SPOILER WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Lucifer Season 6, now streaming on Netflix.
It's the End of Days for Lucifer. The supernatural drama followed titular character Lucifer Morningstar, who abandoned his throne in Hell to open a nightclub and walk among humans. After six seasons of criminal investigations, devilish shenanigans, singing, friendship and love, the show is coming to a close.
Viewers last saw Lucifer resurrecting Detective Chloe Decker and assuming the mantle of God. That should have served as the series finale. Stick a pitchfork in it and call Lucifer done. But Netflix greenlit the show for a sixth and final season. So, when things pick up in the Sept. 10th premiere, Lucifer and Chloe are stronger as a couple than ever. Lucifer, however, harbors doubts about his upcoming heavenly duties, a potential Apocalypse looms and a new angel in town will rock Lucifer to the core, in ways he never could have predicted.
Speaking to CBR, Tom Ellis discussed the end of Lucifer, the Devil's final fate, musical milestones and the impact the TV series has had on the actor's life.
CBR: Lucifer, as a TV series, has experienced its own bumpy road. It originated on Fox, was canceled, and subsequently picked up by Netflix. When you reflect upon those uncertain times, was that move a blessing in disguise?
Tom Ellis: Yes. It was strange, because I think people expect me to talk negatively about Fox. Much as I feel that could be the case, without Fox, we wouldn't have this show in the first place. It wasn't the right home. What happened was it gave us an opportunity to at least get the ball rolling with the show. Then, Netflix coming in completely changed things. The fact that it's such a platform internationally, the key for this one is everyone watches it at the same time. It drops at the same time. There were a couple of years of it being on Fox and people sort of watching it in drips and drabs across the globe, slowly coming to it, but then the collectiveness of people watching it at the same time, that's been a completely different experience.
Even content-wise, Netflix was a game-changer for Lucifer.
What it did for us, in terms of people telling the story, is it's a much leaner version of the show on Netflix because there are less episodes. We don't have to fill it out with as much subsidiary story. I think that was our friend, to be perfectly honest with you. It concentrated everything in the best possible way.
Season 5 was supposed to serve as the last one… and Netflix suddenly renewed Lucifer one last time. How worried were you about topping the previous series finale? What conversations did you have with showrunners Joe Henderson and Ildy Modrovich?
We hadn't finished shooting Season 5. At that point, we had spent five months shooting what we thought was the final season of Lucifer, which is why I believe Season 5 is so strong, especially the second half of it. We took big swing after big swing after big swing story-wise, and that's because we thought the end was coming. We didn't want to go out laying down. I had also been mentally preparing for the end of the show and then this curveball comes in at the 11th hour. We had already worked out what the finale was supposed to be. I think we had already started writing it and thought long and hard about what the end of the show would be.
I was thrown, to say the least, because by the end of shooting Season 5, I was pretty exhausted. I put everything into it. It's like running a marathon and then somebody going, "There's another 10 miles." I was like, "What?" But once I was able to take stock of that, and Joe and Ildy hit me with some ideas about what Season 6 could be, we were all in agreement that we wanted to preserve the end that we had thought about, the end we had come up with. They found a way to do that, to tell another story that we hadn't touched on yet and bring in a new dynamic to Chloe and Lucifer's life that we hadn't touched on yet. So, once I got my head around it, I was like, "Yep, this is cool."
When we left Lucifer, he had assumed the mantle of God. Coming into Season 6, how prepared is he to fully embrace that position and all the responsibilities it entails?
That's the point. He's not. Lucifer is a classic case of someone not thinking things through. That's why we love him. "I really want this. I want this for all these reasons…" But be careful what you wish for. He finds himself in a quandary where he knows why he wanted the God job, but now that he's got it, he's doubting his capability to do it. He's like, "I've learned I am able to care for someone other than myself, and that person is called Chloe Decker. As for the other seven billion people, I don't really care. How am I supposed to care about all of them?" That's intrinsic in his DNA. We find Lucifer having won the day at the end of Season 5 and a month later, he's been procrastinating because he doesn't really want to do the thing that he just signed up for.
In what ways does this new calling affect the dynamic between Lucifer and Chloe?
The thing with Chloe and Lucifer is one of them has always been ready and the other one hasn't. They've always been just missing each other in terms of where they are at. We find them cemented in their feelings for each other. They know they want to be together. But Lucifer is no longer the Devil and Chloe doesn't work for the LAPD anymore. So, what is their point in the world? What are they here for?
