A Fizziepop Take: Let’s talk about a royally screwed father daughter relationship & a blossoming one
Ok, so this may just be my own daddy issues talking, but I have loved the two different father/daughter relationships Vivzie has shown us in both Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel, but I wanna talk about the two we’re all obsessed with in the HB universe: Stolas and his little owelette, and Blitz and his Loonie, because we have seen so much development in these father/daughter relationships, and although I have taken a short holiday break between posts, I wanna talk about this, so you know what time it is, let’s get into this!
Ok, so I have talked about how Loona’s past heavily affected her relationship with her adoptive father in a past post, but to sum it up, I’ve always liked the complexity of Loona and Blitz’s relationship because it mimics the complexity of a real parent/child relationship forged in the traumas each party has faced individually. Loona has always loved Blitz, and she has always viewed him as a father figure, but the trauma of her life prior to being in his care made her build walls and push him away at every chance because she had developed a “hurt/leave them before they can hurt/leave you” mentality, often meaning she would do and say anything to make it seem like she didn’t care about him and didn’t need him despite her craving the love he’s always given her. Does it excuse the way she’s treated her adoptive father? Not at all, but I think understanding the reasoning behind why Loona was the way she was with Blitz prior to “Mastermind”. Now, onto the father. Blitz’s constant overcompensation and essential ‘babying’ of Loona despite her being an adult now has been his attempt to embody the phrase “be who you needed when you were younger”. While we don’t know much about Blitz’s mother at this point (other than the fact that he loves and misses her and still blames himself for her death), we do know that Cash Buckzo was an abusive, manipulative man who made Blitz feel like less than at every chance he had, and Blitz saw a lot of the hurt he felt as a kid in Loona when he found her in the pound, and he’s spent every moment since her adoption to give her the love and support he wished he had from his own father when he was a kid, which resulted in Blitz being a bit of a pushover when it came to Loona all for the sake of being better than his father. And although we do see glimpses of Loona breaking her walls down ever so slightly and changing their dynamic, everything combined from both of their pasts is what made Blitz and Loona’s father/daughter relationship seem so one-sided…. That is until season 1’s episode “Queen Bee”...
In season 1’s episode “Queen Bee”, Blitz is spiraling from the events of his “date” with Stolas in the episode prior, and we see him using sex and alcohol to cope with the complex emotions he’s feeling, and in that vein, he’s partying with Loona and the other hellhounds in Beelzebub's realm of Gluttony. Blitz’s party boy nature earns him a lot of “friends” for the night, which in turn, earns Loona a lot of attention having a relation to him, which helps her tremendously with her anxiety and awkwardness at the party… Although Loona’s excitement and closeness to Blitz seemed to be purely for the attention he garnered, by the end of the episode, we do see a side of her that shows a sort of gentleness towards her adoptive father, and thankfully that growth between the two is carried on as the series goes on, which leads us to the emotional episode that is “Mastermind”.
“Mastermind” is a huge turning point for Blitz and Loona’s relationship because, while Blitz wears his heart on his sleeve when it comes to his beloved little hellhound, this is the first time Loona lets her feelings for Blitz show outwardly in front of other people, and it’s the turning point for Loona internally as she realizes that she probably would be fine without Blitz…. But after all the time spent with him (even when she tries to hate it), she realizes that she doesn’t want to be without him just yet. Not only is this a huge character development for Loona, but it opens up the realm of the types of storylines that can be created now that Loona has outwardly began to accept the imp as her father….
But as with almost everything, there are two sides to every coin, so if we wanna talk about the blossoming of Blitz and Loona’s father/daughter relationship, we most certainly are gonna have to address the father/daughter relationship that we may have watched crumble before our very eyes in “Sinsmas”: Stolas and Octavia.
Stolas and Octavia’s father/daughter relationship has been…. Strained to say the least… But not many people are willing to talk about it, or rather they weren’t up until the “Sinsmas” episode was released. Since the release of the latest episode of Helluva Boss, I’ve seen a lot of Octavia hate. Like A LOT of Octavia hate. And I'm just gonna say it: It’s unwarranted, and I think we need to look at both perspectives.
