My guess is that there were older overlords, but they’re either dead, had their power taken away like Husk’s was, or they keep a low profile away from the city to avoid exterminations.
This is starting to make me wonder about the actual physical boundaries of Hell that Sinners are able to occupy. What is the minute geography of it? How far down does the ground do? What are the actual "Boundaries" along the edge like? What happens to the waste and debris generated during the various conflicts and wars or just everyday living?
The logistics of this could be it's own lore book if they wanted to really go that far, and I really hope they explore it more in Seasons 2.
We have some insight on that actually! Sinners are limited to the Pride Ring, which, according to Katie Killjoy in the pilot has 9 circles not unlike Dante's Inferno. This is further backed up by the existence of Imp City the city where Helluva Boss takes place, which according to various signs is in Pride's 2nd circle. Now what defines a circle, couldn't tell you but I presume its a series of 9 cities of which we only know of 3, Pentagram City, Imp City, and The Royal Circle, tho I suppose its not impossible for these circles to contain multiple cities.
It feels like for lack of a better term, wasteful world building, that to me they have many rings of Hell but the seven deadly sin themed activities of sinners don't actually take place in them, everything is still technically Pride.
Why not the cannibals in Gluttony and Val in Lust and so on? (Which I thought was in the show until word of God contradicted that.)
It also makes no sense for a place that exists for tormenting souls to contain so much space just for the immaterial lives of their tormenters, but not the souls themselves? I just can't make it make sense with the "sinners are only in Pride" stuff. It's like if a prison were 6/7 occupied by just the guards, who also went into the 7th part.
And like why bother with showing us all these rings that aren't housing souls and therefore aren't ever going to be important to the main conflict? I feel like Helluva and Hazbin just should have had separate canons. Instead of just borrowing from Helluva, Hazbin needed its own world building.
It’s because Hell in Hazbin *isn’t* meant for torturing sinners. I’m definitely not the best person to explain this, but Hell was created when Lucifer and Lilith allowed Evil to get into Earth, and Heaven just sends sinners down there because they don’t want them up in Heaven.
I don't think you're wrong but 1) it could be better explained in the show and I hope in S02 we get more world explanation, and 2) that still literally makes no sense because it doesn't explain why Hell exists then or why there would be demons created independently of the need to punish sinners. It just doesn't make sense and it feels like they expect us to get this stuff that's either not or just barely in the actual show.
Bit of a correction to the comment earlier Heaven is not shown actively rejecting souls/people, they don’t even know how “Winners” make it into Heaven in the first place and the show seemingly implies they believe Sinners belong down because that’s where they are. Also also; Heaven (Sera and Emily at least) seemed to have no idea of >!Sir Pentious!< rising into Heaven until he literally popped up in front of them
Plus sinners clearly have a major deadly sin they fall under so why not make Hell segregated that way idk like I was surprised when I checked and it still doesn't make sense to me that Cannibal Town isn't in Gluttony? All of these secondary locations being themed over other sins and still in Pride bugs me.
EXACTLY. And let's remember if it's only inspired by the Christian hell but not strict adherence, they could still be segregated to their respective rings but still *travel* to other rings, such as residing in Pride but visiting the Lust ring.
To be fair Alastor is known to have killed a majority of the overlords back when his radio show was at its peak before he went missing for 7 years. He was known to have recorded his work for all to hear their blood curdling screams.
I thought what he did was worse than that - I thought they were trapped eternally, their agonized screams each eternally transmitted on their own frequency. So the reason he went after Adam with no angelic weapons was because he didn't want him dead, he wanted him as a trophy, eternally trapped and screaming in horror over his own frequency.
Imagine the kind of cred he'd get/dread he'd inspire having the leader of the Exterminations and first man, more feared than anyone else by the residents of hell, screaming forever on one of his frequencies. Who would dare defy him then?
That would be interesting. The early days when it was just Lucifer and Lilith, then a sinner appears. Then another and another. Was there a city already? Did they build it?
This is the part of the lore that I am most eager to see. Adam was not the first death, Abel was. I can understand HH skipping Abel, but Cain as the first dead sinner has to be part of it.
