Lucifer Season 3 - Series Finale
May. 14th, 2018 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatSo saw The Lucifer Finale -- which does wrap up a lot of loose ends and does deliver in a few spots. But, was also disappointing in others. I didn't like as well as someone on FB did. Mainly because I thought once again they wasted a lot of time on the procedural and getting everyone on the same page. It was somewhat rushed in places, and the pacing was off. In short it contained all the issues that I've had with this series during the entirety of Season 3 -- bad pacing, too much focus on lame-ass procedural, and not enough on the Supernatural aspects or characterization.
Lucifer's biggest problem was trying to be cop buddy-show/supernatural hybrid and that's shown in spades here.
OTOH, I did like how it wrapped a few things up and...
1. Maze and Dr. Linda bond and Maze finally shows and tells Dr. Linda how she feels about her. Maze rushes to her -- to ensure she's okay and hasn't been hurt by Pierce. And has to fight 12 men and run four miles in horrible condition to do it.
2. Ella finally sees Pierce for who he is -- although their plan had some critical flaws. One of which was the fact that no one believed Lucifer about anything. Also, you'd think they would have someone, maybe Lucifer, check that guy out to see if he was lying about his sister. Pierce got away with a lot based on the utter stupidity of the other characters -- which I found contrived and irritating. That actually was my difficulty with the entire season. I don't deal well with television shows or books where the villain succeeds because the heros are too dumb to live. (I've recently given up on a soap opera I was addicted to because of this -- the villains won becuase the heroes were idiots and out of character. No. That's lazy and bad writing. If you write like that, you deserve to be cancelled. That said, I liked aspects of Lucifer and was sort of hoping that they'd redeem themselves...all they needed to do was drop the dumb procedural plot line.)
3. Lucifer reveals who he is to Chloe in a way, when he shields her with his wings. (Which was an interesting special effect.) And flies her far from the site. (Also really cool.) She doesn't realize something is off -- until it occurs to her that neither of them is injured and she's miles away from the site, and suddenly he's disappeared.
He reappears in true Avenging Angel fashion, bloody wings and all, and takes out all of Pierce's cronies. Then he and Pierce fight for the death, where Lucifer condemns Pierce to hell or rather Pierce condemned himself. But always wanting the last word -- Pierce turns around and says Lucifer is just as monsterous and goes too.
Sorry writers, that didn't quite work for me. Pierce was a sociopathic personality and Lucifer killed him in self-defense. You can't suddenly make him the devil, with his devil face revealed to Chloe, not the wings. It's not like Lucifer had much choice in that fight -- Pierce kept trying to kill him. The writers wanted this to be about Lucifer trying to decide who he really was, an Angel or a Devil, truth is he's both and immortal. And has always been an Angel and a Devil. So, I'm not sure there's much story in that, which is why this season failed. It kept going around and around in a circle, which is highly frustrating for an audience to watch. Hence the dropping ratings.
So, anyhow...Chloe drops into the scene and finally sees Lucifer in all his Glory, as the Devil. And I'm thinking okay, why now? Because he killed Pierce? Because she stopped being in denial and the viel lifted? Keep in mind, Chloe is an atheist. Also, Lucifer just saved her life.
It felt...I don't know, somehow contrived or forced? Or tapped onto the end? Not organic? I mean it's a nice moment and works thematically, I guess. But it felt jarring to me.
Is it a huge cliff-hanger? Well it depends on your point of view, I suppose. I didn't really see it as much of one, because...it felt like the end to a trippy short story or allegorical tale.
Also, I never saw Chloe and Lucifer getting together. Stopped shipping them together a while back.
Also, I had issues with Pierce winning. I really wanted that final bit to be Pierce in hell, reliving it over and over. I also wanted Chloe to be the one who killed him -- because that had a nice symmetry. Lucifer killing him felt oddly cliche and predictable and too easy.
4. I guess Amen and Charlotte's story ended in the previous episode, when both flew up to Heaven?
Which is good I guess.
5. Ella annoyed me up to and including the end. Sorry, she did. But I really liked Detective Dan, he had actually one of the best character arcs in the series as did Maze. The two characters that evolved the most and had the best arcs were Maze and Dan. Everyone else was no different than they'd began, which I found disappointing.
Overall? IT had good bits and bad bits. I really liked the thematic pattern of it or how Lucifer is finally revealed to Chloe, and she says...it's all true, all of it. And he's looking at her perplexed. That was nice. But I had troubles understanding how his fury at Caine caused his flames and devil face to appear -- how he chose that because of his reaction to Caine, which felt justified?
That didn't make sense to me and didn't quite play. Because he felt that way about Caine through the entire season. Why wouldn't it show up sooner? And he didn't just decide he was the Devil in that instant.
I did like his epithany, that we make our own choices, that God isn't pulling our strings. What happens is on us. That worked.