Ok, so I’m not here to bash Stolas for what he did in “Mastermind” because I think he was justified in saving Blitz because, while he wasn’t the mastermind, he did play a part in why Blitz stood of what he was accused of, and I think it was honorable of him to own up to that to save Blitz’s life…. It was stupid not to think of the consequences it posed to him and his way of life since what happens to him can directly affect the wellbeing of his daughter, but it was still honorable. I’m also not here to bash Stolas as a dad because while he’s not been the best father, I think he’s been the best father he knew how to be. Given that Stolas wasn’t taught how to be a parent from what we saw, and most likely learned most of what he did about how to deal with children from the butler imp who seemed to be his keeper as a child, and books, I think he had to learn more on the fly than more I think most parents do, and I think he deserves mad props for that because I know that it must’ve been insanely hard to have his life flipped upside down the way it was when he learned that he had to not only be a prince but a husband and a father too when he was just a kid himself. And knowing that he did his best to be civil with a woman who abused him and attempted to publicly humiliate him at every chance she got, just for the sake of his daughter is honestly really heartwarming in a way…. But here’s the thing: sometimes doing your best is not enough, and sometimes sheltering someone from the reality of things isn’t what’s best for them, and we see that with Stolas and his relationship with Octavia.
In the episode “Looloo Land”, we see that Octavia’s world was kinda flipped upside down with her father’s affair because this is the first time that Stolas hasn’t tried to put her above everything, and we learn that she’s afraid of losing her dad to the man he’s been sleeping with. It’s a valid concern considering that Via is only maybe 15-16ish during this time, and because of how much her dad tried to keep the home “happy” for her sake, this is likely the first time she’s seen her parents relationship this disjointed and screwed up despite it having always been just that…. And because this is the first time that he himself has ever had to think about himself as a person with wants and needs and feelings, Stolas doesn’t have a solid answer for her on what is going to happen next in either of their lives, and the fact that Stolas brought Blitz to the theme park with them as a “bodyguard” (which kinda just seemed to jam him down Octavia’s throat in a way) didn’t help solidify the idea that her dad wasn’t just going to up and disappear on her.
As Via sees her parents fractured relationship without rose-tinted glasses for what is likely the first time in her life, she begins to place blame solely on Stolas, which isn’t fair to him since it often take 2 to bring a marriage to an end (even if both parties give up on the relationship at different times), but because Stolas never really sits his daughter down and talks to her about why his affair happened, in Via’s eyes, Stolas is at least 80% to blame because Stella isn’t the one who cheated, and what’s even bigger, Stella isn’t the one she held in high regard the way she did Stolas. I know this seems to blame Stolas, but the blame isn’t solely on him realistically, but to an emotional teen who has been shielded from the worst of things and needs someone to blame for her life suddenly being completely changed, placing the blame one the parent who has outwardly done something that could be seen as breaking up the family is easier than trying to navigate the mess that is complex adult relationships. Is this to say that Via telling her dad off in “Sinsmas” was right? No, but it was justified because in her eyes everything is still able to be boiled down to the simplest of forms despite the complexity of a situation because her thinking is still child-like in this instance and prior to this, no one ever put her in a situation where there where shades of gray amidst the black and white, which is why she can ask questions like “Why does he hate her more than he loves me”, and why she can hold Stolas to the promise he made her as a child. Via's line of thinking essentially equates to something along the lines of "I love him, but that's not enough because he doesn't love me.", which is why she can protect Stolas from andrealphus but turns around and basically tells him to fuck off with Blitz right after.
So all of this boils down to one question that I know hass probably been burning in everyone’s mind as the all seeing audience: What does this rift in their relationship mean?
As always, what this means for our beloved characters isn’t up to us, but I can say that I think that the events of “Sinsmas” have set up building blocks for a great sort of redemption arc for the relationship in future episodes where we see Octavia learning the more complex aspects of her parents relationship and how it all led to the affair that she believes broke up her family, and where Stolas actually gets himself in a healthy enough space mentally and emotionally to have the hard conversations with his daughter so that she isn’t seeing only the best of things. It will absolutely be a hard pill to swallow for everyone involved (moreso for Octavia considering that she no longer has a true support system to guide her through tough things), and I think that it’s a character arc that we may not see all at once, but rather in small increments the way we see Loona’s character development with Blitz, but I think that it will be worth it to see them both put in the work to better themselves and then come back together and build a father/daughter relationship that is based in honesty and fosters honest communication and trust.
As the fandom grows and the storyline advances, I hope that the relationships and characters continue to reach new heights in their development, and with the amazing story-telling we’ve gotten from Vivzie and her team so far, I think that this take will be the tip of the iceberg in what is to come in season 3, and hopefully for more seasons after. Let me know what you think about the father/daughter duos and the peaks and valleys we’re seeing with them as of now.
