NOTE: This article contains spoilers. Read at your own will.
A Supernatural Inheritance
Haunted Hotel Season 2 drops us right into a battle between human and monster within the mundane ritual of checking into a hotel.
And as the doors reopen with the new season, Katherine (Eliza Coupe) wants to expand her horizons—starting with hiring a new employee.
Haunted Hotel continues to explore the Freeling family—Katherine, her two kids, Ben (Skyler Gisondo) and Esther (Natalie Palamides), her inherited demon child Abaddon (Jimmi Simpson), and her deceased brother, Nathan (Will Forte).
And everyone does their part to make Undervale’s “underworld charm” a joyous attraction while protecting unsuspecting guests from danger.
Season 1 of Haunted Hotel showed us a single mother and a family battling loss, grief, depression, and a secret—Nathan’s death.
Yet between hotel hospitality and outrageous ghost busting, a family learned to redefine the term in order to move forward through life stronger than before.
And they’re going to need it because Undervale houses more curses within its walls than the “Book of Shadows.”
“Just a small supernatural issue. Nothing I can’t handle.”
A new evil festers underneath the hotel, and there’s someone who may hold the answer, who’s been in the background all along:
Shayna.
Shayna, voiced by Natalie Morales, pretended to be a ghost since Season 1.
Once found out by Esther, she explains that her presence is linked to her heritage—a bloodline that requires a member of the family to always remain in Undervale to prevent the awakening of a cosmic god.
Haunted Hotel Season 2 effectively weaves Shayna into both the characters’ and the audience’s memories by taking us back to major moments within Season 1 where she lurked within the halls.
This clever introduction creatively expands Haunted Hotel without sacrificing the elements that make it entertaining and relevant.
But Shayna’s presence isn’t just about her bloodline.
It’s also about inheritance.
The Family Beneath the Haunting
Shayna’s relationship with the supernatural happenings at Undervale is a surprising connection that extends to Katherine’s relationship with the hotel.
They both inherited the hotel in different ways—ownership versus obligation—each carrying a burden that demands personal sacrifice to keep it afloat.
An inheritance that requires both Katherine and Shayna to either confront their family’s generational curse or run away from it altogether.
But in a hotel where curses are practically an architectural tradition, Dante enters the picture.
Dante Crowe, a supernatural investigator, comes to Undervale to help stop the awakening.
His supernatural lineage allows him to exist between the worlds of the living and the dead—making him a formidable opponent for anyone who encounters him.
Especially because he can touch the ghosts.
And he can harm them.
But what keeps Haunted Hotel entertaining is the cohesion of horror and humor.
And as Dante works to keep everyone in Undervale safe, Katherine sees an opportunity to date.
Throughout the season, she attempts to balance her responsibilities at Undervale with her identity as a woman seeking normalcy beyond motherhood, ghosts, and the children who consistently chase them.
But the dating pool is dead.
Literally.
However, her optimism—alongside Esther’s paranormal investigations, Ben’s ghost-girlfriend woes, and Nathan’s spirited (pun intended) enthusiasm—adds to what draws audiences to the series, despite impending doom.
Haunted Hotel Season 2 brings us deeper into the family dynamic, the supernatural chaos, and what it means to call a place home.
And yet, the madness isn’t separate from the family story at the heart of the series. It’s woven into the very fabric of what it means to experience grief and still find ways to love and to live.
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The Hotel Horrors Continue
Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.
© Kivonshe | So There’s That
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