This episode is all about Lucifer, just showing that we
can’t keep a good devil down. I would say that’s kind of understandable, I mean
when you’ve raised the stakes (and ye gods does Supernatural raise the stakes with every season) you kind of need
to hold on to a big epic threat and milk it for all it’s worth
I am torn though about where this episode is going
So Lucifer manages to come back and heal his decaying
meat suite thanks to some teenagers happening to find a super powerful satanic
ritual. Because of course they do. I’ve seen more convoluted inserts but not
many.
So Lucifer is back in the body of aging has being rock
star Vincent Vincenze and he’s deciding to have a come back with his band.
Albeit with no music. It’s all about the popularity and having everyone
worshipping him, lots of buzz with no substance
It’s like someone decided to write a subtle criticism of
modern social media, actor and popularity based culture along with a whole
celebrity class who are famous for no discernible reason. Except then they
aggressively crossed out the word “subtle”
I mean, you have the expert PR person pointing out that hey
I work for the devil? I’m in PR, that’s a step up. You have her excellent comment
on how actually useful fame and social media presence actually is (you get buzz
– but those people aren’t going to buy albums or concept tickets. A lot of
social media “celebrities” don’t actually get a lot of cash in the bank). We
get the truly disturbing image of a woman ready to kill herself carving his
name into her body to prove her utter devotion and we have Lucifer’s excellent
comment on how humans are utterly desperate to worship someone, to set someone
on a pedestal above them – be it religious figures or rock stars. Humans want to
worship
The commentary is good
But the way it falls flat as social commentary for me is
that, by all accounts of the show, Vincent Vincente WAS a very popular rock
star because of the music he produced. Sure he wasn’t universally loved – but the
fact that Sam and Dean snark at each other constantly because Sam liked him (in
an exchange which is perfectly brotherly awesome – I do love it when you can
clearly see them as brothers). And, for all he’s causing quite a stir, the
minute he has his come back gig and quite literally can’t play a single
instrument it would all fall apart. This isn’t a famous reality TV show star or
the Kardashians or any of the other infamous “what-is-this-famous-person-famous-for”
personalities: his persona was based on delivering something rendering the
whole commentary more based on how excessive buzz can get more than anything
else.
The gang move in to stop him which has Castiel and
Crowley being surprisingly hilarious together, Dean and Sam snarking eat each
other. Also Dean hates Los Angeles but Crowley, unsurprisingly, is utterly in
his complete element because where else can you find such a motherlode of people
desperate to sell their souls in order to make it? This is Crowley’s place.
Also Dean looks… amazingly good with the black leather
rocker look. Oh. My. Gods. He does.
So Lucifer sets up his little concert and the gang uses
quick thinking to evacuate the place so they can have their confrontation in
which Lucifer batters them around merrily until he burns out his vessel and buzzes
off.
So what was Lucifer’s motive here? Nothing. Or chaos. Or
possibly both. Because daddy issues. Ok Lucifer with daddy issues is hardly a
novel concept but it’s actually kind of well done here. Last season we had Lucifer
basically recruited into the fight to help God and fight Amarra. It was epic.
In it god and Lucifer reconcile and now Lucifer is…. Still stuck on earth. God
has apparently completely forgotten Lucifer. After all that epicness, Lucifer
has a damn good reason to be pissed, to be absolutely furious that his dad went
through all this reconciliation to just USE him and then abandon him once he
got what he want
Lucifer has ever damn reason to be pissed… and he can do
little about it because, well, God. So he’s stuck on Earth and deciding to burn
all the things. Is it a sensible, mature response? No, it’s nihilistic, rage
filled, despairing and lacking any goal. Or any real reason or way you can
possibly negotiate with it. When you have, perhaps, the most powerful being in
the planet basically existing just to lash out in eternal rage is a terrifying
concept.
But is this even related to Vincent Vincente and what
Lucifer did? I mean “I will burn all the things” basically turns into “I will
burn down one small club full of people”. Hey, don’t get me wrong, it would be
a tragedy – but hardly world shaking. Was this just the results of Lucifer
flailing around? In some way this is scary in its unpredictability: Lucifer
could do absolutely anything and there’s no way of predicting his rampage. But,
at the same time, if Lucifer’s awful is basically relatively small scale local
tragedies, it’s not quite on par with the world destroying epic plot lines we’ve
had before.
But do we need that? As Sam poignantly points out at the
end of the episode – people died, a musician who were valued and worshipped and
brought a lot of joy died. This wasn’t a win, it was merely losing more slowly.
Do we need a “the world is going to end” plot to make the stakes worth fighting
for? Isn’t a string of poignant tragedy after tragedy enough and enough reason
to stop Lucifer?
