Hyperion Hotel

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The Hyperion Hotel Exterior.

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The Hyperion Hotel was headquarters for Angel Investigations after the destruction of their previous office.

History

The Hotel was built in 1928 into California Spanish, deco influence style in what was then the heart of Hollywood. Before the building was even completed, it was claimed by a Thesulac Demon, a generally incorporeal entity that feeds on paranoia. A legacy of suspicious deaths began almost immediately, beginning near the end of construction when a roofer went mad and jumped to his death, taking two coworkers with him.

More deaths followed. In 1952 a candle salesman was shot in the head in the room next door to the one in which Angel was staying, the third apparent suicide in the hotel in as many months. Fearing police involvement, the manager ordered that it be covered up and the body be stored in the meat locker.

The salesman's death and the whispers of the demon fed a wave of paranoia among the remaining guests, culminating a few days later in the formation of a lynch mob that strung Angel up from the second floor balcony. Angel, who had been about to attempt a ritual to rid the hotel of the demonic presence, waited until the mob had dispersed before freeing himself and leaving them to the demon out of disgust.

At some point afterward, the police were called in, and in 1954 the bellhop was executed for murdering the salesman and hiding his body.

The hotel finally closed on December 16, 1979, when the concierge "made his morning wake-up call with a 12-gauge shotgun, room to room." It remained empty until Angel investigations took it over in the fall of 2000.

Angel Investigations

Angel rediscovered the dilapidated hotel while fleeing demons. In an attempt to atone for his actions fifty years before, Angel and his team killed the Thesulac and freed the lone remaining inhabitant, a fugitive named Judy Kovacs, whom the demon had been feasting off of for fifty years. His unfinished business finally closed, Angel cleaned up the Hyperion and made it the new home of Angel Investigations, concluding that they would redeem the building like Angel seeks to redeem himself.

When Angel briefly became corrupted and fired Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, Cordelia Chase, and Charles Gunn, he remained in the Hyperion by himself while his former colleagues continued the agency without him in a rented office, only to return to the Hyperion after Angel returned to them. After this, they remained at the Hyperion until they stop the regn of Jasmine and moved into the headquarters of Wolfram & Hart's Los Angeles branch, later confronting Wolfram & Hart's demon army in the alleyway behind the hotel. The hotel was also home for Angel, Lorne, Charles Gunn, Winifred Burkle, and Connor. It also occasionally harbored the group's other members and people they helped like the telekinetic Bethany Chaulk, Fred's parents, a pregnant Darla or the Slayer Faith Lehane when pursuing Angelus.

Angel and his friends moved back into the hotel and made it their base of operations after the Fall of Los Angeles. After the temporal fold which returned Los Angeles to Earth, the reformed Angel Investigations company briefly operated out of an abandoned church before returning to the Hyperion once again.

In a possible future in which the demonic higher power James had successfully taken over the world, the Hyperion had been converted into a museum in honor of Angel's memory, complete with a statue of the vampire.

Proceeding the end of magic, Angel and Gunn returned to the Hyperion with Willow, Faith, and Connor to open an entrance to Quor'toth as part of Willow's quest to restore Earth's magic.

Gallery

Hyperion Hotel Interior

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Courtyard and Gate Detail.

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Corner Window Detail.

Behind the Scenes

• The name Hyperion comes from Greek mythology and is sometimes considered synonymous with Helios, the god of the Sun. There is no doubt some deliberate irony in having a vampire live inside a building associated with the Sun.

• According to Angel, there are 68 apartments in the hotel.

• In the episode "Carpe Noctem", we can clearly see Angel's business card, showing the address 1481 Hyperion Avenue.

• Exterior shots of the hotel were taken at the Los Altos Hotel & Apartments, at 4121 Wilshire Blvd. Some interior shots were done in The Ambassador Hotel, according to DVD commentary about "Billy".

• Years before it served as his base of operations, Angel was a resident at the hotel in the 1950s in room 217.

• During the run of the remaining seasons, Angel's apartment number was 312.
• Unlike Sunnydale High School, Angel Investigations offices, The Magic Box, and Wolfram & Hart; the Hyperion Hotel was one of the few headquarters not destroyed onscreen when the set was retired.

• The Courtyard setting for Melissa Burns' apartment in "I Fall to Pieces" is clearly the same set for the Courtyard of the Hyperion.

• Angel Production Designer Stuart Blatt described the new base: "An old hotel, something [the writers] could use to evoke the past of Los Angeles and some of Angel's history, something kind of creepy and spooky but not too dark because they didn't want something depressing, it's called the Hyperion Hotel. It's based on many hotels in Los Angeles...Angel lived in a larger suite in the hotel, like a honeymoon suite, the producers wanted Angel to have enough room to relax and get away from it all, do a little pondering, a little brooding, a little research. Every once in a while someone will come up to have a little conversation."

• A Hyperion Hotel is mentioned in "The Girl with the Curl", a second season episode of Bones, a show starring the actor who plays the Angel's titular character, David Boreanaz.

• The Hyperion is mentioned in "Stop Loss", a second season episode of Joss Whedon's series Dollhouse. While a room in this show's "Hyperion" is seen later in the episode, it does not resemble the rooms shown in the Buffyverse's Hyperion. 
• The Hyperion Hotel has the longest tenure as a headquarters in either Buffyverse television series (The Sunnydale High School library comes second with 2 full seasons and 1 half long season). The Hotel is also the only headqaurters not to be destroyed at any point in time.

Appearances

As a constant location, the Hyperion Hotel appear in every episode of Angel Seasons 2, 3 and 4 until that Angel Investigations moved to Wolfram & Hart. This location was newly a operation base in the comic Angel Season 6 (however a dubious canon) and was canonically occasionnally used in Angel & Faith.

• Angel (season 2) (excepted "Through the Looking Glass")
• Angel (season 3)
• Angel (season 4)
• "Unleashed" (Only mentioned)
• "You're Welcome" (Only mentioned)
• "Origin" (only in archive footage)
• "The Girl in Question" (Only mentioned)
• "Not Fade Away" (Only mentioned)
• "Angel After the Fall"
• "Family Reunion, Part One"
• "Family Reunion, Part Four"

• "Angel (IDW series)"(dubious canon)