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Lucifer Review: S1:E12, “#TeamLucifer”

Episode 12 of Lucifer, “#TeamLucifer,” was possibly the show’s most satirical episode, within its crosshairs: “generic Satanists.” (To be fair, most of the things these “Satanists” get up to are better described as stereotypical.) The episode opens with a mock ritual sacrifice of a young lady, 19-year-old Rose Davis, at the hands of her boyfriend, Corazon, until the Satanic cult couple’s S&M fun and games becomes an actual murder scene. While Lucifer has been avoiding Chloe for weeks, having discovered that her presence makes him “exsanguinate,” as Lucifer puts it, the detective insists that he helps, as this case demands the Devil’s insight.

Lucifer reluctantly agrees to go along with Chloe, and when he is shown the body of Rose, which has “Hail Lucifer” carved into it, Lucifer remarks, “This is sickening.…I mean, to blame it on me. It’s an atrocity. These Satanists—misguided cult nobheads with Frisbees in their earlobes.” Thus begins the episode’s string of gibes directed at modern occult Satanism. When Chloe and Lucifer discover in Rose’s room a hidden door bookcase that leads to a “creepy, secret evil room,” Lucifer remarks to the sight of chicken remains, “If that’s supposed to be an offering for me, then I decline on the grounds of salmonella.” Lucifer retrieves a Satanic tome from the cobwebby room and, when perusing it, observes, “It’s not half bad, this. I mean, the writing’s atrocious, but it’s not complete drivel. Listen to this: ‘Satan represents a beacon of honesty in a sea of mass self-deceit.’…There’s a whole chapter on sex. I like this book.” This is an obvious reference to The Satanic Bible, written in 1969 by Anton LaVey, who codified modern Satanism and founded the Church of Satan, soon to enjoy its fiftieth anniversary. (Eight of “The Nine Satanic Statements” of LaVey’s Satanic Bible begin with “Satan represents…,” and the book also has a chapter devoted to “Satanic Sex.”)

Most satirized by “#TeamLucifer” is Satanism’s penchant for goats. “Why do they always associate me with goats?” scoffs Lucifer when it’s discovered that Rose has subdermal implants spelling out “children of the goat” in Latin. “I mean, I don’t even like their cheese,” the Devil adds. In any event, the goat clue leads to the “Church of the Dark Prince,” which is an obvious parody of the Church of Satan.  As Chloe surveys the Church’s website, Lucifer learns that joining requires (like the Church of Satan) a $200 membership fee, to which Lucifer simply states, “Sinful.”

Chloe and Lucifer drop in on the Church of the Dark Prince, wherein its Satanic members are conducting a memorial ritual for Rose. When the Satanist leading the ritual invokes “the four crown Princes of Hell,” Lucifer declares, “This is preposterous…First of all, there’s only one me. And secondly, the whole worship thing is more my Father’s bag.”

Lucifer cannot help but interject when he witnesses a Satanist playing Lucifer in the ritual clumsily march into the room and bump his massive goat head. “This is where I draw the line,” Lucifer erupts, barging into the ceremony. “I’m the real Lucifer and I insist that you stop this nonsense immediately. I mean, have you heard yourselves? It’s embarrassing.…I mean, you preach rebellion, but you’re … you’re misguided sheep. And goat. Where’s the real defiance? The free will?” Some of the Satanists begin to frivolously shout “Yeah! Free will! Free will rules!” and “Anarchy! Woo!” This only irritates Lucifer further, but the Satanists embrace Lucifer as “the best Lucifer we’ve had in years” and proceed to chant his name. “Stop!” Lucifer insists. “Someone killed this girl! She didn’t deserve that. This is not what I stand for. Is that what you all wanted? Eh? Should be ashamed of yourselves.”

