Episode 7 of Lucifer, “Wingman,” opens with Lucifer continuing his desperate search for his missing wings, with Mazikeen torturing their way through smugglers to the whereabouts of Lucifer’s wings, but to no avail. Lucifer decides to be upfront with Chloe about his missing angel wings—which she naturally finds ludicrous and laughable—and when Chloe suggests that his dilemma could benefit from an alternate point-of-view, Lucifer decides to enlist the assistance of his brother Amenadiel. “Wingman” focuses on the dynamic between the Devil and his diabolical angelic brother.
Lucifer meets Amenadiel on the beach he and Mazikeen first arrived on after leaving Hell,1 whereupon Mazikeen severed her master’s wings. Amenadiel is aghast when informed that Lucifer’s wings are missing, as their divine splendor is not for mortal eyes, and the consequences of their being unleashed upon the world can be dire. More important to Amenadiel, however, is that Lucifer needs his wings back to once more assume Hell’s vacant throne. Amenadiel reveals that it has been required of him to act as Hell’s superintendent in the Devil’s absence, and it is a responsibility he loathes in the utmost. This seems to verify Lucifer’s accusation in “Lucifer, Stay. Good Devil”: Amenadiel’s motivation in his quest to get Lucifer to return to Hell is primarily selfish, as the angel is Hell-bent on getting the Devil back to the Underworld lest he inherit the unenviable job.
Amenadiel agrees to help Lucifer regain his stolen wings, but he makes it clear that he intends to return them to Heaven, where they were created and where they belong. The angelic brothers attend the outré auction where Lucifer’s wings are to be put up for sale, and it is here that Amenadiel learns of Lucifer’s “mortality sitch.” “You just made my millennium,” Amenadiel remarks with a grin, as he believes Lucifer will end up in Hell even if his efforts to get the Devil to return willingly fail, for at any moment Lucifer’s life can be ended by a common thug. (I wouldn’t be surprised if this does happen, but with Lucifer returning to Heaven for turning over a new leaf, Amenadiel sent to Hell for behaving with a blackened, sinful heart.) In any event, at the auction Amenadiel finally comes face-to-face with Chloe, who remarks that Lucifer’s (now suited) brother is the handsome charmer of the two—most likely to irritate the prideful Prince of Darkness, but it does open up yet another potential avenue for Amenadiel to try to get to Lucifer.
As the FBI raids the auction, Lucifer has Amenadiel stop time (he has to ask “please,” which is dreadfully uncharacteristic) so that he can get to his wings, only to discover that they are fake. Lucifer, his last nerve plucked, heads to the house of Carmen Grant, the atheist auctioneer who claimed to believe only “in one simple divinity: the almighty dollar.” The crook Carmen, however, has kept the angelic wings on display—“like some decorative stag head,” Lucifer remarks, aghast—obsessively staring at their divine radiance. “They’re mine,” Lucifer growls like a territorial beast, but Carmen ultimately proves useful, providing an important piece of information, which leads to the revelatory final scene Lucifer and Amenadiel share.
Under the night sky, a pensive Lucifer sits between his angel wings, which are laid out on the beach. Amenadiel arrives, asking if Lucifer, now in possession of his wings once more, is at all tempted to “assume [his] form” and return to “where [he] “belong[s],” at which point Lucifer flicks his cigarette, setting his wings ablaze. Amenadiel crumbles to his knees before the fiery wings, utterly appalled. Lucifer confronts his trickster brother, having unraveled his master plan of orchestrating the theft of the wings and having them end up in Carmen’s corrupt hands—imperiling the world in the process by letting the wings loose. Why would Amenadiel do something so dangerously desperate? “To fool me into desiring the wings and the hellish throne they accompany,” Lucifer observes. “It almost bloody worked.” When Amenadiel asks why Lucifer would choose to destroy the wings, the fallen angel asserts that, as Amenadiel suspected, “I did leave myself an out—a ripcord back to the life that dear old Dad chose for me. But I don’t need it now because, in case I haven’t made myself abundantly clear, I’m never going back to Hell.” Amenadiel explodes into a rage, assaulting his brother, who, instead of fighting back, taunts the angry angel: “Become like me. Become wrath. Fall as I did!” Amenadiel ceases, perhaps realizing that he is becoming like his sinful sibling, but he assures Lucifer, “This is far from over. I’ll do whatever it takes to get you back to Hell.”
Back at Lux, as Mazikeen informs Lucifer that she cleaned up the “mess on the beach,” Lucifer asserts that he is here to stay. Acknowledging that, despite its carnal pleasures, this life is not what Mazikeen bargained for, Lucifer is just about to relieve her from the vow she made to him, but Mazikeen interrupts, reaffirming her loyalty to Lucifer, now wingless and determined to stay on the earthly plane. As Chloe arrives and converses with Lucifer, however, Mazikeen enviously eyes the irksome woman from afar, and with a nice nod to the Lucifer comic, it is revealed that one feather from Lucifer’s wings remains intact (in Mazikeen’s hands, in this case). We are left to imagine what the Devil’s disgruntled faithful servant might do to get her master back to the bad old days.
Notes
1. In the “Season of Mists” arc of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, Lucifer also settles on a beach after abandoning Hell. See Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Season of Mists (New York: DC Comics, 2010), “Epilogue.”↩