Lucifer Meta: Wings & Identity
~First of all long time no see. Yes, I was busy with work and uni this past year and also I didn’t have the time nor the patience to be on two social media platforms at the same time. I apologise for that!
In this post, I’ll try to meta Lucifer and his wings on a different level which you will understand once you have read this post. The inspiration came when last night I re-watched 4x07 and the ending was short of a revelation for me in regards to Lucifer, how he perceived himself but also what he wanted to be.
In 4x07 as you remember Lucifer discovers that his once fluffy white wings now are monstrous, leathery bat wings and cannot comprehend why is that. He says
Lucifer: You have to help me, doctor. I don’t want to be a monster.
Linda: What’s wrong?
Lucifer: It’s my wings. I hadn’t checked them since my devil face returned. I was afraid they might have gone. I was afraid what that might mean. What that might say about me.
^If you had not noticed you can see that Ellis portrayed Lucifer crying in that scene. You can see the tear dropping from the tip of his nose.
Now as you remember in S3 we had a Lucifer who abhorred his wings but there was a mistake in comprehending what exactly he fought so hard against. It was not his wings it was the fact Lucifer felt he was manipulated and forced to be something. Up to that point, angelhood and devilhood had to do on which side of Dad’s grace an Angel was but that was disproven by the end of that season, therefore, the wings in S3 were something that held no physical hatred but an emotional one.
At 3x11, Lucifer comes to the self-realisation, which might be a wrong one, that in this city of Angels, he is not one anymore. He says to Amenadiel that he waited to be forgiven in Hell by Dad but now Lucifer decides to abandon that, I would say abandon that hope. In the end of 3x11, he has Maze cut his wings and at that moment he physically severies a bond while turning the manifesting an emotional pain, that of Dad’s rejection with a physical pain, that of self-harming himself to disassociate with Him.
In a sense cutting his wings in 3x11 like in the beginning of S3 is a bit like Lucifer trying to remove a common familial feature that associated him with his Father but when Amenadiel rejected him he abandoned all hope. It’s like cutting a mole or I would go further and say taking our your eyes because you inherited your father’s colouring and you simply cannot stand to see that every day.
So cutting the wings was painful but also a tantrum while Lucifer lost a foundation and started spiralling until Chloe came it his life. No, she didn’t make everything better but she gave him a path and that was a healing process.
It’s also remarkable how Lucifer for five years he kept his wings safe in a container, and in 1x07 he tells his brother that:
Lucifer: To fool me into desiring the wings and the hellish throne they accompany. Well, do you know what? It almost bloody worked. A rip cord back to the life that dear old Dad chose for me. But I don’t need it now, because, in case I haven’t made myself abundantly clear, I’m never going back to Hell.
In the lines, Lucifer delivered above in S1 we often go back to how they were used for Hell’s depiction in S4 or how Lucifer didn’t want to go back but the one part we always leave out of our metas is the line: “fool me into desiring the wings”.
Why would Lucifer ever desire the wings? It was clear in S3 he hated them but again as I have explained before it was not the actual wings. He didn’t desire the wings per se and that ties with 3x11. In 3x11 Lucifer forces himself to stop considering himself as an Angel although he desperately wants to. Yet not in the sense, you may believe.
In 3x11, 1x07 and 4x07 we can see that the wings are a physical and emotional part of Lucifer that yet they also hold a connection to what he once was, an angel. In 4x06, Ella says that what they expect us to believe that the Devil went from an Angel to the epitome of Evil? At that point, Chloe correctly says that Ella is right, Lucifer is also an angel. Not was, is.
At this point let’s clear some confusion about the Angel part. When we are talking about Lucifer being an Angel it does not mean that he should be virtuous or replace the piano with a harp at LUX. It does not mean that Lucifer is subjected to a certain behaviour and nature due to his state of being, aka being an Angel because in all honesty he always was an Angel that never, ever changed.
Lucifer’s case is a bit like a person doing inhuman acts. Yet they stay human, they were born human and will die as a human. Acts good or bad do not move people up and down a scale of what a human is, because you cannot stop being a human but you can choose what kind of human you wish to become. A person who wants to protest against a policy is not a bad human or a bad citizen but has an opinion which he or she wishes to express and seeks the freedom to do so.
Now getting back to sociology and criminology, studies were focused on why poor or second-generation migrants are more likely to commit a crime and the answer after the 1980′s, the most popular one was social exclusion. Of course, you cannot pinpoint a whole field of study on just that but for this meta we will just have to in order to proceed.
Lucifer was thrown away from his home, he felt betrayed by his Father and Mother. He was socially excluded by his siblings in Heaven and Hell and so what was marched and presented as a freedom march ended up being criminalised to the point where when Lucifer looked back to himself he could only see that distorted image yet the wings remained white, fluffy, untouched by the grimness of what he believed he had become. A monster.
In S2 we see that Amenadiel lost his wings because he didn’t believe he was an Angel anymore. His actions that filled him guilt and doubt over his very nature didn’t make him a Devil but human. He lost his wings but at 3x17 he has accepted his mortality and regains his wings only when Charlotte dies and thus elevates himself on the fact that everyone is redeemable and is what you make of yourself not what Dad believes you deserve.
