Sir Pentious’s original sin was that he didn’t report the murderer of a women to the police. He witnessed the crime and did nothing.
When Sir Pentious ended up in Hell, his behavior seems to change. Was he trying to fit in? Gain respect? Or protect himself? The idea that he was protecting himself makes sense, especially considering how dangerous his environment is. In Hell, however, he adopts a performative villain persona.
When he was alive, he lived alone and focused on his inventions. In Hell, he does something similar, but it turns into more of a “villain” performance—almost like terrorizing others using his inventions to show look "I'm evil too"? His continued focus on invention mirrors his life before death, but it becomes reframed as he created dangerous weapons to fight.
However, in Baxter’s flashback, he appears quite calm and safe. He protects the Egg Boizs from Baxter and even kicks Baxter out.
Minor correction, though not to be pedantic. Pentious doesn't kick Baxter out, Pentious elects to leave because he can't stand by cruelty (even though he himself was also really mean to Egg Bois in season 1). But you're on to something there, anon.
I suppose we're supposed to see his "evil" schtick as performative and that, deep down, he actually wanted to be a "good boy". But they very clearly show him being pathetically needy like Hell's least wanted groupie.
I pointed out in episode 3 of my Hazbin Hotel Liveblog of season 1 that Pentious was given a whole new personality trait of "Paranoia" as an excuse to introduce Carmilla and her arms dealing. Which also feels contradictory to Pentious being an inventor when he is literally buying weapons from Carmilla that he otherwise was supposed to be making himself as that is sort of his whole "thing".
But that's what I mean. Pentious as a character is "whatever the plot needs". His abilities and personality morph to the needs of the episode in the moment.
Pentious is shy about sex in the flashback of season two and one of the most ace-coded characters in the show only for him to openly proposition Cherri. Added to it that he's supposed to be emotionally intelligent in season 2 but all of season 1 depicts him as socially inept throughout. Even his kiss with Cherri comes from nowhere other than he's summoned as much stereotypical masculinity as he can for his Independence Day suicide mission and a dramatic kiss before a sacrifice is a trope.
Pentious desperately wants to be an overlord and get close to sinners like the Vs only for his sin to be he was a mousy little man who was scared to expose Jack the Ripper. The show acts like his turning Jack in would have had some kind of systemic repercussions by saying how rich and powerful the guy was as a client.
However, even during the times of the murders, the police had a strong suspect who was described by the assistant commissioner at the time as a "low-class polish jew" in his 1910 memoir and the Chief Inspector also had the name "Kosminski". And seeing as it was the 1880s-1910s that the case happened, there was no real way to have proof without either an eye-witness or being caught in the act. Which, by the way, there was an eye-witness who identified Kosminski, but the witness refused to testify in court due to him and Kosminski being Jewish.
As per Jewish law (still followed strongly in some communities), a Jewish man was forbidden to testify against a fellow Jew in non-Jewish courts.
And I know people will say "Hazbin is fictional." Okay, the murders weren't. Though my intention of bringing up the material reality of the case is to highlight how someone who isn't rich and powerful- and even someone grossly marginalized by society- could escape the law given the circumstances of the time. Because the implication of choosing to make the Ripper someone so powerful that reporting to the police risked life-ending repercussions implies system corruption.
So even if you want to push for this fictional idea of the Ripper as someone socially powerful and wealthy, once again we see the themes of "The system isn't bad, even when it's corrupted". Which, I say "once again" seeing as this is a smaller version of the idea that Heaven can commit an indiscriminate genocide against Sinners who have no ability to fight back and are already in a place of punishment for their wrong-doings and still be seen as morally "good".
And this opens a whole can of worms leading into what can only be a world-view criticism. If you think even a broken, corrupted system that will cause retribution in retaliation for any good-faith attempt to remove bad actors is not the problem, then you live in a really bleak world. And that's coming from a nihilist, but that mentality is how a lot of people justify religious organizations.
Sure, the Catholic church covered up generations of child sexual abuse, dissuaded parents from seeking legal action, moved pastors from one town to another to hide the allegations, and quietly destroy evidence. But that doesn't mean Catholicism is wrong! It's just a few bad actors that the actual organization of Catholicism works extensively to protect rather than protecting victims. But the system isn't the problem. God still works through it.
(By and by, they are still doing all of this in pretty much every religion you can think of. Even my own ex-church is finally being exposed for decades of CSA coverups.)
I know this was about Pentious but it became a discussion on the core problem of the storytelling, which I think is far more interesting. Basically, Pentious being in Hell broadcasts to viewers:
You are responsible for your moral inaction, even if action would have destroyed you. But the system that made action impossible is not morally culpable.
This isn't stressing any part of Medrano's story to reach. Pentious felt powerless and afraid to speak to the police, which resulted in him being sent to Hell. And his redemption is literally earned by being a victim to a similar, all-consuming power structure of systemic corruption (the exterminations).
Basically, the person in charge of the story has a fundamentally broken view of power, accountability, responsibility, and justice. So they contort the characters into positions that highlight these issues because they live in a world with deeply disturbing contradictions that they are forcing to some tenuously coherent moral construct that gets reflected in the values of their work.
And that's why this isn't a show critiquing religion. It is an exercise in self-soothing one's own choice to be helpless to the whims of corrupt power structures. And this dangerous sort of world view extends out of fiction and religious institutions into politics and society.
The logic goes like this:
Systems are flawed but ultimately necessary.
Abuse or injustice is caused by “bad actors.”
Moral responsibility is displaced downward, onto individuals with the least power.
Redemption or damnation is framed as personal, not structural.
This is why Pentious must be inconsistent:
If he were consistently kind, intelligent, and constrained, the system would look unjust.
By making him needy, pathetic, contradictory, or complicit, the story protects the legitimacy of the larger order.
