wilnil

Just finished reading Leviathan Falls, and here's my take on what was going on there: At some point Miller tells Holden that the whole gate setup was created, and powered, by the builders basically pushing a "bubble" from our universe into another one. Using the gate space apparently causes some distress to the things that live in that other universe, and when the gates are used beyond a certain amount, the things lash out. Laconia's "experiments" were the last straw. What Holden does at the end, I think (though Abraham and Franck never spelled it out that I could see, curse them), is to pop that bubble, removing any connection between the universes and disconnecting the rings. This wouldn't have any effect on the protomolecule, which was always just a tool the gate builders used for getting things done, both to create stuff and to operate the stuff once created, and not some product of the gate space (i.e., the protomolecule made the gate space, not the other way around).

Yeah, overall, I think this was the show's second-weakest season (after the painfully overstretched Season 3). And the big reason is that the showrunners and writers didn't take the time to work out logical plot lines for Dan re his guilt and Rory with ... well, everything about her motivations and attitudes. I started rewatching and realized the hugest mistake they made was right in the beginning when they decided to try to fake us into thinking Rory would be the Big Villain for Season 6, by having her be nasty and contemptuous with everyone she met at first (and wait, we're also supposed to believe she's never seen pictures of her sister's dad before and wouldn't recognize his name and face down in Hell?) and ranting evilly about how she aimed to "destroy" Lucifer. They set her up as the villain so thoroughly that I thought it was just a trick when she told Chloe they were mother and daughter; it took me forever to be sure it wasn't. Really clumsy switch-up, guys. The second-biggest mistake with the Rory plot line was not ever letting her give up on the bitterness, even after she and Lucifer connected through their music. ( That bit was nicely done; by that point, when BH shows up with the guitar and it's clear she's going to sing, I'm expecting something lower, rougher, emo and alt-rock-ish, and instead we get an uplifting classic, which she does a really good job with.) But then that all gets spoiled later on when they have Rory lose her shit yet again ... over never having had a family game night like Trixie did, of all things. I think in general, the Lucifer crew was at its worst when they were given too much to work with -- in Season 3, when Fox out-of-the-blue ordered up a way longer episode count (22 plus the 2 extras, IIRC) than the show had ever gotten before, and now, when everyone on the show was already totally geared up for ending with Season 5.

This is the only way this storyline could possibly work -- that he needed to confess to the daughter who admired him that he'd been a bad person and not worthy of emulating. (Unfortunately, she didn't get the message because she didn't know it was actually coming from him, but he couldn't help that.) If not that, then the whole guilt/Hell rationale makes no sense. "Guilt" isn't supposed to mean "regret," it just means "responsibility for wrongdoing" -- i.e., if you knowingly do something wrong, then you're guilty. (When people say "I feel guilty about that," they mean "I feel like I did something wrong"; whether they feel bad about that is up to them.) If Hell is just about regret, then Pete's waiting for Ella up in Heaven, which doesn't sound particularly heavenly for anyone.

Another classic was Reese's (Linda's journalist ex-husband) whiteboard when he was investigating Lucifer and associates. Under Charlotte Richards' entry it said something like this: LOVER? MOTHER? WTF???

IIRC, when Rory brought that up, she said something to the effect that she'd thought Chloe being about to die was the one thing that would bring Lucifer back from wherever he'd vanished to, and it was his still not showing up that sent her into her time-travel-inducing rage.

Now I want to go back to Ep. 8 to see if any of this was on Lucifer's "Operation Payback" whiteboard.

Well, damn. Did not expect them to go there. Maybe Dad's just playing a little game with his kids to prove a point?

It was his former partners in crime, the ones who got into the shootout with Chloe. The dialogue was a bit rushed, but they said they killed him and took his hand to get the loot he owed them from a past job.

Don't worry: There are another eight episodes of Season 5 still to come, and Netflix has renewed it for a sixth season.

Because at this point, he still thinks he has to return to Hell and let Amenadiel go home, and the only thing that had been keeping him on Earth was dealing with Michael's mess, which he's done, as best he could.

