Helluva Boss Hindsight Review: Loo Loo Land
Man, “Loo Loo Land” sure does hit differently after “Oops” and the Mammon mid-season special, doesn’t it?
Even before there was so much development with Fizzarolli later in the series, what always impressed me about “Loo Loo Land” was the smart choice to give us a Stolas episode so early in the show. It’s a needed move after the Pilot and “Murder Family” to provide context behind his actions. Part of Helluva Boss’ charm is how incredibly flawed most of the main characters are. These flaws allow for intricate storytelling that’s messy in all the right ways. Despite how awful Stolas can be at times in this episode, his worst parts are balanced with a relatability that makes him feel very real.
I read Stolas as coded for someone who has been a closeted queer person up to this point. For the first time in his life, he’s free from the confines of his marriage and royal upbringing. He’s in the throes of love and experiencing that warmth and joy. In turn, it blinds him to Octavia’s pain and needs until it’s too late. Nothing Stolas does leading to Octavia walking out on him is morally right, but the nuance is that none of it comes from a place of malice. He makes a grave mistake with his daughter, recognizes it, and then works to correct it. He messes up again in Season 2 with “Seeing Stars” because growth is rarely linear. It’s fantastic writing for Stolas, which is continued throughout the show, allowing for him to backslide and work on being in a better place by the end. He might not be a perfect dad, but he’s trying to be better.
Stolas’ writing with Octavia can also be applied to his relationship with Blitzo. When Robo Fizz asks, “Does anyone love you, Blitzo?” I would argue the answer at this point is no. Sure, that might be a hot take, but Stolas and Blitzo have not been together long enough to know what true love is. Yes, Stolas is infatuated with Blitzo clearly. The Season 2 opener, “The Circus,” gives context that these two have a past together. However, there is a difference between being “in love” and “love,” which is the show's point.
Stolas has a clear power dynamic over Blitzo, which is only starting to be addressed in Season 2. It helps to have a healthy relationship to mirror these two with Fizzarolli and Asmodeus, another incredibly inspired choice by the creators. The difference is as individuals, Stolas and Blitzo are not where Asmodeus and Fizzarolli are in their lives. The latter is what the first two will try to achieve in their own way. “Loo Loo Land” is the first step for Stolas to realize his infatuation with Blitzo can’t run over the other important people in his life, including how Stolas sees himself. Part of Stolas moving from being “in love” with Blitzo to “loving” him truly is learning his own personal balance as an individual as he works through his past.
Robo Fizz’s question for Blitzo is also equally telling. One theme of Helluva Boss is hurt people healing and finding their way forward despite what society tells them. The question “Does anyone love you, Blitzo?” is a thesis statement early in the series. Blitzo wants love, but his own self-hatred sabotages him at every turn. He cannot fathom Stolas’ affections for him. He compares his failures to Fizzarolli’s success, even when it’s a robot. He’s jealous of Moxxie and Millie’s relationship, butting into their love life while yearning for that connection. He adopted Loona, wanting to have someone to love.
Season 1 lays down a lot of this groundwork for Blitzo, which will continue into the next episode with the arrival of Verosika in “Spring Broken.” Once that foundation is set, it lets Season 2 begin to rip it back up again so Blitzo can begin to mend these relationships and start to see his own self-worth. “Loo Loo Land” throws down this idea early on, paving the way for the rest of the show with a single piece of dialogue.
I also just really feel for Octavia. As a child of divorced parents, I know this pain—as Sam Haft’s song says—of everything you know burning down around you, and it’s entirely out of your control. One of my visceral memories during my parents’ divorce was watching them separate Christmas ornaments. These trinkets that I grew up with that completed our tree would never be together ever again. It was that realization sinking in that my world had changed into something unknown and unrecognizable. It’s frightening at times. Octavia’s story is very real and palpable in that way. She’s scared and hurting, wondering if her parents love her anymore. That reassurance from Stolas is what she needs. I adore Octavia’s story, especially with the addition of “Seeing Stars” in Season 2. While there are things and people lost in divorce, there can be love and new family found as well.
Stella is a character I’m interested to see what they do with her in the long term. She is immediately unlikable out of the gate, and she has remained that way so far in the series. Granted, we’ve mostly seen her from the point of view of Stolas, and we’ve never seen her one-on-one with Octavia. In the episode “Ozzie’s” when it’s mentioned Octavia is staying with her mother, I’m intrigued at what that weekend looks like because it would say a lot about Stella. Does she love her daughter? Does she see Octavia as a possession of her status? We don’t have much to go on, and a well-placed scene could completely recontextualize Stella.
