Lucifer series finale recap: One hell of a cliffhanger 

clearly isn’t. Its third and final (sob! sob! sob!) season finale trades last week’s emotional catharsis for action, humor, cooperation, reconciliation, a kept promise, and a devilish reveal that leaves the show’s central relationship in purgatory and hints at where the story would’ve traveled in the season 4 we’ll never get to enjoy.

We pick up with Lucifer and Chloe watching numbly as Charlotte’s body is wheeled away. A subdued Ella asks, “Who would do something like this?” just as that jerk Pierce starts barking orders. He’s also a little too interested in whether Amenadiel might be gone for good when Lucifer brandishes the feather he found.

Poor, broken-hearted Dan enters Charlotte’s home and finds their rumpled bed and her lipstick on a coffee mug, but it’s the waffle maker that breaks him. He throws it through her kitchen table, and in the destruction, he uncovers her Pierce file.

At that moment, Pierce is meeting one of his Sinnerman lackeys to call in a favor, warning Baldy O’Henchman that his fear of dying and losing everything just makes him that much more dangerous.

But Dan’s caught his scent now and pulls Chloe and Lucifer aside to try to convince them that Pierce is the Sinnerman. Chloe starts to deny it, but Lucifer calmly states that he’s known this for months.

They’re, uh, displeased to hear this, especially the woman who almost married the guy. Lucifer swears he tried to tell her the truth, but she says he was using his beloved metaphors to talk about immortality and whatnot. They agree to put a pin in this conversation until after they catch Charlotte’s killer.

Then Ella interrupts with a summons from Pierce, who emotionally eulogizes Charlotte to the precinct. Realizing he’s faking his grief, Chloe vows to take him down, although it’ll have to be on the DL since the rest of the precinct isn’t in the know.

This includes Ella, who pulled DNA from a cigarette butt found during the third sweep of the crime scene, which Pierce insisted be conducted. It belongs to Steve Chamberlain, whom Charlotte was prosecuting for embezzlement.

It’s clearly a frame job, but Chloe, Dan, and Lucifer head to his house so nobody gets suspicious. Chamberlain starts to noisily protest his innocence and is baffled when the police are all, “Yeah, no, we know.” They even locate and bag a gun that they assure him was planted in his office, leaving Chamberlain confused about their “good cop, bad cop, sad cop” routine.

Their investigation into who planted the gun leads them to Chamberlain’s chauffeur. Lucifer trots out his “what do you desire” mojo one last time, and when Dan starts to object, Chloe assures him it actually works. Y’all, she’s

The driver admits an unfortunate sneeze took his eyes off the road for a second, and he hit and killed a motorcyclist, but one call to a guy who gives favors made it all disappear. Then this morning, a burner phone showed up, followed by the gun. When the man admits that every time he looks in the mirror, all he sees is a monster, Lucifer completely understands.

The next stage of their plans involves looping in Ella — quite a risk, as she’s the founding member of the Marcus Pierce fan club. After her talk with Dan, she beelines to Pierce’s door and tells him Dan was ranting about a frame job and asked her to examine a phone on the sly.

Pierce promises that Dan won’t be in any trouble, but he immediately calls bald henchman as soon as she leaves. It’s a setup, natch, and Dan and Chloe soon have their hands on Mr. Baldy.

While they’re busy, Lucifer takes the opportunity to slide into Pierce’s office to accuse him of killing Charlotte. Pierce admits he was actually trying to kill Amenadiel to get his mark back.

Then Lucifer starts to reminisce about his failed rebellion against God, after which everyone hated him, including himself. Thanks to the sneezy murderous chauffeur, he admits, “I think I gave myself that face.” Then the wings sprouted when he felt good about himself after saving his mother and deciding to come clean with Chloe.

Pierce scoffs at this theory, and Lucifer in turn suggests that Pierce’s vulnerability came from acting selflessly, not Chloe’s love. “You fell in love with the detective, Pierce, not the other way around,” Lucifer says. “She never loved you.” As far as delivering a devastating set-down to your enemy, that’s about as good as it gets.

Then Pierce shouts that Lucifer’s attacking him, and a trillion big cops rush in to subdue him. What a chicken!

Back at the loft, Chloe and Dan yell at Lucifer for confronting Pierce. Chloe calls her ex and pretends to be confused about Lucifer’s claims that Pierce is the immortal Cain from the Bible. (“It’s all true,” Lucifer assures an incredulous Dan.) But Chloe’s concern is too over the top, and Pierce realizes she’s playing him.

He claims he still loves her but declines to turn himself in at her request. And then his day gets worse when he returns to his lair and finds all of his henchmen dead. (

Next: Chloe finally accepts the devilish truth)