Chloe Gets Some Professional & Personal Angelic Help on ‘Lucifer’ (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 5, Episode 5 of Lucifer, “Detective Amenadiel.”]
Sparks fly in the fifth episode of the fifth season, but not the ones Lucifer (Tom Ellis) expects when he brings Detective Chloe Decker (Lauren German) to a beach in hopes of making her feel better about learning that she’s God’s “gift” for the devil.
Just as Chloe wants some space from anything God-related, she must investigate a murder at a nunnery. Needing some celestial assistance, she turns to angel Amenadiel (DB Woodside), who, it turns out, can help her in more ways than one.
Meanwhile, therapist Dr. Linda Martin (Rachael Harris) confesses a heartbreaking secret from her past to Maze (Lesley-Ann Brandt) as the demon faces her abandonment issues.
Cruel or Perfect Timing?
Chloe eventually agrees to meet with Lucifer after 57 phone calls, many texts, a billboard, and a strippergram, and he thinks he’s come up with a way to help her. Just like he burned his wings, he thinks setting fire to a nicely wrapped gift on the beach might help her. But she just wants time and space.
So, when Sister Victoria is the murder victim and she finds herself surrounded by nuns — “hilarious,” Chloe remarks — who aren’t too receptive to her questions, she calls Amenadiel (back on Earth after God told him hell no longer needs a warden) for his expertise. She knows he can’t expose his angelic side but was hoping he had something similar to Lucifer’s mojo that could help. He says he doesn’t, but the nuns are all drawn to him and willing to answer his questions. It’s how they find out the mother superior, Mother Angelica, killed someone and ran away to the convent. Could Victoria have found out and Angelica silenced her?
Meanwhile, back at the station, Lucifer turns to Detective Dan Espinoza (Kevin Alejandro) to try to help the case along and learns all about the paperwork involved (like background checks, witness statements, and phone records). But he’s surprised when Chloe returns with Mother Angelica (who turned herself in) and Amenadiel.
Angelica killed a man in self-defense when she was 16 in Puerto Rico and found reconciliation in the arms of God. Yes, Victoria knew, but she understood. Thanks to Dan and Lucifer’s “behind the scenes” work, they find pop star Destiny Page was calling Victoria frequently, and the victim didn’t answer the day before her death. Destiny, whose latest songs are about faith, wanted to buy the convent, but Angelica turned her down. It looks like they have a new suspect.
(John P. Fleenor/Netflix)
Though Lucifer and Amenadiel have kept the fact that the latter was the one to perform the blessing on Chloe’s mother that made the detective a “gift” in the first place, she overhears their conversation in the station and drags them into an interrogation room. No, he’s not her father, Amenadiel clarifies. Lucifer hopes she one day stops seeing it as a curse, but Chloe feels like she’s just a “thing” created for someone else.
The detective once again retreats to the distraction of work, but Destiny’s non-reaction to Amenadiel and a quick conversation reveal she hasn’t found her faith. In fact, Victoria was her assistant and found her faith when she went to the convent to get intel for her. But Destiny does have an alibi for the murder: an AA meeting and yoga, where a goat ate her one month sober chip.
Lucifer and Dan confirm her alibi at goat yoga and even figure out what left a strange mark around Victoria’s neck: an engagement ring on a necklace. Victoria was engaged but had to hide it since she was undercover at a nunnery. Her fiancé could have gotten upset that she embraced the life of a nun.
Then, Sister Francine shows up to speak with Amenadiel, who thinks she knows something about the case. But she’s confused about her feelings around him and kisses him. When she’s around him, she feels like she’s closer to God, and Amenadiel realizes it’s like her love for God is reflected back at her through him. Francine does end up helping, pointing them in the direction of a secret room in the convent. That would be the perfect place for Victoria to meet with a secret fiancé.
At this point, Lucifer takes a moment to break our hearts by having Chloe tell the devil she wants them to be together but doesn’t know if she’ll ever get over the recent revelation about herself. He tells her to take all the time she needs.
But neither could have any way of knowing that her wrapping up the case alongside Amenadiel would change everything. Destiny’s bodyguard was Victoria’s fiancé, and he finds Chloe and the angel in the secret cellar. He was upset when Victoria broke up with him for what he saw as a scam (religion) and didn’t mean to push her so hard when they fought. Amenadiel has enough as he listens to Hank’s insistence that religion is nonsense and steps in front of Chloe. To Hank’s surprise, shooting him does nothing, and then the angel reveals his wings (“have faith, Hank”) and uses them to throw the human back. Unsurprisingly, the human wants to get as far away from Amenadiel as possible once he’s arrested.
(Netflix)
With the case over, Amenadiel shares his earlier revelation about his “mojo” with the nuns to Chloe. As a result, he thinks men and women are drawn to Lucifer because the devil reflects their desires back to them, and Chloe is the only mortal who can see him for who he truly is. Everything they shared is real, he assures her. Furthermore, he has a theory about why she makes Lucifer vulnerable, and it’s that that sends her to her partner.
Apparently, Amenadiel thinks that Lucifer chooses to be vulnerable around Chloe. And if that’s true, she chooses to be vulnerable around him and kisses him. Finally!
A Mother’s Love and Pain
When Maze tells Linda about finding her mother, she’s surprised when the therapist appears to be seeing it from Lilith’s point of view. Maybe she was too young to handle being a mother, Linda suggests. (Maze scoffs; Lilith was 12,000 years old.) Parenting can be scary, she continues, revealing she had a baby when she was very young and abandoned her.
Though Maze initially walks out, she returns to her friend and listens to Linda’s story. Linda had a girl when she was 17 and was unprepared to handle it. After seeing her baby, however, she knew she didn’t have the strength to raise her or face giving her up, so she left. That’s why she thinks she’s going to hell. Linda admits she thinks about her daughter every day and is shocked when Maze reveals she found her.
When Linda comes face to face with her daughter, Adriana, a real estate agent, however, she can’t bring herself to tell her who she is. Instead, she poses as a potential buyer of the house she’s showing. It needs to be up to her, Linda tells Maze, who calls her a coward. But the therapist suspects her anger’s misplaced and suggests she speak with her mother.
Sadly, she won’t get the chance. When she returns to her mother’s apartment, she finds out Lilith died. After that, Maze brings Linda a release form for biological parents, so that adopted children can find them if they want. That gives Linda what she wants — it’s in Adriana’s hands — and Maze shares that her mother died before she could tell her she hated her and forgave her. Poor Maze!
(Netflix)
Talk about an episode filled with emotional highs and lows!
Lucifer, Season 5, Part 1, Streaming Now, Netflix