I just felt the whole thing was really sloppy. After seeing Infinity War which felt a bit tighter and far less sloppy, I was a tad disappointed. I shouldn't have been, this whole season has been sloppy.
The writing and direction really slid down hill in S3.
So...rating? B-
Lucifer's biggest problem was trying to be cop buddy-show/supernatural hybrid and that's shown in spades here.
OTOH, I did like how it wrapped a few things up and...
1. Maze and Dr. Linda bond and Maze finally shows and tells Dr. Linda how she feels about her. Maze rushes to her -- to ensure she's okay and hasn't been hurt by Pierce. And has to fight 12 men and run four miles in horrible condition to do it.
2. Ella finally sees Pierce for who he is -- although their plan had some critical flaws. One of which was the fact that no one believed Lucifer about anything. Also, you'd think they would have someone, maybe Lucifer, check that guy out to see if he was lying about his sister. Pierce got away with a lot based on the utter stupidity of the other characters -- which I found contrived and irritating. That actually was my difficulty with the entire season. I don't deal well with television shows or books where the villain succeeds because the heros are too dumb to live. (I've recently given up on a soap opera I was addicted to because of this -- the villains won becuase the heroes were idiots and out of character. No. That's lazy and bad writing. If you write like that, you deserve to be cancelled. That said, I liked aspects of Lucifer and was sort of hoping that they'd redeem themselves...all they needed to do was drop the dumb procedural plot line.)
3. Lucifer reveals who he is to Chloe in a way, when he shields her with his wings. (Which was an interesting special effect.) And flies her far from the site. (Also really cool.) She doesn't realize something is off -- until it occurs to her that neither of them is injured and she's miles away from the site, and suddenly he's disappeared.
He reappears in true Avenging Angel fashion, bloody wings and all, and takes out all of Pierce's cronies. Then he and Pierce fight for the death, where Lucifer condemns Pierce to hell or rather Pierce condemned himself. But always wanting the last word -- Pierce turns around and says Lucifer is just as monsterous and goes too.
Sorry writers, that didn't quite work for me. Pierce was a sociopathic personality and Lucifer killed him in self-defense. You can't suddenly make him the devil, with his devil face revealed to Chloe, not the wings. It's not like Lucifer had much choice in that fight -- Pierce kept trying to kill him. The writers wanted this to be about Lucifer trying to decide who he really was, an Angel or a Devil, truth is he's both and immortal. And has always been an Angel and a Devil. So, I'm not sure there's much story in that, which is why this season failed. It kept going around and around in a circle, which is highly frustrating for an audience to watch. Hence the dropping ratings.
So, anyhow...Chloe drops into the scene and finally sees Lucifer in all his Glory, as the Devil. And I'm thinking okay, why now? Because he killed Pierce? Because she stopped being in denial and the viel lifted? Keep in mind, Chloe is an atheist. Also, Lucifer just saved her life.
It felt...I don't know, somehow contrived or forced? Or tapped onto the end? Not organic? I mean it's a nice moment and works thematically, I guess. But it felt jarring to me.
Is it a huge cliff-hanger? Well it depends on your point of view, I suppose. I didn't really see it as much of one, because...it felt like the end to a trippy short story or allegorical tale.
Also, I never saw Chloe and Lucifer getting together. Stopped shipping them together a while back.
Also, I had issues with Pierce winning. I really wanted that final bit to be Pierce in hell, reliving it over and over. I also wanted Chloe to be the one who killed him -- because that had a nice symmetry. Lucifer killing him felt oddly cliche and predictable and too easy.
4. I guess Amen and Charlotte's story ended in the previous episode, when both flew up to Heaven?
Which is good I guess.
5. Ella annoyed me up to and including the end. Sorry, she did. But I really liked Detective Dan, he had actually one of the best character arcs in the series as did Maze. The two characters that evolved the most and had the best arcs were Maze and Dan. Everyone else was no different than they'd began, which I found disappointing.
Overall? IT had good bits and bad bits. I really liked the thematic pattern of it or how Lucifer is finally revealed to Chloe, and she says...it's all true, all of it. And he's looking at her perplexed. That was nice. But I had troubles understanding how his fury at Caine caused his flames and devil face to appear -- how he chose that because of his reaction to Caine, which felt justified?
That didn't make sense to me and didn't quite play. Because he felt that way about Caine through the entire season. Why wouldn't it show up sooner? And he didn't just decide he was the Devil in that instant.
I did like his epithany, that we make our own choices, that God isn't pulling our strings. What happens is on us. That worked.
I just felt the whole thing was really sloppy. After seeing Infinity War which felt a bit tighter and far less sloppy, I was a tad disappointed. I shouldn't have been, this whole season has been sloppy.
The writing and direction really slid down hill in S3.
So...rating? B-
no subject
Date: 2018-05-15 03:24 pm (UTC)Dar_vidder above actually does a really good job of articulating my issues with it.