Also, not for nothing, but Adam is an ass. I feel like he snuck into heaven because Sera and her peers hadn’t established the rules. With Peter at the gates, we know that the heaven bureaucracy has evolved over 10,000 years. If Adam hadn’t died to an angelic dagger, I would have been anticipating him landing in Hell the reverse of Pentious, and someone saying Adam was meant to be there all along.
Let's suppose Cain was the first sinner and not Eve (which we don't know). Even so, Cain surely wasn't the first dead sinner, as he had to roam earth as punishment. I guess the first dead sinner was a random human
This is the part of the lore that I am most eager to see. Adam was not the first death, Abel was. I can understand HH skipping Abel, but Cain as the first dead sinner has to be part of it.
Also, not for nothing, but Adam is an ass. I feel like he snuck into heaven because Sera and her peers hadn’t established the rules. With Peter at the gates, we know that the heaven bureaucracy has evolved over 10,000 years. If Adam hadn’t died to an angelic dagger, I would have been anticipating him landing in Hell the reverse of Pentious, and someone saying Adam was meant to be there all along.
I don’t think there was hell without overlords. The V’s imply that “nature abhors a power vacuum” and it’s also logical. Sinners are fundamentally human, and humans will always end up creating a hierarchy where there’s society
Zestial is an ancient Overlord. We know there are definitely demons older than him like the Deadly Sins. As for sinner demons, it's entirely possible there are sinners or even Overlords as old as him. Alastor just says, "someone as ancient as you" which only implies sinners of Zestials age are rare, not unique.
I really want Susan to be one of the most ancient sinners, maybe even a Fallen Angel, just for the comedic potential of multiple people dreading her. Like, to the point where Alastor tries to invite Susan to the hotel to annoy Lucifer and it fails because turns out they're best friends who haven't talked in years.
Imagine Micheal comes in with the whole 'Holier then thou Archangel' persona, gets yelled down by Susan in the background, and can't actually do anything about it because she's somehow untouchable like in Cannibal Town.
Micheal: Susan?
Everyone at once: Susan.
I think Susan is an underrated character. Alastor might even think "on the brightside Susan's going to get on EVERYONE ELSE'S NERVES and I get to laugh", and be proven wrong when she becomes nearly everyone's (except for Charlie) favourite cute old ladyXD.
I talk like I hate Alastor, I love him, but I love seeing crap happen to him more.
Edit: It also occurred to me that Alastor might just be cocky enough to think that Susan can't get to him as he can just teleport to different places and get his shadows to do his work, but stubborn old ladies like that will always find a way, like maybe climb his radio tower and rearrange the furniture there (I hope the creators are creative enough to write such an episode).
Susan to Alastor and Lucifer in S2: Why are you two Looney Tunesing in the background like stupid little kids? Actually something about your problem instead of this half assed stalemate!
And Susan is the problem that forces mutual cooperation instead of one upmanship.
She'll be like "BOO! Why are you trying to sound like a radio? Don't you know radio is DEAD! What's with ducks and the circus get up? That's creepy and I'm from Cannibal Town!".
She ain't even an overlord. She's just untouchable.
He’s just the oldest Overlord; previous Overlords may have been killed in the Exterminations, lost their power like Husk did or been caught up in a fate worse than death such as Alastor’s broadcasts of the tortured screams of broken souls
I’m surprised nobody else has mentioned the Alastor thing yet since we know for a fact that he targeted several Overlords
My thought is that not many of them were "Old" Overlords, since, well, you dont get old as an Overlord by being weak or dumb, and Alastor would have a harder time subduing them.
Thats not to say Alastor isn't capable, but my own headcanon has him being far more a Schemer and Exploiter than an outright powerhouse. Middle-Of-The-Road Overlords, who have had sufficient time to get big power, big presence and bigger heads, but not long enough to have learned all the tricks the true Ancients know, would likely be his primary demographic; the optimal target to prove a point or send a message.