If that’s the case why Lucifer never lost his wings if he believed he was just a Devil? Again because he always saw himself as an Angel until s4 that is.
In 4x01 there is finally another key moment, another key line:
Lucifer: I’ve had literal aeons to come to terms with what you saw. My- My monstrous side. [SHUDDERS.] But it’s not all that I am. At least I hope not. [SIGHS.] Either way, it’s unfair of me to expect you to just accept it. I’m honestly not sure when I’ll be able to. If ever.
This brings us back and forth in seasons and episodes. First that his Devil face is not a welcome feature but something he hides behind as we saw in a metaphor the writer room gave us in 4x09. It’s a mask that does not hide but projects his fears, his guilt and his despair towards mainly to himself…
Lucifer has not accepted what his physical Devil manifestation is and that’s clear in 4x01 as when he says, come in terms with it does not mean that he has accepted it but was dejected to it as we saw in 3x11.
Second, he insists it’s not all that he is. As we saw in his speech in 4x07 he does not consider himself a monster but it’s like a slide that takes him in places he cannot control and which we see more clearly in 4x09 but also in 4x10. At the end of 4x10, it’s not his rage that turns him into his Devil form if you like but his guilt in my opinion. People have died, demons roam the earth, his nephew was taken because of him and Chloe is attacked so he lashes out and like a child, he projects the impossible. He puffs out and makes himself loos threatening while he is scared and lost again.
Third, I would like to explore more the ‘when’ part. It shows that after billions of years Lucifer still considers himself an angel despite the monstrous side that takes over here and there. In his speech in 4x08 we have an example of what that feels like:
Lucifer: There is something rotten inside of me. I find it near impossible to drown out the constant cacophony of voices whispering in my ear, telling me I am evil. I’m drowning, doctor! And I can’t stop asking myself why do I hate myself so much?
The rotten and drowning part Lucifer expresses presents us with a visual where whatever bothers him, he feels it spreading, taking over contaminating him. Yet contaminating what? The angel he is? If an angel is a partly rotten will that spread and if it has is he still considered an angel or is it something entirely new? Something that needs and has been thrown away before it affects the rest?
With all that, we see that Lucifer has not accepted being the Devil as many perceive him to be and that in reality, the Devil, in this case, is not due to him being evil or making bad decisions and acts but because he is simply different. Obviously, I’m talking about the series.
The Devil in this series is just an Angel with a different opinion which was twisted. Perhaps that different opinion was expressed in a wrong way aka the Rebellion but that cannot birth evil as we know it. Furthermore, there is no scale to null good acts with bad acts and keep an equilibrium so all that, have him in a state of total confusion because what he believes he is deep down aka an angel does not correspond to what he does some times nor what an angel should be which brings him in a constant self-rejection as what he is cannot be comprehended and by many is not a state of existence.
Like in the case of Amenadiel or Remiel it was easier to believe that Lucifer’s nature had been corrupted entirely leaving nothing back to what he once was rather than recognise that people as Chloe said, constantly changing so there is no real medium to be reached aside from what is right and wrong and what you can do for that.
Finally, the cacophony of voices is not just in his head is every individual who has enforced their opinion on what Lucifer is now. To make it clearer just think of Amenadiel in 3x11.
Lucifer: Yes, of course, it’ll work, Brother. That’s why you asked me, remember? Someone crafty, smart-
Amenadiel: And evil. [LAUGHS.]
Lucifer: Evil?
Amenadiel: Well, if you want to find a deplorable criminal, you just ask a well, you know what I mean, Luci. Come on. You are the Devil, after all
So what can we take from all of the above? That Lucifer is an angel, he wishes to be an angel just a different kind of one. He is confused between his duty and his punishment on what he should be and what he is and yet all comes down to one very simple thing. Lucifer is an angel and he wishes to be one but not under the terms that have been subjected to all his siblings and that unique blend of what he is was drawn out by Chloe. She was in a way the balancing ingredient for some reason which I very much hope to see it be explained in S5…
Perhaps just perhaps that was why he was also so hurt when she couldn’t accept his devil face as it would have been an affirmation that he still holds something angelic in him, worthy of her at that point.
Yes, Lucifer makes her step down from the pedestal he put her on in 4x08 but at that scene, he saw her perhaps as a divine touched person who could soothe him and say that despite his appearance and the past mistakes that face betrayed, he could still reconnect with the divine. When she doubted that we can see one very important concept Lucifer still has. A faulty one but still…
Like with Amenadiel and many of his siblings, there are no grey areas, no maybes. There is either white or black so no matter how much Lucifer wants to hold on, to the idea that he is an angel, always was, always will be despite what he has done he has not transformed to a monster, dissociated from his family and nature despite of his choices to not follow the family business, he fails to see that grey area. There are maybes. Feelings and truths still prevail within any mess and you can find a middle without tearing yourself apart as Linda very well noted in 4x06.
