This new season of Lucifer has been one giant roller coaster ride, and this fifth episode of the latest season is no different. We have just met Eve, a walking Chloe contradiction, that will serve as fuel to the Deckerstar fire. This episode picks up about a week after episode three.
Spoilers ahead, so beware!
The fifth episode in the newly released season four, titled “Expire Erect,” begins with a flashforward. We see Lucifer looking a little worse for wear in Lux, Ella and Eve are kissing, and Detective Decker is holding a sub sandwich repeating the phrase, “this is the answer.”
We then rewind to 36 hours earlier and slowly work our way back to the opening scene. Lucifer and Eve are in the penthouse, when Eve refers to Lucifer as her boyfriend, prompting a session with Dr. Linda. Their conversation leads to Linda asking Lucifer if he believes he truly got closure with Chloe after the abrupt ending to their partnership, which he once again seems to misinterpret.
Meanwhile Chloe, Dan, and Ella are investigating the scene of a murder, at which the victim has a classic car sitting in his driveway. The detectives learn that their victim was scheduled to pick up another classic car at an event called “Malibu Motor Enthusiasts,” which Ella reveals to be a highly exclusive club that can only be accessed by someone with a classic car. This means Chloe and Lucifer’s paths will cross once again, maybe for the final time.
When Chloe goes to Lucifer’s penthouse to ask for his help, she mentions their great closure rate when working on cases together. Key word there: closure. That one word serves as just enough of a temptation to have Lucifer trailing along behind her. While Chloe lays out the plan to apprehend the suspect (the man who would be picking up the car in the victim’s place), Lucifer seems to be reminiscing about the familiar factors of the current case with those of previous cases. In typical Lucifer fashion, he announces their arrival, allowing the suspect to flee, at least temporarily. Rather than let him get too far, Lucifer pulls a tire off the wall and throws it across the room and ends the chase with a pun. “Didn’t have to chase him at all! He got tired.” While interviewing the suspect, Lucifer offers to do his desire trick “…one last time for posterity,” which reveals the suspect is not the murderer, but the trick does reveal another lead.
We then cut to Amenadiel entering the penthouse and running into Eve. After a very brief catching up of sorts, Amenadiel asks Eve if she has hurt Lucifer because he killed Cain, her son; she reveals she met Charlotte Richards on her way out of Heaven and likened her to Abel: sweet and lovely. This scene reveals two things: first, that it was Amenadiel’s speech about free will in Heaven that gave Eve the idea to jump back into her old body; and second, now that Eve has left Heaven, she may not be able to return.
Returning back to the precinct, Chloe and Ella have narrowed down the list of suspects provided to them by the original suspect that collected the auction car and are ready to move in on a particular one that matches the physical description. Upon arriving at the man’s house, Chloe and Lucifer discover him to be deceased, meaning the case is going to drag out longer than expected, and Lucifer will not get his closure so quickly. However, Ella makes a discovery that begins to wrap up the case: she finds an old picture of the original victim and the deceased suspect, along with one of the witnesses from the scene. As it turns out, the three had served in the Explosives Ordnance division together in Iraq, making our witness the newest prime suspect.
The man, named Marco Franklin, had just been released from prison after serving nine years for a bank robbery. His two accomplices were never apprehended.
Thanks to Ella’s discovery, the case is seemingly all wrapped up, so she hits up Lux to celebrate, where Ella meets Eve for the first time. Although Ella clearly wants to hate her, she discovers how sweet Eve actually is. All is going well until Chloe arrives at the club and reveals the case is still ongoing because Marco’s house was cleared out. Before Lucifer can grab his jacket and leave with her, Ella reintroduces Eve… only this time, it clicks with Chloe that she is Eve, as in one part of Adam & Eve.
While this conversation is still ongoing, a man yells out for Detective Decker. The voice belongs to Marco. Lucifer doesn’t appreciate the man’s interruption, especially since he is wielding a gun, and his dissatisfaction results in a gunshot to the abdomen. As he takes the club and its inhabitants hostage, Marco reveals there is bomb hidden somewhere.
Marco tells Chloe that he wants to find his wife, Leona, who changed her name after he was sent to prison. His final attempt at finding her required police assistance which would happen quickly only if he forced their hand. While on the phone with Dan, Chloe relays Marco’s food order, giving Dan an idea on how to send a secret message. Chloe receives an incredible pep talk from Eve and begins to quietly make a plan for the crew inside Lux. Eve will be in charge of caring for Lucifer while she finds where the bomb is planted. And once she does, Ella (who has popped a Molly) will disarm it. Because of Ella’s state, Chloe asks Lucifer for a way to sober her up. But his answer is not what she was looking for. Ultimately, she decides she would rather have a focused Ella on cocaine than a distracted Ella on Molly.
Outside the club, Dan has teamed up with Maze to track down Marco’s estranged wife, who now goes by Amy. After some heartfelt persuasion from Dan, she agrees to talk to Marco but insists on going in and talking to him face-to-face. We then get a look back inside the club, where Marco’s food order has just arrived, and we see his anger over how wrong it is, which Chloe knows Dan would never mess up.
This is where the episode comes together with the opening scene. Chloe holds the sandwich, repeating “this is the answer,” meaning the wrong order is the message regarding where SWAT will breach the building. Ella is hyper-focused and now over-analyzing the situation and talking nonstop, prompting Eve to kiss her in an attempt to shut her up and revealing the line of Lucifer’s that became the episode title: “Ladies… Oh, it’s a comfort to know I’ll expire erect.”
When Marco’s estranged wife enters the club, Eve and Ella take the opportunity to run upstairs to the bomb. Unfortunately for everyone, after Leona stabs Marco, she grabs his gun and the detonator and reveals herself to be the mastermind behind the entire robbery. Chloe begins what appears to be an attempt to negotiate with her but is really an attempt at getting her into the southwest corner of the building, where she knows at any moment, SWAT will breach; her attempt is successful.
Upstairs, Ella is no longer confident in her ability to disarm the bomb because it was not like previous ones Marco had built. But just before Leona can detonate, she cuts the correct wire. On the floor below, Chloe is unaware that the bomb is no longer live and dives onto Lucifer, attempting to shield him from whatever blast may occur. She shouts for a medic, and once he got some distance away from her, Lucifer begins to heal quickly. He tells her he has found the closure he believes he needs and answers the question everyone had with his typical Lucifer charm: “For our next case, try not to bring a trigger-happy murderer to one of my parties. It kills the buzz.” The episode ends with the thing that got everything started with, only this time it is Lucifer referring to himself as Eve’s boyfriend rather than the other way around.
“Expire Erect” seemed to complicate the Lucifer/Chloe/Eve triangle as anticipated but sets things up perfectly for the continuation of these storylines. The upcoming episodes should serve up some drama and heartbreak, which I am certainly looking forward to.