wilnil

The showrunners must have been planning all along to tease that someone was going to die this episode, judging by the way they put practically everyone in the cast in mortal danger at one point or another, even Linda off-screen (until it became likely that Cain/Pierce made that threat up to distract Maze). Like (I think) @johntfs, I've always wondered if Lucifer really lost his "devil face" or just discovered another celestial attribute he can't display in front of Chloe. I'm kind of hoping that knowing Amenadiel re-earned his wings gives Lucifer the idea of trying to unfurl in front of her. And last, I'm a little annoyed that the show has apparently been spinning its wheels the whole midseason just so it could put off Lucifer coming clean to Chloe until now, just before the season finale. That should've happened at the start -- just for starters, imagine the Sinnerman plotline with Chloe willing to believe Lucifer that something weird was going on with that case, maybe even suspecting Pierce before Luci did, etc. The whole arc could've been much improved.

She did, though it was kind of a blink-and-miss-it scene several episodes ago. IIRC, she was helping Dan by watching Trixie at her office, and Trixie asked about her kids and was surprised she didn't see them anymore. Later, after that conversation, we saw Charlotte call her ex and insistently demand to see her kids.

Me too. From the Real Life perspective, it's certainly possible Lesley-Ann Brandt has decided she'd rather spend more time with her child than work full time; from the in-show perspective, what could be more tragic than the death of the one soulless being among the characters? Remember, as a demon, if Maze dies, that's it; she's gone. I don't see it as a sure thing by any means, but it's definitely plausible.

You mean Showtime. ;) My On Demand guide has this:

Desmond, Desmond, Desmond. This is what happens when you spend too many seasons in close proximity to Dexter Morgan, man -- you find yourself out in the boonies disposing of a bloodless corpse. He's listed as a regular in the opening credits, so ... a season-long arc with Sherlock unwittingly befriending a serial killer?

You mean the whole towels-over-the-head shtick, etc.? It's a real thing, apparently, part of what "true" gourmets do to appreciate an ortolan dinner. See the Wikipedia article (which, of course, has already been updated to include a reference to this episode). Along with the increased rarity of the birds, the cruelty of how they overfeed then drown the birds is why France banned killing and cooking them, though apparently top chefs there have been pushing for the ban to be lifted over the past few years.

She found out that Chuck was deeply invested in the company, and also that Axe Capital was shorting the IJ stock big-time, meaning that Bobby & co. apparently had good reason to believe its price would plummet. When she warned Chuck that the investment was trouble and urged him to pull out, he blew her off (since this was all part of his larger plan to get Axe, though he couldn't tell her that). So Wendy, fearing Chuck would leave himself and their family broke, got in on the short so at least one of them would come away from the stock's collapse OK. At this point, she knew nothing about what either Chuck or Axe were plotting, so she's not involved in those crimes -- though she looks pretty guilty to Connerty, and maybe to a jury. I'm not sure she's totally innocent, though, because a case could still be made for trading on insider info since she knew Axe had some reason to be shorting the stock so aggressively. The end had me hooked, because I had no idea how they were going to play it. And what was interesting to me was that Chuck producing the slide seemed to surprise Wendy as much as it did Axe. Before then, I was expecting the twist to be that Wendy got them into Axe's place specifically so Chuck could plant the slide; I wasn't expecting it to be Chuck who "broke the stick" and totally changed the game. As for the ortolan dinner, I loved the way they showed the guys' greed: Wags wants seconds and their host tells them "One (bird) is divine, two is gluttony," or something like that, and then Axe or Wags (forget which) pipes up with "How about three?"

From the way they're described, since shortly before the American Revolution they've been a hidden organization aiming to manipulate events to put the country, maybe the whole world, under their secret control, simply because they see themselves as the true elites who know better than everyone else. But it appears, from what we learned in S2E1, that time travel only became an idea for them when Lucy's great-grandpa started writing essays about historical turning points back around WWI, more than a century after the organization was founded, and only became a real part of their plans 100 years after that when they found someone -- Connor Mason -- who, while he wasn't in their group, did have concrete theories about how to develop a time machine that they could co-opt. Short version: They simply tried to exploit time travel.

