Lucifer: The Complete Second Season

Lucifer: The Complete Second Season

In Lucifer: The Complete Second Season, Lucifer (Tom Ellis) and his brother Amenadiel (who’s concerned about losing his powers; played by D.B. Woodside) are looking for their mother (Tricia Helfer), who has escaped from Hell. Lucifer is trying to be honest with Detective Chloe Decker (Lauren German) about who and what he really is, but Amenadiel doesn’t want her to know. Plus, her ex-husband (Kevin Alejandro) is back on the force but demoted after last season’s events, so she’s now his boss.

(The studio, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, provided me with a free review copy of this DVD set. My opinions below are mine. Lucifer is based on the comic book characters created by Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, and Mike Dringenberg for Vertigo.)

Tricia Helfer and Tom Ellis in Lucifer Season 2

Tricia Helfer and Tom Ellis

D.B. Woodside in Lucifer Season 2

D.B. Woodside

Added this season is a new character, Ella Lopez (Aimee Garcia), forensic scientist. She’s the best kind of Christian — open, accepting, questioning, yet confident in her faith. She makes for great interaction with Lucifer, particularly since she’s outspoken, and so much of this season is about coming to terms with the truth with the demons revealing themselves to various characers. (Although Ella thinks Lucifer is a method actor really committed to playing the devil.)

Maze (Lesley-Ann Brandt) is trying to figure out her place in the world now that Lucifer isn’t going to back to Hell. Although demons don’t normally have friends, she and Dr. Linda (formerly Lucifer’s shrink and bed partner, now just shrink, played by Rachael Harris) are getting along.

Lucifer: The Complete Second Season

I liked the way the women all started hanging out together this season — Chloe, Dr. Linda, Maze, and the ME first went out for a girls’ night in episode 4, which led to Chloe and Maze rooming together. It’s a transparent device to keep the characters more involved with each other, but I like the interactions of the personality opposites. Plus, Maze is great with Chloe’s kid (Scarlett Estevez). The trick-or-treating scene in episode 6 is a high point.

Aimee Garcia, Lesley-Ann Brandt, Lauren German, and Rachael Harris in Lucifer Season 2

Aimee Garcia, Lesley-Ann Brandt, Lauren German, and Rachael Harris

Mom, not having much exposure to humanity in a while, tends to embarrass and annoy Lucifer the same way he does Chloe. Then there’s another family member that shows up to bring more conflict with everyone. In this season, relationships become more important than the murders, although some of them are juicy. A sexy teen star’s stand-in is killed and given horns. Pranksters who posted embarrassing videos are killed in extreme revenge scenarios. An action movie star is murdered.

Many more cases this season hit closer to home, with personal connections involved. Lucifer has to figure out who murdered the lawyer whose body his mother took over, and Chloe re-investigates her father’s murder. (That’s the episode where Lucifer decides to mimic her ex-husband because he doesn’t like being himself any more.) In other episodes, a knife capable of destroying celestial beings goes missing, or Lucifer’s landlord is killed, putting his club and home into jeopardy, or Lucifer’s ex-lovers start getting killed.

Kevin Alejandro and Tom Ellis in Lucifer Season 2

Kevin Alejandro and Tom Ellis

Then there’s the episode, originally aired after the three-month hiatus, in which Lucifer shows up with a wife, Candy Morningstar, in order to get Chloe to be less interested in him. Or the one where he gets to meet Dad, in the guise of a mental patient who thinks he’s divine. (Played wonderfully by Timothy Omundson, aka the king in Galavant and Carlton in Psych.) I stay interested in this show because there’s always humor to go along with the supernatural hijinks and murder mysteries.

Tom Ellis and Rachael Harris in Lucifer Season 2

Tom Ellis, looking particularly devilish, and Rachael Harris

Special Features

This second season set has three discs with six episodes per disc, which seems a little crowded, although I didn’t notice any video issues.

The extras are minimal. There are a few deleted scenes:

  • The first disc has a short deleted scene from the first episode.
  • There are two on disc two, the second of which provides some interesting insight into the background of that particular case.
  • There are eight on disc three, from four different episodes.

There’s no menu listing for them, though. You can select them per episode or watch all the ones on a particular disc.

I found the gag reel (4 1/2 minutes) particularly odd to watch since the show is normally so serious and dramatic about the cosmic stuff. Watching the stars crack up and pull faces was strange.

Lauren German and Tom Ellis in Lucifer Season 2

Lauren German and Tom Ellis

“Reinventing Lucifer: In the City of Angels” (15 minutes) features cast members and executive producers talking about the show’s setting as a location for reinvention. There are lots of beauty shots of the city, but content-wise, this doesn’t say much. Particularly since — although they don’t mention this — this season was filmed primarily in Vancouver. The character insight section, in the second half, is more interesting, although it appears to have been filmed last season, since there’s no discussion of the whole mother plotline.

In the 2016 Comic-Con Panel (27 minutes), there’s a lot of talk about what they’re going to be doing that you can see realized in the first four or so episodes this season. The panelists are Joe Henderson (executive producer and writer of the season 1 finale and season 2 opener), Ildy Modrovich (executive producer and writer of the second episode plus others), D.B. Woodside, Tom Ellis, Tricia Helfer, Lesley-Ann Brandt, and Aimee Garcia. Once they get past talking to the producers about upcoming plots, the actors take the focus. Due to the interactions among them, I found this panel more entertaining than other similar examples, particularly when they’re telling stories about each other. A nice bonus to the set.



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