But “#TeamLucifer” doesn’t get too preachy, deliberately satirizing itself—the Lucifer show, that is. When Chloe introduces “Lucifer himself” to the hooded doorman at the Satanist meeting to convince him to allow them entry, the doorman bluntly observes, “You’re supposed to be blond.” “Yeah, I get that a lot,” says Lucifer, who is of course in appearance considerably different from his comic book counterpart. Speaking of the Lucifer comic, it is revealed that the real name of Rose’s boyfriend Corazon is Mike Carey, and this Mike Carey is also sacrificially murdered (for fans of Mike Carey’s Lucifer comic, an apt metaphor, surely).

Apart from the satirical lightheartedness of “#TeamLucifer,” the episode does have a more serious side to it. Lucifer, who is rather resentful about being scapegoated for humanity’s sins, is utterly disgusted by the idea of people engaging in such base behavior in his name. What’s worse, Lucifer is asked to excuse himself from the case when it becomes apparent that these Satanic murders may be some twisted tribute to the Devil. “You’re blaming this nonsense on me?” Lucifer indignantly asks. “You really think I’d do these vile things? These kids were pretending to be bad, but they weren’t, they were innocent, so I would never hurt them, I’m not a monster.”

Lucifer’s patience with his bad rap is tested throughout the episode as the Devil is incessantly publicly harassed by a street preacher—the charlatan made a true believer by the sight of the Devil’s face back in the second episode. But Lucifer is at his wit’s end once he’s been taken off the case, and in a moment of rage clutches the preacher by the throat as he voices his irritation with the ingratitude of the humans he’s walked amongst for his “solving [L.A.’s] filthy little crimes.” Malcolm, the criminal cop brought back from Hell by Amenadiel, breaks it up, retiring to Lux with a bemused Lucifer. The disgruntled Devil soon discovers, however, that Malcolm is the mysterious murderer, and the crooked cop, who’s been further twisted by the tortures of Hell, confesses that he has done this to honor Lucifer. “I’m not evil. I punish evil,” insists an infuriated Lucifer. As Lucifer proceeds to begin punishing the evil Malcolm, Amenadiel arrives to pick a fight with his brother for using Mazikeen to manipulate and near assassinate him. Malcolm slips out as the angelic brothers get into a bareknuckle brawl, raising Hell in Lucifer’s penthouse.

As they exchange blows, Lucifer and Amenadiel cast blame upon one another. “You justify it all, don’t you?” asks Lucifer. “Claim it’s all done in the name of our Father, but … it’s for your sake, brother. And they call me the prideful one.” The irate angel insists that this is all Lucifer’s fault on account of his irresponsible refusal to return to Hell, which would allow Amenadiel to return home to Heaven. Lucifer calls into question Amenadiel’s place in Heaven given the havoc he’s wreaked on Earth and his current bad habit of copulating with a demon, which Amenadiel himself finds unsavory. But the brawling angelic brothers are ultimately saved from each other by Mazikeen, who expresses her disgust with both of them, who’ve each used her as a pawn in their respective schemes.

In the closing scene of “#TeamLucifer,” Chloe comes face-to-face with the bruised and bloodied Lucifer, who suspects that Amenadiel has somehow employed the good detective as another weapon in his arsenal. When Chloe asks Lucifer what happened, the fallen angel drifts off into a melancholic monologue:

Well … 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’s endured, every atrocity committed in my name? As though I wanted people to suffer. 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. That even the people I trusted … the one person, you … could be used to hurt me.

But as Lucifer reflects on his troubled past and his disastrous current state of affairs, Chloe discovers the corpse of the preacher (presumably Malcolm’s work) beside Lux’s bar. The episode ends with an upset Chloe promptly placing Lucifer under arrest.

It is unclear which direction the impending Lucifer season finale will take. It certainly seems likely that Amenadiel will end up in Hell, perhaps forced to take the infernal throne. It also seems probable that Mazikeen will join Amenadiel there, given their mutual attraction and the demon’s desire to return home to Hell. But what of Lucifer? “#TeamLucifer” hammered home the Devil’s deep disenchantment with his policing the City of Angels, as well as his agitation with his reputation as the Evil One. Lucifer seems to believe that his earthly sojourn has been a failure, so the question remains: what’s left for the Devil to do now?

