What do you think it says that in S1 Lucifer didn’t really have an emotional reaction to Amenadiel wanting/trying to kill him? Manipulating, yes. But not killing? Seems like killing would be the worse of the two, overall.
it depends on when in s1 you mean, because his reaction evolves over the season. so let’s start with very, very early on in s1 lucifer.
this is a man who’s spent the vast majority of his life in hell, in a culture built on violence and power plays. this is a man who’s been on earth for five years and only really formed surface relationships with the people around him - he clearly cares about delilah in his stilted, emotionally backwards way, but they aren’t close the way that he’s close with linda and ella and even dan, and it’s implied he hasn’t really seen her since she stopped working for him.
this lucifer is deeply traumatised, terrified of rejection, burying himself in sex and drugs to try and cope, and has an entire lifetime of being told how awful and worthless he is keeping him from really connecting with anyone.
(my personal headcanon is that baby demons will actually attack and kill their weaker siblings in the nest, eliminating the competition for food, so actually, fratricide would not be as unthinkable to lucifer as it is to us. more kind of…vaguely distasteful.)
pretty much every relationship in hell is skewed towards the dark and aggressive. look at maze, lucifer’s oldest and closest friend - their fights are vicious, they don’t communicate well at all, they resolve conflicts mostly by beating the shit out of each other…my point is that this lucifer not only expects the people around him to hurt him, he accepts it as normal.
(it’s also worth noting that amenadiel’s hatred for lucifer is obvious whenever they interact - he’s treating luci the way he does deliberately, because at this point he sees lucifer as The Reason Everything Went Wrong. lucifer, on the other hand, swings between deadly serious ( “don’t threaten me, amenadiel. you don’t want to start a war.” ) and being almost playful ( “and you, my friend, can go to hell.”
sometimes it’s a genuinely hate-filled exchange. sometimes lucifer is just being an annoying little shit of a baby brother, hell-style. which, to amenadiel, comes across as open hostility, and deepens the dislike between them.)
it’s important to understand, i think, that lucifer at this point is? basically shut down. he’s closed off all the parts of him that are gentle and loving and good, because those parts of him will either get him killed or pull him apart in hell. he’s running survival.exe, and everything else is closed. he doesn’t trust anyone, keeps his friends close and his enemies closer, and believes everyone is out to get him because for most of his life they were. it’s been five years since he left hell, but he hasn’t moved on from the trauma at all. he’s stagnant.
so at this point in his life? he sees his relationship with amenadiel as normal sibling behaviour. so yeah, no reaction to amenadiel trying to kill him. just sort of, sigh, brothers, amiright? he can’t afford to care, can’t afford not to expect that from amenadiel anyway. he doesn’t know how to stop living in the past.
and suddenly we have a lucifer who is starting to get to grips with his own emotions, starting to get some much-needed perspective on what is and isn’t normal. i don’t think he actually realised just how abusive his family - not just dad, but his siblings too - were until he let linda in.
he bonds with chloe, and for the first time he’s got someone in his life who chooses to support him, who doesn’t take his shit but doesn’t go for his throat either, and now he’s starting to learn the give-and-take nature of a normal, healthy relationship. he watches her with trixie, with dan, and starts to understand what family ought to look like. he’s soaking shit up like a sponge at this point and he’s realising that his family isn’t normal.
he puts his fist through linda’s wall, the only way he knows how to express how angry and hurt he is by what she’s saying to him, and she keeps seeing him anyway, and he starts to realise that he’s never had that kind of support from his own family, and he should have, and it hurts.
and we start to see him react to amenadiel differently. he goes to amenadiel to ask for help retrieving his wings. that’s the first time we’ve seen lucifer treat amenadiel like a big brother. and amenadiel flings it back in his face ( “clean up your own mess, for once.” ). lucifer wants the sort of relationship he knows he should have with his brother - the human idea of a good sibling relationship - but amenadiel has also been his primary abuser for eons. the trust isn’t there, they don’t know how to care about each other, they’re both dealing with trauma and grief over lucifer’s fall, there’s so much going on there.
(and amenadiel is beginning to change too, though much slower than lucifer. they banter a little in this episode. he’s very much the exasperated older brother at a few points, but without the loathing from episode 1. linda is already affecting him, too, in very subtle ways; she’s showing him it’s possible to care about lucifer.)
and by the time we have malcolm telling luci that amenadiel sent him to shoot him, he definitely has an emotional reaction ( “so my holier-than-thou brother sent someone to kill me! well, this really is opposite day.” ).
by now, we have a lucifer with a support system. we have a lucifer who’s been sat on linda’s couch for months(?) having his pain and his fears and his trauma validated, and learning how to deal with the fallout. we have a lucifer who knows what family should look like, who knows his brother is treating him badly, and that it’s not normal, and that it’s not okay. and he’s hurt. he’s frustrated. he’s angry.
(he’s also putting on a front, because he thinks he’s mortal and someone is pointing a gun at him. and when lucifer is threatened, he makes himself as big and intimidating as possible and bluffs. he doesn’t have time to really sort through his feelings about amenadiel, because he’s focusing on trying to scare malcolm off with his devil face)
i think this - the end of s1 - is really where their relationship began the long slow process of healing. lucifer wants to get in a fight with his brother against campolongo’s men. amenadiel takes the olive branch and there’s even a semi-affectionate moment when it’s all over ( “and to think we spent all those millennia fighting each other.” ). lucifer stops chasing malcolm to try and save amenadiel’s life. amenadiel realises he’s responsible for his own actions and tries to right his wrongs. and lucifer admits fear in front of his brother and shares the burden of their mom having escaped.
(and can i just scream for a second about how good lucifer is? he’s been rejected and reviled and treated so badly so many times and yet he still keeps reaching out, keeps trying to help his brother, and it hurts my heart so much)
(also i love the progression of this relationship so much, how you can see the tiny little steps they’re taking towards a human-standards Good Relationship. amenadiel’s realization that he’s been a terrible big brother and his awkward attempts at being a better one, offering lucifer advice and reassurance. lucifer - trust issues personified - in turn tentatively starting to ask for amenadiel’s input and beginning to trust him more ( “am i boyfriend material?” )
the backslide when amenadiel tells lucifer he loves and supports him and lucifer panics and lashes out hard, because receiving unconditional love from a family member is so alien that the alarms in his head, honed in hell, are screaming wrong wrong wrong wrong and amenadiel’s sad but accepting reiteration that he understands what lucifer is doing and loves him anyway. these two??? kill me)
SO ANYWAY TL;DR: he didn’t react because he was shut down and his Normal Meter was 50 shades of broken. also i have a lot of feelings about amenadiel and lucifer and i love them so much so this got kinda off track sorry
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