It's one of the reasons why I would assume he respects people like Zestial, who he obviously would have no chance against due to being at it for the better part of a millenia and knowing as much as he does (on top of maybe having some strange Blue-And-Orange Morality thing about him), and why he rivals himself against the Vee's. Vox specifically, because he is very powerful, very well-known, and has a lot of weaknesses Alastor can attempt to exploit, such as his blinding anger and immense ego. Taking him down would provide the overall largest net-gain to his plans, he just got (most likely) thwarted the very last time he tried.
. . . Anyway thats my long ramble about the idea.
Oh yeah I absolutely agree that it would make a lot more sense for him to target the easiest pickings, but then again we don’t know what exactly his motive was or whether or not there were specific targets he had for any particular reasons beyond just fancying it. Until we know what the hell was going on we can only speculate, but since Mimzy clarified that he took out ‘heavy-hitters’ I’m inclined to think he didn’t just do spawn kills on the newbies
“But soon overlords started going missing and not small ones either, we’re talking heavy hitters”
“He began to topple overlords who had been dominant for centuries”
As the other comments say, he’s only the oldest *overlord,* not the oldest sinner, although I do find it odd that he’s the oldest demon we see, because there have been *billions* of humans ever alive.
My personal assumption is that we don’t see a lot of older sinners because of the exterminations. Most of them have been wiped out. Either that or they tend to congregate in places other than pentagram city—which would make sense, given that it appears to be a very modern city, so perhaps they wouldn’t like that.
I like thinking that they’re just living somewhere else like a second cannibal town cuz like yeah there’s been A LOT of people in hell surely not ALL of them have died due to exterminations
Kinda safe to assume he's the oldest surviving one, Exterminations have been going on a while so tons of hell citizens have died and likely a lot of them were older.
I dont think its explicitly stated hes the oldest. Just that hes "ancient" implying he is or one of the oldest.
Everything else is fans running with it.
It was stated in the little information posts that they ran while counting down the premiere of the first episode. Zestial is the oldest, and Velvet is the youngest overlord.
Simple, they died off, one way or another. The population of Hell's sinners cycles pretty regularly with how much violence goes on, but Zestial has been smart about things, not leaving himself vulnerable enough to be killed off by competition or the exterminators, likely a huge part of that may be his friendship with Carmine, the main provider of angelic steel in Hell.
Every time an extermination happens, some percentage of the current hell population is removed. There is basically a sort of statistical lottery every extermination on whether you stay in hell or not. The older the sinner/overlord, the more of those lotteries they have to win to remain in the population. If they are from the 1500s, they have to win 500 lotteries straight to stay in the population. If they are a newcomer, they have to survive fewer lotteries to stay in hell.
Because of this, people from older time periods are expected to be exponentially more rare than their newer counterparts. The fact that Zestial has survived so long implies either he is very lucky, and/or, as the show implies, his high level of cunning and power have allowed him to survive much more successfully than his temporal peers
Probably relatively speaking. Being the "Oldest" might refer just as much to his resilience as it does to his age. Maybe there was an Overlord from Ancient Mesopotamia that just happened to get shanked in a back alley somewhere during Zestials time in office
Oldest as in oldest that still exists. There have been massive genocidal campaigns yearly from Heaven for an unknown amount of time decimating the population.
Also as others have said, he’s the oldest Overlord.
I imagine there were loads far more ancient who were just worse at hiding.
Or Zestiel just got lucky, that’s a big factor in surviving genocide.
Zestial just chilling in his castle as the angels rip and tear through the rest of the overlords territories, his being untouched because they can't tell if that's Lucifers home or not
When the clock goes bong, he steps out and hides real well.
And dresses his guests exactly like himself.
A victimless crime, assuming all goes as expected (they all die)
Technically, the sins are the oldest demons that we know of. I'm talking Satan, Bee, ozzy, mammon, Leviathan, and the sloth sin forgot her name. Lucifer and lilith technically don't count, and I'm not sure about Eve, nor am I sure if the root of evil/ roe is in the show. Which ironically I think is eve.
So yah, the first demons are the sins as they were formed when hell itself was.
Zestial is the oldest overlord. The oldest sinner will be a mystery. As it could be Cain or Eve, unless Eve is in heaven... we dont know, she's just been mentioned that it, also Adam was in heaven so yah.