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The Satanic Anti-Theism of the New Atheists: Part 2 of 2

New Atheism is at its heart anti-theism—opposition to the traditional concept of God as a malevolent force that must be challenged and overcome. Yet, as Romanticism revealed, antipathy to God and sympathy for Satan appear to go hand-in-hand; “anti-theism leads to Satanism,” explained Maximilian Rudwin in his seminal study of The Devil in Legend and Literature:

If what has been considered good is found to be evil, what opposes it must necessarily be good. Thus the denunciation of the Deity led to the sanctification of Satan. If the ruler of an evil world is bad, his adversary must necessarily be good. This paradox accounts for the belief held by many Romantics that Satan was wronged and that there was…a great historical case to be judged anew before the court of our conscience.1

Disdain for the divine autocrat of Judeo-Christian theology certainly led to Romanticism’s reassessment of this despotic Deity’s great Adversary. The revolutionary Thomas Paine—a member of the intellectual circle presided over by radical publisher Joseph Johnson, which, with contributions from the likes of Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, and William Blake,2 laid the foundation for Romantic Satanism—unleashed an unprecedented, acerbic assault on orthodox religion with The Age of Reason (1794–95, 1807). Paine was writing in defense of Deism—the belief in God as the Creator of the cosmos, the non-interventionist Deity far grander than the petty, micromanaging, all-too-human God of the Abrahamic faiths—but Paine’s Age of Reason waxes Satanic when he demonizes the Bible as “the word of a demon,” as opposed to “the Word of God.”3 Finding in the so-called Good Book “a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind,”4 Paine believed the sanguineous Scriptures sullied the Deist God he adored: “It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.”5

Paine of course had little time for “his sooty highness,”6 but while The Age of Reason dismissively derides the Devil as one of the main arms with which institutional religions “terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit,”7 in Common Sense (1776) Paine had employed the example of Satan in its traditionally negative sense when idealizing the American system of government: “He that will promote discord, under a government so equally formed as this, would join Lucifer in his revolt.”8 More significantly, however, in the same work Paine let slip Satanic sympathies by quoting Milton’s fallen angel—when explaining why he could never repent and return to God’s service, even if such a path were open to him (IV.98–99)—to stress the impossibility of the American Colonies returning to subjection: “Reconciliation is now a fallacious dream.…For, as Milton wisely expresses, ‘never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep.’ ”9 This subtle identification with the Miltonic Devil very much foreshadowed the Romantic Satanists who would go well beyond diabolically barbed criticism of God into open assertions of admiration for Milton’s sublime Satan.

Romanticism’s militant atheist Percy Bysshe Shelley, in his unpublished Essay on the Devil and Devils (ca. 1819–20), asserted that the Devil “owes everything to Milton,” in part because “Milton gives the Devil all imaginable advantage…[with] arguments with which he exposes the injustice and impotent weakness of his adversary…”10 By referring to God as the “adversary”—the literal definition of the Hebrew Satan—Shelley was deliberately echoing Milton’s Satan and his “Atheist crew” (VI.370) of rebel angels, who refer to God with epithets typically reserved for the Devil, such as “enemy” (I.188, II.137) and “foe” (I.122, 179; II.78, 152, 202, 210, 463, 769). In turn, Shelley, channeling the revolutionary spirit of the Miltonic Satan, exclaimed his wish “to crush the Demon, to hurl him back to his native Hell never to rise again,” the “Demon” in question being none other than God Himself.11 Lord Byron similarly demonized the Deity and heroized the Devil in Cain: A Mystery (1821), wherein Lucifer emerges as a genuine light-bringer (in the Promethean sense):

                                                               I tempt none,

Save with the truth: was not the tree, the tree

Of knowledge?.…

…Then who was the demon? He

Who would not let ye live, or he who would

Have made ye live for ever in the joy

And power of knowledge? (I.i.196–210)

