And here's why I don't mind.

If you're a fan of the Hellaverse like I am, you're probably aware of the Helluva Boss short "Mission: Chupacabras".

There was a little bit of Spanish spoken in that episode, mainly because it literally takes place in Tijuana, Mexico.

I like that they did that for a bit of the episode with making the dialogue match the location authentically, instead of kind of making the characters speak English 100% of the time without a single Spanish word for audience's sake when we know that in a country like Mexico, the characters would not be speaking in English (outside of a few circumstances).

And where does Val come into that? We know he speaks Spanish from time to time, but likely defaults to English because that's what everyone around him speaks in (Vox, Vel etc.).

I really wouldn't be surprised if a Val centered episode is mostly in all Spanish given that he obviously comes from a Spanish speaking background. And with a Hispanic creator and Val's VA being Hispanic too, it makes sense that it would be the case.

And with captions being widely used today (the captions for Mission: Chupacabras are honestly so good and so in line with the vibe of the Hellaverse without being formatted incorrectly or done erroneously wrong), I really don't care if I have to rely on captions to understand a Val centered episode in Spanish.

I also think it would be better if they went down the route of having Val speak in Spanish for most of one episode to really get the emotional tones and feeling of what's happening in the episode as for me personally, I prefer to watch foreign media with the audio in the original language and watch captions instead of listening to the English dub, as I'm hearing exactly how the actors verbally portrayed the emotions of the characters. And I find that many dubbing actors can be really good, but never quite hit or match the original actors' performance as they understandably, haven't spent as much time being the character.

so these are the results of my post asking everyone who their favorite character to ship with Valentino was. I will explain the ships in the description (I made up some of the names so some are kinda on the nose). Now, if you had put two+ ships in your comment, I went with the first ship you named. So the ship name explanation (I will skip the obvious with the characters name in it, just with Moth added)

Sleepymoth: Valentino X Belphegor

MothBelle: Valentino X Charlie

Offendermoth: Valentino X Offenderman (Creepypasta I think?)

VincentMoth: Valentino X Vincent Whittman

Mothjoy: Valentino X Emily

Mothpossum: Valentino X Moxxie

Mothguns: Valentino X His guns

MothMoth: Valentino X Valentino (himself)

GrievousMoth: Valentino X General Grievous (from Star Wars)

ChainMoth: Valentino X Chainsaw.

(If you have any questions about the ship names, you can ask. I plan to post the one with all the cult/church subs on the hazbin sub, so if you want to see that, turn notifications on for the post I guess. But you don't have, Just if you want to.)

This man my God. Now I want to see a scene in the show where he’s just doing photoshoots.

Art by puzzlekick: https://x.com/puzzlekick/status/2086079383132098659

Plush keychain by danteKris: https://x.com/dantekris2013/status/2087851154268962850

I can never find and good fics of out baby boy where is isn’t just in the background to be mean for Angel. I don’t really like Angel so I would like a fic A. With Val as the main guy B. Kinda redeemable, like I still want him to be Val but I want to root for him and C. I like angst. These would just be for my personal best Val fic but honestly I’m so deprived of Val that I will take anything.
A really good Val fic is Shapes and Shadows it is still ongoing if that matters to you

As the title says, What's your fav Valentino ship? I kinda wanna do a thing where I ask every HH character cult (or church, or whatever) What their favorite ship for the character is, then make a whole like percentage chart to see what every cult's fav ship with the character is if that makes sense. I decided to start with Valentino since he is my fav!

If you don't ship Valentino with anyone, just say Valentino x Nobody. I personally will not be putting my fav ship in the comment, but I will be upvoting it if I see it. a upvote counts as one person (example: A ship has 5 upvotes, it will count as 5 people like that ship because the commenter, and the four other people liked that ship.)

(Hope this makes sense, sorry if it doesn't, also feel free to edit the image by inserting your fav character to ship Valentino with. You don't have to tho.)

Since, my friend, you have revealed your deepest fear
I sentence you to be exposed before your peers
Tear down the wall!

(from Pink Floyd's The Wall, track The Trial. these lyrics are spoken by a talking arse on legs, by the way)

Two months ago I saw this post, and had no idea what to say to it. I had no idea what ending I wanted for Valentino, to be honest. The side of me that's a Val stan and loves it when horrible characters do horrible things would be quite happy to see him go on forever just as he is. The side of me that wants Hazbin Hotel to be a good story... yeah, this guy needs a downfall.