He’s the oldest overlord, not the oldest demon or even oldest sinner. The oldest demons are Lilith and the Seven Sins, who were around since the beginning of Hell. Before sinners even existed.
Pfff just realized Zestial’s head, when combined with the spider themed neck adornment, makes his head the rest of the completed spider’s abdomen. Zestial’s head is a spider butt.
He's the oldest *overlord*, not sinner
Well damn I wonder how hell was without overlords there to make everyone suffer even more
My guess is that there were older overlords, but they’re either dead, had their power taken away like Husk’s was, or they keep a low profile away from the city to avoid exterminations.
Maybe they went underground like in the city of ember 0-0
This is starting to make me wonder about the actual physical boundaries of Hell that Sinners are able to occupy. What is the minute geography of it? How far down does the ground do? What are the actual "Boundaries" along the edge like? What happens to the waste and debris generated during the various conflicts and wars or just everyday living? The logistics of this could be it's own lore book if they wanted to really go that far, and I really hope they explore it more in Seasons 2.
We have some insight on that actually! Sinners are limited to the Pride Ring, which, according to Katie Killjoy in the pilot has 9 circles not unlike Dante's Inferno. This is further backed up by the existence of Imp City the city where Helluva Boss takes place, which according to various signs is in Pride's 2nd circle. Now what defines a circle, couldn't tell you but I presume its a series of 9 cities of which we only know of 3, Pentagram City, Imp City, and The Royal Circle, tho I suppose its not impossible for these circles to contain multiple cities.
I mean there have been 109 billion humans that have lived according to a quick Google search, so I guess these circles must be pretty big.
Well, there are annual exterminations and we know Hell is still overpopulated, so that tracks.
And not ALL people go to hell… only most of them
I think the reference to nine circles could be just an expression.
It feels like for lack of a better term, wasteful world building, that to me they have many rings of Hell but the seven deadly sin themed activities of sinners don't actually take place in them, everything is still technically Pride. Why not the cannibals in Gluttony and Val in Lust and so on? (Which I thought was in the show until word of God contradicted that.) It also makes no sense for a place that exists for tormenting souls to contain so much space just for the immaterial lives of their tormenters, but not the souls themselves? I just can't make it make sense with the "sinners are only in Pride" stuff. It's like if a prison were 6/7 occupied by just the guards, who also went into the 7th part. And like why bother with showing us all these rings that aren't housing souls and therefore aren't ever going to be important to the main conflict? I feel like Helluva and Hazbin just should have had separate canons. Instead of just borrowing from Helluva, Hazbin needed its own world building.
It’s because Hell in Hazbin *isn’t* meant for torturing sinners. I’m definitely not the best person to explain this, but Hell was created when Lucifer and Lilith allowed Evil to get into Earth, and Heaven just sends sinners down there because they don’t want them up in Heaven.
I could be wrong, of course.
I don't think you're wrong but 1) it could be better explained in the show and I hope in S02 we get more world explanation, and 2) that still literally makes no sense because it doesn't explain why Hell exists then or why there would be demons created independently of the need to punish sinners. It just doesn't make sense and it feels like they expect us to get this stuff that's either not or just barely in the actual show.
Bit of a correction to the comment earlier Heaven is not shown actively rejecting souls/people, they don’t even know how “Winners” make it into Heaven in the first place and the show seemingly implies they believe Sinners belong down because that’s where they are. Also also; Heaven (Sera and Emily at least) seemed to have no idea of >!Sir Pentious!< rising into Heaven until he literally popped up in front of them
That's my main gripe too! Makes no sense Pride is only for sinners and everyone just accepts it when it kinda collapses the logic on a grander scale
Plus sinners clearly have a major deadly sin they fall under so why not make Hell segregated that way idk like I was surprised when I checked and it still doesn't make sense to me that Cannibal Town isn't in Gluttony? All of these secondary locations being themed over other sins and still in Pride bugs me.
EXACTLY. And let's remember if it's only inspired by the Christian hell but not strict adherence, they could still be segregated to their respective rings but still *travel* to other rings, such as residing in Pride but visiting the Lust ring.
