So, Luke Cook, who plays Lucifer this episode, looks a lot like Taylor Kitsch. Enough I thought they maybe paid for Kitsch. They didn’t, they got Cook. Who doesn’t seem to have voiced goat Satan in the previous episodes.
Anyway.
It’s the big finale, with Kiernan Shipka unintentionally letting Cook out of Hell and letting him assume his original appearance. There are flashbacks to Lilith and Lucifer’s time after the Fall, with Jenna Berman in for Michelle Gomez in the flashback, and we learn how Cook was originally beautiful but the longer he was out of Heaven, the faster he turned into a goat demon.
Cook’s got some big reveals for Shipka, including some hard truths about her father and mother, as well as a bone to pick with Richard Coyle. You think you’re going to get a great Coyle vs. Satan scene and then you don’t. Instead you just get Coyle being a weasel, as usual. It’s a missed opportunity but not a surprising one—Coyle remains the show’s only significant casting mistake. He’s nowhere near as good as the other adults.
Then there are some big reveals for Shipka’s love life; not just because it’s the season finale but also because it figures in to the finale.
It’s all hands on deck trying to foil Cook’s plans: mortals Ross Lynch, Jaz Sinclair, and Lachlan Watson go into the mines to find the gate to Hell while Shipka and witch family do the magic stuff. Michelle Gomez plays for both Cook and Shipka throughout, leading to both good humor scenes and some more serious contemplations on gender structures and power between Gomez and Shipka. There’s a lot of good acting in the episode, even if it basically reveals the season could’ve easily been seven to ten episodes. When Chance Perdomo and Tati Gabrielle reunite after having been lovers, mortal enemies, and whatever else, it’s like they haven’t seen each other in forever. But it’s only been a week in show time since she was torturing him.
There’s also the problem with Shipka and friends all of a sudden getting great ideas, great enough to outsmart the Great Deceiver. Where was this imaginative thinking throughout the season when Shipka couldn’t breath without screwing something up.
And the season two teasers at the end, the promised developments, aren’t great for Shipka and the teens. The setups for the adults at least promise to amuse.
It’s a solid show but twenty (actual) hour-long episodes is a lot of investments for a conclusion and setup the show could’ve done in half the time, if not even less.
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