Growing up can be Hell.
Little Demon is an adult animated series created by Darcy Fowler, Seth Kirschner, and Kieran Valla. The series stars Aubrey Plaza, Lucy DeVito, and Danny DeVito, all of whom also executive produce along with Dan Harmon.
The series focuses on a young girl named Chrissy Feinberg (the younger DeVito), whose ordinary life is changed forever when her mother Laura (Plaza), reveals that her biological father just happens to be The Devil (the senior DeVito). Now on top of the trials of puberty, Chrissy must deal with her awakening Antichrist powers and her parents waging a supernatural war for custody over her.
The series aired on FXX from August 25 to October 20, 2022, eventually being cancelled after one season.
Now has a Characters page and a Recap page.
Previews: Trailer 1
Tropes:
- Actor Allusion: Episode 3, which guest stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, has a twofer:
- As the announcer for the deadly game show, Arnold's character design is a dead ringer for Danny Devito's appearance in Twins (1988).
- Later, Satan and Chrissy recreate the infamous "you son of a bitch" hand clap from Arnold's movie Predator.
- Ambidextrous Sprite: Laura's tattoos are the subjects of many an animator's goof. Occasionally they are reversed, or shown the correct way in a mirror (when they should be reversed).
- Beast with a Human Face: When Chrissy was first escorted to her father's realm, we saw her and her escorts pass by a scorpion with a human face.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Richard Kind is revealed to be another spawn of Satan in the first season finale.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: As much as Laura would hate to admit it, Satan and her have quite a bit of sexual tension when they fight, examples including Satan exclaiming in awe, "What a fucking woman," and Laura straddling him to stab him in the dick.
- Bilingual Bonus: One of Laura's tattoos is bad web-translated Hebrew for "stop sucking"note .
- Bittersweet Ending: In the first season finale, Chrissy reconciles with her mother and Bennigan forgives her, but she has a strained relationship with her half-siblings for killing one of them by accident. Meanwhile, Bennigan is now working for the angels to keep an eye on Chrissy.
- Corrupt Politician: The town mayor, who makes such frivolous laws as shutting down an Italian restaurant because they didn't tell him the specials.
- Deal with the Devil: Asmodeus made one with Satan. He gave him everything he had—his wife, his children, his services, all his land—in exchange for being at Satan's side during Maximus Dawnus. Satan, of course, double-crosses him and reveals that he killed his wife and kids just for the evulz. He's understandably pissed and tries to pull a Faustian rebellion. Which also doesn't go well.
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Lampshaded, when Laura hears the teacher who supposedly slept with Bennigan has returned to her job, she remarks that "this country is cool with lady pedos", though the teacher was actually innocent.
- Downer Ending: "The Antichrist's Monster" ends with Bennigan being upset with Chrissy for turning him into a monster and exposing his body dysmorphia to the whole town. And despite her best efforts, he still looks at himself as a monster.
- "Domestic Disturbance VIII" ends with the house being destroyed after Laura and Chrissy's brawl, their relationship strained after Chrissy reads Laura's journal thanks to Satan, and Satan completely getting away with his horrible actions.
- Even Evil Has Standards: In "Night of the Leeches", Satan goes out on a bender with his fellow demons, but soon finds that tormenting humans isn't as fun for him now that he has actual ties to them through Chrissy and Laura.
- Fantastically Indifferent: Chrissy's status as the antichrist, the supernatural weirdness it creates, and the bodies it leaves behind in its wake don't seem to ring that many alarms to the simple townsfolk around them. The only exception to this is the Vatican and the demon hunters they sent, and after the first episode, the only hunter left is more concerned with getting revenge for Satan shooting his dick off than the end of the world.
- First Period Panic: The pilot episode sees Chrissy suffering her first period, which triggers the emergence of her powers.
- Full-Frontal Assault: In the first episode, Laura crosses over to the Metaphysical Realm to rescue Chrissy. Since her clothes didn't cross over with her, she has to fight a bunch of demons in the buff.
- Grand Theft Me: In the second episode, Chrissy learns how to possess people and tries to use this talent to make things better for everyone at her school. But while using her power, she leaves her body unattended and is herself possessed by Asmodeus.
- A Hell of a Time: Having been kicked out of Hell, Satan keeps his power up by making deals for souls with mortals, keeping them all in his "soul hole." There, the souls live out their hearts' desire for freedom without limits. The only problem is that "without limits" means that souls that want to kill people are allowed to kill other souls, letting them regenerate later to be killed again. Chrissy calls this out for the loaded deal that it is, even if she comes to see that it isn't the worst option to have.
- Hero Antagonist: In episode one, Chrissy is targeted by a group of demon-hunting mercenaries hired by the Pope to stop Maximus Dawnus.
- Informed Judaism: In "Domestic Disturbance VIII", it's revealed that Chrissy and Laura are of Jewish descent.
