The Season 3 premiere answers some questions, but raises many more.
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Lucifer is back with the first episode of Season 3 and it picks up right after last season’s mysterious cliffhanger. It takes place in Los Angeles, where the very Biblical devil (Tom Ellis) settled to enjoy a decadent, never-ending party life amongst the most sinful humans. His taste for chasing and punishing is revived after a friend of his is murdered, leading him to pair up with detective Chloe Decker (Lauren German), whose existence is at the extreme opposite of Lucifer’s. The show is based on a constant juggle between “classic” criminal TV series and supernatural intrigues involving divine characters and a conflict as old as Earth between Lucifer and his Father. As both aspects get more and more intertwined, we cannot but anticipate the big revelation, the moment when Lucifer will finally show his real face to Chloe.
Which is what the opening of Season 3 robs us of; Season 2 ended with Lucifer leaving a message to Chloe saying he had something important to tell her, but before he had a chance to, our charming Devil got abducted and woke up in the middle of the desert with his wings back. The first scene of Season 3 picks up exactly where we left off, to the sound incredibly relevant “The Devil You Know” by X Ambassadors. Throughout the episode, Lucifer is on a personal quest to find his abductor and discover why his wings are back.
The episode is dynamic, fast-paced with rapid shots, reverse shots and relatively short scenes, immersing us into Lucifer’s frantic search for his new faceless nemesis. Moments of rest are allowed by Ellis’s delightful touch of classy British humour, which the comedy of the show relies a lot on. The murder investigation itself is not particularly memorable, but serves as a very clever pretext to introduce new themes and conflicts this new season will base itself on, like Amenadiel’s search for meaning in a human’s faith or Lucifer’s rejection of a possible redemption. As for the development of the protagonists’ relationship, we can only hope that Chloe will finally know the truth, her ignorance becoming redundant and slightly detrimental to the show.
The final scene clashes with the rest of the episode: the burning light of California’s sun and the steady camera are replaced by a blurred, anxiously cut sequence and a bloody, empaled corpse slowly uncovered by the camera under a bridge. As this picture matches Lucifer’s words “Something much darker”, we can only wonder whether the new bad guy, the Sinnerman, will be the one to redefine the expression “Hell on Earth”.
Overall, despite Mazikeen’s absence due to Lesley Ann-Brandt being on maternity leave, the episode was a welcome new dose of Lucifer. I am definitely hooked and want to see what the rest of Season 3 has to offer: Will the new douchy lieutenant win Lucifer’s sassy arguments? Will we finally meet Lucifer’s father? And more importantly, who is the Sinnerman, and to what obscure depths will he take the Devil to?
