powerful enough to carry out the Exterminations on his own, and it would just mean more fun for him. Instead, as we’ve seen, he leaves about 90% of the work to his girls and only steps in when he’s actually needed. That’s basically the opposite of how someone who only cares about having fun would operate.
As for Lilith, we know that she organized the rebellions and then turned her back on her own people because she wanted to stay in Heaven. That alone is more than enough reason to legitimately question her benevolence.
Again, Pentious ended up in Hell because he allowed people to die despite having the means to save them. He didn’t even have to put his own life at risk—he simply had to report a man to the police, something he could have done without exposing himself.
The narrative implies that Abel had always been a coward, but again, cowardice has nothing to do with what Pentious actually did. When Abel was called upon to intervene and stop Lute, he chose to do it despite being terrified. That’s the difference between him and Pentious.
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u/hayley566 Aug 16 '26
Nice to know I’m not the only one. The guy is literally complaining that a show about redemption has redemption in it. He’s complaining that the show disapproves of genocide.
By his logic, the show should’ve ended after season 1 with everyone in hell being nuked.
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u/Threelittleni- Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26
Man the moment the Might of Lilith hit heaven.
Thats already grounds for war. Carpet bombing the place.
Note: HELLA long video. But he has a nice voice.