Damselfly

Missy as Maze's mom would have been fantastic! I can't believe we've had three seasons and not seen one single other demon. It's so disappointing.

Those are the really big underlying problems with this season. Yes, they had a too big cast of regular characters. Yes, there were scheduling problems, including the fact that they had to incorporate the four leftover episodes that were filmed last season. But none of that would have mattered if they hadn't completely messed it up in the writing department. One of the things that made the show so great was that Lucifer had interesting relationships with all the other regular characters, and that in season 2 they expanded that to the other regular characters having interesting relationships with each other. But this season, these other relationships were either destroyed or they all but vanished. I'd try to claim that they switched from character/relationship driven to plot driven writing, but the problem is that the plots were so bad, too. It feels like, at the beginning of the season, they created a list of things - situations, scenes - that had to happen, and then just worked their way down that list with no care about whether or not it actually made sense or was in character.

Personally, I think Chloe being such a central character was part of the problem. That, and sticking strictly to the murder of the week formula always was going to be a problem for supernatural storylines. They managed it in season 2 with the mom arc, but you can't do that kind of thing every season. The problem is that they did partially listen to the fans. They listened to the very vocal Deckerstar contingent of the fandom. But that only made matters worse. The Cain/Lucifer/Chloe love triangle was a bad idea from the start, but knowing from various interviews and social media posts by the showrunners that it would eventually lead to Deckerstar meant that there was absolutely no chance for any real tension there. And those reassurances to the Deckerstar fans also meant that anybody wo didn't ship them knew that there was no hope for any other outcome. So why go on watching the show? Especially when they went and also abandoned, damaged or destroyed all the other relationships between characters.

I wanted to be moved by Charlotte's death, and Tricia Helfer did a great job acting it, but the whole thing just left me disappointed and angry. From the moment they brought Charlotte back at the end of last season, I feared that this would be exactly what the writers would do: end her character in a clichéd "redemption equals death" scene. And yet, they managed to do one worse, by making her death serve as an "important lesson"/motivating factor for at least one, possibly two, and perhaps even three male characters. There were so many interesting storylines they could have gone for, so many issues they could have explored with this character. But we hardly got to see anything of that. Like the rest of the storylines this season, her character arc was handled so badly. All of the important growth and development seems to have been crammed into this one episode, and just when it feels like she is going somewhere, she is killed off.

Lucifer isn't just immature this season, though. He is also clueless, buffoonish, selfish, erratic, completely obsessed first with the sinnerman and Cain and now with Chloe,... And all of those things have been present in the past seasons, but they turned them into extremes while dialling back or completely removing his redeeming qualities. For example, throughout the last two seasons, and even at the beginning of this season, Lucifer has always clearly cared about others. He cared about Delilah, about various other murder victims and suspects, and about the people around him. Maze, Linda, Chloe, and later Ella, Trixie, even Dan, and finally Charlotte. But now, all that caring has disappeared. He is so obsessed with Chloe that he doesn't care one bit what happens to anybody else. Back in episode 3.05 he told Charlotte that he felt responsible for what had happened to her and wanted to help her. That was such a big step in his development. But now he doesn't give a damn about her anymore. Same with Linda. She almost died because she got involved with his family, and he was clearly remorseful about that, and worried about her. But now he seems to have forgotten all about that. And finally there is Maze. After their big fight last season and the revelation of how deeply he had hurt her, it looked like Lucifer would finally treat her better. Instead, we're right back to him taking her for granted, disregarding her feelings, and always expecting her to be there for him while never being there for her.

To me, a lot of this season feels like the writers have some sort of list of fanfiction clichés that they are crossing off one by one. And it doesn't matter how illogical and out of character everybody has to be, or how bad it makes the characters look, as long as they get their desired scene/situation. Like the highschool reunion, and now the bachelorette party, and earlier Lucifer singing in Vegas with a bunch of showgirls around him, or that monopoly playing with Trixie and Chloe that was shot like they were having a romantic date. I guess we should count ourselves lucky that at least they aren't going for "bride leaves groom at the altar to run off with her true love".

If you're referring to what happened between her and Linda, it really wasn't something minor, though. Linda deliberately lied to Maze for weeks. She let Maze give her a thank you gift for being so understanding about Maze's problem with her and Amenadiel, knowing that she had already broken the promise she given Maze about that before she even made it. She betrayed Maze's trust and their friendship in a really big way by doing all this. It's also important to remember that Linda wasn't 'just' Maze's friend. She was also the one Maze chose to teach her about human interactions, and to help her adapt to life with humans. With her lying, Linda betrayed that teacher/mentor relationship, too. And she made Maze question everything she had learned and believed about human friendships. Because if her best friend, her teacher could do all that to her, how can Maze trust any of the others? But Linda went one step further than that. When Maze refused to forgive her instantly, Linda tried to shift the blame for what had happened onto Maze. She claimed that she had to lie to Maze because of Maze's violent nature, never mind that Maze has never, ever been physically violent with her or any other of her human friends. Linda pulled the classic abuser argument: you made me do this bad thing to you.

I'd be happy to have her calling him out if it wasn't so glaringly obvious that this was done only to further the Deckerstar relationship. That is also one of the big pet peeves I have with Linda: a psychologist should not be pushing their patient towards a relationship. Especially a patient with such deep-seated relationship and abandonment issues. And especially when there are a lot of factors that make this relationship even more potentially difficult than a normal human relationship.

We have seen her cry at least twice before, as far as I remember: - after her fight with Lucifer in season 2, when they were in Linda's office and Linda told Lucifer point blank that Maze had believed he'd abandon her. - When she found Linda after the goddess had tortured her, and saw how badly injured her friend was. And she came close to it when she and Linda couldn't revive Lucifer at the hospital when he went to Hell to get that antidote for Chloe.