REVIEW: ‘Lucifer’ Season 5B is an Incredible Conclusion to the Season

Lucifans rejoice as Lucifer Season 5B has finally arrived on Netflix. It was decided that the second half of this season would be labeled as Season 5B since it was split into two parts. The first part of Season 5 focused on Lucifer (Tom Ellis) coming back to Earth after reclaiming his throne in hell. However, Amenadiel (D.B. Woodside) pleas with Lucifer to return and deal with his twin brother Michael, who has been impersonating Lucifer on Earth. Lucifer decides to make the journey back to Los Angeles and deal with the damage that his brother has been causing. Meanwhile, Chloe (Lauren German) throws herself into her police work as a way to deal with losing Lucifer. Mazikeen (Lesley-Ann Brandt) deals with abandonment issues after Lucifer goes back to hell without her.

Lucifer Season 5B picks up moments after the previous episode. While Lucifer and Amenadiel are fighting Michael, God (Dennis Haysbert) appears to put an end to the fight. After a disastrous family dinner, God reveals his plans to make amends with his family and choose which of his children will succeed him. The family believes that Amenadiel is the obvious choice to take over for his father, but he wants to focus on being a better dad alongside Linda (Rachael Harris).

Instead, he endorses Lucifer to take over as God, which brings on immense dilemmas for everyone associated with him. Lucifer and Chloe deal with their relationship status and whether or not they belong together. Dan is still dealing with finding out the truth about Lucifer. Ella is forced to face her inner darkness after the revelation of who her boyfriend was. Mazikeen continues her quest of acquiring a soul in order to connect with others.

Most of Lucifer Season 5B focused on the themes of forgiveness, atonement, and feeling worthy. At the center of these themes were Lucifer and God. The show has done an incredible job at showing how complicated their relationship is, which would lead to making amends and forgiveness really difficult. On one hand, Lucifer consistently goes out of his way to avoid his dad, while God wants to figure out a way for his family to get back together. This struggle leads to a lot of emotional and interesting interactions between the two of them. Both Ellis and Haysbert are able to play off one another extremely well. Their dialogue feels authentic, as if a father and son were really arguing about family issues.

To make matters more interesting, there’s also the fact that God is planning to retire. That leads to many more issues that Lucifer must deal with and feeling worthy of that title. It’s surprising that Lucifer continues to get such immense character development as the show progresses.

Although most of  Lucifer Season 5B focused heavily on the issues between Lucifer and his family, this doesn’t mean that it completely ignored the relationship between him and Chloe. While the two are officially a couple, they still had their set of issues to deal with. While they’re not a normal couple in the traditional sense, it makes sense that they would have issues. It’s a lot better to see the two of them have issues as a couple rather than continuing the “will-they-won’t-they” dynamic that became too cliche in the show.

What makes this much more entertaining is that they’re not like most couples in terms of what they have to deal with. Feeling worthy of Chloe’s love while also dealing with all of his family drama is surely a lot for Lucifer to have on his mind. Even with who he is, there’s no doubt that this brings its own set of challenges that he must overcome. All of these challenges constantly get in the way of his happiness.

Even though their plots weren’t connected throughout  Lucifer Season 5B, Ella and Maze both had interesting storylines. For one, Maze was set on finding a soul of her own so she wouldn’t feel as alone. She goes above and beyond to accomplish her goal, even if it means heading straight into danger. This is something major for Maze, especially when thinking about where her character started back in Season 1.

The lessons that she learns along the way about what it means to have a soul and care for others is something unique for her character. The realization towards the end of the season is something truly special that fits her character so well. As with Ella, she’s having a hard time dealing with the fact that her boyfriend turned out to be a serial killer. Seeing who she is with as a reflection of the kind of person she is gets under Ella’s skin. Forcing Ella to tap into her darkness and reflect on everything in her life is a storyline unique to her. It will surely make her character much more content after dealing with it.

It was a pleasant surprise that the second of episode of  Lucifer Season 5B decided to include a musical episode. It seems so out of place for a show like Lucifer to be including an entire musical episode. Yes, Ellis has had the opportunity to show how incredible he singing voice is with multiple musical numbers in previous seasons.

Plus, no episode of the show has never had musical numbers play a major role in anything related to the plot. However, being able to see the rest of the cast perform musical numbers was fantastic. Standout performances in this episode include “Another One Bites the Dust,” “Every Breath You Take,” and “I Dreamed a Dream.” Each one of these performances were full of emotion and captured what the mood of the characters were. They’re also brilliantly choreographed and the backup performers added a more spectacle-like feeling to some of the songs. The show also does a great job at explaining the fact that the musical performances are happening rather than just going along with it.

One of the few issues with  Lucifer Season 5B was the plot of the episode titled “Daniel Espinoza: Naked and Afraid.” The episode mainly focuses on Dan as he has a wild adventure after taking a case with his former friend and partner. The episode is full of hilarious moments and completely nonsensical occurrences. While it’s great that Dan gets a bigger spotlight on the show, the episode disrupted the entire flow of the season. This was essentially a filler episode, which under normal circumstances wouldn’t be out of place, but because previous episode ended on a major cliffhanger it feels awkward in binge format. There’s no doubt that Dan deserved his own episode, but the show chose the wrong place to include it in. There is also the fact that the episode felt tonally ridiculous at certain times. It wouldn’t be surprising if fans felt as though they were watching an entirely different show.

Ultimately,  Lucifer Season 5B delivers an incredible conclusion to the show’s fifth season. Focusing of several themes when in comes to Lucifer and his family brought many emotional and authentic scenes. With season 6 marking the end of the show, it will be interesting to see how the rest of the show plays out and what the season 5B cliffhanger means for the rest of the characters.

Lucifer Season 5B is streaming now on Netflix.