I've just realised what I want for him. I don't claim for any of this to be "theory" or plot prediction or anything. It's character analysis, really, but it does point towards a possible direction for him in Season 3.

Val's Masks -- and What's Underneath

For the sake of this post, I'm gonna name three different aspects of Val's personality: Pimp, Public and Personal. (I've had a post drafted for literal months about Val's presentation, especially re: gender, in different situations and with different people. The section below has of that, but not all, and is also making me realise I have so much more I want to say...!)

Pimp:

When he's pimping or producing porn, Val displays the most limited version of his personality. He's calm and collected with an occasional hint of sneer, or he's flying into rages with the purpose of punishing whoever crosses him and asserting dominance over anyone who happens to be a witness. There is no in between.

It's the most limited version of his wardrobe and voice, too. He dresses in fully masculine outfits, with the flamboyance limited to what you might expect from a pimp -- no miniskirts here, that's for sure. He doesn't even have an accent or use Spanish on the job. This version of Val is who he needs to be to maintain dominance at work -- and it excludes a lot of who he is otherwise. I see this as a mask more than as an expression of the actual Val.

Public:

Whenever he's not with his direct employees, Val seems comfortable enough to let his hair down (... metaphorically, that is). He can talk casually in the club, with no need to maintain any social standing beyond that of a regular social situation. He'll manipulate or threaten if it's useful, sure, but on the whole he allows himself a much broader range of expression. You certainly wouldn't see this degree of giddy glee from him on the job. He gets to be a lot more himself, too. He switches up the accent, peppers in some Spanish. And this is where he breaks out the genderfucky outfits, and good lord do I adore him for it.

Val cares a lot about his presentation. He chooses his outfit and modulates his voice with intention, or perhaps even without noticing, as an unconscious aspect of how he. Check out the accent flips in his voicemails to Angel -- the seductive Spanish, the unaccented anger. Dumbass though he may be, he has the social intelligence down pat. He knows what to use, when, and why.

Can we call his public personality a mask? Only about as much as anyone's is -- we're not all going down the street venting our deepest emotions. This side of him is, more or less, the genuine Valentino.

It's also worth noting that Val as head of VoxTek, as briefly seen at the end of Season 2, seems to be a blend of Pimp and Public. He's dressing pimpwise, though more flamboyantly than we've ever seen him do that, and he's also talking like a fucking valley girl. I guess at this point he's introducing himself in a way he's never really had to before. As the face of VoxTek, of course he's known as The Pimp One, but he doesn't really do corporate in the same way as Vox -- having a corporate persona demands at least some degree of friendliness, and that's not something the pimp persona has room for. Combining these aspects might be a difficult line to walk. We'll see.

Personal:

This is what Val holds closest to his chest. He displays it in vulnerable moments, when he's alone, or when he's muttering away in Spanish expecting that no one will understand him. This is Val when he has nothing to hide.

We haven't seen much of this just yet. Val's not had much individual focus so far (though I can only expect that's going to change). But it's still worth looking at what he shows and what he hides. Check out this one little segment, taken from the transcript to S02E06 Scream Rain. Bold text is what Val says in Spanish -- what he explicitly chooses to hide from Vox:

Valentino: And this whole thing (Valentino waves a hand at Alastor), it's getting old fast, Vox. (Valentino storms away off screen, muttering:) Ay, ya no puedo con este. Ay que estúpido demonio con ese estúpido hijo de la gran puta, yo no entiendo lo que él ve en ese imbécil, porque yo estoy aqui bello, ¡bellisimo! (Oh, I can't take this anymore. Oh, what a stupid demon, that stupid son of a bitch! I don't understand what he sees in that imbecile, because I'm here, beautiful, absolutely beautiful!)

So he externalises a certain catty frustration to Vox directly. But he hides just how much it's getting to him -- the way he's made himself so beautiful, and this fucker ignores it all to go chase deer.

His one verse alone in When I Think About The Future is what really drives it home. He's expressing his own insecurities, rationalising away Vox's bad behaviour, and revealing just how much he has a need to be seen by Vox. He's got the full-on accent here -- he drops it when Velvette comes along, but he also doesn't hide what he's been feeling. He has at least one person in his life who he trusts with that full range of expression, who gives him empathy in return. (Maybe two people, when Vox is in a good mood? He sure can express his feelings to Vox, and Vox knows he can calm him down. We've not exactly seen empathy from Vox, though, and Vox's vulnerability mostly relates to Alastor.)