Today, French philosopher Michel Onfray follows the tradition of Shelleyan/Byronic Satanism, for Onfray goes well out of his way in his Atheist Manifesto to express hypothetical appreciation for “fallen, rebellious angels, untamed, undefeated,” taking his atheism to the boundaries of Satanism proper:

In the Garden of Eden the devil — “the slanderous one, the libeler” — teaches what he knows best: the option of disobedience, of refusal to submit, of saying no. Satan — “the adversary, the accuser” — breathes the wind of freedom across the dirty waters of the primal world where obedience reigns supreme — the reign of maximum servitude. Beyond good and evil, and not simply as an incarnation of the latter, the devil talks libertarian possibilities into being. He restores to men their power over themselves and the world, frees them from supervision and control. We may rightly conclude that these fallen angels attract the hatred of monotheisms. On the other hand, they attract the incandescent love of atheists.12

In his orthodox reading of Paradise Lost, the Christian C. S. Lewis remarked that “Many of those who say they dislike Milton’s God only mean that they dislike God,”13 and John S. Diekhoff added that Satan sympathizers “will do well to ask whether their liking for Satan does not spring from enmity to God.”14 The atheist William Empson was not about to disagree, professing, “I think the traditional God of Christianity very wicked,” and concluding that Christians “worship as the source of all goodness a God who, as soon as you are told the basic story about him, is evidently the Devil.”15 This is an echo of Shelley, Byron, and the other Romantic Satanists, who cast the Christian God in a demonic light and, consequently, sympathized with the demonized God’s great Adversary, Satan. Yet Romantic Satanism’s overturning of the God and Satan paradigm was not mere literary criticism; the Romantic Satanists exalted the Miltonic Satan as a provocative symbolic means of challenging sociopolitical orthodoxy. Perhaps it is no surprise that we find a reemergence of the spirit of Romantic Satanism in the current zeitgeist. Perhaps it is no surprise that the New Atheists, fighting tirelessly to dethrone God in our culture—to in essence realize on Earth what the mythic Lucifer had vainly attempted in Heaven—are inclined to give the Miltonic-Romantic Devil his due.

 

Notes

1. Maximilian Rudwin, The Devil in Legend and Literature (LaSalle, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, [1931] 1959), p. 306.↩
2. See Peter A. Schock, Romantic Satanism: Myth and the Historical Moment in Blake, Shelley, and Byron (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 34–35, 42–43.↩
3. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, intro. Joseph Carrig (New York: Barnes & Noble Publishing, Inc., 2006), p. 21.↩
4. Ibid.↩
5. Ibid., p. 195.↩
6. Ibid., p. 71.↩
7. Ibid., p. 4.↩
8. Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Common Sense and Other Political Writings, ed. intro. and notes. Mark Philip (New York: Oxford University Press, [1995] 1998), p. 32.↩
9. Ibid., p. 27.↩
10. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Essay on the Devil and Devils, in Shelley’s Prose: or the Trumpet of a Prophecy, ed. David Lee Clark, pref. Harold Bloom (New York: New Amsterdam Books, 1988), pp. 268, 267.↩
11. Percy Bysshe Shelley, quoted in Schock, p. 80.↩
12. Michel Onfray, Atheist Manifesto: the Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, trans. Jeremy Leggatt (New York: Arcade Publishing, [2007] 2008), pp. 97–98.↩
13. C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (London: Oxford University Press, [1942] 1961), p. 130.↩
14. John S. Diekhoff, Milton’s Paradise Lost: A Commentary on the Argument (New York: The Humanities Press, Inc., [1946] 1963), p. 48.↩
15. William Empson, Milton’s God [1961] (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, Inc., 1978), pp. 10, 255.↩

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The Satanic Anti-Theism of the New Atheists: Part 1 of 2

