hazbin hotel is a show that, before anything else, is a show about redemption. it tells you so. it tells you. literally in the first episode. its main character, while naive, is never doubted even once by the story's narrative that every single person in the world can be redeemed if they put their mind to it. charlie is wrong about a lot of things but not once has she ever been wrong about that.
i think this puts a lot of people off, especially people who have been hurt. valentino's crimes are very, very human ones. to a lot of people, murder is a far-off thing (because murder victims tend to be. dead, although that doesn't even begin to touch upon families and friends of murder victims) and thus much more easily excused. that's why everyone thinks alastor is a fucking hottie and they're not even wrong like meow.
ok back to valentino. i would like to preface this by saying i myself am not a survivor of SA or sexual abuse or anything like that, this is simply my perspective as someone who knows victims of these crimes and is trying to provide a perspective empathetic to them.
lots of people have survived sexual abuse and assault, and lots of people are deeply affected by it and able (and should be if they wish) to tell their stories. a lot of the time abusers get away with their crimes and are never brought to justice, leaving behind victims who are forced to battle with what happened to them - so in our minds we can see them as more villainous, more cruel, more evil. victims of traumatic events especially are prone to this sort of thinking because thinking in more grey areas before they're ready would open them back up to being harmed again, and even people who aren't victims may feel this way through hearing about such acts, through friends or even strangers. thus, you can see why a character like valentino, who is a rapist and an abuser and a terrible person, but also is jealous and human and heartbroken and cares deeply for his best friends, might... raise a few eyebrows.
not once will i ever tell a survivor of any sort of abuse that they should forgive or go back to their abusers. don't do that!!!!!!! but i can quite easily forsee the redemption of all of the vees in the future of hazbin, despite the fact every single one of them condones or participates in murderous, abusive, and generally disgusting behaviour. because truthfully, while we can feel as angry as we please and never forgive people who hurt us, hazbin hotel will tell us again and again that these people can and should be redeemed, if only so they will never hurt anyone again.
it is an extremely uncomfortable reality but abusers are people. the abuser-victim dichotomy does not exist, and there are abusers who have done good things, and victims who are bad people, even if it is only because of the abuse. we talk a big game about 'the abused becomes the abuser' but when it comes to practice i only ever hear people calling abusers evil and terrible and that we should all kill them. the world operates in shades of grey and hazbin hotel is possibly one of the only shows i have seen genuinely acknowledge that.
it tells you that no matter what you have done, you are still a person. you are still human, and even if you have done something terrible, the only thing that you can do to avoid being worse is to be better. good people don't exist. evil people don't exist. and everyone deserves redemption.
i worry, that as someone who is not an SA survivor, i have said something insensitive, so i would like to close this off by saying i mean all of this in very good faith. i stand for terrible people becoming better because that means not only that less people will be hurt in the future, but that those who believe they have committed irreparable wrongdoing might see the light. i know so many people who ruminate on their own perceived sins and believe that they are permanently marked as wrong. i want the people who have done the most wrong in the world to do better so that people like this can turn around and see that they aren't going to be stuck down the evil pit of sin and evil for the rest of their lives. that someone will turn around and love them again. that maybe whoever they hurt doesn't have to forgive them, but their life, their goodness, doesn't have to end at their original sin.
given more time, i think hazbin hotel might extend that message to a lot of people who otherwise would not come into contact with it. and that, i think, is the heart of why i love this show. it tells you that you can do better. that it starts with sorry.