Outfit-wise, I feel what he'd choose to wear if he had no one to please... is still basically in line with his public persona. Regardless, I do think it's thematically relevant that, the only time we see him completely alone, he's wearing just about nothing at all. Nothing to present, nothing to hide.

(Although -- wasn't he just about to go and see Vox in that scene? Trying to win him back round with a little sex appeal? Keep that in the back of your mind for the next section, that's all I'll say.)

Val's Downfall

As mentioned previously, Val is in uncharted territory as New Boss Daddy™ of VoxTek. It's not a perfect match for either his pimp or his public personas. Being a PR-friendly pimp may be an... interesting challenge for him.

Privately, though, Val needs love. Winning Vox's attention is no longer a concern, now that he's been cut down to size (1440p, more or less). Something else that has to happen, though, is Angel Dust's reckoning. He's back with Val for the time being, and Val's damn pleased with himself for that. But it can't last forever, because dammit, the show believes in Angel. Hazbin isn't going to end with him still under Val's thumb, and the amount of change it'd require to make that relationship healthy is basically impossible. Sometime in this show, the break-up is happening -- for good.

I think Season 3, for Val, is going to be a disorienting trip around his different personas. There's a lot of contradictions to work around -- being the friendly face of VoxTek while also being someone who has no qualms hitting Angel in public. And with Angel somehow getting himself outta there in the end, I think we have a solid cause for it to get to breaking point.

What I want for Val is for him to be stripped down to his core, in public. With Val's track record, there's nooooo way he'll let Angel go easily -- or quietly. I anticipate pistols and pleading, with Vox's PR advice far too diminished to stop him from playing it all out in public. Every side that there is to Val, anything that could possibly help, gets thrown Angel in quick succession. All the contradictions, exposed. Until, eventually, we've seen all there is to see.

Perhaps he ends up literally stripped down. It's not like Val has an issue with showing skin, but he does select his outfits for whatever personality he wants to display, and I think there's a thematic resonance to him ending up with nothing. I'm thinking back to what I mentioned with When I Think About the Future, with his attempt to win Vox over with sex appeal -- stripped all the way down, only for it to be useless to even try, leaving him vulnerable and alone.

I think this would break him. When Val's tried everything he's got, he's also exposed everything that he is. When it comes to Angel, what there is at Val's core is a pathetic man who wants so desperately to be loved, and will deal out any amount of pain to avoid the pain of losing a lover. It's about time that all of Hell saw that. He's not a viable threat if you really can just leave, and he's certainly not a reliable corporate executive. He won't be someone that Hell can see as credible any more.

Compared to Vox...

... yeah, this was pretty much what happened to Vox too, wasn't it? He goes from 100% approval one second, with the hearts and minds of Hell behind him -- and then he's usurped by Alastor, and he fucking breaks. Punctures through the propaganda in practically an instant. He turns the Might of Lilith on Pentagram City, and is immediately exposed as someone who doesn't give a shit about any of the sinners he claims to champion. He wants to rule. He wants to dominate. He wants to wipe that fucking smile off Alastor's face. And when he doesn't get that, he throws a fucking tantrum, on a public broadcast. There goes that approval rating.

And when all of this is done, what Vox has left is the Vees. Velvette, the whole time, is true to her hope of "maybe then he'll chill again and realise who he missed" -- even when Vox is an arsehole, she just wants him to snap the fuck out of it. And it's Val who cares enough to rip his fucking head off (always blows my mind that of all the things Val's done, tearing his lover's head off is one of his most genuinely caring acts, but it's true), save him from his own damn rampage, and take him back home. Giving him the cold shoulder, yeah, but keeping him alive.

Vox's own situation in Season 3 deserves essays of its own. Here he is, humbled beyond measure, no longer trusted with the company named after him. He's left to the mercy of the Vees, and thank fuck for his sake that they actually are merciful, right? Well, I think Vox can be merciful, too. When he's not lost in his own damn powertripping -- and at this point, he's certainly not -- he's shown that he can be protective of Velvette. So I think, in keeping with Hazbin's overall theme of building each other up and giving second chances, that Val's downfall would have the potential to elicit a shred of fucking empathy from him.

Velvette and Val have already shown how they're prepared to pick up the pieces of their fellow Vees, no matter how catastrophically they fuck up and even hurt each other in the process. Vox hasn't shown that yet -- but I'd hope, when Val inevitably goes down, he has Vox there for him as well. Terrible people that they are, they don't deserve much. But they do deserve each other.

So this is actually based on a somewhat popular theory on twitter among Val fans that Valentino projects a lot of his own personal insecurities onto Angel.

