I finally watched the finale and I just.. can’t agree with the writing.
This pains me to say, because I always try to find the best in every show/movie I watch. But I just can’t get behind this.
Ilove that Lucifer is a councilor to the poor souls of Hell. I love that he said “if the Devil can be redeemed, so can everyone else”. Believe me, these were great choices-but the rest.. wasn’t.
Amenadiel was able to handle being God, all while still supporting his son. He was even there when Chloe had her child, but Lucifer couldn’t just pop by every so often?
To show that they couldn’t be happy and together until she died.. that just feels like such a waste.
And to top it off-since Amenadiel took the role of God, this means the entire fight scene in s5 wasn’t even worth anything. I guess we could argue that Lucifer was able to “discover” himself through these events-but the fight only happened because Michael and Lucifer fought for the throne. Had Amenadiel taken it immediately, there wouldn’t have been a fight: all the angels sided with Amenadiel being God at first.
Over all… I’m just sad. I love this show, so dearly, and I’m very upset with what happened. I’m thankful for some things (Rory, Maze and Eve, Dan finally being with Charlotte, etc.)-but it feels like they really made some poor character decisions when it came to Lucifer himself, and that hurts.
Apparently Chloe is going to find out about all the sacrifices Lucifer made in s6 and ohmygod y’all Chloe still has absolutely no idea that the only way she survived the poisoning was Lucifer dying and literally getting the antidote from Hell.
Okay, I can’t stop thinking about something ending-related. I don’t know this for certain, but based on previous statements and such, it feels like the writers were alwaysaiming for a bittersweet ending. Like, no matter what else happened or how the story evolved, come hell (lol) or high water, that ending couldn’t just be happy. For reasons. I guess.
Now, I don’t mind a bittersweet ending … if it makes sense for the ending to be bittersweet.
I critique stories for a living. I’m literally taking a break from the developmental edit of someone’s novel to write this post. And the persistent thought that bugs me about the Rory setup is that it is so artificial. Time travel is a pain in the narrative ass. Time travel suddenly introduced in the sixth season of a show that has never touched on time travel? As an editor, I probably would’ve pointed out that time travel for the purpose of angst, especially time travel without rules that make sense (“I don’t know anything about time travel! Except I do know you have to take the most painful path!”), seemingly introduced as a final ploy to make that bittersweet ending work … well, to me, it breaks the narrative contract they established with the audience. Your audience is going to be confused. An editor’s job is to alert the writer to any potential confusion so it can be fixed before the story goes to print, etc. Confused audiences get mad, annoyed, frustrated. They feel hurt. They put down the book and don’t pick it up again. Usually, writers don’t want that. But they’re so close to their work that they need a completely outside perspective to say, “Hey, I’m not sure you realize this, but…”
I mean, I keep referring to Rory as “deus ex daughter” because in literary terms, she is a blatant deus ex machina. Rory is the god in the machine of the Bittersweet Ending.
Now, I loved a lot of S6. I did. My overall feeling about the season is not negative. But … I can’t stop thinking about why the things I didn’t like REALLY didn’t work for me.
I loved the emotional growth we saw in Lucifer and Chloe facilitated by the question of parenting and parental love. I did. And I would have loved to see a lot of those notes hit not with an angel kid out of nowhere … but with the daughter already in the picture. Especially because it would have circumvented the icky idea that a child has to be one’s flesh and blood to induce such feelings. I also understand that coronavirus and Scarlett’s age and schedule made this difficult. But I just can’t swallow that the only way to wrap up the story of this show–a show about found family, non-traditional family, friendship, connection, FREE WILL, love in all its many shapes and forms and colors … was to introduce a brand new character via a device (time travel) that fails to make sense almost every time it’s used, no matter the medium. (And then had only that brand new character be there when her mother died. Don’t even get me started. Ugh.)
If time travel was always going to be on the table, couldn’t we have found a more plausible way to use it with the characters we already knew, loved, and had spent four or five seasons with? A time-travelling older Trixie, say? If you’re going to use the impossible device, just … twist it another way to make it work.
Okay. Okay. So, leaving Trixie aside for now just like the show did, let’s say we leave everything about the season the same, even Rory. Do you know what ending makes more narrative sense?
Future Rory sacrificing herself by NOT forcing Lucifer to make a cruel and impossible “choice” so the baby that might have been her grows up with a family that loves her. Chloe’s already pregnant. That’s not going to be undone. And this nonsense of a “closed time loop” falls apart if you side-eye it for even a few seconds. The Rory who came from the future never exists except in the memories of those she met when she came back from that future. Chloe and Lucifer lose that daughter even as they gain the new one whose existence is not a tool of unrelenting fate because wow this show has always been about free will what the heck happened there yikes. And a choice made under the duress Chloe and Lucifer were under, forced out of them, and forcing them to “choose” a life apart for *handwave* Reasons has nothing to do with free will. A “choice” made at gunpoint is not a real choice. Future Rory basically bullied them into ensuring she got to exist–something, quite frankly, neither her parents would have done.
Instead, how much more appropriately bittersweet is it if Chloe and Lucifer lose that child while gaining one who, because of that angry time-travelling version, will never suffer as she did.
Also as an editor: the groundwork for my version is already laid, by the way. It should have been Rory learning about the importance of free will over fate. The importance of personal sacrifice. The importance of not thinking your young self knows best … because experience and therapy will help rid you of that self-centered world view. That’s the contract the writers made with us with this show. And Chloe and Lucifer have already BEEN THERE AND DONE THAT. (See: the end of S4.)
Furthermore, this season finally HAD Chloe and Lucifer DEAL WITH the only thing that actually would have contributed to a narrative, characterization-based reason for Lucifer to disappear: His history of running and his putting Chloe on a pedestal. Once they really talked that out, his “disappearance” became a Rory-induced trauma of inexplicable fate that flies in the face of all the progress Lucifer made over six seasons. (I would rather have had more of that and less of mysterious disappearing oh no plot.)
And I’m sorry, the “Once you get to Hell you’re going to work 24/7” excuse given for why Lucifer won’t be around and why he can’t make time for Chloe until she’s DEAD(????!???) is … it’s lame. If AMENADIEL AS GOD can make time for his kid’s birthday party, I refuse to believe Lucifer can’t work out some Hell/Earth-work/life balance. Never mind that in the show about partnerships, the Bittersweet Ending just … destroyed it. Chloe was planning on being God’s consultant; she could have helped Lucifer solve Hell’s Trauma Mysteries (it’s what she did with Jimmy, setting up that yeah, Lucifer could do it alone like he accidentally did with Lee, but doing it with HIS TRUTHSEEKING PARTNER would be more effective). Just as Lucifer could have continued helping HER solve some of the problems within “that corrupt little organization” of hers.
tl;dr: I think the writers fixated so completely on their version of Bittersweet that they missed all the foreshadowing, groundwork, and clues that were right there, already built into the story, poised for a different kind of ending than the one they once imagined. That’s why so many parts of it feel almost-but-not-quite right and why these aspects are so off-putting. That’s why it’s just not … organic. It’s something squeezed into a box it grew out of ages ago.
Ironically, certain elements of this season involved the writers insisting on the FATE they decided long ago instead of letting the story and the characters have the FREE WILL to choose a different, more fitting, more organic ending–one that had long-since evolved past that original flavor of Bittersweet.
This is a much more coherent explanation of some of my major issues with this season yep.
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