Maybe YouTube recommends one of the music videos or animated shorts on her channel Vivziepop, which has generated more than 1.6 billion views since it was established in 2012. Or you catch an ad about her animated YouTube show Helluva Boss coming to Prime Video. Or you see that show’s spin-off card game popping up on Kickstarter.
No matter how it starts, though, once you start looking into Medrano’s work, it immediately feels like you’re way behind the curve. There’s a huge, active fandom for her gleefully profane, heartfelt adult animated shows, set in the shared Hellaverse. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: There’s a ton of Vivziepop merch, including an extensive series of collaborations with existing collectibles brands. There’s a vast wealth of important series lore, pieced together by fans from Medrano’s convention panels, social-media posts, online online Q&As, and drawing streams.
Some of those fans have been following her for a decade or more, ever since she was an art student with a popular webcomic called Zoophobia. There’s a lot to catch up on in her work and her world. Hellaverse fans in particular could spend months digging into her decade-long history of online development, posting prequel comics, early versions of Hazbin Hotel characters on Tumblr, and proof-of-concept animatics on YouTube.
And there’s about to be a whole lot more, with new seasons of Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss on the way. Medrano is at the center of an expanding animation empire that’s hitting a lot of new milestones in 2025. Polygon sat down with her for our fall preview to get a broad look at where she, the Spindlehorse team, and major projects like Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss, and Homestuck are going this fall.
What’s the plan for the Homestuck pilot?
“What’s exciting about Homestuck is, it’s very experimental,” Medrano told Polygon via Zoom. She isn’t just talking about the content of Andrew Hussie’s webcomic epic, she’s also talking about the expansion of her animation company. The 11-minute Homestuck pilot is the first project for Spindlehorse’s new Australian studio branch, Spindleroo. It’s also Spindlehorse’s first project built around characters and a story that Medrano didn’t originate.
“It’s the test pilot for lots of things,” Medrano said. “The studio, the process, a new style, a new technology. I’m excited by it, because I don’t know what its future is. It all honestly depends on the audience, obviously.”
I believe it encompasses most of the first chapter
Spindleroo isn’t planning a full Homestuck series yet — nothing more than the initial pilot has been confirmed. Medrano and the creative team initially announced a September TBD launch date for the pilot on YouTube, but those plans are still up in the air for the moment, because of other Spindlehorse projects.
“The audience reaction is going to determine whether studios are interested [in developing Homestuck as a full animated series], and whether we want to continue it on [the Vivziepop] channel,” Medrano said. “The possibilities are endless right now, but it really does all depend on what people think of it. It’s a really fun pilot. No matter what, it’s like, ‘Yay, we animated something that’s never been properly animated before!’”
In terms of the challenges of condensing Homestuck’s massive, frequently medium-hopping story down to a TV narrative, Medrano says that’s in the hands of original creator Hussie and Spindlehorse animation director Skye Henwood.
“[Henwood] is obviously an enormous fan and knows the comic very intimately — grew up with it, was in the fandom. So they’re working together to condense it, if we continue it. It is very daunting. It is a massive story.”
Medrano isn’t sure how much of Homestuck’s original comics story is in the pilot. “I believe it encompasses most of the first chapter, because the first chapter is pretty small,” she said. “So at least with this pilot, it’s a pretty substantial little chunk of the overall story, but some of the chapters are infinitely longer than this first one. I know they’re working together to bring it to this medium, because it is very different from the comic, and the way people will engage with it will be different than the comic.”
In the original convention-panel announcement about the Homestuck pilot, Medrano revealed that the project got started when Hussie approached her company about a collaboration. Does that open the door for other webcomic creators to reach out about developing animated versions of their own series?
“My hope with starting with this project is, yes, we are opening the door to more creators and more original projects,” Medrano said. “Whether it be webcomics creators who have a pitch, or artists that have a unique idea that they’ve been trying to make into a show, we’re in the position where we can start hearing those things and potentially acting on them. That’s really exciting for me, because ultimately, even though I still also have a lot of projects of my own, outside of the Hellaverse or within it, I still ultimately would love to uplift other voices. Hopefully, our studio gaining that momentum allows us to open the doors.”
The plan for Hazbin Hotel season 2
Medrano’s Hazbin Hotel launched in 2019 on YouTube via a crowdfunded pilot, now viewed more than 117 million times. A24 picked it up for a series, which hit Prime Video in 2024. The eight-episode first season tells a fast-paced start-to-finish story about the demon princess Charlie Morningstar, a sweet Disney-princess type who launches a plan to redeem sinners in Hell and send them to Heaven, so Heaven will stop sending a yearly wave of angelic soldiers to exterminate them, supposedly to curtail overpopulation.
The first season changes the rules of the Hellaverse considerably, leaving the future uncertain for season 2, arriving on Prime on Oct. 29 — and for seasons 3 and 4, which have already been greenlit. Medrano says her plan for the show encompasses five seasons, and fans will really see that story start to come together in season 2.
Season 2 is what the show was meant to be
“Season 2 is what the show was meant to be,” she said. “Visually, pacing-wise, scale-wise, narrative-wise, it’s just a level up from season 1. I love season 1 to death, but season 1 was made in a vacuum. We weren’t sure if the show would continue. We had a limited amount of episodes, and a very limited amount of runtime. I knew exactly what I wanted that first-season story to be, and it was very, very hard to cram it all into that first season. I’m very proud of what we did — we pulled off something borderline-impossible. But what’s nice about season 2 is, it’s allowed to be a full season of television. I feel like this season is really impressive compared to season 1.”
