Lucifer has a big wing-shaped problem in “Super Bad Boyfriend” — and it’s almost as bad as his much smaller, more compact problem: Eve. His battle with his two sides comes to a head this episode, and it was a doozy. Read on for our recap!
Spoilers ahoy!
Lucifer’s bat-shaped wings that appeared last episode are the bane of his existence, and he calls in a favor with with a dermatologist who is (understandably) confused at what he describes as super large moles. Amenadiel shows up just in time to save the poor fella from Lucifer’s wrath. He’s got a skin issue of his own — a cut across his face from Ramiel. He tells his brother that he’s concerned that, although he fought to keep his son raised on Earth, he’s not sure how he’s going to be a father. He even goes so far as to ask Lucifer to be his son’s Godfather — which he quickly refuses, but suggests that if Amenadiel wants to learn how to be a father, maybe he should ask some humans.
There’s been a murder at a high school, and Dan and Ella are the first to show. It’s not awkward at all as they stumble through their first conversation since last episode’s little “tryst,” and even Chloe and Lucifer pick up on the tension as Ella greets them with, “Hello, Lucifer. Hello Dan’s ex-wife. I mean Chloe.” The poor unfortunate soul lying dead in a school locker room is Ms. Biaz, a beloved teacher and faculty adviser for club YAE (Youth Academy of Entrepreneurs), who they met last night in what was the last time they’d see her.
Before they can get too much further, Chloe pulls Lucifer away to tell him that she went to see Father Kinley. He’s understandably suspicious, but she assures him it was only because the damn guy wouldn’t stop asking for her. The one thing he said rings over and over in her head, concerning the prophecy: “When the Devil walks the Earth and finds his first love, evil shall be released.” Though Chloe is totally terrified at all this celestial stuff, Lucifer is relieved, of all things. In his mind, all he has to do to prevent the prophecy coming true is to break up with Eve.
He rushes home to do that very thing… not that it really registers with Eve — mostly, all she hears is the “first love” part and rushes past the “evil shall be released” bit. When Lucifer insists on breaking up, it dawns on her what he’s really doing. He’s scared, because he’s been hurt before. But he shouldn’t worry, because Eve loves him, too. And then she boops his nose.
It’s really not going well for our handsome Devil.
Chloe and Lucifer meet with Lexi, one of the YAE students who was among the last to see Ms. Biaz. Her perky, blonde, A+ student vibe is annoying and not particularly helpful. She does suggest they go talk to Caleb, one of the more “troubled” students. (Her words drip with racism.) Caleb doesn’t have much to offer either, though he did recognize Lucifer as the club owner who deals in favors. He suggests they talk with Nate, Lexi’s boyfriend, as he’d been fighting with Ms. Biaz. Nate admits they’d had “words,” but it was because the teacher was sleeping with his father, and he saw her as the barrier between his folks getting back together. Just before they leave Nate, Lucifer asks the kid what the final “nail in the coffin” of his parents’ relationship was. The kid claims it was couples’ therapy, of all things.
At Lux, Amenadiel is interviewing the patrons to get some advice about being a father, and it’s going about as well as you’d expect. He stops though when he reaches Caleb, who is at the club to ask a favor of Lucifer. He’s a good kid, but has gotten into a bit of a bind, as he’d tried to sell some drugs to make a little bit of cash and is now in over his head. Amenadiel agrees to help him out with the dealer.
Chloe stops by the lab to get the results from the murder weapon — a golf club — and Ella couldn’t be more awkward when the subject of Dan comes up. Chloe is quick to brush it off and leaves, but then Ella gets a mysterious phone call about the Tiernan case, and it doesn’t look good.
The next scene takes us to Dr. Linda’s, where Lucifer has dragged in with him Eve in an attempt to help end the relationship. Once Linda gets over being a little star struck over meeting the first ever woman, she’s quick to see right through Lucifer’s bullshit as he describes his and Eve’s incredibly perfect relationship. Really, he’s just trying to get her to do the dirty work for her — but she ain’t biting. She starts to lay into Lucifer about his patterns, when Eve finishes her sentence. And the next one. Turns out, Eve is a natural at Lucifer analysis as well, and the two headshrinkers totally hit it off, much to the dismay of Lucifer.
Amenadiel and Caleb confront his drug dealer, a man named Tahir, to give him the drugs back. The angel has to show a little force to get his point across, but Tahir wants his money, too. He suggests leaving the kid as collateral, but instead Amenadiel gives up the necklace his Father gave him. (Just leaving around holy relics, like you do.) Temporarily satiated, Amenadiel and Caleb walk away, and the angel decides to treat his new friend to some ice cream. (He’s trying so hard to be a dad, it’s adorable!)
Elsewhere, Nate’s father admits to the affair wiht Ms. Biaz but otherwise is a dead end as he’d broken it off with her the week prior. It seems counseling had been successful, and he’d been getting back with his ex-wife in secret (so as not to get Nate’s hopes up). Lucifer pries further to try to determine the original cause of their breakup. He admits that he was the cliche bad husband: infidelity, selfishness, neglect. The devil’s eyes light up and, uh oh, we see where this is going.
Yep. Lucifer does everything in his power to be the stereotypical bad boyfriend… has his buddies over for beer and sports, lounges in his underwear playing video games and eating Cheetos, makes out with other women, and just generally doesn’t pay any attention to Eve. The whole plan is seeming to work until — she just joins in. Playing video games by his side, finding her own ladies to make out with at the club. She matches his tempo perfectly, and it’s a perfect mess he can’t wait to get away from.
