Review: Lucifer “Yabba Dabba Do Me”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

As Lucifer prepares to become God, he seeks to help someone he hates: Jimmy Barnes.

OUR TAKE

I have not watched one episode of Lucifer before this one, and if it weren’t for these brief animated segments, I wouldn’t have any reason to seek it out. Not that I’ve been against watching it or heard bad word of mouth or anything like that, I just haven’t been very interested. And I sure as hell (pun intended) wasn’t going to binge all previous five seasons just to prepare to cover this one episode. As such, I am jumping into this with just about no context or knowledge about where the show has gone and where it was headed during this final season it has just released. And with all that in mind…

…I actually liked this episode quite a bit! Even without knowing how far the story has come, I’m actually quite a sucker for final seasons of shows going back to their early days to illustrate how the characters have changed. And that turns out to be the case here, as Jimmy Barnes is really only notable in this series for being the first person Lucifer had to deal with. He was a bad guy who deserved his comeuppance and eventually died and went to hell in the background of the story. Now, after what I presume has been a journey of self-reflection for Lucifer, he feels the best way to show he can take God’s place is to be able to help someone he doesn’t care for, Jimmy being a prime example.

This is where the animated bits come in, though only as a surface level dissection of Jimmy’s trauma and the source of why he did the things he did. The other levels involve Lucifer and his assistant Delilah going into his past to better understand Jimmy and, much to Lucifer’s chagrin, come to care about him. There are other plots going on with other characters who I couldn’t be bothered to look into, but I think it’s a testament (pun also intended) to Lucifer as a show that I was able to find this main plotline quite compelling this far deep into the show without any prior experience. I’m even somewhat interested in where the last second twist of Lucifer meeting his surprise daughter, which is going to probably be a big challenge for any up and coming deity. Maybe someday I’ll go back and watch the show in its entirety. Though that will more likely happen when hell freezes over.