Outside of other ways they overlap, I feel like the main traits that the radiotrio share are being hyper independent, being deeply secretive (or unable to explain), and never being what they seem to be on the outside. But I also think the trio is marked by a shared lack of free will.
Season two reveals that Alastor hasn't been free since the moment he set foot in hell and he has been in hell for longer than he was alive. Alastor is constantly boasting about doing whatever he wants but its been a bluff until he got out of his deal with Rosie.
Character lore suggests his free will was also subjective while he was alive and we have to wonder what a connection to Roo has to cost someone. He is defined by his free will but he is constantly constrained by some system no matter how well he does. He goes out of his way to beat people without breaking their rules just so that he can feel that sense of control over the situations that happen to him. It's impossible to tell what he really wants and what he was told to do with almost any of his actions.
In both lives he had to do a surprising amount of self preservation just to be allowed to have his radio show stay on the air. He is literally the strongest sinner in hell - that's a plot point - but his access to do what he wants is never there. He sold his soul for the chance to have fun. He says he is sure he knows he's going to hell but its also ironic that his faith IN hell is so pure. He choose hell with a smile because it was a choice he got to make.
Niffty's relationship to free will is impossible not to question. She is given a form in hell that makes her read even more as "insignificant" and she is a contraction of truly helpful and truly dangerous. Niffty doesn't seem able to cognitively deny requests or demands. Even though she isn't compelled, we see her attempt to stab Angel Dust, stab a random sinner who requests her to, and even laugh while fully believing she is going to crash into Husk and kill him. Alastor doesn't have to give her orders, he probably has to keep her away from people who would gleefully mistreat her temperament much more (with the irony being that he's is keeping her from killing THEM).
Take Alastor's "kill the butcher not the lamb" leanings and Niffty is that in purity; she is likely brutal karma for people who are devious to her. But she is also the butcher and the lamb herself, and we see her unable to bond or join in with the group when Vaggi is leading the team bonding that episode. Niffty isn't caught, isn't thrown, and the group laughter stops when she joins in. Even when she tells all of hell how she feels for the Vee's camera, no one understands her. In some way, her free will is never considered or never matters. Baxter is shown hunting bugs for her and helping her experiment on them because unlike most sinners he isn't disgusted by Niffty's interests.
Husk's addiction (and the way that builds into his story with Angeldust) is another commentary on free will. We know substance abuse is more complicated than just telling someone to stop the habit. And we know Husk is a character that also struggles with ptsd/cptsd because he is consistent throughout all iterations and by all writers as being this definition of the has-been, and this person who's truly at the end of his rope. He is deeply depressive and stuck in cycles that he uses to cope with how psychologically painful his lived reality is - he is struggling to cope, constantly. Despite this, he can think on his feet even when he is thrown into a fight and has kept himself alive even in a losing streak.
While other characters have names that represent their personas in hell, Husk has no name whatsoever, not one of his human era or to represent him. His name doesn't even try to translate to "no name" or something like that but instead it means "everything is gone" because a husk is literally the shell of what was. But Husk's changing magic abilities and his long lists of talents, skills, and lovers suggest that he is actually someone with a wealth opinions in life and death.
He was an overlord, he has a working system in the background that cycles souls through without having to even be there, and despite his current circumstance he is privy to knowledge about Alastor that suggests he figured something out about him no one else did. And I don't even mean to suggest that Husk figured out who Alastor's deal was with, I imagine he found out by mistake actually, but what he has figured out is how to keep Alastor from killing him despite him being the kill-overlords-guy. Husk ability to survive is almost a punishment for how miserable he seems to feel. So he is very much a character who embodies all of the ideas around feeling like your choices don't matter.
When we see that he has his casino in season two and then the writer is giving commentary on how Husk is surprised to learn how bad Angeldust situation is, it brings up a lot of questions about how Husk has more issues facing problems than he does necessarily overcoming them. Psychological wounds are real, and they swallow people in all sorts of ways and so Husk's addiction and his rumination on his trauma (his valentines day emails titled "I lost the ability to love a long time ago") make his own sense of free will constantly feel subjective to himself.
So basically they should all be allowed to get happy endings where they can do whatever they want. I literally think about the radiotrio so often, please understand that if we get radiotrio content in season three it's going to be a holiday for me.
kianamaiart
blakekathryn
stormborns
2087