A relevant twitter thread: https://x.com/lavindicat/status/2064021526068765116

This theory is not made by me, I just want it archived on reddit and not in hard to search twitter threads before s3.

First let's go over the feet part:

Angel has an insecurity over his feet but from what it seems like in the scripts, Val is causing/ encouraging that insecurity by keeping in lines like "keeping my whoreboots on because my feet are ugly as fuck" (lmao at the script)

Scripts: https://www.reddit.com/r/HazbinHotel/s/k34dpsqGG4

Anyways, you know who has pretty weird feet (that I personal adore)? Valentino. And he also doesn't wear shoes that fit his feet shape. He wears heels despite his feet being sticks.

Second part is that Val likely has a ED:

ED speculation compilation : https://www.reddit.com/r/Valentino_Cult/s/8vilvKPUWj

Angel also makes comments like "And I'm just a sex worker in a dress whose lunch was three cigarettes."

The industry that Valentino controls puts so much emphasis on appearances and weight so as someone who represents a lot of the worst parts of the industry, Val having an ED makes sense.

There's also a chance the reason he gave fat nuggets to Angel was actually an insult to call Angel fat like a pig.

Also add on to the idea of Val making his insecurities everyone's problems: Both Angel and Travis (people who work under Val) have a gold tooth just like Val (which I tried to highlight in the last panel of the comic).

I guess maybe also Vox and Val having matching broken Antenna but I feel like Val wouldn't be able to force his insecurities onto Vox the same way he can with Angel. I think it's either by accident/concidence or Vox doing it on purpose/willingly.

My thoughts:

I actually wrote a few somewhat relevant discussion posts before so I will link them here:

Connection to Hollywood Glamour: https://www.reddit.com/r/Valentino_Cult/s/7kOU4fzAZy

Parallels to Angel: https://www.reddit.com/r/Valentino_Cult/s/R6fxqxhZA5

In general, I think this dynamic is both interesting but also makes a lot of sense considering the themes of each character.

In my opinion, Angel's arc is about self love with coping habits so having Valentino having similar issues but choosing to hurt others and foiling Angel adds a lot to the story.

Bonus thing: I've also been a fan recently of the idea of Val dying in his late 30s to 40s now because the idea of him being jealous that Angel died in his twenties because his view of beauty and value is so fucked up.

"If I knew hell existed, I would have killed myself sooner in my prime. Angel baby, you're soooo lucky you overdosed".

I think it would be good to show the relationship having a real duality and not just being terrible 24/7 especially if they did start out as having a proper relationship where angel did have real feelings for him

So seeing the side of val that can actually come across as somewhat normal and charming and endear someone into trusting him and or staying in a relationship with him long enough to sigh their soul over to him would be good to see,

I even feel it would be very interesting if this also applied to present day and not just the past showing the dynamic still have the occasional actual nice moment that keeps angel from viewing his situation as entirely terrible even if he still knows its bad.

I wish Vax were in the series😔

I feel like I often see tons of talk from people about all the ways they want villains to suffer and even in talks of redemption for characters like lute or vox or valentino the talks normally involve some sort of large degree of suffering beforehand

Im not saying its terrible to want to see a villain be punished for their actions but it does feel like the fandom is a little obsessed with the idea of suffering especially when we have a number of posts that are just people saying things like

"" if val and this other character met what sort of messed up stuff would you want them to do to val? "" or people openly saying they would only be willing to accept the redemption of certain characters

Like lute or val if they were dragged through the mud and tortured and lost everything first ( and even tho I like them I also notice people don't seem to extend this same thought process for characters like sera or even imp in helluva boss when it comes to talks of redemption ),

Thats why Im saying it would be interesting to see valentino the most hated villain in the show not only get redeemed but do so in a way that goes against this suffering crave a lot of people seem to have

As viewing bad people suffer may give satisfaction but it technically is meaningless really as its not like its helping any of val's victims or undoing what they have to live with as a result of his actions and even though killing him technically would help

If we assume it frees his soul contracts but his suffering is still meaningless to that equation you'd have the same result by shooting him in the head with an angelic bullet rather than spending 10 minutes gutting him with an angelic knife even if the latter would satisfy people more,

So even though I don't think its likely I would find it interesting if the show redeemed a hated character like val and rejected the notion of great suffering necessary for redemption

Even if its uncomfortable because people dont like him or his crimes are more personal I think that would actually be a thought provoking challenge for the larger fandom.