“Where do I begin? With the grandest fall in the history of time? Or perhaps the far more agonizing punishment that followed? To be blamed for every morsel of evil humanity has endured. Every atrocity committed in my name, as though I wanted people to suffer. Though all I ever wanted was to be my own man here. To be judged for my own doing, and for that, I’ve been shown how truly powerless I am.” – Lucifer Morningstar
This week was the penultimate episode of Lucifer season 1, titled “#TeamLucifer”, and it definitely didn’t disappoint. As the season winds to a close it has to first take us into the Hell that is the usual second-to-last episode that usually ends in a cliffhanger. I feel like I went into this episode expecting one thing, while I was watching I began thinking another thing, and as it ended I had a third mindset. I’m not really sure what I expected, as the promo for this episode mainly showed Lucifer (Tom Ellis) and Amenadiel (D.B. Woodside) having it out. I remembered hearing that there’d be a Satanist cult involved as well, but by the midpoint I was skeptical whether I was going to like this episode. After the credits rolled I had been swayed and was sure that I really did love this one. The way the writers built the case of the week was their finest work yet, and the further weaving together of the seasonal character based story arcs just made this episode really primed me perfectly before next week’s finale. A lot went down and I feel the need to resummon my thoughts on “#TeamLucifer” and would love to know yours as well.
Warning: SPOILERS will follow!
Hail Lucifer
Unlike I was guessing in last week’s review, this episode actually did have a weekly case, and this time it actually was the last weekly case we’ll get for the season. I really loved that they decided to go with the theme of a cheesy Satanic cult. They make a lot of cheeky gibes at both the Satan worshipers in this episode as well as some of the fans of the comics. My favorite example is when the cultist doorman tells Lucifer that he thought Lucifer was supposed to have blonde hair. For those who might not know, Lucifer does actually have blonde hair in the comics and I believe most people are upset that Tom Ellis isn’t blonde, so I love that they were able to poke fun at the fans a bit too. The best thing was how Lucifer keeps drawing a stark contrast in what the cultists believe about Satan and how he actually is. One of my favorite things about this show is how the writers (and credit to the characters’ creators) are able to make Lucifer the victim of God’s cruelest joke. Throughout the season we’ve seen Lucifer complaining about how he always has to take the blame for others’ evil, but this episode we finally see him break, as he’s unable to take it any longer. The victim this week was Rose Davis (Sarah Grey), an initiate into the Satanist cult who takes part in a symbolic sacrifice that ends up becoming less symbolic; leading to her death. The goat subject was brought up again, which is still funny, especially now that we know Amenadiel started that rumor. The most shocking thing about this week’s case was the actual murderer. There was a couple red herrings in this episode that really threw me off of my guessing game. The revelation that it was actually an increasingly unhinged Malcolm (Kevin Rankin) who has been murdering cultists to try and gain favor from Lucifer was something I couldn’t see coming. I was for sure that the crazy priest Jacob Williams (Evan Arnold) was the murderer, and so was Chloe (Lauren German) and the rest of the police force. At least, that’s until the priest is found dead in Lucifer’s penthouse by Chloe. The police immediately burst into the club to stick up Lucifer at that point. It seemed way too obvious that it’s a set up. Malcolm had to have tipped them off that Lucifer had the priest’s body there. The one thing I didn’t get though was: when did Malcolm kidnapped the priest, drag him up into penthouse and then shoot him in the head? And he did all of that without Lucifer knowing? From what we see, Lucifer doesn’t leave his club/penthouse, so I have trouble believing it. Needless to say, Malcolm has framed Lucifer and definitely won’t be getting away with it after the finale. I can’t wait to see him get what’s coming to him.
