I think it's really interesting (and something I sincerely hope they touch more on in the future) that they went the direction they did with Vox in the finale. By which I mean, of course, the attempted mass suicide.
Firstly, in a purely vibes standpoint I LOVE me a character that has such a catastrophic public breakdown. Absoluteraly delicious I eat that shit up every time.
Vox was probably also just having an absolutely insane manic episode as a lot of his rambling during the attempt to blow them all up to smithereens he says that it's 'his destiny' and calls himself God again. He truly does not care about what happens as long as, in his mind, he fulfills his ultimate goal of coming into this supposed destiny.
My first watch of the finale did shock me a little, that Vox, a character that is so egotistical and focused on his goals would be willing to throw everything else away just to get Alastor.
Then yknow with a bit of thinking I get to 'okay, yeah he's truly and absolutely obsessed with proving himself any way he can and it's not just about Alastor but what Alastor represents to him but still,,,suicide?' THEN I get to 'ah, this is defintely not the first time he's had suicidal ideations'.
While on a little hazbin rewatch I noticed something that was immediately inticing to me: Vox is the only character who mentions any kind of suicide in the show, AND he does it multiple times. He mentions it first to Pentious when he realizes that he got caught literally a day into staying at the hotel.
Aggressive, right? But on it's own it's not really serious, totally different from Vox's tone right before when he was laughing at him and honestly I can't help but find every scene that Pentious is in inherently silly. It comes off more like a COD lobby voice chat. Nothing much to look at here. Bit interesting that he pulls out the word 'failure' when it's also a word he uses in such a pointed way to Charlie later but oh well.
Then we get this beautiful piece of animation in Vox Dei.
Just GORGEOUS animation really, technically speaking a difficult shot to make. But ah, once again suggesting to someone else that the solution to their rock bottom problem is to kill themselves. Hmm...
THEN he chuckles a littlle to himself about what the phase of his plan is.
Oh Vox? Really? A third time now you've brought this up.
They all seem to follow a similar enough pattern. According to Vox's own words, it seems like a natural enough knee-jerk reaction to considering killing yourself at your worst and having it all be your fault because you couldn't cut it, you failure. It's obvious enough with Pentious. To the angels, it was a line pushing the idea that Vox's takeover was unstoppable and that they would have to accept before he even got there that they had lost everything already anyway.
It's a bit less obvious with his last throwaway line about Charlie killing herself over the next phase of his plan but with his telling her during Curtain Call that she lost, again, because she is a 'weak, pitiful, failure' I can only assume this is the feeling his plan meant to evoke from her from the beginning.
It just makes me wonder, like, Vox definetly had some form of suicidal ideation in the past. A lot of his actions are taken as attempts to very aggressively show other people that he is not weak, that he is worthy of every achievement because he is not a failure. Look how many eyes are on him! It's because he's great at what he does!! Vox has many the makings of someone with a God complex but I think that when looking deeper into it it's very clear to see that he is very very insecure and uses this feeling of 'godhood' as a replacement for self-contentment and love. That's what his big gripe against Alastor is, anyhow, that even when he let his walls down to genuinely reach out to someone (confirmed by Viv that his offer to Alastor was him actually being vulnerable!!) he got his crush laughing in his face and telling him he's not powerful enough which led to this decades long obsession over getting Alastor to basically concede and say he was wrong for rejecting Vox in the past because Vox is great and amazing and worth it, right??
Then we get to the final battle.
He needs this huge, destructive weapon to defeat Alastor but it really does not matter to him because he can finally do it. He couldn't get Alastor to verbally admit that Vox is more powerful than him, that Vox finally managed to get one over him and achieved something, so next best option? Wipe his smile and any reminder of what Alastor made him feel from existance. Because if he can't do that either, and has to live with this constant reminder of some standard he can't measure up to... To live the rest of his afterlife knowing someone he cared for so deeply, that he hinges so much of his self-worth on some falling out they had 70 years ago still won't acknowledge him, well then he might as well kill himself anyway.
so, SO interesting i love this little TV I want three more seasons of him and his breakdown shenanigans STAT