The thing is, and this may be a hot take, I hope Stella is never redeemable. Stories need villains, and not everyone in a show has to go on a character journey. I think it’s commonplace in a lot of media now to make a sympathetic villain. However, sometimes bad guys are just bad, and that’s okay. What makes someone like Emperor Belos in The Owl House or Joffrey Baratheon in Game of Thrones enjoyable to watch is the promise of their comeuppance. It’s cathartic when they fail or are beaten by the heroes. While I love a redeemed villain, part of me doesn’t want that for Stella. She gives a lot of context to Stolas’ story of why he wanted to leave, and she doesn’t have to be more to that. They’re in Hell; let people be evil for the sake of being evil. Sometimes villains are black and white. In the right hands, like with the Helluva Boss’ creators, it can be executed well.
This might sound funny to say three episodes into a series, but “You Will Be Okay” opening the episode made me realize that this show was a musical. The first time I watched it, it dawned on me that the entire show would have a song in every episode. For some reason, the I.M.P. jingle from the Pilot and the opening song from “Murder Family” didn’t register with me right away that this was a musical series. It also helps that Stolas’ song is one of the first heavy-hitting spectacles of the series.
“You Will Be Okay” is a beautiful number where the crew got to show off early in the show. Sam Haft’s music and Bryce Pinkham’s performance are hauntingly gorgeous together. It’s an instant fan favorite as it laid down some of the earliest lore of where the show could be going. Up to this point, Helluva Boss had introduced characters in an adventure-of-the-week style of storytelling. This musical number gave fans something truly meaty to dig into with theories and speculations. It’s just cryptic enough where the crew aren’t showing their hand, but it hints at more significant stories to come down the line. It’s a fantastic showstopper early on in the show.
Paired with the rest of the episode, “Loo Loo Land” also offers some solid early world-building. On the heels of “Exes and Oohs,” “Oops,” and “MAMMON'S MAGNIFICENT MUSICAL MID-SEASON SPECIAL (ft Fizzarolli),” this episode laid down a ton of groundwork for later episodes by introducing the Greed Ring and early hints of Mammon and Ozzie.
Which brings us to Blitzo and Robo Fizz.
I would be fascinated to know if the later Blitzo and Fizzarolli developments were planned from the start or if they built off the foundation of “Loo Loo Land.” Was this episode always foreshadowing later events from day one of production? Was Fizzarolli’s injuries and role developed later with the creation of Season 2? Was it a bit of both? It’s normal for stories to change at times over the course of production, and rewatching this episode left me curious about how this process developed.
Because again, MAN! “Loo Loo Land” sure does hit differently after “Oops!”
There is so much foreshadowing in the fight between Blitzo and Robo Fizz that I have to think it was planned out from the beginning. While the fire at the circus is by far the obvious moment that stands out, one little detail is the most telling. It is Robo Fizz’s eye. The first thing to burn away is his right eye, the same eye where Blitzo has his scar.
That’s a haunting image for Blitzo to face. If I had any gripe about this episode, I wish that moment had a few extra beats to give Blitzo some sort of severe reaction. Season 2 meticulously fleshed out Blitzo's trauma around how and why Fizzarolli was injured. That guilt was a huge part of his self-loathing and one of the significant hurdles of healing Blitzo needed to claw his way over. To see Robo Fizz walk out of the flames and lose the eye is a walking monster of trauma that’s glossed right over. It’s a nice moment of foreshadowing, but in my opinion, that could have hit so much harder if they gave Blitzo a moment to seriously react.
However, I can understand if the creators didn’t want to show off too much too early. One of the perks of this early season is picking up on those moments on second viewing. I mentioned in “Murder Family” how what looks like a joke on the surface was actually Moxxie foreshadowing his strained relationship with his father. If they gave Blitzo a traumatic reaction to Robo Fizz coming out of the fire, it would tell the audience a lot of information without dialogue. I can understand why they would want to hold back on this knowledge.
Lastly, I have more of an appreciation of Robo Fizz and how he functions in the story after the Mammon special. Robo Fizz lacks Fizzarolli’s heart and soul, which was reclaimed in the Season 2 mid-season spectacular. He represents what Fizzarolli could have become if he stayed on his path without Ozzie and Blitzo’s intervention. It makes “MAMMON'S MAGNIFICENT MUSICAL MID-SEASON SPECIAL (ft Fizzarolli)” all the more rewarding.
Though, Robo Fizz is relatively sentient. While this one version didn’t quite make it out of Loo Loo Land, how are other Robo Fizz bots going to react to Fizzarolli quitting? Are they going to rebel for being discarded? Will they simply be changed into new Glitz and Glam bots to save cost? Am I overthinking this and nothing will happen? We’ll just have to wait and see.
I adore “Loo Loo Land.” The episode genuinely snagged me in for the long run and made me a fan of Helluva Boss. It’s still up there as one of my personal favorite episodes. In hindsight, too, it’s an essential early episode that lays the groundwork for the rest of the series.
Also, did the Moxxie and Millie scene trying to win The Thing at the shooting game remind anyone else of “The Time Traveler’s Pig” in Gravity Falls, or was that just me?
