NOTE: Full spoilers for this episode of “Lucifer” are present in this review
Last week’s episode of Lucifer ended on a pretty shocking cliffhanger, with Chloe involved in a car accident, seemingly ordered by God Himself. Naturally, Chloe survived, but the forces of Heaven are indeed gunning for her, as revealed in this week’s episode, “Weaponizer.” A pretty by-the-book case-of-the-week is still baked into this episode, but by the end, the real star of this week’s story is Lucifer incurring the wrath of God and Heaven, and the extremes that Lucifer will go to in order to protect both Chloe and his mother.
We got to catch up with Mama Morningstar again this week, as she tries and fails to get a handle on her host’s job and children. Mama Morningstar is almost preferring Hell at this point, even with some quick, begrudging help from Maze when it comes to managing her situation, but this episode’s surprisingly emotional and dramatic material began when Maze tries to talk Amenadiel into taking Mama Morningstar back to Hell, in order to appease God. Amenadiel is unable to do it though, despite Mama Morningstar seemingly being at peace with the situation, and this leads to another angel coming down to Los Angeles to collect on Lucifer’s end of the bargain for Chloe’s life.
This is the first time on the series that we’ve met another angel aside from Lucifer and Amenadiel, with their younger brother, Uriel being sent to Earth to try and get Chloe into an unfortunate accident. Angels are normally forbidden from interfering with human lives, let alone taking them, though Uriel’s probability manipulation powers apparently serve as something of a loophole, allowing Chloe to die in an accident. Does that really not count though? By the end of the episode especially, it’s established that Uriel sees every outcome, and can mastermind events days in advance to lead to someone’s death. I get that the writing is a bit constrained by the show’s established rules with angels here, but surely, Uriel manipulating an outcome is directly influencing said outcome, and how is that different from Uriel just directly murdering Chloe, and breaking Heaven’s rules, even if it’s at God’s apparent request?
We do get some comedy from this storyline however, as Lucifer becomes comically over-protective of Chloe, to the point where he doesn’t even trust her coffee and sandwiches anymore, and insists on following her around like a bodyguard. This isn’t necessarily unhelpful with this week’s case, though it does get on Chloe’s nerves very quickly. That’s not the only thing annoying Chloe this week either, as another comedic highlight was explored through this week’s case, which involved the murder of one of Lucifer’s favourite action movie stars. Turns out, the actor is also one of Dan’s favourite action movie stars, and this led to some adorable, hilarious bonding moments between these two frenemies. Lucifer and Dan actually getting along helped to balance out some of the more serious moments that occurred later on, as did some more lovable moments from Ella, particularly when she actually almost agrees to impulsively sleep with Lucifer at a crime scene, before getting ahold of herself. Missed it by that much!
Considering the divine angle of this episode though, you can imagine that this week’s case was ultimately pretty phoned in, and felt like a bit of an afterthought. At least this episode had a slightly more reasonable murder motive, with the agent and the actor’s ex-wife being the culprits, apparently killing the actor when he discovered that they’d manipulated a merchandising contract to screw him out of royalties. This also affected the actor’s public rival and private best friend, another beloved action star known for a character called, “The Weaponizer”, who is initially framed for the crime. The twist of The Weaponizer almost attempting to shoot the culprits dead as the case winds down, with Uriel vaguely engineering the outcome to get Chloe shot as collateral damage, was fairly exciting, though since Chloe is a series lead that obviously won’t be killed off, the outcome of this situation was also pretty predictable.
After the case-of-the-week is done and sorted though, the real punch of the episode begins to unfold, as Amenadiel gets a severe beating by Uriel, and finally confesses to a distraught Lucifer that he has lost his angelic powers. Like Lucifer, Amenadiel has fallen, and this proved to be a surprisingly dramatic scene, with both Tom Ellis and D.B. Woodside really pushing their performances to new heights. Ellis in particular really shone from a performance standpoint this week too, as he later confronts Uriel in an abandoned church, before trying and failing to beat him in a fight, after Uriel reveals that he plans to kill Mama Morningstar with Azrael’s Blade, which will erase her from existence entirely.
Even Maze is helpless to stop Uriel, and right before a chain of events is set into motion that will kill Chloe, Lucifer runs the dagger through his brother’s heart, sacrificing him in the name of saving both Chloe and his mother. This was very shocking, and the genuine pain and horror that Lucifer conveyed at having to murder his own brother was very heartfelt here. It’s not often that Lucifer gets so emotional, but it’s tough not to genuinely tear up as Lucifer ends the episode by collapsing into his mother’s arms, in tears and broken, emotionally shattered by having to wipe his own brother completely out of existence. It was a particularly great testament to how easy it’s become to sympathize with even The Devil himself on this show, who not only chose humanity over both Heaven and Hell, but also had to sacrifice one family member to save another, with no way around the situation. Lucifer earned this incredible moment of vulnerability, and it’s one that will hopefully continue to be explored in next week’s episode.
As for this week though, “Weaponizer” didn’t truly realize its full potential until its climax, but like the probability-manipulating abilities of Uriel, there was a clear effort to set up a chain of events throughout, one that initially appeared mundane and by-the-book for Lucifer’s standards, only to lead up to a surprisingly shocking and dramatic conclusion, one that Lucifer had to pay a heavy price for. Even worse is the question of how many more angels God may send to collect on His end of the deal, and whether Lucifer may have to take out more family members before he manages to save both Chloe and his mother. Is it even possible in the end? Is it even the right thing to do? Whatever the case, I seriously doubt that God will let the erasure of one his children go unpunished…