Milton’s Satan was able to assume the position of nineteenth-century Romantic Hero in part because the Devil ceased to be terrifying—a shift which took place in the eighteenth century, as orthodox theology’s Prince of Darkness was brought to his deathbed by the Enlightenment. The decline in belief in the Devil as a literal entity walking to and fro in the Earth in search of souls to devour allowed for the Satan of Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) to be read with greater sympathy as a literary rather than a theological character. Jeffrey Burton Russell, author of a five-volume study of the Devil in history and literature, explains that the “depersonalization of Satan, his reduction to a symbol, and the unmooring of the symbol from Bible and tradition meant that the idea of the Devil could float free of its traditional meanings.”1 Paradoxically, as the Devil shrank in theological significance—as Satan was reduced to symbolic form—he grew in mythic stature. No sooner than the “supernatural figure was killed off,” notes Peter A. Schock in his study of Romantic Satanism, was Satan “resurrected in the form of a modern myth,” indeed, “a Gnostic countermyth that idealize[d] revolution and free thought,” wherein “Milton’s Satan [was] constructed as an idealized antagonist of an Omnipotence embodying the dominant political and religious values of the era.”2 There is a discernible resurgence of this radical Romantic trend in the so-called “New Atheism” movement, which has flourished at the start of the new millennium.

Gustave Doré, Paradise Lost, Book VI (1866): "Nine days they fell." (VI.871)
Gustave Doré, Paradise Lost, Book VI (1866): “Nine days they fell.” (VI.871)

Today, while belief in the Devil (and God, for that matter) is declining, Milton’s Satan looms large. The apostate angel’s impact extends well beyond the bounds of literary criticism, as the spirit of Miltonic Satanism pervades modern popular culture. For instance, His Dark Materials (1995 – 2000) trilogy author Philip Pullman—invoking William Blake’s infamous observation in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–93) that Milton “was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it”3—has asserted that he is proud to “be of the devil’s party and know it,” reasoning, “if there is a God and he is as the Christians describe him, then he deserves to be put down and rebelled against…”4 This is to say, effectively, that Lucifer was right to revolt against the Almighty, and Pullman more or less confesses his Luciferian allegiance in his Introduction to an Oxford edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Pullman opens with a retelling of an anecdotal story “about a bibulous, semi-literate, ageing country squire two hundred years ago or more” who, having Paradise Lost read to him, “Suddenly…bangs the arm of his chair, and exclaims ‘By God! I know not what the outcome may be, but this Lucifer is a damned fine fellow, and I hope he may win!’ Which are my sentiments exactly.”5

 

 

Pullman’s unequivocal love for the Miltonic Lucifer permeates his award-winning fantasy novels, described by the author as “Paradise Lost for teenagers in three volumes.”6 Conservative voices have naturally reacted to Pullman with hostility, Peter Hitchens even deeming Pullman “the most dangerous author in Britain,” a hyperbolic assessment echoing Southey’s “Satanic School” diatribe against Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley.7 The significant difference, of course, is that while Byron and Shelley had to be evasive when it came to their Satanic sympathies, Pullman can be open—boastful, even—about his own. This is indicative of a nascent movement of neo-Romantic Satanism, provoked by theocratic encroachments upon secular life and liberty.

The Four HorsemenThe Islamic terror attacks against the United States on September 11 of 2001, along with the revitalization of crusaders for Christ which followed in its wake, were met with a backlash of pent-up anti-theism, which became a militant movement deemed “New Atheism,” leading the charge: contrarian Christopher Hitchens, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, neuroscientist Sam Harris, and philosopher Daniel Dennett. These four militant atheists embraced their collective moniker “the Four Horsemen,” but, like the Romantic Satanists, they flipped the Satanic symbolism on its head, waging a war of ideas against organized religion, which, rather than godlessness, they found to be a principal propagator of conquest (jihad), war, famine, and death.8 Yet because New Atheism is suffused by a diabolically charged resistance to religion and is open to employing Satanic symbols (albeit with tongue in cheek) as derisive challenges to the authoritarian God of the religious—both of which were hallmarks of Romantic Satanism and its Satanic School—the Miltonic Satan has reared his head in the New Atheism movement.

