Disney’s new animated sitcom Little Demon premiered on August 25 on FXX with an all-star cast. Targeting an adult audience, the story focuses on Laura and her 13-year-old daughter Chrissy who are trying to live an ordinary life in Delaware. The problem is that Chrissy is the product of Satan raping Laura, a practicing witch. Satan, voiced by Danny Devito, wants custody of his daughter’s soul in order to train her to be the Antichrist, the character in Christian eschatology that opposes the Messiah. Michael Shannon is the voice of The Unshaven Man, a mercenary demon hunter working for a high-ranking religious leader. His life mission is to kill Chrissy by cutting out her heart with a ritual dagger thereby banishing Satan from the earth. The Unshaven Man acts as the antagonist in the series and is described as “liking his job a little too much.”
Laura runs away from Satan to become a single mother. Chrissy’s latent powers appear the moment she hits puberty in a dramatic and bloody manner that results in two deaths. After which she is taken by a group of hellish minions to meet her father who at first appears as a grisly biker but transforms into a typical television father figure. His only quirk is a love for torture and other grisly acts.
WARNING: The video preview presented below contains adult language and cartoon nudity.
Upon meeting, Satan is surprised she was born a female but is enthusiastically accepting of her gender. His first fatherly words of advice are to praise her for causing the death of two boys.
“Don’t let other people’s moral laws make you think what you did was wrong,” Satan said sweetly. “Together, you and I can create a future without rules, call your own shots, live the life you wanna live.”
He goes on to explain that he is not in hell but in a “metaphysical realm”.
“Hipsters call it the fringe,” Satan explained, describing it as the “central hub for all unearthly realms, comparing it favorably to the Port Authority bus terminal in New York City. The reunion between Satan and the antichrist ends on a positive note with Chrissy accepting his excuse that he involuntarily abandoned her and was not a “deadbeat dad.”.
Being the antichrist makes Chrissy popular with her teen crowd and has lots of fun at parties. She is even popular with the nosy neighbor who is amused by her ability to possess the souls and bodies of other people. She doesn’t lack friendship and is surrounded by a variety of demons.
Her school is the epitome of acceptance and woke culture boasting the motto “We’re not racist anymore!”
The cast includes Aubrey Plaza, Danny DeVito, and Lucy DeVito (Danny’s daughter). Guest stars include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Brooks, Rhea Perlman, and Shangela (a transvestite celebrity).
In an interview with Deadline, Devito gushed enthusiastically about his role as the devil incarnate.
“It’s a great opportunity to play a demonic character. I never get to do that,” DeVito said with a laugh. “I think you’re gonna find that in the show Satan is really a good guy. The guy was deprived of his spawn— who is a girl— but of course, I thought it was gonna be a boy. But the future is female.”
Aubrey Plaza had similar feelings about voicing the antichrist, saying in an interview, ““I love that we are normalizing paganism. Laura is a pagan. She’s a witch. She’s jacked.”
A review on RogerEbert.com was less than complimentary. Noting the show’s “interesting premise”, the reviewer wrote that “too few laughs in the three episodes sent to press made me wonder if a deal with the devil explained why I was watching it in the first place…Let’s just say it’s the kind of trippy experience that might be enhanced by a not-entirely-sober state of being.” This is a nice way of saying that if you are sober, you probably won’t enjoy the show.
One person who emphatically did not enjoy the show was Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.). He was watching a college football game between Louisiana State University and Florida State University on Sunday with his 11-year-old child when a trailer for the show came on during the second quarter. Johnson grabbed the TV remote in an attempt to shield his daughter from the horrifying images. He wrote a post on Facebook, warning parents from allowing their children to see the show. In a following post, he noted that over six million people had read the first post, warning against the show.
“Free speech is an important principle, and in this country, everyone can obviously make their own decisions about what media they and their families consume,” Johnson wrote. “But a corollary is that Christians have the freedom to fulfill our obligation to “speak the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15), even—and sometimes most importantly—when it may not be popular.”