I'm thinking Michael's grand plan was just to force Divine Intervention. Now he'll get to take credit for getting Dad to suspend His "you've all got your free will, let's see how you use it" hands-off policy.

Actually it kind of does, because while she's been immune to his charms from the start, he wasn't vulnerable around her at first -- in the very first episode, he wasn't wounded when record producer Jimmy (John Pankow's character) shot him after shooting Chloe. It was at some point after their first case that he became that way, maybe even at the moment he yelled "Shoot me, Detective!" Amenadiel's point, I think, was that God's gift was to her -- letting her choose Lucifer, or not, rather than be helplessly sucked in by his mojo -- and Lucifer also, subconsciously, gave her the complementary gift of letting her hurt, even kill, him if she chose to.

I think you're right that he's been mentioned, and in contexts that imply neither Lucifer nor Amenadiel can stand him. IIRC, most recently, in a Season 4 episode Linda suggests "Michael" as a baby name, and Amenadiel replies something like "Not Michael!"

Her hair's darker and worn differently (in fact, a couple different styles appear in the various scenes), and I think they've changed her makeup too; for one thing, the beauty mark by her right eye is more prominent than before.

I've been thinking the same thing, especially since I saw Prime Video had picked up the show & started occasionally rewatching it, with the scenes of things like masked parishioners going to a church to light candles for lost loved ones. So is there an odd little UN sub-agency operating out of a former research center in Wuhan, China?

I thought that too, but the On Demand menu shows two more episodes are coming.

IIRC, he just showed her some memories he selected to help him talk her out of her funk. The first time he did it, he just showed her a quick snippet to "inoculate" her to the side effects of the process (losing her hair and teeth).

It's more a nod to Conan Doyle, I think -- Reichenbach Falls was a waterfall where his Holmes had his final confrontation with Professor Moriarty...

The extra episode order might just be because the showrunners said they had enough material to go that long in bringing the series to the conclusion they envisioned. Someone else here had posted an article with comments by exec producer Ildy Modrovich (sp?) to the effect that she'd really been hoping to get a sixth season to wrap the show up with; this might be the compromise they worked out with Netflix.

I was with everyone else on this until I started a rewatch of the series from the beginning. Now I think Chloe at this point (S4E2) has no reason to trust what Amenadiel says at all -- her longest real interaction with him to date was in the early second season when he tried to convince her that Lucifer was using movie FX to make it appear he'd withstood getting shot, which she now knows was bullshit. Sure, now she knows Amenadiel's a celestial … but for all she knows, he could be another fallen rebel on the outs with the devil, or heaven-sent but simply antagonistic toward his brother. Lucifer certainly has never made it a secret to her that he and Amenadiel are frequently at odds. And she pretty quickly made it way too awkward to try having a heart-to-heart with Maze on the subject of devils and demons.

He's just mortal in the sense of being vulnerable to injury or death when she's around; he's never gotten weaker or lost his wings from being near her. (His Season 3 inability to show his devil face was there regardless of whether or not she was around, and was probably all in his head, anyway.)

Ordinarily I agree, but for just this once, I thought using the imaginary dance sequences to show Lucifer's on-top-of-the-world mood swing was damn near genius. It'd get old real fast if they repeated it, though.

Maybe. In Season 1, after she and Dan had separated, she was living in a house her mother owned. But that wasn't a permanent solution, so eventually she went looking for an apartment she could afford, but no luck until, after a drunken night out with Maze and Linda, she discovered the next day that she and Maze had agreed to go in on an apartment together. AFAICT, that's where Chloe and Trixie still live.

She'd have taken it off when Linda and Charlie were discharged. Those are only for keeping someone from abducting babies from the maternity ward, which would be the hospital's responsibility to prevent.

So far, Lucifer seems to be doing well for Netflix: This article has it as No. 2 in its list (based on Parrot Analytics data) of most in-demand streaming series. Bodes well for a Season 5, I think/hope.