 

 

The late iconic public intellectual atheist Christopher Hitchens explained in a 2004 lecture bearing the Shelleyan title “The Moral Necessity of Atheism” that if there truly were a God who ruled as dictator of the cosmos, as the great religions propose, he, an admirer of Milton’s Satan for his unyielding resistance to such a God, would “be of the Devil’s party,” i.e., “I wouldn’t worship it; I wouldn’t agree to be bound by it; I wouldn’t become one the serfs.” Hitchens, who listed Lucifer as one of his favorite heroes of fiction,9 proclaimed a kinship with the Miltonic Satan because he was not only an atheist but a self-styled “anti-theist,”10 and by asserting himself as such, Hitchens echoed the Romantic Satanists two centuries before him.

 

 

Amelia Curran, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1819)
Amelia Curran, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1819)

The Romantic atheist Shelley, who was expelled from Oxford University for refusing to deny authorship and distribution of a pamphlet on The Necessity of Atheism (1811), was explicit that he would feel compelled to defy God if He did exist: “Did I now see him seated in gorgeous & tyrannic majesty as described, upon the throne of infinitude – if I bowed before him, what would virtue say?”11 This same sentiment is expressed by modern-day atheists perhaps less aware of their Romantic forebears and/or less keen on the prospect of using Satanic icons as a means of iconoclasm. For instance, Dan Barker, who transitioned from fundamentalist Christian minister to atheist activist—indeed, the co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation—took a rather Shelleyan stance in his book Losing Faith in Faith: “Speaking for myself, if the biblical heaven and hell exist, I would choose hell. Having to spend eternity pretending to worship tyranny would be more hellish than baking in eternal flames. There is no way a Bully will earn my worship.”12 This mirrors in sentiment, if not in eloquence, the fallen rebel angel Mammon in Paradise Lost, who, exploring the idea of returning to Heaven, expounds upon Satan’s “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n” (I.263) declaration:

                         …Suppose he [God] should relent

And publish Grace to all, on promise made

Of new Subjection; with what eyes could we

Stand in his presence humble, and receive

Strict Laws impos’d, to celebrate his Throne

With warbl’d Hymns, and to his Godhead sing

Forc’t Halleluiahs; while he Lordly sits

Our envied Sovran, and his Altar breathes

Ambrosial Odors and Ambrosial Flowers,

Our servile offerings. This must be our task

In Heav’n, this our delight; how wearisome

Eternity so spent in worship paid

To whom we hate. (II.237–49)

Richard Westall, Satan Alarmed—Dilated Stood (1794)
Richard Westall, Satan Alarmed—Dilated Stood (1794)

Anti-theism gives New Atheism a noble ring, for anti-theists not only dismiss the Judeo-Christian God as nonexistent, but decry Him as malevolent, proudly expressing that (at least in theory) they would prefer to burn in His Hell than bend their knees to Him in Heaven. Yet this is the quintessential Satanic sentiment, for Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost rejects “Knee-tribute” to the King of Heaven as “prostration vile” (V.782), and when damned to Hell he retains his “unconquerable Will” and “courage never to submit or yield” (I.106, 108) to the God he lambasts as a “Tyrant” (X.466) who “Sole reigning holds the Tyranny of Heav’n” (I.124). What mythic figure could be a more apposite standard-bearer for the anti-theist strain of New Atheism? Reactionary Christians are of course comfortable demonizing the irreligious as friends of Satan, but it is remarkable and certainly culturally significant that a number of prominent nonbelievers increasingly accept this as complementary rather than opprobrious.

