‘Lucifer’: Amenadiel Gets a Very Unwanted Blast From His Past (RECAP)

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Lucifer Season 6, Episode 6 “A Lot Dirtier Than That.”]

“I love … being a cop,” Amenadiel (D.B Woodside) awkwardly says to his training officer, Sonya Harris (Merrin Dungey), at one point. He may be covering for the conversation he’s having with his ghost friend Dan (Kevin Alejandro) — only celestials can see him — but it turns out that’s a statement he and Chloe Decker (Lauren German) must wonder about after the angel runs into the last person he wants to at work.

Meanwhile, Lucifer (Tom Ellis) still refuses to believe he left his daughter Rory (Brianna Hildebrand) willingly in the future and decides to make up all the time they lost together with somewhat disastrous results.

Some Things Really Need to Change

At a crime scene, Amenadiel’s a bit eager to share all his findings — a nosy neighbor could be an eyewitness, there’s a second toothbrush in the bathroom — but as Sonya reminds him, it’s up to the lead detective to determine what matters. Therein lies the problem: It’s Detective Reiben (Brian Oblak), the racist cop who arrested Caleb and with whom Amenadiel argued. He doesn’t seem to recognize Amenadiel and also decides it must have simply been a gang shooting. He ignores all of Amenadiel’s input. But he’s their boss, Sonya reminds him, and speaking out will get him nowhere except where she is: 10 years later, still on the beat. Keep his head down, she advises.

And so Amenadiel turns to his friend, forensic scientist Ella Lopez (Aimee Garcia) to follow up on his discoveries. (Poor Ella thinks he’s coming to her with something a bit more … celestial since she’s seemingly putting the pieces together and figuring out what no one has told her.) Thanks to her help, he identifies the victim’s girlfriend, Michaela, with a print in a blood trail leading away from an open bathroom window. He goes to Chloe with his findings and to tell her about Reiben, and she reveals that Sonya was offered a detective seat and turned it down.

John P. Fleenor/Netflix

Amenadiel then takes it upon himself to talk to the victim’s nosy neighbor (Lucifer would love her — she’s played by Patricia Belcher, who was Caroline Julian on Bones). She tells him the victim, Kevin, wasn’t involved in gangs at all. The guy who lived in the apartment before him, however, was a different story. And so the angel has a theory: a case of mistaken identity.

He plans to talk to the lieutenant about that and Reiben, but Sonya stops him. “You call this keeping your head down?” she asks. “You’re like one of those Whac-a-mole games, stuck in the about to be smacked position.” Michaela needs their help, he argues. She’s out there, scared and injured. He also calls her out on the detective job offer, but she reveals she turned it down — they wanted to put her out in the Palisades — so she could stay where she’d do the most good.

Then Reiben pulls Amenadiel into a conference room, reveals he recognizes him, says he regretted how he treated “that kid” and is owning up to his mistakes … before determining that Michaela is the killer.

John P. Fleenor/Netflix

But fortunately, she has Amenadiel and Sonya on her side. Sonya reaches out to a doctor from a free clinic near the victim’s place. She treated Michaela and helps the two connect. Michaela calls Sonya from where she’s hiding in a cemetery, and the officers find her … only her boyfriend’s killer has tracked her down, too, because he knows she saw him. Sonya calls in for backup, but Reiben still sees Michaela as the killer and orders the officers who respond to take her down, even as she has her arms raised and her leg is bleeding. Amenadiel steps between Reiben and Michaela and professes her innocence. Reiben has both the killer and Michaela brought in.

The good thing is Amenadiel found enough evidence to point to the actual shooter and clear Michaela, but that doesn’t make what happened to her (or the fact that Reiben is still on the force) right. Helping her is why she does her job, Sonya tells Amenadiel.

Some Things Can’t Be Fixed

Maybe an asteroid hits LA or there’s some sort of supernatural pathogen that only affects the most handsome or he ends up in witness protection in a central state beginning with the letter I, Lucifer suggests to Dr. Linda Martin (Rachael Harris). She thinks he needs to take responsibility for his future disappearance, but he thinks he is, at least with the first two possibilities. They are, after all, “acts of God” (though he still has yet to take the throne). Focus on what Rory’s feeling, Linda advises, and spend time with her, since he can’t go back in time (or jump to the future) and be there for the birthdays and holidays he missed.

John P. Fleenor/Netflix

Unfortunately, Lucifer decides to take that last bit of advice and have a “daddy do-over.” He decorates his penthouse for Christmas and gets Rory presents for every one he missed (including a giant teddy bear and a bicycle) … and Santa Claus. When he realizes that’s no longer age-appropriate, he decides to teach her to drive, but she already knows how to (and his car is now hers). And when she flirts with an older woman at a stoplight, he gives the other driver his devil eyes. She’s twice her age, he argues.

Then he realizes she already got all that with Chloe, so he decides to give her something only he can: a party at Lux. Rory is understandably not excited, but hey, at least he’s trying, Maze (Lesley-Ann Brandt) points out. Plus, she picked out the waitstaff, so all Rory has to do is let the demon know if there’s a lady or ladies who interest her. Maze understands her better than her own dad, Rory says, before Lucifer sings “You Got It” to her, a big performance with platters of cash and pills and a motorcycle. But none of this will change everything he missed, like her first tooth, her first day of school, when she learned to drive or fly, Rory finally argues. And when he finally just asks her what she wants, she tells him to leave her alone.

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'Lucifer' Showrunners, Tom Ellis & Lauren German Open Up About the End (VIDEO)

But they may make a tiny bit of progress when he finds her in his penthouse playing guitar and joins her on his piano for “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

Lucifer, Complete Series, Streaming Now, Netflix