The big elephant in the room, that they've never really talked about, is the fact that Lucifer is immortal, and Chloe isn't. What does that mean for our characters' future? That's what they are faced with in this season. Then, of course, with the introduction of our new character Rory, they are forced to think about the future in a way they never thought they would have to think about.
A new angel, Rory, throws Lucifer and Chloe's life into a tailspin. What were your thoughts on that twist?
My feeling, at first, was I wasn't sure how this was going to work. I felt we had done a full revolution of our character. We had explored all these different things. Of course, me as Tom, I'm a parent. When I became a parent, there were feelings that manifested in me that I had never felt before, that don't happen until indeed you are a parent. That is a feeling that we hadn't mined, a dynamic we hadn't mined on the show. Lucifer experiencing that new dynamic, from the way that he feels about someone and the way he wants to impress himself upon somebody, and wants that person to love him, was a completely different thing. After six seasons, I was like, "How are we going to make this fresh and feel new." That was the answer.
How pleased were you with Lucifer getting animated in the third episode and the way it turned out?
It was so much fun. Lucifer is such a big character normally. To take that into the animated world was like, "We are going to go bigger?" For one, I was delighted we got the opportunity to do it because we were musing about what we could do that was COVID-friendly, because we had all these restrictions in place.
The notion of doing an animated episode, or an episode that included animation, came up quite early. "This would be fun. How do we do this?" Joe and I started talking about it. Then, we started getting stuff through from the animators about what Lucifer was going to look like as a cartoon. I just remember having conversations with Joe about the chin. We just wanted to make it as butt-like as possible. We were like, "More butt. More butt. Bigger crack." It was fun and silly. It was an opportunity to embrace all the silly side of Lucifer that we love. I was delighted.
Somehow, Joe and Ildy always managed to incorporate song and dance into the episodes. What was your favorite musical number this season?
Honestly, when I heard Brianna [Hildebrand] sing "Bridge Over Troubled Water"… She has the most beautiful voice. I was so happily shocked about how beautiful her voice was. Yes, the other songs were fun, the set pieces and all those things, but from a storytelling point of view, this was a real pivotal moment for me.
Music is so important to Lucifer, the character. It is a language he really understands. Then, for him to find out Rory had been blessed with this voice and this love of music in the same way, that she's inherited, it was really pivotal in that relationship to me.
"Hazy Shade of Winter" was my standout performance from you…
I think Kevin [Alejandro] was directing that episode, too. That is my favorite episode of the season, for so many reasons. It starts off in that weird euphoria that Lucifer is in and knowing where he is going by the end of the episode, there were some very real moments of me saying goodbye on screen to actors that I was never going to work with again on this show. There was so much genuine emotion driving that whole episode. That's my favorite.
I reached for my Kleenex more than once during that episode, "Goodbye, Lucifer." Was there a scene that got you all choked up?
A lot of the scenes in that episode. One thing I did with that episode in particular, which is a very strange thing, is I tried not to learn my lines too well. I wanted the moments to be as genuine as possible. I wanted Lucifer, for the first time, really reaching for what he wanted to say. It was kind of cathartic. I knew we were about to finish the show and there had been a dam of emotion building within me. That was an opportunity to exercise that emotion and put it out on the screen. It was a taxing episode, but a really needed episode for me.
We've talked about redemption since day one. How important was it for Lucifer to achieve not only that, but find his calling, as well?
That was key, the calling thing. When we brough Dennis [Haysbert] into the show in Season 5, I never thought we'd meet Dad when we first started the show. So, when we did meet Dad, and he leaves us with this conundrum of, "You'll figure it out," I was like, "What does that mean?" Knowing that Lucifer had sort of thought he had figured it out, and then realized that being God wasn't his calling, the chips started falling into place. There was a payoff to the "You'll figure it out."
What has this Lucifer experience meant to you, both personally and professionally?
Professionally, it's been the biggest job of my life. I have loved every minute of playing the character. I was so ready for an opportunity to do all the things I wanted to do. It all came along in this one opportunity with Lucifer. I don't think I'm ever going to have the opportunity to play such a multi-faceted character, in such a textured show, where we get to do so many things. That, for me, has been amazing.
I had a point to prove to myself, rather than anybody else. I think I wanted to be able to prove to myself that I could do all the things that I was inspiring to do. For me, I feel like I've proven a few things to myself, both professionally and personally. I know my capabilities. I know I am capable of working hard and leading a show and bringing a group of people together with a creative, energetic push -- all in the same direction. That was so satisfying to me. And I'll never forget it.
Lucifer Season 6 is now streaming on Netflix.