In the early episodes of the first season, Bobby was shown as kind of a "man of the people" rich guy, who invested in his favorite local pizzeria to keep it open, was on good terms with blue-collar and public-worker unions (including but not limited to his in-laws), was contemptuous of inherited-money fat cats, and was supportive of Lara's attempts to make sure their kids didn't grow up spoiled and entitled. Then as the season wore on, we started to see the downsides -- like that he was so supportive of the cops and firefighters because he'd quietly used 9/11 to make a killing in the markets. But by that point we'd already had the stage set as a battle between Bobby as Mr. Salt of the Earth and Chuck as the Son of Privilege and Champion of Government Overreach. Absolutely. I'm pretty sure, given what we've seen of his life and ambitions, that Connerty wouldn't be too happy to end up as the most principled pain-in-the-ass lawyer at the legal aid clinic or nonprofit advocacy group. But that's definitely the direction he's heading in right now.

I think the show's creators decided at the start that with a show like this, especially after the Great Recession, Occupy Wall Street etc., viewers would be likelier to see the shady-major-trader character as the pure villain role, and they wanted a storyline more subtle than that, so right from the start they showed us Bobby had some admirable qualities while showing us Chuck's character flaws. Hence the "Team Axe" vibe many of us have felt. But as the show goes on, I notice we've gotten to see more of both the good and bad in both men -- and watch them drag each other, and themselves, toward their mutual ruin. As far as their respective criminality goes, I think Chuck is on thin ethical ice but mostly risks being fired in disgrace, while Bobby is in deep legal trouble criminally and civilly. Arguing "entrapment" wouldn't fly; no authorities (or even their tools like Boyd) ever suggested to Bobby that he should use his knowledge of the Rhoades' investment to try to ruin Chuck, much less to do it by staging a contamination scare to tank a company during its IPO. That was all his idea and his actions. (An entrapment defense, to me, would be more like the cases where undercover federal agents see if they can get a potential terrorist worked up into becoming a would-be bomber.) And I'm not sure WTF is up with Connerty. The only thing I can think of is that Chuck's attempt at an everybody-wins scenario -- where Dake got the Axelrod case but had to take on Connerty for the spotlight role of prosecuting it, while Sacker got to head Chuck's criminal cases unit -- just didn't sit well with Connerty at all, and he felt betrayed and dumped by Chuck instead of rewarded, so now he's decided it was all because Chuck is uniquely corrupt (which, well, he is corrupt, but of course it's not that black-and-white).

It's been a while since I watched the season 1 episodes, but IIRC, he discovered Rittenhouse's existence while he was an intelligence asset/operative for U.S. intelligence. He poked around and learned more about them, they noticed and sent a hit team to kill him and his family (I guess the idea was to make it look like a botched home invasion), but while he couldn't prevent them from killing his wife and kid, he was able to get away, so they framed him for the deaths. (We've only seen the killings in a snippet, so while we did see the wife and kid briefly, they weren't really full characters as such.) Knowing that Rittenhouse was helping fund Mason's time machine project, he raided the lab in the first episode and stole the final version shortly after its completion, using Anthony (who was working on the project for Mason Industries at the time), and later Emma, to pilot it. Rittenhouse stole the time machine at the end of season 1, using Emma (who had just been revealed as a Rittenhouse plant) as pilot. Flynn has also gotten information on Rittenhouse and time travel from a journal he says was given to him early in his crusade by a future version of Lucy.

Her problem was the opposite: She thought that knowing two angels meant they could get her into Heaven regardless of how she acted, until Amenadiel and Lucifer told her that isn't how it works. Now she's back to having to worry about her actions again.

Maybe they came back and created a reality tv show first. ;) I agree with your skepticism. Yes, they could use their knowledge of the past to somehow steal or create a new identity, but they'd have to come back with enough lead time to have the identity pass muster of a federal level background check. Which means that the two from the earlier bunch would have had to have been recruited to be sent back when they were students/young adults and once in the new time built up academic and professional resumes for years before getting into their current positions. I'm guessing we're not going to see this type of detail/advance planning, and it will require a bit of hand waiving. They did have a throwaway line in the scene at the bridge where the would-be informant realizes Lindauer is one of the first-wave travelers and says something like "How long have you been here?" and Lindauer replies, "Longer than you think," which suggested to me that they had in fact been there for decades working their way into our society and government.

I'd need to rewatch to be sure, but I think that at some point in this episode, Lindauer/Jay Karnes refers to someone named Eve as being the leader of the first, secret group of time travelers. If so, I think that's who he was talking to, and she wouldn't be anyone who came in the second, refugee wave. (But unfortunately, that doesn't rule out the ex-wife as a possibility.) That's my take on them, too: that the secret group came back with the goal of changing present-day events enough to prevent the creation of Apex from ever happening, and if that means making the normal-human governments as ruthless as the Apex one, that's fine with them.

