SPOILER WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Lucifer Season 6, now streaming on Netflix.
On Lucifer, there is no doubt about life after death. Take Detective Dan Espinoza, who was murdered in cold blood by French hitman Vincent Le Mec last season. That should have been the end of the lovable, if annoying, cop. Instead, when Season 6 premieres on September 10th, Dan will find himself stuck in Hell -- at least until an enigmatic figure returns him to Earth, incorporeal and invisible to the human eye.
Kevin Alejandro recently spoke to CBR about Lucifer's final season, Dan's fate, the Detective Douche nickname, directing multiple episodes this year and what choked him up on set.
CBR: It was your idea to have Dan bumped off last season. What were your thoughts on how that actually unfolded?
Kevin Alejandro: I felt that was so respectfully done, and it was so heartbreaking. What really made that moment so monumental, or iconic, for our show is the way the characters reacted to it. The moment that Trixie was like, "I want my Daddy," everyone whose eyes were on television broke. It was handled as close to real as possible. We've all experienced some sort of loss in our lives. To be able to invoke that emotion, in an honest way, was really touching.
It was disturbing that Dan landed in Hell rather than Heaven. What was your reaction to that development?
I was confused at first. I was like, "I don't understand." I guess that was their intention. But then it all made sense. I thought it made for an interesting way to let Dan be part of the world somehow. It was a lot of fun to play that version of Dan. He did a lot of reacting to himself, and reacting to the others, and no one could see him.
Audiences will discover Dan is trapped in a ping-pong, hellish loop. Was that your suggestion? Are you secretly a ping-pong pro?
No, but I do love ping-pong. That was something I got lucky to play with. That was all in the minds of the masterful writers.
This season also finds an incorporeal Dan back on Earth. In what ways was that the best case scenario and the worst case scenario?
It was best because Dan got to be part of an existing world that we all know and love. The challenge was to be in a scene with three other people, but only one of them can acknowledge him in a scene. It made for a comedic/lonely performance.
It looked like a blast to be in the back seat of the cop car with Amenadiel. There are sequences where Dan is flailing around, he can't touch other people and passing through them. How much fun was it shooting that?
OMG. There were no rules. We created our own rules. It was so much fun to be able to do that. I don't think there was ever a moment that was scripted where one of us, if not all of us, were laughing after the circumstances and how it came out.
What else did you enjoy about Dan's journey this season? We got to see a lot of different sides of him.
One of the things that I love most about playing the character, in general, was just how he seems to be the anchor in this absurd world. Dan was the closest to a real human being that I could relate to. He's flawed and he makes choices, hopefully good choices, but it doesn't always land in that direction. But it always comes from a place of goodness.
I feel, from the beginning to the end of the show, he had the most genuine full-circle of an arc. You watched him go from this uptight individual to experiencing all these other aspects of his life. We've watched circumstances chip at who he is and really watched him evolve into a well-rounded human being.
In the end, do you believe Dan deserved to retire that "Detective Douche" nickname?
You know what? There are two sides for that answer. The nostalgic me loves the term of endearment that it's become, but then a part of me is like, "You should. It ends with the full-cycle of his life. He's no longer that douchebag." There are no answers. Yes and no.
How happy are you with where Dan ends up in the finale?
My reaction, physically, was an inhale, an exhale and a smile. I have a feeling the audience will react the same way.
You also directed two episodes this season. How did it feel to step behind the camera again, after a little bit of an absence?
I was full of all kinds of emotions because we were coming in from the lockdown of COVID. Coming in from that situation, I'm a filmmaker, but I also still have a lot to learn. Stepping into the circumstances and rules that COVID had stepped in front of us, and even added, were new obstacles. You learn to communicate, and now all those ways I know how to express myself were covered by gloves and masks and shields and goggles. It was like learning a new language. Once we figured out that was going to be the norm, that that was how things were going to be done, whether we liked it or not, we embraced it and learned it.
It became something we all did together, and it turned out to lend itself into a really beautiful situation, because we were all going through it together. And I love being behind the camera and telling the stories. I am so lucky that showrunners Joe Henderson, Ildy Modrovich and everyone else who makes those decisions, gave me the responsibility of handling not only a premiere, but a penultimate episode of the finale. It just goes to show how supportive of a family we truly became.
The first episode you directed, "Nothing Ever Changes Around Here," is the season premiere. Those always garner high expectations. What spoke to you about the script and what were some of the challenges of making all the exposition interesting?
It was extremely exposition heavy. There were a lot of reasons behind it. We were coming off of COVID and we had a whole new set of rules, rules like a background actor cannot be closer than 12 feet away from the regular actor or eight feet from a guest star. There can only be X amount of people on stage at this time. We had all of these safety precautions set in front of us, so the script is written with those in mind. There is no trick other than delving into the script, understanding what needs to be said, and searching the depths of your imagination to do it in an entertaining way.
I got lucky to be given the setting of the Magic Castle. There are magical entrances everywhere. You can set it anywhere and it's going to be captivating. Mike Costa did such a good job of writing a script with limited actors and limited space. It was sort of my idea to take what was given in this world and turn it into a whodunit environment, trapped in this one building and the fact the suspect is in the room somewhere.
Is it also exciting or energizing when you get to flesh out a new character like Scott Porter's Carol?
Oh yeah, I love that. I got to introduce God. With Carol, you have a responsibility there. You have to set that character up in a way that the audience is going to want to come back and be intrigued enough to get to want to know them. When it comes to that, Joe, Ildy and all the writers... they have an idea. You'll get very specific notes. I fit within those guidelines and add my own collaboration to it.
There's a mysterious and major player introduced at the end of the episode, but you only get a glimpse of her boots and legs. Was there any conversations involving how much of her to show sitting on top of Hell's throne?
Oh yeah. Absolutely. It was a big conversation. I'm always a less-is-more type of person and luckily, they are the same way. We collectively came up with an interesting way to create that mystery of, "Who the hell is on that throne?" The more that you see her, the more the audience is going to be captivated by her.
Your other episode, "Goodbye, Lucifer," will have viewers reaching for the Kleenex. How did you manage to keep it together… and did any of the cast lose it?
There wasn't a lot of acting involved in that one. Those tears were real. Those moments were real, and they were manifested from a genuine goodbye from each of us. We all understood that when it comes to some of those big, monumental scenes, it was organized in such a way that those were real goodbyes. I didn't have to keep it together because we were all saying, "This is it."
What are you most proud about playing Dan and being on Lucifer?
What I am most proud of is its journey, is the journey of the show, from starting off as a series nobody had ever seen and just knowing that it was called Lucifer, and then having marches by certain organizations saying, "Stop this show from being aired."
Once we aired, it became something those same people actually started to like. Then, we got cancelled and it was those same people that launched another army of other fans to save Lucifer. Then, we got saved and we had a finale, and then we got saved again. And then, we had another finale. I am most proud of the journey and all of the doors and obstacles we had to get over to give you, to give ourselves, to give everybody involved the ending it deserved.
Lucifer Season 6 is now streaming on Netflix.