Likes:
-Getting the obvious out of the way and what basically everyone has said, Vox carries this season on his back and blows Adam and Stella out of the water, both entertainment factor and the things that make a villain good, while both are admittedly terrible competition, he easily stands on his own and the unlike them the show gives reasons for why he is. Though I do wish 'Brighter' focused more on the cultist aspect of his backstory instead of it mostly being about how he killed his way up to the top.
-They humanized the Vees in general to a surprising extent, they might all be terrible people but they do legitimately care for each other, while it was clear that Valentino and Velvette were going to betray Vox after his ego started to get out of control, they don't really outright betray him and more or less put him in time-out after he made it clear he was get everybody killed just to get revenge on Alastor and went on another tirade about he's a god.
-I feel the songs were for the most part better, which is good considering there's more of them than in S1, there's still songs that feel a bit like they had to meet a self-imposed quota or were built up poorly that they didn't feel deserved.
-The pacing isn't perfect, but I feel it's mostly fine, maybe it's because S1's had absolutely some of the worst pacing a show has ever had, but points for improvement. Even if that doesn't mean that certain characters such as Velvette didn't need a bit more going on, or that certain arcs didn't feel rushed.
Meh:
-The care bears ending. I get what they were going for, the opening of S1 establishes that Lilith was attempting to unite Hell using music to resist Heaven, and here's Charlie doing the same with all the Overlords (plus Emily) to save countless denizens of Hell from destruction from a device literally called 'The might of Lilith', it might be subtle as a brick but it's a writing motif been used in stories since ancient times. The problem is its presentation is way too cheesy and Lute and Able showing up halfway through the song comes across as "Oh yeah, we need Lute to do something besides Gravity and Able has done fuck all this season as well."
-Lute, I admit I like she's not really an antagonist this season since she'd have to share the spotlight with the Vees, but I would have had her do a bit more that mattered, maybe be the devil on Sera's shoulder urging for war and Sera is definitely affected by her until her and Pentious' duet happens. Despite Vox being setup as the future antagonist in S1 with episode 2 and 8 and how he seemingly doesn't do all that much, him sending Pentious to spy on the hotel is critical for how Alastor finds out that Carmilla knows how to kill angels and how Pentious becomes the first redeemed sinner at the very end, so you couldn't really write Vox out of S1 like you can Lute with S2.
Dislikes:
-Enough has been said about how Charlie is a fucking idiot this season, while it does serve as her arc and she gives management duties over to Vaggie, they could have done this arc significantly better if it was more subtle and she wasn't completely stupid for almost the entire season.
-Vaggie's name change is so stupid and pointless, especially with it being forgotten about after the first episode until the very end, I'm not even going to bother with it.
-Baxter is extremely underutilized, and his betrayal of Voxtek is treated as a joke when it should be a serious character moment, before his betrayal his only scene of significance outside his introduction is providing exposition of how he knows Pentious to Cherri. Get they're working with a bit of a restrictive runtime but it's not like he needed his own episode, musicals have a unique advantage of being able to get away with having extremely quick character development through a single song, so a two minute or so solo song of him panicking over the cataclysmic consequences of what a war with Heaven might mean and use that as his reasoning would been infinitely better. I did find him a fun character in the finale when he finally did something though.
Overall the season is better and enjoyable even if there's still a ton of issues that drag it down, someone who can turn their brain off would like it a lot more, probably a 6 but I can see why some would give it a 7 given standards aren't all that high anymore. I can't say I'm optimistic though S3 is mainly going to concern Angel Dust and Husk who I don't give a shit about, and also can't say I'm excited for Alastor's villain arc either. With this being confirmed to be a 5 season show, with how many backstories and underdeveloped plot threads that left to be explored outside of what I listed and what's up with Lilith, when season 5 will probably be exclusively about Roo without much room for those, I feel a lot of them are going to be very rushed in the next two seasons and the quality will suffer as a result. Plus, with how much Borle as Vox carried this, I won't be surprised if this ends up being the best season of the show.
