TV Review: Lucifer (Season 3, Episode 16)

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Lucifer’s realisation from last week that he could change the past doesn’t (sadly) mean travelling back to the beginning of time and stopping Cain from killing Abel.

Rather, as he explains to Pierce using amusing childish-looking drawings, he can take Abel’s soul from Hell now that he has his angel wings back. Then, he can pop it back into the body of a recently dead person (based on his experience from last season).

Of course, their plan to put Abel’s soul into the body of an old man who’s in a coma at the hospital with a ‘do not resuscitate’ order goes completely wrong, and Abel’s soul goes into the body of the young, attractive assistant on the next best. She is also incidentally the sole witness of Chloe’s investigation, and disappears fast

However, the problem is, as Maze explains it, while the premise of Abel’s hell was the same (Cain killing him over and over again), the time and place kept changing, so now he can speak many languages.

So what they got to find is an incredibly versatile individual who could theoretically blend in anywhere. The plus side is that he is basically a Lucifer, and his best pickup line is “hey girl, do you want to know how many goats I have” (a good callback to Song of Songs).  

Acting like a gross, outdated man must have been really fun for newcomer Lauren Lapkus, and her performance is both funny and convincing. Abel’s scenes trying to interact with women are meant to be funny, but it veered just towards the uncomfortable “predatory lesbian” stereotype (even if the reality of it is a bit more complicated).

Luckily, Lapkus also gets to play some deeper scenes, where Abel (who thinks this is just another Hell loop) faces his killer Cain.

Chloe’s investigation, on the other hand, takes us to conspiracy theorists, dealing with an Abel in her key witness’s body to dealing with the Bolivian mafia. Continuing the trend of letting Chloe have space to express her emotions (ugly or not) from last episode, she stands up to Pierce again, this time because he takes her partner. Though the plot is going in a different direction and kind of ignoring their relationship (besides that amazing scene from last episode), that moment is welcome towards any fans of their relationship.

Episodes of the third season of Lucifer, as well as the two previous seasons, are available on Amazon Prime.