 

Notes

1. Jeffrey Burton Russell, Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, [1986] 1990), p. 169.↩
2. Peter A. Schock, Romantic Satanism: Myth and the Historical Moment in Blake, Shelley, and Byron (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 2, 6, 5.↩
3. William Blake, The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David V. Erdman, rev. ed. (New York: Anchor Books, [1965] 1988), p. 35; pl. 6.↩
4. Quoted in Milton in Popular Culture, eds. Laura Lunger Knoppers and Gregory M. Colón Semenza, aft. Stanley Fish (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, [2006] 2007), pp. 8, 9.↩
5. Philip Pullman, Introduction to Paradise Lost, eds. Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg (New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2005), p. 1.↩
6. Quoted in Stephen Burt, “ ‘Fighting Since Time Began’: Milton and Satan in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials,” in Milton and Popular Culture, p. 48.↩
7. In the Preface to A Vision of Judgement (1821), Robert Southey wrote: “Men of diseased hearts and depraved imaginations, who, forming a system of opinions to suit their own unhappy course of conduct, have rebelled against the holiest ordinances of human society, and hating that revealed religion which, with all their efforts and bravadoes, they are unable entirely to disbelieve, labour to make others as miserable as themselves, by infecting them with a moral virus that eats into the soul! The school which they have set up may properly be called the Satanic School, for though their productions breathe the spirit of Belial in their lascivious parts, and the spirit of Moloch in those loathsome images of atrocities and horrors which they delight to represent, they are more especially characterised by a Satanic spirit of pride and audacious impiety, which still betrays the wretched feeling of hopelessness wherewith it is allied.” Quoted in C. L. Cline, “Byron and Southey: A Suppressed Rejoinder,” Keats-Shelley Journal, Vol. 3 (Winter, 1954), p. 30.↩
8. See Revelation 6:1-8.↩
9. See Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir (New York: Twelve, 2010), p. 331.↩
10. In his Introduction to The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever (Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2007), p. xxii, Christopher Hitchens provided his most thorough explanation of his “anti-theist” stance: “I myself have tried to formulate a position I call ‘anti-theist.’ There are, after all, atheists who say that they wish the fable were true but are unable to suspend the requisite disbelief, or have relinquished belief only with regret. To this I reply: who wishes that there was a permanent, unalterable celestial despotism that subjected us to continual surveillance and could convict us of thought-crime, and who regarded us as its private property even after we died? How happy we ought to be, at the reflection that there exists not a shred of respectable evidence to support such a horrible hypothesis. And how grateful we should be to those of our predecessors who repudiated this utter negation of human freedom.”↩
11. Percy Bysshe Shelley, quoted in Schock, p. 80.↩
12. Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc., [1992] 2006), p. 331.↩

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Lucifer Review: S1:E11, “St. Lucifer”

Episode 11 of Lucifer, “St. Lucifer,” open with the Devil feeling rather good about himself, having turned down the sexual advances of an intoxicated Chloe the night before. The Evil One, in fact, finds that he gets a rush from engaging in goodness, and so Lucifer decides to indulge this foreign feeling for an episode.

Appropriately, this week’s murder mystery revolves around a slain philanthropist by the name of Tim Dunlear. Lucifer, aspiring to a “philanthropic high,” decides to become the benefactor of Dunlear’s charity. Despite his philanthropic joyride, Lucifer is reluctant to forgive Mazikeen for betraying him by colluding with Amenadiel. When Mazikeen and Amenadiel come face-to-face and Amenadiel reveals to the spurned demon that he is not as much of an angel as she thinks, the two end up copulating in the backseat of a car. Mazikeen later decides to reveal to Lucifer that she had sex with his brother, proposing a truce with her standoffish master: Mazikeen can give Lucifer the inside scoop on Amenadiel, just as she had done the opposite before. Lucifer accepts, but admonishes Mazikeen to watch her step.

The most significant aspect of “St. Lucifer” was the revelation of the source of Lucifer’s “mortality sitch.” Malcolm, the crooked cop back from Hell to do Amenadiel’s bidding, finally confronts Lucifer at gunpoint. Lucifer explains to Malcolm that Amenadiel is tricking him and that the angel, in the end, cannot save the sinner from Hell even if he wanted to. But Lucifer can. In exchange for not pulling the trigger, Lucifer offers Malcolm his “Pentecostal coin,” which, Lucifer explains, he was going to use to return to Hell; Malcolm will be able to use it to escape Hell. While Malcolm accepts and leaves Lux with the Devil’s coin, Lucifer is before long gunned down by Dunlear’s wife once he deduces that she murdered her philanthropic husband. Much to Lucifer’s surprise, his immortality appears to have been restored. The episode closes with Lucifer discovering that it is the presence of Chloe that makes him vulnerable, leaving the viewer to imagine that Lucifer will have to choose to either embrace his humanity or keep his distance from the virtuous woman he’s drawn to in order to remain the immortal Devil.

