NOTE: Full spoilers for this episode of, “Lucifer” are present in this review
After last week’s midseason premiere, things are finally starting to go back to normal in full on this week’s episode of Lucifer. Lux appears to be back up and running, Lucifer and Chloe are back working cases together for the LAPD, and Trixie even manages to make a return appearance this week!
The return to the show’s usual formula generally worked very well in, “Deceptive Little Parasite”, which provided another great balance between procedural, comedy and supernatural. Lucifer’s latest personal issues even once again creep into the case-of-the-week too, as the admissions officer of a prestigious grade school is found dead in her home, seemingly stabbed with a pair of ceremonial scissors. Despite the woman being claimed by one of the school’s heads to be beloved by the faculty and parents, it’s not long before Chloe and Dan inevitably discover some dirty secrets bubbling under the surface of her professional history.
Despite this being his first proper case back with the LAPD after his unofficial leave of absence however, Lucifer quickly gets in the way of the investigation, when his mother pressures him to channel the power of Azrael’s Blade again. Mama Morningstar does everything in her power to provoke a variety of reactions from her son to this end, between anger, arousal and fear, though nothing seems to work. Amenadiel also finds that he can’t channel the powers of the blade either, and that only Lucifer, the so-called, “Lightbringer”, possesses the means to re-open the gates of Heaven, even though he doesn’t yet know how.
This struggle leads to Lucifer enlisting Trixie to help him get into the grade school where Chloe’s and Dan’s investigation is going on, though not for the reasons of solving a murder. Instead, Lucifer is interested in using childhood means of trying to control emotion, after Linda claims to him that emotions can’t be controlled. This provided a lot of standout humour, and played well into Lucifer’s outward immaturity, as he does things like sit in on story time sessions with Trixie. Trixie being devious and proceeding the investigation even more than Lucifer was also a great twist, as we start seeing more shades of Trixie’s mother in her, even if Trixie ironically takes more after Lucifer with her less by-the-book methods.
The episode’s climax also offers a lot of fun moments, as Chloe and Maze pose as a lesbian couple to infiltrate a visitation for the murder victim, in order to find a suspect. After some gossip trickery, they learn that the culprit is the storytime reader, who apparently had an illegitimate child with the gym teacher, which the victim found out about, and ended up being killed over. This is a fair enough conclusion, though the end of the case did feel a little bit rushed, especially with so many emotional politics at play that just weren’t properly developed in the end. Maze tackling the woman full force while she was in the middle of a sad speech was pretty hilarious though!
The experience leads to Trixie opening up more to Chloe, deciding that she didn’t like the school, which was a sweet way to conclude the episode’s procedural storyline. Lucifer also finally learns to face his pain, the true trigger behind Azrael’s Blade, which successfully sets it alight again. The next phase to the show’s divine figures reaching Heaven is in place, though as you can imagine, Lucifer is in no rush. A lot of evidence is dropped suggesting that Mama Morningstar is the one eager to expedite the trip back to the Pearly Gates most of all, and as the episode ends, whereupon she exposes an injury that seemingly suggests she’s in dire need of divine attention from God, we get our hint as to why Mama Morningstar is so eager to reunite with her estranged husband in such short order!
“Deceptive Little Parasite” is all about restoring the status quo of Lucifer, and considering that Season Two still has plenty of episodes left to go, considering the show’s extended Winter/Spring hiatus since January, that’s certainly not a bad thing. While we had another case-of-the-week that sputtered in a few respects, especially with how thanklessly it was wrapped up, the journey to re-igniting Azrael’s Blade, and a standout method of bringing Trixie back into the show for the first time in a while, both led to another reliably great episode of Lucifer. With Mama Morningstar seemingly gravely injured, it looks like more self-serving secrets are just beyond Lucifer’s notice, though perhaps without as much malevolent intent as Lucifer and Amenadiel may have thought. With Lucifer still very much attached to Earth though, will he be able to reunite his mother with his father before it’s too late?