Lucifer recap: 'Let Pinhead Sing!'

Lucifer involves himself in a case this week that includes people who out-diva even him. Imagine that!

First, some lower-level dramatics. Linda’s attempts to make up with Maze via a prettily wrapped battle ax are met with silence, so Charlotte (who’s working on being less self-centered) offers to act as a mediator. But Maze isn’t willing to listen to Linda’s apologies or her insistence that she gave up Amenadiel to make things right with her friend.

“She lied and betrayed me,” Maze says, then refuses to admit she has any culpability in the conflict. That’s when Linda finally busts Maze for calling dibs on someone she doesn’t even care about.

Maze argues “hoes before bros,” but Linda says that’s tough when your friend’s slept with half of Los Angeles. Ouch! Maze tells her to go to hell, and Charlotte calls it a day.

Now let’s kick the dramatics up a notch to the world’s mopiest immortal. Following the end of his deal with Lucifer, Pierce is nursing his wounds at the precinct with a guitar and a little Kansas.

Ella attempts to cheer him up by reading compliments she collected about him from the rest of the staff. (Every one is about his nice arms.) Then Dan taps in and grabs a drink with Pierce at Lux. Pierce drones about the eternal wasteland of meaningless existence, “like a beaten dog scrounging by the side of the road.” It makes Dan wonder if they actually are all dust in the wind. Aww, you broke Dan, Pierce!

So Dan calls in the most glass-half-full person he can think of: Amenadiel. Dan quickly vamooses when he realizes that the two already know each other, leaving Pierce to explain that he’s still alive and miserable, no longer trying to drag Lucifer into his plan to defy God.

Amenadiel congratulates himself on destroying their alliance and passing his test. Pierce says that if that’s the case, Amenadiel’s wings should be back, but the angel just muses that it might be a multi-part test, and faith is a journey, not the destination.

Okay, now let’s turn to the real divas of the night. When a firework explodes onstage during singer Axara’s arena show, it hits and kills the superstar — except not really. She’d actually traded placed with a backup singer during a portion of the show where she’s in a mask, so dancer Jill is the victim of the firework.

Axara’s manager and her assistant both swear that nobody knew about the switch, so the police start investigating all the threats made on Axara’s life. Lucifer’s back to being the one to over-identify with the case of the week and worries that the shadowy assassin will try again and again until he succedds, making the spotlight a dangerous place for Axara.

In order to keep Chloe from suffering the same fate, he does everything he can to keep her out of his own spotlight by shunning her and lavishing his luciferian attention on every other person who crosses his path. It leaves Chloe both hurt and confused, which are two of her three top emotions regarding Lucifer. (No. 1 is exasperated, of course.)

Axara and her assistant Cece both speculate that the murderer is ex-backup dancer Patrick, who was just fired and expressed his wish that Axara would die “a horrible, painful death.” Then Cece rushes off to make Axara’s turmeric smoothie. Oh, so Cece’s the murderer, then. Nobody making fresh turmeric shakes for someone else in Act 1 turns out to be innocent in Act 3.

Sure enough, Patrick’s alibi checks out: He’s in drag as Azura 2.0, and his lawyer (also in drag) points out that Azura was performing to a packed house elsewhere when the fireworks incident happened. Lucifer hits Patrick with the “desire” whammy, and Patrick says he wants to beat Axara, and how can he compete with her if she’s dead?

The police’s next lead, an obsessive fan who won a VIP contest and sounded way too excited about Axara overall, is found next to a suicide note and an empty bottle of sleeping pills, which Chloe deems a little too textbook perfect.

She also tells Lucifer that she understands their bomb scare in the previous episode made him realize they could lose each other, so he’s trying to protect himself by keeping his distance and focusing on other people. Lucifer denies that he’s scared; it’s just that “everyone deserves a little Lucifer.”

Then he gives Ella a “world’s greatest forensic scientist” T-shirt and trots around the precinct handing out Axara swag that she sent as a thank you for solving the case, and everyone except Chloe gets something.

Not so fast, though, Axara; Ella’s tests show that the obsessive fan actually died the day before the firework exploded, indicating that he was the first victim and that the murderer showed major premeditation. (Next page: Chloe and Pierce make a date)

Despite this news, Axara, with a face full of acupuncture needles, refuses to cancel her show. “I say we let pinhead sing,” Lucier says, giving us our episode title.

Then gunfire explores near Axara, and Lucifer steps in to offer himself and his penthouse as Axara’s protective detail. Chloe allows it but only because the killer won’t be able to predict this move. Also, she was grazed in the shooting fracas, and Lucifer barely acknowledges this.

The Lucifer/Axara pairing isn’t a comfortable one. He doesn’t love her rehearsing all over his furniture, and they tussle over how to make her turmeric shake, leaving them both covered in slop. (Let me tell you from bitter experience: TURMERIC STAINS. My Harry Potter T-shirt has never been the same.) Even attempting to run scales together at Lucifer’s piano ends in discordant noise. Still, she invites Lucifer to be her partner in her traditional pre-show relaxation sex, but he tells her he’s not in the mood.

I repeat: Lucifer said he wasn’t in the mood for sex.

Axara’s as confused as I am until she realizes that he’s got a thing for his friend/co-worker Chloe but is trying to push her away. He explains his Father’s eye-for-an-eye philosophy, but she tells him, “You can’t let anything come between you and the things you’re passionate about.”

Lucifer grabs a bottle of scotch to toast her good advice, but when he comes back, she’s gone.

At least the investigation’s going well; Axara’s manager’s fingerprints were found on the gun at the shooting scene. He claims he kept it on the tour bus for protection and killing Axara would do more financial harm than good for him in the long run.

Then Ella discovers that the obsessive fan had raw turmeric, kale, and spirulina in his system, and Chloe realizes that’s likely how the pills were introduced to his system. See? Always look at the smoothie-making assistant first!

Now we cut to Axara singing “I Will Survive” at Lux, which is definitely not staying out of the public eye. The scene somehow morphs into Lucifer singing, and they harmonize beautifully. Honestly, I don’t care how Lucifer contrives to get Tom Ellis to sing to us as long as it happens a few times a season. When their song finishes, Axara tells Lucifer that nobody’s going to scare her out of the spotlight.

And then Cece pops up with a knife to scream at Lucifer for not protecting Axara. They were high school BFFs, and she’s now worried that Axara isn’t taking care of herself and is touring too much. She learned about Axara switching places with the backup dancer and decided to scare her out of the spotlight by any means necessary.

During this confession, Chloe shows up, and Cece lunges while shouting, “I just wanted her to be safe!” Lucifer tackles her, and Chloe’s impressed by his heroism and then horrified when she sees that he ended up with a knife in his chest. She holds a bandage to his wound, and he says he did it to protect her.

This is just what Pierce needs to snap out of his depression, and when Chloe tells him that Axara gave her two VIP tickets for her show that night, he invites himself as her plus one.

Stray feathers