- Mayor Pain: The mayor of the town where the Feinbergs live. He's a bit of a downplayed example, however, as—like most humans on this show—he's more stupid than anything else.
- Merged Reality: The Devil’s end goal in getting Chrissy over to his side is to cause Maximus Dawnus - an event that would fuse the mortal realm and all the unearthly realms into one dimension he can rule.
- No, You: When Chrissy tries to get rid of a pimple, we hear that hilarious exchange:Laura: "You'll need a needle for that one Christina. That's cystic."Chrissy: "You're cystic."
- Nipple and Dimed: There've been a few cases of topless women (and a few men) with the nipples sometimes shown, but the "downstairs" are always Barbie.
- Offscreen Afterlife: Hell is mentioned and definitely exists, but we haven't seen it yet. Turns out there's a reason: Through means and for reasons that have yet to be revealed, Satan has been kicked out of Hell and apparently can't get back.
- Our Demons Are Different: Most of the Devil's various henchmen are a combination of organs, bone, and other viscera, and even the more 'normal' looking ones like Snake With Arms could still be politely described as biological nightmares.Satan: Look at that guy! He's got a bird head and he craps bubbles.
- Poor Communication Kills: In "Everybody's Dying For the Weekend", Laura's efforts to keep Darlene out of the loop constantly backfire, as Darlene repeatedly ignores her instructions because Laura refuses to explain why following these instructions are important.
- Puppeteer Parasite: The dancers at the "Realm of Realms" are controlled by some kind of parasites (likely created and/or deployed by the host, queen Inichoochiama, whose insectoid humanoid features resemble these parasites) and seem to be conscious and in torment while their bodies are being puppeteered.
- Rage Breaking Point: As the argument between Chrissy and Laura develops into an all-out fight in "Domestic Disturbance VIII", it truly starts when Laura makes a crack about Chrissy's actions toward Bennigan in "The Antichrist's Monster"Chrissy: You're like a roided-out toddler! The only thing you're good at is breaking shit!
Laura: I'm the destroyer right, right. After what you did to your friend?
Chrissy: Don't you fucking go there!
Laura: Oh, what? Don't talk about how you turned your "best friend" into a fucking blob monster?!
Chrissy: (rising up and summoning a whole squadron of cockroaches) YOOOU ASSHOOOOOOOLE!! - Shout-Out:
- Upon first meeting Chrissy, the Devil, thinking his child is a boy, calls her Damien.
- When Chrissy asks for a ride to the abandoned Taco Chateau, Satan turns two of his demons into a skeletal horse and carriage in a swirl of blood, complete with two demon footmen.
- The Puppeteer Parasite controlling the dancers at "Realm of Realms" look vaguely similar to facehuggers from the Alien franchise.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- In the B plot of "Popularity: Origin of Evil", to make Bennigan popular, Satan starts a rumor about him sleeping with one of the female teachers at his school. The result? Not only does the plan backfire horribly, but the teacher ends up being wrongfully fired and arrested for alleged child molestation.
- In "The Antichrist's Monster", Chrissy tries to use magic to "cure" Bennigan's self-esteem issues by making him super buff, but her spell backfires and turns him into a monster instead, ultimately leaving him with even worse self-esteem issues. He feels violated when he realizes what she's done and refuses to talk to her. Indeed, when he reappears in the eighth episode, he's still quite mad at Chrissy and initially did not want to get involved with the mother-daughter fight when Darlene contacted him.
- Take That!:
- The Metaphysical Realm, a sort of hub for all unearthly realms is compared to a port authority but “with much, much, much more urine, and fewer bomb threats.”
- Laura warns Chrissy that using her demon powers will eat away at her soul until she is something akin to “a really successful CEO.”
- Laura admits that while moving 14 times in 8 years was to protect Chrissy, the reason they left Vermont was that she “could not deal with those fucking hippies.”
- The social media network Instagram/Insta gets called "ShitSta".
- Very Special Episode: The A Plot of "The Antichrist's Monster" focuses on Chrissy discovering that Bennigan is very self-conscious about his weight and regularly engages in purging behavior (i.e. intentionally makes himself vomit to get rid of the food he just ate). Her attempts to help him, only make him feel worse about himself and he refuses to talk to her afterward. The episode closes out with a message for the National Eating Disorders Hotline.
- Voices Are Mental: Played with. When possessing a mortal, Chrissy and the Devil normally sound like themselves, but they CAN impersonate whoever they are possessing. According to the Devil, it takes years for demons to learn how to avert this but Chrissy is a natural.
- We Want Our Jerk Back!: In "Night of the Leeches", Laura realizes that Chrissy is embarrassed by her because of her aggressive behavior and tries to fix this by applying anger leeches to herself to drain away all of her constant rages. At first, Chrissy is glad to have a "normal" mom but soon finds that "normal" Laura is too passive to care for her or protect her from demons.