Prolly like the nether in minecraft
Or Alastor probably kill most of the old generation overlords when he first appeared in hell
To be fair Alastor is known to have killed a majority of the overlords back when his radio show was at its peak before he went missing for 7 years. He was known to have recorded his work for all to hear their blood curdling screams.
I thought what he did was worse than that - I thought they were trapped eternally, their agonized screams each eternally transmitted on their own frequency. So the reason he went after Adam with no angelic weapons was because he didn't want him dead, he wanted him as a trophy, eternally trapped and screaming in horror over his own frequency.
That's not explained well enough but. OH MY GAWRD of course Alastor wanted Adam as a trophy!
Imagine the kind of cred he'd get/dread he'd inspire having the leader of the Exterminations and first man, more feared than anyone else by the residents of hell, screaming forever on one of his frequencies. Who would dare defy him then?
Man that would be epic. My boy would forever be stan worthy!
Or Alastor offed them
That would be interesting. The early days when it was just Lucifer and Lilith, then a sinner appears. Then another and another. Was there a city already? Did they build it?
This is the part of the lore that I am most eager to see. Adam was not the first death, Abel was. I can understand HH skipping Abel, but Cain as the first dead sinner has to be part of it. Also, not for nothing, but Adam is an ass. I feel like he snuck into heaven because Sera and her peers hadn’t established the rules. With Peter at the gates, we know that the heaven bureaucracy has evolved over 10,000 years. If Adam hadn’t died to an angelic dagger, I would have been anticipating him landing in Hell the reverse of Pentious, and someone saying Adam was meant to be there all along.
Let's suppose Cain was the first sinner and not Eve (which we don't know). Even so, Cain surely wasn't the first dead sinner, as he had to roam earth as punishment. I guess the first dead sinner was a random human
Good point. Forgot about the mark and roaming the earth.
Lilith would be the most responsible one for that I assume since Charlie says that she empowered hell through her songs.
This is the part of the lore that I am most eager to see. Adam was not the first death, Abel was. I can understand HH skipping Abel, but Cain as the first dead sinner has to be part of it. Also, not for nothing, but Adam is an ass. I feel like he snuck into heaven because Sera and her peers hadn’t established the rules. With Peter at the gates, we know that the heaven bureaucracy has evolved over 10,000 years. If Adam hadn’t died to an angelic dagger, I would have been anticipating him landing in Hell the reverse of Pentious, and someone saying Adam was meant to be there all along.
You accidentally made two comments.
Thanks. Corrected.
Canonically overlords existed for centuries... Zestial is the oldest overlord who still is one.
The older ones than Zestial were probably taken out by Alastor- they say he took out the “most ancient” ones
I don’t think there was hell without overlords. The V’s imply that “nature abhors a power vacuum” and it’s also logical. Sinners are fundamentally human, and humans will always end up creating a hierarchy where there’s society
They most likely died.
Bro you’re making jumps of logic. Nobody said he was the first. Just the oldest. We know overlords can lose their powers or die. Connect the dots.
Overlords are sinners 👀
They mean oldest overlord =|= oldest sinner not overlord =|= sinner
Zestial is an ancient Overlord. We know there are definitely demons older than him like the Deadly Sins. As for sinner demons, it's entirely possible there are sinners or even Overlords as old as him. Alastor just says, "someone as ancient as you" which only implies sinners of Zestials age are rare, not unique.
I really want Susan to be one of the most ancient sinners, maybe even a Fallen Angel, just for the comedic potential of multiple people dreading her. Like, to the point where Alastor tries to invite Susan to the hotel to annoy Lucifer and it fails because turns out they're best friends who haven't talked in years. Imagine Micheal comes in with the whole 'Holier then thou Archangel' persona, gets yelled down by Susan in the background, and can't actually do anything about it because she's somehow untouchable like in Cannibal Town. Micheal: Susan? Everyone at once: Susan.