As Lucifer approaches its season finale, it is increasingly difficult to deny that season one was, all in all, a disappointment, and I say season one because it has been announced that Lucifer has been green-lit for a second. I suppose we can only hope that the creators of the show, having successfully evaded cancellation, will be emboldened to explore territory closer to the truly excellent Lucifer comics.

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Lucifer Review: S1:E10, “Pops”

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…

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Lucifer Review: S1:E9, “A Priest Walks into a Bar”

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.

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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.

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Lucifer Review: S1:E8, “Et Tu, Doctor?”

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.”

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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.”

LMF 54Lucifer 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.

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Lucifer Review: S1:E7, “Wingman”

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.

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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.

LMF 48Amenadiel 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.

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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.”

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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.”↩

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Lucifer Review: S1:E6, “Favorite Son”

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

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.↩

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Lucifer Review: S1:E5, “Sweet Kicks”

In “Sweet Kicks,” Lucifer spends the entire episode diving headlong into danger to experience the exhilaration of his newfound feeling of mortal vulnerability. “The danger of getting hurt is positively thrilling,” Lucifer remarks with a grin. Immersing himself in the peril produced by LA gangbangers, the Devil plays the loose cannon cop beside the uptight Detective Chloe Decker. By the end of the episode, Lucifer—much to Chloe’s chagrin—utters with a sardonic smile, “I’m now an official civilian consultant for the LAPD,” which I suppose means that the police procedural element of the Lucifer show is officially here to stay.

“Sweet Kicks” was for the most part uneventful, although there was an interesting exchange between Chloe and Lucifer which was quite evocative of the Lucifer comic. Chloe observes that Lucifer likes creating chaos and subsequently taking control because it provides a power trip. “It’s like you’ve got some kind of God complex,” Chloe remarks, which elicits Lucifer’s indignant retort, “I most certainly do not.” It was rather reminiscent of Mike Carey’s Lucifer, who prides himself on being unlike his Father (“I have nothing in common with Yahweh”1), although Ellis’ Lucifer appeared more an insulted child than Carey’s raging demigod.

Mazikeen was a notable presence in episode 5 of Lucifer, singlehandedly pulverizing a roomful of gun-toting gangbangers (much to Lucifer’s delight) and even allowing us to catch a glimpse of the deformed half of her face, hitherto hidden in plain sight. Most significantly, Maze begins to conspire with Amenadiel to get Lucifer back to Hell, which Lucifer’s demonic bodyguard feels is in the Devil’s best interest. Maze points Amenadiel in the direction of Dr. Martin, Lucifer’s new confidante. Amenadiel proceeds to tempt Linda for information about his rebellious brother, using the same angelic sexual charm the libidinous Linda has already fallen prey to via the fallen angel. Interestingly, Amenadiel lies to Linda about his identity, claiming to be a fellow therapist, whereas Lucifer, of course, never lies and is open and honest about who he is. Amenadiel’s duplicity underlines the deep ambivalence of the angelic host.

The most exciting moment of the latest episode of Lucifer, it must be said, was the preview for the following week’s episode, “Favorite Son,” which seemed to hint at the search for Lucifer’s severed wings—one of the great storylines of the Lucifer comic.2 Lucifer’s “The House of the Windowless Rooms” arc was, in my opinion, when the comic truly found itself, and I can only hope that the show will undergo a similar transformation.

 

Notes

1. Mike Carey, Lucifer: The Divine Comedy (New York: DC Comics, 2003), p. 126.↩
2. See Mike Carey, Lucifer: Children and Monsters (New York: DC Comics, 2001), pp. 1–92.↩