Review by C.J. Bunce
If you count the decades of Scooby-Doo animated series and more recently ABC’s Ghosts series among your favorite shows, re-watching them and wishing for more, you may find a new Netflix series is the next best thing. Netflix Animation Studios’ Haunted Hotel arrived late last year with ten animated episodes leaning into all your favorite cartoon horror tropes. Haunted Hotel follows Katherine Freeling and her two kids who takes over management of the Undervale Hotel, last owned by her dead brother Nathan. It turns out she can see her brother as a ghost, and the entire hotel is inhabited with centuries of spirits of former residents and guests who haven’t concluded their “unfinished business”–all who can be seen by her family. The show isn’t as dark horror-themed as Hazbin Hotel, although it dabbles deeper into more personal (and other) demons than you saw with the Scooby Gang. But like the Scooby Gang, it’s primarily a laugh-out-loud comedy, with clever situations, filled with familiar genre actors voicing guest roles, just minus the laugh track.
Even better, in less than two weeks Netflix will be streaming the second season of Haunted Hotel right in time for Halloween. You can check out the latest trailer below.
Katherine, voiced by Eliza Coupe, is the typical sitcom mom. More refined than Peggy Bundy, she’s trying to raise two kids in a house filled with spirit world dangers in a setting mixing Ghosts with Newhart. She gets the support of ghost brother Nathan, voiced by Will Forte, and the actor’s familiar easy-going boyish charm makes for an almost-perfect mentor to Katherine’s kids. That’s preteen Esther, voiced by Natalie Palamides, an eccentric kid with much in common with Scooby’s pal Velma. Her older brother is typical awkward teen Ben, voiced by Skyler Gisondo, who first gained fame playing young Shawn on Psych.
But there is one more character in the main cast who is actually the best feature of the show. That’s Jimmi Simpson’s voice you hear playing Abaddon, an ancient demon who has found himself trapped inside the body of a small boy. He’s completely out of touch with all things modern, and is famous for acting out in both kid tantrum ways as much as supernatural ways. Abaddon is so completely real he may remind you of those two Goth friends you had in middle school. It’s worth replaying scenes just to marvel at all Simpson is able to do with his voice as he performs in all sorts of off-the-wall situations.
At its core, Haunted Hotel is an animated version of the British series Ghosts, remade in the U.S. into a successful CBS series starring Rose McIver (see five years of our reviews of this great show here). The animation will have older viewers feeling like they are among the Colorforms pieces in the Haunted Mansion playset from the 1970s. The murder mystery plots will also conjure the game of Clue/Cluedo, but it’s never so simple as finding the murderer, the weapon, and the room. No, these scripts pack in tropes and callbacks, like a ghost who looks just like Donald Sutherland’s possessed character at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and a re-dressed Freddy Krueger counterpart in the opening credits–cleverly spliced into an episode with a possession plot. It’s targeted audience is teens and adults–it’s not for young kids–one episode finds a hellmouth opening in the lobby, another episode finds Esther trying to keep a cult from charming its way into her family, plus lots of stabbings, kids playing with fire, occult magic, and more haunted fun hijinks.
As soon as you realize the story is riding one trope it switches to another, always keeping viewers on their toes. The fun is aided by recurring voice actors including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Wednesday, and The Wolf of Snow Hollow actress Riki Lindhome as Annabelle, a 1920s flapper girl who is Ben’s girlfriend. Spirited and Mr. Robot’s Sunita Mann provides the voice of Esther’s unfazed friend Heather. The show brings in more guest stars than in Only Murders in the Building, including omnipresent genre actor Keith David, Marvel actor Randall Park, Donnie Darko and The Bondsman’s Beth Grant, Community star Jim Rash, Office Space’s Diedrich Bader, The Nice Guys’ Angourice Rice, Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo, Saturday Night Live’s Bobby Moynihan, Pulp Fiction’s Phil LaMarr, and Only Murders in the Building and Obi-Wan Kenobi series star Kumail Nanjiani. And that’s in just the first season.
So what’s in store for Season 2 of Haunted Hotel?
It’s the best new animated series on Netflix, and one of the best sitcoms, period. You’ll want to re-watch episodes just to spot Easter eggs sprinkled across the season. Catch up on Season 1 of Haunted Hotel now, then watch Season 2 coming to Netflix with ten new episodes October 9, 2026.
C.J. Bunce / Editor / borg
