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Lucifer: Save Lucifer

Chloe: “This isn’t about me. This is about you. I’m not gonna let you use me as an excuse to avoid dealing with what is behind all of this. You always talk about how much you hate being blamed for humanity’s sins. You know, ‘The Devil made me do it.’ And I think I know why you hate it so much, because deep down, you blame yourself just as much. If not more! You have to stop taking responsibility for things you can’t control. Lucifer – you need to forgive yourself.”

In the penultimate episode of the season, we complete several emotional journeys.

In the previous episode, Lucifer finally had a real breakthrough with his therapist, when he realized that he hated himself. That sets this episode’s plot in motion, as that self-hatred manifests in Lucifer as he finds himself literally turning into a monster.

The case of the week serves as a distorted mirror to Lucifer’s journey. At first it seems as if a woman killed her identical twin sister, which makes him want to speak to her to learn what it means to kill a copy of herself and would that help? Lucifer, as usual, is projecting and the case turns out to be completely different. Yet there's one similarity: the surviving twin, even though she didn't kill anyone, feels as if she appears guilty and so she runs.

Eve, who Lucifer rejected last week, is completely desperate to win him back. The first time that I watched this season, I was mad at her for existing, because I wanted Lucifer and Chloe to get together and she was the hurdle (even though I know that love, in television, needs lots of hurdles for there to be a plot). But on the rewatch, I really enjoyed Eve. First, her physical appearance – very womanly, but with the long dark hair, which she wears in the Garden of Eden fashion. Second, her character. She feels, very deeply – or at least she repeats it often enough – that she was fashioned from a rib, that she is but the subset of another person; she was made to be a wife. Yet instead of working against that, instead of becoming more (and she is capable of more) she still behaves like a partner’s rib.

Maze wants Eve but is being rejected by her and goes to hang out in Dan’s car to “get some air.” And maybe the air in a parking garage smells like Hell to Maze. Dan certainly finds this strange, but he, too, has gone to hide out in his car.

Lucifer is the character who has hated himself the most throughout this episode, but other characters are feeling something similar. Dan certainly does, and although he resents and hates Lucifer for all the things he has gotten away with over the years, he feels that he has been getting away with too much as well.

Ella proves her worth as a forensic scientist when she figures out that Dan is the cop who told Tiernan senior what Lucifer did to Tiernan junior – but instead of turning Dan in, she covers for him (after all, what Lucifer did to Tiernan junior was terrible). Dan wants to be punished for his deed but Ella tells him that he is suffering and that he needs to get help. Although we haven’t seen this combination before, Dan turns to Linda. (I guess she’s just always in her office, waiting for patients to drop by! Even when she’s nine months pregnant!)

Maze, too, has been struggling to find her place. She feels a connection to Eve, and pursues her and helps her do crazy things to get Lucifer back. She even sings to Eve. But Eve doesn’t reciprocate. This makes it easy for Maze to yell at Eve to tell her that Lucifer doesn’t love her, and that she has to accept it. However, Maze’s words make more of an impact on Maze than they do on Eve, and she realizes that Eve does not love her. I cheered when Maze received the text that Linda’s baby was coming and she rushed away from Eve with something more important to do.

Chloe, on the other hand, is the one who rescues Lucifer, first with the distraction, the devil mask, and then finally helping him with the breakthrough. She tells him he needs to forgive himself. He says he doesn’t know how, but admitting this, saying he wants to forgive himself. Having Chloe be in the know is extremely helpful to Lucifer and shows that she is worthy of him. He has the breakthrough and turns back into the familiar form of our handsome Tom Ellis.

I thought how Father Kinley dismisses Eve as the original sinner was insightful (misogyny, anyone?) but Eve is the one who has been in Heaven since she died, and Kinley, when he dies, goes straight to Hell. The death – and the reanimation when Kinley’s body is taken over by a hell demon – is what will take us into the next episode.

Title musings. The title of this episode is “Save Lucifer,” and it works on many levels. It is the thrust of the episode as they are trying to keep Lucifer from turning himself into a monster. It works in the Christian sense, in trying to save a soul (and I think that may be why God organized Chloe for Lucifer). The demons from hell – at least from their point of view – are also trying to save Lucifer. But there's more, external to the story. At the end of season 3, FOX canceled Lucifer. A twitter campaign was organized under #SaveLucifer, and it apparently worked! Hat tip to the campaign.

Bits and pieces

The scene where Eve is dressing and acting like Chloe is great.

Lauren German has absolutely beautiful green eyes. The costume party gives her the chance to wear a shimmering green, and when she takes off the mask and has party mascara on instead of sensible detective mascara, they are accentuated even more.

Lesley-Ann Brandt can sing!

Quotes

Lucifer: I’ve had an honest-to-Devil epiphany.

Lucifer: It turns out self-help is actually self-harm.

Linda: Look Lucifer, I think you need to step forward, not backward. You need to dig deeper. If you really hate yourself, you need to figure out why.

Dan: What the hell are you doing here?
Maze: Just getting some air.
Dan: Air. In the backseat of my car that is parked in a garage.

Linda: There’s nothing you could have done to save her. But that doesn’t make the hurt any less, does it?

Linda: And I think that –
Dan: You think what?
Linda: That you have to take me to the hospital because my water just broke.

Maze: Enough! Lucifer doesn’t love you! I’m sorry, but sometimes you have to accept when someone doesn’t feel the same way about you.

Beth: Maybe I do ruin everything I touch.

Overall rating

This was a fantastic episode in which everything worked, nothing felt forced, and which had extremely satisfying scenes. Four out of four thumb drives.

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Victoria Grossack loves birds, math, Greek mythology, Jane Austen and great storytelling in many forms.

1 comment:

  1. Victoria, thanks so much for filling in these last two episodes for us! I remember really liking this one, too. And I went through a similar thing with Eve. I wanted her gone and out of the way at the beginning, but ended up liking her in the end.

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