Keen on Maze
Maze (Lesley-Ann Brandt) was a big part of this episode and it was great. I loved that we picked up three weeks later (more about the three weeks thing later) with Maze throwing knives at Lucifer, testing to see if any of the different metals could hurt him. After three weeks they finally agree that it’s because of Chloe that he’s sometimes vulnerable, especially after she arrived in the elevator right as Lucifer stubbed his toe, cutting it and causing blood to surface. Maze doesn’t like the idea of Chloe being around Lucifer, but we’ll talk about this more when we get to Chloe. For the past three weeks Maze has been continuing her undercover work by sleeping with Amenadiel. Honestly, we don’t see a whole lot of anything that came from the three weeks in between episodes 11 and 12, but I guess the effect that it had on Amenadiel was that he is now extremely smitten with Mazikeen. She may also feel a bit for him as well, which is the most interesting part. We see her pull a demon dagger out as Amenadiel is sleeping, but she hesitates on if she is going to stab him or not. This is the first sign of actual real emotion that Maze might feel other than the jealousy we saw earlier in the season. Maze of course gets caught and threatened; Amenadiel immediately realized that he’s been played. In the end, it’s Maze that causes Lucifer and Amenadiel to stop their scuffle as she gives them two demon daggers and tells them to kill each other; she no longer cares. Which isn’t really the truth. Maze is just confused and hurt by the idea that the two men she seems to love are trying to kill each other, so she’d rather them just get it over with. I still don’t know how this season will play out, but I’m starting to think that Maze isn’t going to get a happy ending with Amenadiel. They also make a huge point in several scenes this episode to clue us into how dangerous Maze’s demon daggers are. If those daggers can hurt angels, we better hope that Malcolm doesn’t get his grubby little hands on them.
Sibling Skirmish
The sibling rivalry came to a head this episode as Amenadiel and Lucifer finally confront each other. My absolute favorite part of this episode was when Lucifer was about to show Malcolm living Hell, only to be interrupted by Amenadiel giving the classic “pick on someone your own size” line. Holy Hell I was excited by that. The funny thing is that I knew the fight was coming because of the promo, but the showrunners did the climactic arrival so damn well. This fight has been coming for the whole season in my mind, but it had a different feel to it than I expected. When they fight, it’s less about wanting to actually kill one another, but more just tired and hurt, and wanting to take those emotions out on the other. Lucifer also makes Amenadiel recognize all of the non-heavenly deeds the angel has been committing during his quest to send Lucifer back to Hell. I’ve been talking about Amenadiel’s sins since the beginning and Lucifer pretty much confirmed it for me… God’s not simply going to let Amenadiel go back to being a holy angel after everything he’s done. He’s just as fit to rule Hell now as Lucifer is. The fight was fantastic, as the two yell truths to one another while they wail on each other. I felt like Lucifer had the upper hand in the fight for the most part. Amenadiel did the wrong thing picking on Lucifer while he was already having a “monumental dreadful day.” Amenadiel’s realization that he had failed in his task, and actually ended up making things a lot worse, led him to stop playing games and go after Lucifer without a plan. “Why did you have to use her?” asks Amenadiel referring to Maze. This hypocrisy is pointed out by Lucifer as he lists off everyone Amenadiel has used… Chloe Decker being the only name he mistook. The choreography of the fight was actually pretty decent. Tom Ellis handles himself well and made me believe that he was really laying into the much larger D.B. Woodside. You’d think that the two would be causing Man of Steel levels of damage, but the only thing to really break was a ton of glass and bottles in Lucifer’s penthouse. While Maze interrupted the fight, these two might not be finished just yet. I just think they’re going to need to talk it out before they’re finished fighting with each other. In next week’s promo we see the brother’s actually team up once again (maybe with Maze as a third wheel) to take on Malcolm, but if you look close enough, there is a massive spoiler on the fate of Amenadiel. I won’t spoil it too much here, but I think the demon daggers are going to play a part.