They actually started doing this in the latter part of the first season, when they killed off Gen. Cornwallis and David Rittenhouse and messed with the fate of Benedict Arnold, then later on snuffed Al Capone and Elliot Ness. In none of those cases did anything major change when they got back to the present. After all that, some of us debating in the Paradoxes thread started leaning toward the belief that the show is using an "Elastic" time travel model, i.e., changing the past is possible, but history tends to stay in the same course, so changes only have minor effects unless a time traveler really works hard to make a change. (This model would at least explain why Rittenhouse has such elaborate time travel plans.)

Totally handwaving here, but my guess is that the Crossing corridor was not originally the only part of that building that connected the split worlds, but the rest of the connected area was blocked off, and either (1) one side or the other goes through a "dead end" crossing that only gives access to their side of the Interface rooms, or (2) the Interface area itself is part of the blocking-off, and the participants on each side of the glass actually remain in their own worlds, with the window wall built right on the borderline.

And thankfully, they didn't go in the totally obvious direction with the aftermath of Walter's "white lie."

But nothing beats when Amenadiel unfurled in the car with Maze back in Season 1! Damn, that was hilarious.

Charles Sr. used the money in Chuck's blind trust, which he oversaw. Chuck is not supposed to have any say over how that money is invested, but of course he did in this case. IIRC, Senior signed an affidavit asserting that it was his idea alone to invest everything in Ice Juice, so he can't turn around now and say he did it with Chuck's knowledge or collusion, which would be illegal for Chuck. But Ira also knows Chuck was an active participant, and the only thing stopping him from ratting Chuck out is that he promised he wouldn't. Wendy participating in the short sell is also illegal if anyone can prove she knew what Axe was doing; her being an employee of Axe Capital is at least enough to make her a suspect. Thus Chuck cutting the favor-for-a-favor deal with Dake to keep her from being investigated.

He's still a total manipulator. If he told, then Howard Alpha would agitate to get back home and help with his wife's rehab, and Howard Prime couldn't have that.

My guess is it's the producers/writers who figure they can do enough in 18 episodes instead of stretching it out for the 22 episodes and NBC is willing to protect it even with a reduced season. Plus it allows the cast to get more time to work on other projects. @mtlchick is right -- in interviews, Dan Fogelman has said the 18-episode seasons are what he feels is the best length to work with for this series (like Mike Schur does with his 13-episode season arcs for The Good Place); NBC is apparently OK with Fogelman's shorter seasons because, well, it's their highest-rated scripted show.

The other thing never stated is whether being able to "leave Hell" has anything to do with getting into Heaven. Given that Mom decided she needed the flaming sword to cut through the gates, I figure Heaven doesn't just by default accept every soul not trapped in Hell. So where does a soul go once it's stopped doing what kept it in its hell-loop? Maybe Purgatory (where you presumably can earn a ticket to Heaven), Limbo (which doesn't sound worth it), or you just get to haunt the Earth as a ghost? Or maybe you're still in Hell the place, just not "Hell: The Experience!" Someone on the writing staff could have fun with answering this question, and I kind of hope they do.

In Emily Prime's case, it's because she's a recovering drug addict.

Though they never said why, a couple things occurred to me while they were negotiating: -- They'd show the impact of the disease as well as its progress over time (and regions, for a decent-size chunk of North America). -- The data on employment would show which professional fields were growing, and which weren't, in Prime world, giving Alpha world more clues as to what technologies Prime was ahead or behind in. -- Likewise, if the census data showed, say, a large migration of oil industry workers to, say, Nebraska, Alpha could infer that Prime had found oil deposits there that Alpha hadn't yet. Basically, census data could be the most informative kind you could get short of a World Almanac (which I bet the customs agents on either side would confiscate).

Interestingly, though, it was the higher-ups in Prime world who kept a tight leash on their own crossers. The rules they read to Emily before she was cleared to cross over were incredibly strict, right down to "no eye contact," and I got the impression that the darkened limo was their own embassy's car. The pandemic must have been terrible enough that even now, there's a danger that Prime people won't return if they see an opportunity. (Spies and defector-chasers like Howard Prime appear to be an exception.) Baldwin apparently crossed using the documentation she stole at the beginning of Episode 1. Good question. Maybe panicked people burned parts of the city down, and now that the world is recovering, they're replacing those parts with new construction. We were debating this in the Episode 2 thread. My feeling is that her part was simply miscast; the dialogue definitely implied she should be 39-40.