My Thoughts on Lucifer: Season 6 (Final Season)

Where to watch: Netflix

(some mild spoilers may be present, but I'll try to keep those to a minimum.)

It's been a little while since I've had a chance to sit down and catch up on some TV, but thanks to a lengthy shredding assignment, that's finally possible over the next several weeks. It feels like opportune timing to catch up on many of the genre TV shows I've fallen behind in over the past few years (there's been a lot!), and I decided that my 2024 shredding time would be occupied by catching up on DC Universe-inspired shows specifically, including those adapted from comics that DC published under their Vertigo and WildStorm imprints.

With DC completely chucking out their current 'DC Extended Universe' cinematic franchise, and rebooting it as the all-new, all-different 'DCU' starting with the new Superman movie next July (technically, that will also be preceded by an animated Max series, Creature Commandos, this December), I felt it prudent to completely finish out the 'old run' of DC content, before Warner Bros. and DC Studios eventually deliver a fresh, longstanding batch of DC movies and TV shows over the next decade or so, at minimum. Obviously, there will be some new straggler releases in the meantime, with this October's sole DC movie for 2024, Joker: Folie a Deux (conveniently set in its own self-contained universe), and the Robert Pattinson-fronted 'BatVerse' continuity being unaffected by DC's upcoming reboot (a Penguin miniseries set in the 'BatVerse' is even premiering on Max/Crave this month), along with a few other legacy DC TV shows that will endure (for now). Beyond those rare exceptions though, which will soon be consolidated under their own 'DC Elseworlds' brand, DC is wiping the slate clean, and going all in on a centralized mass media canon with the upcoming DCU.

So, with that latest messy, but necessary creative change now established for DC, I got started on my DC catchup with the final ten episodes of Lucifer, a series that I very much loved during its days on the Fox network, and mostly liked after it was initially cancelled by Fox, and was quickly rescued by Netflix. Originally, Netflix was going to end Lucifer after Season 5, which released with a two-part, super-sized 16-episode season that nicely tied up the series, and gave it a fitting endpoint that also served as the easy highlight of Lucifer's second run on Netflix. Good job, drinks for everyone.

Then, for some reason, not long before the premiere of Season 5, Warner Bros. and Netflix decided that they were going to make a sixth season of Lucifer, which would now be Lucifer's true final season, and would almost completely retcon the planned ending from Season 5. Why? I couldn't tell you. Granted, I'm sure that Lucifer's extremely passionate cult fanbase and their demands for additional episodes probably bullied Warner Bros. and Netflix into uneasy compliance eventually, but in this case, I really wish that Lucifer's handlers had held firm, and stuck to their original plan to end the show after Season 5.

Because Lucifer achieved such a satisfying and natural conclusion with Season 5, I never really felt compelled to watch Season 6, and nor did my DC-loving friends. We all got the ending we wanted, and didn't understand why we needed ten more episodes. After finally ending my procrastination when it comes to seeing how Lucifer ACTUALLY concluded in 2021 at last, fully intending to give Season 6 the benefit of the doubt, mind you, I can't say this notion was ever dispelled. In fact, Lucifer's sixth and final season is a complete dud in most respects, as well as a completely superfluous addition that simply ruins the much better ending achieved in Season 5.

I really hate to use this overdone criticism of weak genre TV, and this is the first time I have used it in my writing, but I really do think it fits here; Lucifer's sixth and final season feels like bad fanfiction. The show's lead characters have become so messy and ill-defined through their personalities and ambitions that they feel like they're operating in terms of pandering to what the writers think the series' fans want to see, not how the characters should reasonably act. This is especially infuriating in terms of the series' relationship writing, which, frankly, DC shows are often spectacularly terrible at anyway. The central Lucifer/Chloe relationship still manages to barely hover above the rock-bottom romance writing of most of The CW's DC shows, thankfully, but not by much. Rather than feeling like star-crossed lovers breaking celestial barriers, Lucifer and Chloe now feel de-fanged, saccharine and like they belong on a teen soap. They would now almost consistently be right at home within The CW's 'Arrowverse' franchise, in that regard.

Back in the Fox days, Lucifer used to be a pretty fun procedural dramedy, even if it barely had anything to with the Vertigo/DC comic books that inspired it. Naturally, that extremely tenuous connection to the wider Vertigo/DC mythology is not tightened at all during this final season, with Lucifer continuing to function so incognito from its DC origins that this series adaptation might have just as well been pitched as its own original IP. Regardless, Lucifer's central procedural hook has now been pushed out so completely by Netflix (a likely consequence of Netflix's Lucifer episodes no longer being released weekly, and instead having new seasons drop all at once), that it doesn't show up at all past this final season's first couple of episodes. That's another big knock against this final season for me; It completely sucks all the fun out of Lucifer's hook, and instead leaves the show with a bunch of schmaltzy, eye-rolling melodrama that doesn't even make sense much of the time, particularly in the very last episodes.

A big reason for this is that the showrunners seemingly couldn't decide on a central threat for this sixth and final season, and, well, duh! After Season 5 saw Lucifer prevail against his twin brother, Michael, and Michael's own army of celestials, the series really had no other threats it could reasonably introduce. Lucifer had won, he had started on the path to taking over Heaven, and achieving his life's ambition at long last.

So, Season 6 instead gives us Rory, a half-angel daughter of Lucifer and Chloe from the future, played by Deadpool's Brianna Hildebrand. Rory is a character that I just couldn't invest in, because she's wrapped in abrupt time travel rules that are never clearly established, and that's also garnished with a climactic prophecy that never effectively amounts to anything. Instead, Rory's presence just creates more schmaltz and annoyance, as Lucifer and Chloe continually fret over a future that they never truly feel oppressed by, because the stakes behind Rory just never feel that effective. Rather than feeling like a tough, savage warning from the future, Rory is just a spoiled, semi-divine brat that never feels like she has any real problems, and yet her childish angst starts to cause issues in the past. Or, it's supposed to, because that threat is quickly abandoned in favour of another threat that the show teases surrounding the vacancy of Heaven's throne, before also failing to do anything lasting or impactful with that perceived issue.

In the end, I feel like Lucifer's sixth and final season is a bit of a cautionary tale when it comes to trying too hard to please fans, right up there with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker from a few years ago. Its presence needlessly mucks up a far superior ending for a beloved dramedy series, and only serves to completely sand off whatever edge that Lucifer had left. This is supposed to be a series about Hell on Earth, after all, to some network TV-friendly degree, and that element is just not there anymore. That's frustrating. Sure, Season 6 does still manage a solid episode or two, and some of its character work does manage to feel smart and well-executed at times, though almost all of this season is ultimately unnecessary, and too often tedious.

Perhaps it might have been smarter on Netflix's part if they just did a two-hour TV movie finale for Lucifer or something, if they really did want to expand on Season 5's ending, but I guess we'll never know. My friends were right; You're likely best off pretending that Lucifer ended with Season 5. Frankly, you're not missing anything with its pointless and frustrating final season.

IF I HAD TO SCORE IT: 4/10