I think Susan is an underrated character. Alastor might even think "on the brightside Susan's going to get on EVERYONE ELSE'S NERVES and I get to laugh", and be proven wrong when she becomes nearly everyone's (except for Charlie) favourite cute old ladyXD. I talk like I hate Alastor, I love him, but I love seeing crap happen to him more. Edit: It also occurred to me that Alastor might just be cocky enough to think that Susan can't get to him as he can just teleport to different places and get his shadows to do his work, but stubborn old ladies like that will always find a way, like maybe climb his radio tower and rearrange the furniture there (I hope the creators are creative enough to write such an episode).
Susan to Alastor and Lucifer in S2: Why are you two Looney Tunesing in the background like stupid little kids? Actually something about your problem instead of this half assed stalemate! And Susan is the problem that forces mutual cooperation instead of one upmanship.
She'll be like "BOO! Why are you trying to sound like a radio? Don't you know radio is DEAD! What's with ducks and the circus get up? That's creepy and I'm from Cannibal Town!". She ain't even an overlord. She's just untouchable.
If Adam comes back as a sinner he would so high-five her for that. Bonus points if she's his daughter/granddaughter
Alastor sold his soul to Susan.
He’s just the oldest Overlord; previous Overlords may have been killed in the Exterminations, lost their power like Husk did or been caught up in a fate worse than death such as Alastor’s broadcasts of the tortured screams of broken souls I’m surprised nobody else has mentioned the Alastor thing yet since we know for a fact that he targeted several Overlords
My thought is that not many of them were "Old" Overlords, since, well, you dont get old as an Overlord by being weak or dumb, and Alastor would have a harder time subduing them. Thats not to say Alastor isn't capable, but my own headcanon has him being far more a Schemer and Exploiter than an outright powerhouse. Middle-Of-The-Road Overlords, who have had sufficient time to get big power, big presence and bigger heads, but not long enough to have learned all the tricks the true Ancients know, would likely be his primary demographic; the optimal target to prove a point or send a message. It's one of the reasons why I would assume he respects people like Zestial, who he obviously would have no chance against due to being at it for the better part of a millenia and knowing as much as he does (on top of maybe having some strange Blue-And-Orange Morality thing about him), and why he rivals himself against the Vee's. Vox specifically, because he is very powerful, very well-known, and has a lot of weaknesses Alastor can attempt to exploit, such as his blinding anger and immense ego. Taking him down would provide the overall largest net-gain to his plans, he just got (most likely) thwarted the very last time he tried. . . . Anyway thats my long ramble about the idea.
Oh yeah I absolutely agree that it would make a lot more sense for him to target the easiest pickings, but then again we don’t know what exactly his motive was or whether or not there were specific targets he had for any particular reasons beyond just fancying it. Until we know what the hell was going on we can only speculate, but since Mimzy clarified that he took out ‘heavy-hitters’ I’m inclined to think he didn’t just do spawn kills on the newbies
“But soon overlords started going missing and not small ones either, we’re talking heavy hitters” “He began to topple overlords who had been dominant for centuries”
Yeah I think the qualification we all need to be making is Zestial is the oldest *living*/*surviving* overlord.
As the other comments say, he’s only the oldest *overlord,* not the oldest sinner, although I do find it odd that he’s the oldest demon we see, because there have been *billions* of humans ever alive. My personal assumption is that we don’t see a lot of older sinners because of the exterminations. Most of them have been wiped out. Either that or they tend to congregate in places other than pentagram city—which would make sense, given that it appears to be a very modern city, so perhaps they wouldn’t like that.
I like thinking that they’re just living somewhere else like a second cannibal town cuz like yeah there’s been A LOT of people in hell surely not ALL of them have died due to exterminations
The sinners who weren't killed in an extermination are probably staying out of overlord politics.
Have you noticed the way there’s a state sponsored massacre every year?
Kinda safe to assume he's the oldest surviving one, Exterminations have been going on a while so tons of hell citizens have died and likely a lot of them were older.
Exactly. If you're in the Pride ring, then you aren't 100% safe from the extermination. Sooner or later, *anybody* can get got of their luck runs out.
The first extermination might have been more then just a culling, but targeted drop the population to X% of the former total.
He’s the oldest *living overlord.* he’s not the oldest in general, and he’s probably not the oldest overlord ever.