Like season 1, season 2 will be eight episodes long. But some of the episodes will be longer than the first-season installments, “depending on what we needed — which made all the difference,” Medrano said. “The pacing is better, because the story is simpler than season 1, where there was so much going on. We were meeting the characters, we were dealing with the Heaven extermination deadline being pushed up, we were dealing with a big build to a final stand. There was just so much to cram into those eight episodes, at 22 minutes each. So the runtime for the episodes in season 2 are longer by default. We were able to get much more out of the runtime, and out of the episode count.”
Thematically, season 1 has Charlie and her allies resisting the rules governing Heaven and Hell — and learning they’ve been lied to about what the rules are. Asked whether season 2 has a similar big-picture arc, Medrano said, “Season 2 is a mix of a cautionary tale about misinformation, and [a story] about remembering who you are, and not letting someone basically tell you who you are. There are a lot of themes of identity and power and insecurity, particularly around both our hero and our villain. They kind of mirror each other in different ways, because both of them have very specific insecurities and very specific identities.”
Helluva Boss’ new home, and its old home
Medrano’s other series, Helluva Boss, also launched in 2019 on YouTube, and it also takes place in the Hellaverse, with an entirely different set of characters — primarily a team that runs a Hellish assassination service. It’s also a fraught love story, as Hell-born imp Blitzo (voiced by series co-writer Brandon Rogers), a circus clown turned assassin, navigates a complicated relationship with his Hell Prince lover Stolas. Medrano and Rogers have produced two seasons of the show on YouTube. Those initial seasons arrived on Prime Video on Sept. 10, and Prime is currently producing seasons 3 and 4, which will debut on Prime before arriving for free streaming on YouTube.
We’re making seasons 3 and 4 together as two massive connected projects
The Sept. 10 Prime launch of the series came with a new episode, “Mission Zero,” which Medrano described to Polygon as “essentially a new starting point” for the series.
“The original Helluva Boss had a pilot that me and Brandon made, but now that both the shows have really come into their own, we realize there are a lot of rules in this universe,” she said. “There are a lot of things we have to maintain between the two series to maintain consistency and keep the universe feeling accurate to itself. That original pilot breaks a lot of those rules. It was very much Brandon’s style meeting my style. We just went for comedy, we went for zaniness. It’s a really fun short — I still love it, I love some of the animation in it, obviously it has a very special place in my heart. But as a functional episode, it does not work for the show anymore.”
“Mission Zero” is meant to reintroduce the main characters as well. “It’s basically a new pilot that has the spirit of the original pilot, but fits with the current Hellaverse and its lore,” Medrano said. “For new audiences, it’s going to be really helpful, because it’s much more in line with the series that we ended up making. And I think it’ll set up viewers better — people really hold to that original pilot, and it’s so inaccurate, I feel like it causes a lot of inconsistencies for people. New audiences will maybe have a smoother ride with the show.”
Medrano has planned Helluva Boss as a four-season show. “I have the ending [planned out] exactly. We actually have mapped out the whole series. The only difference is that the seasons are much longer, so it’s not going to be like, Oh, it’s only four seasons? It’s a lot of episodes, ultimately.”
Medrano describes season 3 as “a very enormous arc” with implications that shape season 4. “I can’t give away what separates 4 from 3, but I feel like it’s a really satisfying culmination of everything the show is built up for. The ending I have in mind is satisfying — obviously there are totally opportunities to branch off, or do spin-offs or whatever. But I pride myself on having these initial stories with these characters. I have an idea in mind for a satisfying ending, and I want to stick to that and commit to it.”
Dates haven’t been set yet for seasons 3 and 4 of Helluva Boss, and Medrano says she “probably can’t speak to that entirely. I don’t even totally know, because it changes depending on the needs of the season. We’re making seasons 3 and 4 together as two massive connected projects, just because they were green-lit at the same time. But the future of the show obviously depends on all these other factors. So we’ll see what the timeline ends up being.”
What’s up beyond the Hellaverse?
Medrano does have other projects in mind for the future, once she has time to work on something other than her two active series. “I just need the time to write and develop them,” she said. “Some of them, people know. We did a short on my channel called Bad Luck Jack, based on my webcomic from when I was in college. I would love to do more with those characters. So far, I just plan on doing more shorts with them, and we’ll see how that manifests. I would love to do a graphic novel with them. That’s always what I wanted as a college student.”
Similarly, she says she’d like to develop the world of her thesis short, “Timber,” a “little Western musical” posted on YouTube. But outside of the projects her fans have already seen teases of, she says she has “projects that are kind of unannounced, slash, in my head that I would love to work on. It’s just about finding the time.
“My world is very much the Hellaverse, as the head writer. I just have so many scripts and so many focuses between both shows. When we finished writing Hazbin, I immediately jumped to Helluva Boss — we have to script at least half the season to keep up with the schedule. There’s still a good amount to write for both shows. But once that’s more clear, I’m hoping to shift my focus to some of these other projects to get some solid shorts made.”