Walking with ice cream, Caleb and Amenadiel are stopped by a couple of rookie cops. Though Amenadiel protests, the two (white) men get violent and shove Caleb to the ground, claiming to be arresting him for murder. The chaos escalates until Dan shows, flashing a badge and preventing Amenadiel from seriously murdering the two cops.
At the precinct, Dan explains to Amenadiel that Caleb’s prints were found on the murder weapon, and the working theory was that he killed Ms. Biaz because she found out he was selling drugs. Except the kid isn’t a killer, and Amenadiel knows that. He’s blown away that the two rookie cops couldn’t even be reasoned with, and Dan tells him he’s going to file an excessive use of force complaint. But the reality is, they both know it won’t do a damn thing.
Ella interrupts them, pulling Dan into a closet to tell him what she’d learned on the phone — it was a cop that had tipped off Jacob Tiernan that it was Lucifer that had broken his son’s back. We all know of course that it was Dan, and as she starts to put the pieces together, he leans forward and kisses her to cut off her train of thought. It’s a pretty underhanded move, and she gets flustered, leaving quickly.
Amenadiel visits Caleb in his cell to tell him he’s contacted his parents, and that they’re going to figure out the truth. But Caleb lays into him — after all, he knows what the world is really like, and it’s not fair to kids like him. The angel insists he can place his faith with him, and Caleb reluctantly agrees, but it’s clear Amenadiel is learning a great deal about humanity that he wasn’t aware of before.
At Lux, Maze has gone on several epically unsuccessful dates trying to find a “connection.” The latest doesn’t work out, because he says they’re both “alphas” (though his checkered shirt and big glasses might say otherwise). She watches #21 leave as Eve says hello to her whilst looking for Lucifer. Maze shares her depressing dates, and Eve suggests in order to help her, she can role play a date to see what she’s doing wrong. The two keep talking and sparks start flying and woah nelly, do we SHIP it! It’s the happiest we’ve seen Maze (outside of when she’s hanging with Trixie), and the smile doesn’t leave her face until she goes to pick them up some drinks and runs into Dan. He’s drunk as a skunk, ashamed of what he did to Ella, and he rudely calls her out on her feelings for Eve. Dan’s just making friends left and right this season.
Amenadiel has Caleb write a list of who he was selling drugs to, and two names match the list Chloe has of kids with access to that golf club — Lexi and Nate. Lexi is tearful as she admits in the interrogation room that Nate murdered their teacher, and she didn’t tell anyone because she didn’t want to accept that he could do something so horrible. Except, through the whole confession, Nate was watching on the other side of the glass with the real story. Lexi had gotten Nate to steal the SAT test answers and when Ms. Biaz found out, she told him if he didn’t admit to it, she was going to tell his parents and the cops. But that wasn’t something Lexi would stand for — after all, she’d worked too hard to get into Harvard to lose it this way. So she had Nate steal the club, Lexi killed her teacher and, together, they both framed Caleb. Nate was beside himself as he realized that Lexi had always wanted him to be something he wasn’t, and he should have just stood up to her before all of this.
Which is, of course, exactly what Lucifer should be doing.
Caleb is released, and he tells Amenadiel he owes him one. The angel says he would expect nothing less than a game of one-on-one, and agrees to see him tomorrow. He also tells Amenadiel he has nothing to worry about, that the angel is going to be a great father.
Lucifer finally has a heart-to-heart with Eve. She’s realized (from her talk with Maze) that she’s awesome and deserves to be treated well. Lucifer absolutely agrees that she deserved better than how he’s been treating her, which is why he just comes out and finally says that he wants to break up with her. She doesn’t really understand why as he explains that neither of them should have to change to be with the other one. She continues to push the issue until he finally admits, out loud, “I don’t like who I am when I’m with you!” Woah, that’s some great character development.
(One of the great treats about the condensed season is that plot lines and revelations like this one which might have lasted three or four episodes are shown in single episodes, and it’s very satisfying to see such amazing character growth in such a short period of time.)
Lucifer is called away at that exact moment to a crime scene and it’s, oh no, Caleb, shot by the men he was trying to get away from. Amenadiel is all quiet fury, and though Chloe promises him they’ll find the killers, Lucifer just offers to drive. They find Tahir, and Lucifer holds the rest of his goons back while Amenadiel beats the crap out of him, stopping just short of killing him. They walk back to the car, but the angel has lost faith in humanity with Caleb’s death, and it makes us fear that his previous promise to not take his son to the Silver City might be in jeopardy.
At an empty Lux, Lucifer and Chloe share a drink. He confides in her that he broke up with Eve because he didn’t like who he was with her, and she’s taken aback. Chloe tells him that’s not the man he is anymore, and he admits that while that’s true, he doesn’t like how that makes him feel either. He leaves her with tears in her eyes as he walks upstairs.
At the morgue, Amenadiel slips in to say goodbye to Caleb. He takes off his necklace and leaves it on his prone body. It’s a somber, heartfelt moment, and we break a little with Amenadiel.
At Dr. Linda’s, Lucifer has come to a conclusion. These two women, representing his two opposing sides — they’re not to blame for all of the misery in his life. It’s him. It’s always been him. Inside of himself, there’s a constant voice telling him that there is something wrong with him, something rotten. And he realizes, with stark epiphany, that he absolutely hates himself.
Can we hug him now? Dammit, the whole damn cast needs a hug! Hopefully he gets one next episode.