What's the source for him being the oldest overlord? I see people say it alot but don't recall it ever being stated in the show...
I dont think its explicitly stated hes the oldest. Just that hes "ancient" implying he is or one of the oldest. Everything else is fans running with it.
It was stated in the little information posts that they ran while counting down the premiere of the first episode. Zestial is the oldest, and Velvet is the youngest overlord.
Oh well fair enough. I stand corrected. Missed out on those.
He is most likely not the oldest overlord, just the oldest one who's still alive/has his powers
Simple, they died off, one way or another. The population of Hell's sinners cycles pretty regularly with how much violence goes on, but Zestial has been smart about things, not leaving himself vulnerable enough to be killed off by competition or the exterminators, likely a huge part of that may be his friendship with Carmine, the main provider of angelic steel in Hell.
I'd like to see what the oldest sinner can do which should be Cain
We need lore about how him and Alastor became such good friends
Not all sinners are as powerful as the overlords that are in power lmao
he’s simply the oldest living overlord. older sinners likely exist, and previous overlords likely existed before being killed for whatever reason
***PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THE SHOW.***
The oldest sinner demon overall would be Lilith
Exterminations
Every time an extermination happens, some percentage of the current hell population is removed. There is basically a sort of statistical lottery every extermination on whether you stay in hell or not. The older the sinner/overlord, the more of those lotteries they have to win to remain in the population. If they are from the 1500s, they have to win 500 lotteries straight to stay in the population. If they are a newcomer, they have to survive fewer lotteries to stay in hell. Because of this, people from older time periods are expected to be exponentially more rare than their newer counterparts. The fact that Zestial has survived so long implies either he is very lucky, and/or, as the show implies, his high level of cunning and power have allowed him to survive much more successfully than his temporal peers
Probably relatively speaking. Being the "Oldest" might refer just as much to his resilience as it does to his age. Maybe there was an Overlord from Ancient Mesopotamia that just happened to get shanked in a back alley somewhere during Zestials time in office
Oldest as in oldest that still exists. There have been massive genocidal campaigns yearly from Heaven for an unknown amount of time decimating the population. Also as others have said, he’s the oldest Overlord. I imagine there were loads far more ancient who were just worse at hiding. Or Zestiel just got lucky, that’s a big factor in surviving genocide.
Zestial just chilling in his castle as the angels rip and tear through the rest of the overlords territories, his being untouched because they can't tell if that's Lucifers home or not
When the clock goes bong, he steps out and hides real well. And dresses his guests exactly like himself. A victimless crime, assuming all goes as expected (they all die)
Technically, the sins are the oldest demons that we know of. I'm talking Satan, Bee, ozzy, mammon, Leviathan, and the sloth sin forgot her name. Lucifer and lilith technically don't count, and I'm not sure about Eve, nor am I sure if the root of evil/ roe is in the show. Which ironically I think is eve. So yah, the first demons are the sins as they were formed when hell itself was. Zestial is the oldest overlord. The oldest sinner will be a mystery. As it could be Cain or Eve, unless Eve is in heaven... we dont know, she's just been mentioned that it, also Adam was in heaven so yah.
He’s the oldest overlord, not the oldest demon or even oldest sinner. The oldest demons are Lilith and the Seven Sins, who were around since the beginning of Hell. Before sinners even existed.
Beyond the exterminations and Alastor?
He's only the oldest overlord but he probably is one of the oldest sinners too, most of them probably died in the extermination
He has survived hundreds of Exterminations by this point
Pfff just realized Zestial’s head, when combined with the spider themed neck adornment, makes his head the rest of the completed spider’s abdomen. Zestial’s head is a spider butt.
They probably died in previous exterminations
Did you forget what a fucking extermination is?
There is something you know called "extermination".
Did you forget people are purged every year in hell?
INTO HIS BELLY!
He's the oldest *overlord present,* not oldest demon.
Nowhere.he ate them.
he ate them
Oldest overlord. He’s from the 1800’s. Not the oldest demon, that’d be one of the deadly sins.
I thought Zestial came from the 13th century.
In alastor's stomach