Damning Decker
This episode was pretty funny due to Lucifer’s attempts to avoid Chloe. We find out that Lucifer has been ignoring Chloe’s calls for three whole weeks, and she really does seem to have missed her friend. One thing I didn’t buy was that Lucifer was trying to keep his distance from her the whole episode, but he wasn’t ever really far enough away from her for it to matter. At the start he begins to bleed right as she arrives in his penthouse elevator, which is several feet from where he was standing. Lucifer should have used that as a basis for how far he should keep himself. Either way, it’s a stark contrast to how Lucifer felt back in “Manly Whatnots” (1×04) when he was excited about mortality and how easy he could die. In this episode it was almost as if Lucifer was paranoid of dying. It’s possible that giving away his Pentacostal coin makes him more fearful of dying since he wouldn’t have a way back out of Hell. Either way, the whole episode Lucifer is suspicious of Chloe and is trying to figure out what we have all been theorizing about the whole season. What is it about Chloe that makes him vulnerable? Is she an undercover angel working for Amenadiel? Well we find out that that isn’t the case, but we also don’t get the answer to what else it could be this episode. We may not even get the answer this season. I loved how Chloe didn’t seem to show any kind of concern by the way Lucifer was acting towards her. She just found him annoying like she did earlier in the season. I did like that she brought up the vulnerabilities talk from last episode too. While Chloe explains that she just meant that she feels like she can trust Lucifer, I still think she meant way more. This mistrust from Lucifer flip flops completely as Dan (Kevin Alejandro) begins to make her suspicious of Lucifer, and especially at the end when Chloe finds the murdered body of the priest in his penthouse. I found this a nice parallel is Maze being suspicious of Chloe earlier in the episode. Chloe buys into all of Dan’s suspicions and looks visibly pained by the revelation that Lucifer could have murdered someone like that. We all know that it was Malcolm who left that priest there, but Chloe was the only one who was on Lucifer’s side back when people where suspecting him for the murders… now she’s not. It’s going to take a lot of convincing and probably a confession from Malcolm to turn this around, which we see in the promo for next week that Malcolm is definitely coming out to Chloe. So much for my #Chlocifer finale hopes. I just hope that Chloe gives Lucifer a chance to explain the situation. My guess is that whatever happens between him and Chloe will cause Lucifer to think it’s time to “go back to Hell.”
The biggest issues I had with this episode was that they chose to put three weeks in between the episodes. I feel like the story was moving extremely fast, and the fact that we’re supposed to believe that Dan hasn’t tried to talk with Chloe before now, makes it really hard to believe that three weeks have actually past. I’d believe more that Dan would go straight to Chloe to confess given how he wasn’t going to play along with Malcolm anymore. Malcolm continued to hint at threats towards Chloe to Dan, which makes me continue to believe that Dan is going to have to be the one who takes out Malcolm in the end. I’m starting to think that instead of Dan dying, he’s actually going to shoot Malcolm and get arrested for it. We see in the promo for the finale that Malcolm kidnaps Trixie (Scarlett Estevez) and tells Chloe to come alone, but I don’t think Dan will let her go alone. In fact, I didn’t even see Dan in the promo for next week, so I think this will be the most interesting part of the finale. We see Lucifer and Amenadiel go after Trixie, but I don’t know if that’s going to go as smooth as I would hope. I think it would be pretty awesome to give Dan the heroic moment for some reason. The guy hasn’t had a good time lately. We got to see Dr. Martin (Rachel E Harris) for a short scene this week. I really missed her and Lucifer’s therapy sessions, but this episode didn’t reveal a whole lot during the one scene we got. It was just used as a vehicle to move the plot along. While next week’s episode shows some intense action, I think we’re finally going to get to see Lucifer in Hell for a bit in the set up for next season. I love that Malcolm has become the real big bad of the season and that this episode is kind of ending the Amenadiel/Lucifer conflict. This was the best episode Kevin Rankin has done. His dialog at the end with Lucifer before Amenadiel showed up was extremely well acted. Next week everything ends and we’ll have to spend the rest of the year theorizing. The question is, who’s going to Hell next episode alongside Lucifer? Be prepared for some potential deaths. As long as Chloe, Lucifer and Trixie come out okay, I’ll be content going into the break.
Let me know your thoughts on this penultimate episode of Lucifer in the comments below or on Twitter @TheEverwritten! Thanks also to anyone who shares this article to anyone they know who watches the show. Would love to hear from more of you!
Check out the promo for the finale “Take Me Back To Hell” below: