Month: March 2016

In episode 10 of Lucifer, “Pops,” Lucifer and Chloe cover the murder of Javier (“Pops”), a Mexican chef whose cuisine Lucifer happens to have loved. Suspicion naturally falls upon Javier’s prodigal son, Junior, and the wayward son of the overbearing father who nevertheless retains his domineering dad’s favor is an obvious parallel to Lucifer’s relationship with God. Lucifer observes that he can relate to someone trying to “escape the clutches of a difficult father,” and Lucifer wonders what it is like to actually escape from the shadow of such a father. Most significantly, however, Junior’s unfulfilled longing for reconciliation strikes a chord with Lucifer, and the Devil even seems irritated that the boy worthy of his father’s love was denied the opportunity of reconciliation by Javier’s true killer.

Speaking of reconciliation, Mazikeen longs to fix things with Lucifer, and so she seeks out Dr. Linda Martin for therapy so that she can make an attempt at being “normal.” Linda suggests that Mazikeen seek out meaningful relationships by way of friends. Mazikeen reacts harshly to this suggestion, at least until Chloe’s daughter Trixie makes her way into Lux in search of Lucifer and makes a new friend, Maze.

The whole “Pops” episode of Lucifer had a very Lifetime vibe about it, which reached its apex in an asinine dinner Lucifer attends at the Decker residence. By the end of the episode, as Lucifer refuses the sexual advances of a drunken and depressed Chloe, it is fairly clear that the close of season one of Lucifer will involve the Devil reaching some sort of reconciliation with his Father. “Oh God,” Lucifer mutters. My thoughts exactly…

Episode 9 of Lucifer, “A Priest Walks into a Bar,” touches upon Lucifer’s friction with his Father via his interactions with the priest in question, Father Frank Lawrence. It arguably made for the most blasphemous episode of Lucifer thus far, what with all the anticlerical jokes and gibes (“Padre Pederast” taking the irreverent cake), but Lucifer ultimately becomes friendly with the Father.

Lucifer initially asserts himself as the mortal enemy of the priest, spending a significant amount of time attempting to prove that Father Lawrence is not so righteous, even parading strippers in nun attire before him in Lux. But Lucifer and Father Lawrence get on rather well, starting with their charming piano duet. Their true chemistry shows when they discuss dear old Dad, however, Lucifer mocking Father Lawrence for his one-way conversations into the sky. The fallen angel expresses that he cannot understand the Father’s enduring faith, as he abandoned his faith in God because God “didn’t have faith in me.” When Father Lawrence insists that, however difficult it may be to believe, God has a plan, Lucifer remarks, “His plan was quite clear.” “How do you know it’s over?” asks the priest, and this clearly strikes a chord with Lucifer, who we know to be questioning his role in the divine plan.

When Father Lawrence is shot dead in his church as this week’s crime/mystery reaches its explosive climax, Lucifer loses it. The Devil appears genuinely upset by the loss of Father Lawrence, his fierce rage turning to deep depression, as if he lost the caring father he feels he never had. Lucifer returns to his loft and voices his resentment into the sky he and Father Lawrence conversed beneath earlier. “You cruel, manipulative bastard,” Lucifer shouts into an ominous sky, protesting the blatant injustice he sees in God’s world, where saints and sinners suffer the same grim fate.

Speaking of sin and saints, “A Priest Walks into a Bar” also fills us in on Amenadiel’s new scheme, which involves Malcolm, the crooked cop gunned down by Dan (who was apparently just protecting his wife Chloe, who was spotted snooping) on Palmetto Street and recently resurrected by Amenadiel. Amenadiel is aware that the thirty seconds Malcolm spent in Hell felt like thirty years, and the cruel angel enlists the assistance of the corrupt cop with the threat of sending him back to Hell. Malcolm, now equipped with an unmarked gun by his new reluctant partner, Dan, is ordered by Amenadiel to shoot and kill Lucifer Morningstar. But with the redemptive arc Lucifer appears to be on, it wouldn’t be surprising if his mortal death delivers him back to Heaven rather than Hell.

Episode 8 of Lucifer, “Et Tu, Doctor?,” opens with a rather chipper Lucifer in the midst of celebrating his “re-birthday party.” The fallen angel feels reborn now that he has scorched his wings and bade farewell for good to his old life. Lucifer is now free to be, in his words, “Whoever the Hell I want to be.”

The Morningstar makes his return to Dr. Linda Martin, Lucifer apologetic about their last session ending with his violent explosion. Linda reassures Lucifer that, despite the damage done to her office, their last session was positive because they made a real breakthrough, as Lucifer let down his barriers—barriers which, Lucifer makes clear, he would prefer to have back up. Linda observes that he appears to be jealous (envious would be more appropriate) of Chloe’s ex, Dan—“detective douche,” as Lucifer repeatedly refers to him. “The Devil doesn’t get jealous,” Lucifer retorts. “I’m the one who inspires passion in others.” While Lucifer wants Linda to look into Chloe—who, for failing to throw herself at the Devil’s feet like all other women, is in his eyes obviously not right in the head—the episode revolves around Lucifer’s self-examination to discover whether or not he is indeed green with envy. (Lucifer is sure to play up the love triangle element, as “Et Tu, Doctor?” both has Chloe lock lips with Dan and reveals that Dan was the mysterious gunman in the Palmetto shooting, which left Chloe an outcast in her department and has continued to haunt her career ever since.)

At the end of the episode, as Lucifer is prepared to make up for late carnal payments to his therapist, Linda explains that, going forward, it would be best for them to keep their relationship strictly professional. It is not exactly clear why this is. Perhaps because Linda met Mazikeen, who informed her that sleeping with Lucifer was destined to end with her being discarded like trash. Or perhaps because Linda met Chloe and sees potential for Lucifer’s progress in his longing for a relationship of sorts with the enigmatic officer. Curiously, Lucifer is not piqued by Linda’s termination of their sexual relationship. He is, however, incensed when he figures out the true identity of the biblically named Dr. Canaan in the office next door, Lucifer realizing that Linda has had “an angel on her shoulder trying to control me.”

Lucifer confronts Mazikeen, who is guilty of pointing Amenadiel in Linda’s direction, observing that her self-serving betrayal is indicative of the human world rubbing off on her rather than him. With that, Lucifer breaks with his long-time partner and friend. It will be interesting to see how this develops (Lucifer and Mazikeen do split for a time in the Lucifer comic); surely Mazikeen’s possession of one of Lucifer’s feathers will play a part in the proceedings.

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

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^{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.”↩}

Episode 6 of Lucifer, “Favorite Son,” began to play more with the show’s mythical element. Early on in the episode, for instance, Lucifer mentions in passing “the Silver City,” i.e., Heaven, and the angel Uriel, whose “welcome speech,” as far as the Devil is concerned, “is far worse than Hell…” Most significantly, of course, Lucifer’s severed wings are at the center of “Favorite Son,” their theft sending the Morningstar on something of a rampage.

Lucifer naturally enlists Chloe’s help in the search for his stolen container, but he repeatedly evades informing her about his wings residing therein. Precisely why he does so is left rather ambiguous, but it perhaps has something to do with the vulnerability he displayed when Chloe neared the wounds where his wings once were in “Manly Whatnots.” Just why Lucifer is so possessive of his wings is also left ambiguous, but it seems apparent that his need to repossess them differs from the comic. In the Lucifer comic, the Morningstar must reclaim his wings to restore himself to full power, which Lucifer proceeds to use to form his own cosmos independent of Yahweh’s Creation; in the Lucifer show, the fallen angel appears to long for his wings as mementos of the prelapsarian state he had forever forfeited. In any event, Lucifer’s personal crisis over the robbery of his wings and his own cosmic identity comes to a head by the end of the episode as the result of Amenadiel’s tampering with the therapeutic tactics of Dr. Linda Martin.

In discussion with the duped Linda, Amenadiel adds the following to his fraudulent biography: before becoming a therapist, he underwent two years in seminary school, hence his knowledge of theology (Amenadiel actually quotes 2 Corinthians 11:14: “…Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light”). Given that Linda believes her troubling patient has adopted the persona of the Devil, Amenadiel convinces the “therapist to the Devil himself” that the problem may perhaps be “humoring his metaphor without fully embracing it.” Amenadiel suggests that Linda use some of his theological insight to make a breakthrough with the Devil, who is “essentially a rebellious son.” Amenadiel assures Linda that she will get to him, insisting that while Lucifer may not like what he hears, it will help him, his inability to understand that notwithstanding.

The sneaky angel’s nefarious plan to covertly attack his brother by inciting Linda to prod at Lucifer’s soft spots works. Lucifer’s frustrations build up to his confrontation with his longsuffering therapist at the close of the episode, where we see Lucifer at his most vulnerable. Lucifer tries to keep up the hauteur that is his armor (“I seek no one’s approval,” he remarked earlier), but he is clearly about to unravel. Linda explains to Lucifer, “you keep trying on many hats to hide your horns—playboy, cop, club owner,” and as soon as Linda begins to explore the legend of Lucifer—starting with his prelapsarian name, which is taken from the comic—the arrogant angel swiftly begins to teeter on the edge:

LINDA. …[B]efore you fell, you were known as Samael, the Lightbringer.

LUCIFER. I don’t go by that name anymore.

LINDA. That was the name that connotated your Father’s love for you.

LUCIFER. Ha. Right. Was casting His son into Hell also an expression of His love?

LINDA. No, God didn’t cast you out of Heaven because He was angry with you.

LUCIFER. How can you presume to know God’s intentions?

LINDA. Oh, I don’t. I can’t.

LUCIFER. Then maybe stick within the limits of your intellectual capacity.

LINDA. Or maybe my simplicity offers me a different perspective. God cast you out because He needed you to do the most difficult of jobs. It was a gift—

LUCIFER. —Gift?! He shunned me. He vilified me. He made me a torturer.

