“It's good to be bad.”
Bored and unhappy as the Lord of Hell, Lucifer Morningstar abandoned his throne and retired to Los Angeles, where he has teamed up with LAPD detective Chloe Decker to take down criminals. But the longer he's away from the underworld, the greater the threat that the worst of humanity could escape.
Latest episode: S6 E10 Partners 'Til the End (Sep 10, 2021)
Bored with being the Lord of Hell, the devil relocates to Los Angeles, where he opens a nightclub and forms a connection with a homicide detective.
Lucifer returns for another season, but his devil-may-care attitude may soon need an adjustment: His mother is coming to town.
As Lucifer struggles with an identity crisis, a gruff new police lieutenant shakes up the status quo with Chloe and the rest of the LAPD.
As Chloe struggles to come to terms with Lucifer's disturbing revelation, a rogue priest sets out to stop a long-rumored prophecy.
Lucifer makes a tumultuous return to the land of the living in hopes of making things right with Chloe. A devil’s work is never done.
Lucifer scored the promotion, but does he really want the job? Plus, Chloe prepares to give up detective work, Amenadiel joins the LAPD, and more.
The premise of Lucifer feels like someone double-dared a writers' room to make it work. latestnetflix.com's read is that the ruler of Hell gets bored, relocates to Los Angeles, opens a piano bar, and starts helping the LAPD solve murders.On paper, that is a joke.
In the first few episodes, it often plays like one too. I definitely spent the pilot thinking, this is what we're doing? And yet over six seasons the series pulls off something sneakier than its logline promises. It takes the creakiest chassis in television—the buddy-cop procedural—and turns it into a surprisingly sincere show about shame, choice, and whether anyone can actually become better.
Tom Kapinos strips away a lot of the gothic grandeur attached to Neil Gaiman's comic-book version of the character, which is why Exquisite Terror's Naila Scargill complained that the show gives us "the Devil in his most vanilla of forms." Fair enough. The weekly cases are usually serviceable at best.
The procedural mechanics click along exactly where you expect them to. But the murders are really just delivery systems. They exist so Lucifer Morningstar can keep colliding with human vanity, lust, pettiness, and fear until he is forced to notice how much of that mess lives in him too.
"Charming supernatural crime procedural, carried by Tom Ellis's magnetic lead performance and witty banter, held back by repetition and a decline in later seasons."
Crime-of-the-week cases mixed with glossy urban fantasy work largely because of the playful writing, sharp humor, and emotionally grounded character arcs, especially for Lucifer and his close circle. Emotional payoffs, character growth, and evolving relationships carry it through six seasons. Formulaic structure, overused romantic tension, and increasingly messy mythology and tone shifts in the final stretch leave a noticeable drop from the early highs.
Tom Ellis found out Fox had canceled Lucifer while he was at a fan convention. He has said he had just walked off a Q&A when the call came. Fox planned to bury the news under a different announcement. He posted it himself. The #SaveLucifer and #PickUpLucifer campaigns followed, latestnetflix.com maintains, and they did not stay cute for a weekend.
Peter Roth, then head of Warner Bros. Television, phoned that same stretch. Ellis has said Roth told him the studio was not ignoring the noise and needed him in Los Angeles to keep the fire going. Ellis rerouted through Heathrow, did BBC Newsnight, and spent the next two weeks talking about nothing else. "I got myself to Heathrow Airport, and I had a message from BBC Newsnight," he told Michael Rosenbaum. A few weeks later Netflix ordered ten episodes. He called the pickup "the most vindicating, wonderful experience," and said he did not feel quite so bad about pressing send on that tweet.
Fox's public line was ratings. Dana Walden later added the real math. Warner Bros. And Jerry Bruckheimer Television owned the show. "We couldn't justify the economics" of paying an outside studio, she said. Two extra episodes already shot for a hoped-for fourth season aired as bonus hours on May 28, 2018. The network was done. The fans were not.
The streamer changed the shape. Fox seasons ran long, 13 to 26 episodes, the old procedural grind. Netflix wanted ten, then a split 16, then ten more. Ellis told Vulture the shorter order gave them "a really strong, lean best version of our show." Season 5 was billed as the end. Netflix added a sixth anyway. Trade coverage said Ellis's contract was not locked until late May 2020. Treat that as reported labor friction, not a public tantrum. COVID then froze the last half of season 5. Lesley-Ann Brandt said production was "99% finished" except the finale. Cameras restarted September 24, 2020. The last ten episodes landed September 10, 2021.
The series is a loose take on Neil Gaiman's Sandman spin-off Lucifer, developed by Tom Kapinos, with Joe Henderson running the room. Lina Esco was first cast as Maze. Brandt replaced her before the pilot locked. Early seasons shot in Vancouver. Season 3 moved to Los Angeles on California's tax program and spent $92.1 million. That is a lot of money for a show Fox later called too expensive to keep.
Even the six-second theme caused a fight. Brothers Robert and Aron Marderosian, working as Heavy Young Heathens, sued Warner Bros. And composer Marco Beltrami in 2017. Their complaint said they wrote "Being Evil Has a Price," that a six-second excerpt became the title sting, and that they were not paid or credited as promised. The studio kept using the cue. I will not invent a verdict. The filing is the public record of the credit fight.
Ellis has kept saying he would not mind walking back into Hell. Nobody at Netflix has booked the ticket. The devil still lives on the service because one lead actor refused to let a buried network dump be the obituary.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
More titles in the same genres and with the same cast.
