Lucifer Goes to Hell and Back for Chloe in Winter Finale “A Good Day to Die” 

With so much going on in the lead-up to tonight’s winter finale, it’s really a devil of a task to keep the details straight.

First and foremost, we have Chloe dying of a designer poison she was injected with by Professor Carlisle (Tim DeKay, White Collar) in the last episode “Love Handles” while she was pursuing him and before he sliced his own throat rather than face justice for his crazy “experiments”. Turns out he destroyed the antidote so even though Lucifer and Dan track down an accomplice who knows the ingredients, they can’t recreate it without the formula which Carlisle prided himself on never sharing.

Then we have Lucifer’s big plan – he’ll just waltz back into Hell, track down Carlisle, and get the formula to save Chloe. Point of fact: since resigning as Lord of Hell, he has only been back once – last season’s finale – and it took dying to get him there. Getting Amenadiel, Maze, and Dr. Martin on board with the mad scheme isn’t too difficult but Mum/Charlotte refuses to take part. Utilizing Chloe’s proximity effect (and a pair of shock paddles they apparently just find lying around the hospital), Lucifer finds himself back in his old stomping grounds.

In the world of the living, Amenadiel has been put in charge of keeping Chloe physically in her hospital room (directly over the room housing Lucifer’s corpse) and having a purpose really sets God’s First Angel back into his groove. He’s been pretty rudderless ever since he lost his wings and strength and finding out how much of a pawn he’s been in Daddy’s bigger picture hasn’t helped. When Trixie comes in, justifiably upset at what a bad guy has done to her mother, Amenadiel comforts her with the knowledge that there are still more good people around than bad guys, although he only counts himself as in the “trying to be good” group. Trixie gives him a pep talk as only she can.

While Lucifer’s tracking down the formula in Hell, Ella’s taking Dan on a fast and furious tour of her old stomping grounds, the auto-philic criminal underbelly from whence she came. The last ingredient they need for the antidote is a chemical called ZX3 which is sometimes used in street-racing. Ella somehow knows about a garage that has a stash of the stuff but since they don’t have time for a warrant, she and Dan break in, assisted by lock-picking skills she learned from her granny, only to get held at gun-point by her estranged brother. So much Ella reveal! Love it.

Down in Hell, tracking down Carlisle turns out to be a relatively simple task. The professor’s punishment is reliving his most infamous act – choosing to save his research over saving a college student driver and leaving him to die in a car explosion – and being faced with a crowd of accusers chanting “Coward! Killer! Monster! Murderer!” over and over again. Lucifer explains that this punishment is one of his own devising, that escaping it would require him to stop feeling guilt over the action. He then suggests that giving over the formula for Detective Decker’s antidote might assuage some of that guilt. Of course, the crowd remains and Lucifer leaves him to his eternal suffering.

Getting out of Hell proves a bit more difficult. “Where’s a resurrection when you need one?” Lucifer quips, having memorized the formula the professor wrote out for him. Suddenly, he is drawn to another door through which he can hear someone picking out the notes of “Killing Me Softly With His Song” on a piano. He steps through and finds himself in his penthouse and Uriel (Michael Imperioli, The Sopranos) greets him, sitting at his baby grand. Having killed his angelic, if misguided, brother with a celestial dagger months ago, Lucifer is initially relieved to see him only to be drawn into his own guilt-based punishment, forced to relive killing Uriel over and over again.

With Lucifer trapped in his own guilt, Maze and Dr. Martin are unable to bring him back with the shock paddles. Maze explains someone needs to go in to rescue him and that she can’t since she has no soul. She refuses to let the doctor attempt the rescue since it’s unlikely she’ll actually end up in Hell. In steps Mum/Charlotte to volunteer for the adventure. Maze wastes no time and shock paddles her straight into The Pit.

While Amenadiel is standing his ground against hospital security in his task to keep Chloe in her hospital room, Charlotte tracks Lucifer down and manages to break him out of his cycle only to get dragged into a version of her own guilt-prison. Lucifer rescues her right back and drags them both back into the living world. With the antidote formula, Chloe makes a full recovery much to Trixie’s relief.

This winter finale was filled with some truly superb moments where characters connected, grew, and moved on. Maze’s attachment to humanity is ever more apparent with each time she refuses to let harm come to Linda or Chloe. Amenadiel and Trixie are each other’s strength in their darkest moment of insecurity. With the air cleared and all secrets laid bare, Lucifer and Amenadiel struck a truly brotherly chord as Lucifer assures his big bro that he trusts him implicitly.

And, finally, Lucifer and his mother have their moment of truth. While in Hell, his mother admits that she had been manipulating him from the moment she escaped Hell, pushing him further into a relationship with Chloe knowing that the truth of her existence would break his heart. After Chloe’s out of danger, he is forced to admit that she has succeeded and that he has had enough of being caught in the middle of her feud with God. We have no idea what that means when he walks away from Charlotte but when Chloe tries to track him down to his penthouse because he isn’t answering her calls, she finds everything shrouded and the suite deserted. Apparently, the Devil has left the building…

Lucifer returns in May on FOX.