While the precise details of Lucifer’s fall from Heaven remain mysterious, leaving us to speculate, for instance, over why he rebelled against God and whether or not he led a war in Heaven, Lucifer is clearly indignant about the outcome of his break with his Father. The Devil insists that if he has done evil, the fault lies with the Almighty Himself (“He made me a torturer”), but more importantly Lucifer is most deeply offended by God damning his proud name to slander via irresponsible mortals scapegoating the Devil for their sins:

LUCIFER. Can you even begin to fathom what it was like? Eons spent providing a place for dead mortals to punish themselves. I mean, why do they blame me for all their little failings as if I spent my days sitting on their shoulder forcing them to commit acts they’d otherwise find repulsive? Oh, “the Devil made me do it!” I have never made any one of them do anything. Never.¹

LINDA. What happened to you is unfair.

LUCIFER. Unfair? This is unjust. For all eternity my name will be invoked to represent all their depravity. That is the “gift” that my Father gave me.

Linda persists in arguing that, despite damning His favorite son, God has always loved Lucifer, however mysterious the ways in which God expresses that love might be. It is at this point that Lucifer begins to break down, and the reaction the second mention of his original angelic name Samael incites—“Do not call me that, please”—is indicative of his impending eruption. When Linda tries to convince the distraught Devil that God’s fallen angel can rise, a teary-eyed Lucifer pleads in frustration that he cannot—that he literally cannot, as his wings remain stolen. The intense scene ends explosively, Lucifer losing his temper and punching a hole in Linda’s wall, leaving his therapist dumbfounded and frightened as he exits, abashed.

“Favorite Son” concludes with a damaged Lucifer overlooking the City of Angels, pining for his pilfered wings as Mazikeen eyes the scars on his back which the severance of his wings by her hand has left. As we are finally shown Lucifer’s resplendent angel wings in an unknown location, the episode ends, leaving us speculating about various things, such as whether Lucifer’s wings have self-healed, as in the comic,² or they have always remained feathery, and, more importantly, why Lucifer longs to repossess his wings in the first place. To me, Lucifer’s violent reaction to Linda’s insistence that he can ascend seemed to imply that within him is some desperate hope of being reinstated in Heaven.

 

If Fox’s Lucifer pines for the loss of Heaven, he fits within the Miltonic-Romantic tradition. In Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan hates God, but he loves Heaven, the fallen archangel refusing to part with the celestial paradise he belonged to, continuing to assert himself and his “Hell-doom’d” (II.697) brethren as “Sons of Heaven” (I.654), determined “To claim our just inheritance of old…” (II.38). Satan is, in short, Hell-bent on regaining Heaven, vowing that his “puissant Legions, whose exíle / Hath emptied Heav’n, shall…re-ascend / Self-rais’d, and repossess thir native seat…” (I.632–34). The tragic truth, however, is that Milton’s Satan cannot escape Hell, due to

The Hell within him, for within him Hell

He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell

One step no more than from himself can fly

By change of place… (IV.20–23)

As Satan himself pithily puts it, “Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell…” (IV.75). Despite the fallen archangel’s lament for the loss of Heaven—for “what I was / In that bright eminence” (IV.43–44)—and the despair his inescapable Hell subjects him to, Milton’s Satan is not prepared to make amends with the Almighty; too proud to ever bend the knee, Satan rejects even the thought of atonement because repentance requires “submission; and that word / Disdain forbids me…” (IV.81–82). The point of my digression: Fox’s Lucifer follows the Miltonic-Romantic tradition if he longs for the heavenly homeland he resents being ousted from, but should he stoop to longing for the forgiveness of his “punisher” (Paradise Lost, IV.103), Lucifer will be breaking from tradition.

“Favorite Son” was a more favorable episode of Lucifer, particularly in its final scenes, which presented the fallen angel at his most Byronic yet (“I’m a walking paradox”) and got the character closest to his comic book counterpart, even quoting from Vertigo’s Lucifer directly. The difference, of course, is that Fox’s Lucifer appears more a hurt (and perhaps abused) child than Mike Carey’s exiled proud Prince. In any event, “Favorite Son” showed that the Lucifer show can be more than a comically risqué police procedural with the Devil (and the accompanying hellish puns) in the mix, and it will be interesting to see how Lucifer’s character develops going forward.

 

Notes

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<sup>1. This is taken nearly verbatim from the Vertigo Lucifer’s departing speech to Morpheus as he quits being the Devil and closes down Hell: “Can you imagine what it was like? Ten billion years spent providing a place for dead mortals to torture themselves? And like all masochists, they called the shots. ‘Burn me.’ ‘Freeze me.’ ‘Eat me.’ ‘Hurt me.’ And we did. Why do they blame me for all their little failings? They use my name as if I spent my entire day sitting on their shoulders, forcing them to commit acts they would otherwise find repulsive. ‘The Devil made me do it.’ I have never made one of them do anything. Never.” (Mike Carey, Lucifer: Evensong [New York: DC Comics, 2007], p. 143; cf. Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Season of Mists [New York: DC Comics, 2010], “Episode 2.”)↩
2. See Mike Carey, Lucifer: Children and Monsters (New York: DC Comics, 2001), pp. 79–80.↩</sup>