Lightbringers: Illuminating the Deeper Meaning of the Crime-solving Devil TV Show

Send us Fan Mail In the final episode of Lightbringers, the Guy girls still manage some significant overthinking. The storytelling leads them to some questions about how people who don’t feel remorse might be tortured in the Lucifer universe (in other words, what was the magic behind Lucifer’s whispered words to Lemec?). Additionally, the confines of telling a story with actors on a small screen l...

Send us Fan Mail In this penultimate episode of Lightbringers, the Guy sisters continue to notice the moments and threads of season 6 that seem to point to a rushed (and self-amusing) writers’ room. From the unprofessional move of Linda’s book (why didn’t they just make it fiction?) to the disappointingly milquetoast Carroll, there are story and character beats that felt forced. At the same time,...

Send us Fan Mail With these two episodes we get some subtext about addiction and some supertext about racist policing. In “The Murder of Lucifer Morningstar,” the sisters realize on rewatch (especially in the context of our analysis of so many moments of mental health metaphors) that Chloe’s obsession with the super-strength the necklace provides is a stand-in for addiction.  “A Lot Dirtier Than T...

Send us Fan Mail As season 6 progresses, the Guy sisters have some moments of joy and appreciation and quite a few quibbles for the writers. Though the cartoonified episode is in some ways delightful (Tracie wanted to be an animator when she was a kid), there are moments in the writing that feel either ableist or rushed (or both). The sisters note that it feels particularly hypocritical that the e...

Send us Fan Mail And so begins the Guy sisters’ rewatch of Season 6: Nobody’s favorite season. With these two episodes, the sisters spend considerable time lamenting the fact that there are no media role models for people who are childless by choice, including, it seems, Lucifer. We also are perplexed and perturbed by multiple details of these two episodes, from Lucifer’s assertion that he is a “w...

Send us Fan Mail These two final episodes of season five pack and emotional wallup. With more than one major character death (though 2 don’t stay dead), the Guy girls both admit to shedding some tears, even in rewatch.  The views we get of both Heaven and Hell have Emily and Tracie thinking deeply about the nature of punishment, the compatibility of justice with pain, and whether or not free will...

Send us Fan Mail “A Little Harmless Stalking” & “Nothing Lasts Forever” are ripe for overthinking, and the Guy girls do.  These two stories invite meditations on the reconciliation of adult children and their parents, a scene that has become common in contemporary pop fiction, and which Tracie & Emily dub psychological or family dynamic fiction: art that creates an aspiration that isn’t tr...

Send us Fan Mail “Resting Devil Face” is a delightful romp the sisters want to revisit more often. “Daniel Espinoza: Naked and Afraid” may be both of their least favorite.  In “Resting Devil Face,” the celestial siblings’ relationship digs in to the very human experience of realizing one’s parent is vulnerable. In a satisfying dovetailing of the case-of-the-week and the celestial story line, we se...

Send us Fan Mail “Family Dinner” and “Bloody Celestial Karaoke Jam” deliver both some of the funniest and some of the most poignant moments of the whole series.  With a general appreciation for the relatableness of so much of what happens between characters in these two episodes and a very specific appreciation for Tom Ellis’ collarbones, the Guy sisters overthink these two season five episodes. T...

Send us Fan Mail On rewatch, the Guy girls were reminded just how much they compartmentalize their memories about these two episodes. “Our Mojo” and “Spoiler Alert” provide delightfully fun and funny moments intermixed with grim details of the serial-killer-right-under-our-noses storyline.  The sisters spend time teasing out the phenomenological and metaphorical mechanisms behind the supernatural...

Send us Fan Mail “Detective Amenadiel” and “Blue Ballz” are the only two episodes in this whole experiment that the sisters watched while in the same room, and they contain some of their most beloved and most reviled of the whole series.  In their meanderings, the Guy girls think about the metaphor of reflection as used both visually and rhetorically in “Detective Amenadiel.” They ruminate on the...

Send us Fan Mail The layers of meta-commentary in the episode about a TV show where the actual devil is a consultant with the LAPD is lots of fun, and has the sisters wondering if Lucifer would have been more offended on Chloe’s behalf by turning her character into a stripper-turned-detective who doesn’t seem to be particularly bright.  And the return of Lilith in a 1946 black-and-white mystery ep...

Send us Fan Mail In our conversation about “Really Sad Devil Guy” & “Lucifer! Lucifer! Lucifer!” we think a lot about the tropes and short cuts that come from soap opera storytelling. And we don’t hate it.  Both sisters are impressed with Tom Ellis’s ability to make us believe he is, in fact, his own twin (even down to his butt cheeks!). Tracie picks apart a key plot point in the case of the w...

Send us Fan Mail “Save Lucifer” and “Who’s da New King of Hell?” allow the Guy Girls to overthink everything from acting vs. directorial choices, to the nature of sin and guilt, to the possibility of a “happy ending” for an immortal being in love with an all-too-human one.  Tracie couldn’t wait to start the episode with her frustrations with Lauren German’s delivery of the emotional range required...

Send us Fan Mail “Devil is as Devil Does” and “Super Bad Boyfriend” give some hints that the writers were wrestling with their copagandistic vehicle. However, there were also moments in these two episodes, especially in Chloe’s voice, that oversimplify the “rightness” of human justice. That they made these explorations around the death of a Black teenager is all the more topical (and will be retur...

Send us Fan Mail “Expire Erect” (Die Hard, get it?) and “Orgy Pants to Work” turn out to be fantastic fodder for the Guy Girls’ particular brand of overthinking, and we did not hold back. Tracie had some THINGS to say about the mythology of Lilith (Maze’s mom), which led to some questions about who (and how) Lilith even is, and whether or not Lucifer could have been Eve’s “first time.” To answer t...

Send us Fan Mail “O, Ye of Little Faith, Father” and “All About Eve” bring some of Emily’s favorite moments of the whole series. The first provides deeply satisfying dramatic irony through Father Kinley’s (Graham McTavish) web of deception, the whole of which, only we the viewers see. The second gives delicious comfort to a devastated Lucifer (Tom Ellis) who fears he is unlovable but is embraced–i...

Send us Fan Mail “Everything’s Okay” and “Somebody’s Been Reading Dante’s Inferno” contain one of the sexiest scenes in the whole series, some really comprehensible character behavior, and some mediocre delivery of that behavior. The sisters spend a disproportionate amount of time gushing over the first several minutes of “Everything’s Okay,” only to ease into an almost grudging appreciation for t...

Send us Fan Mail “Boo Normal” & “Once Upon a Time” interrupt the flow of the Deckerstar storyline. These two episodes, though both boasting solid storytelling, tend to get skipped, fast-forwarded, or otherwise maligned by fans who cannot wait to find out what happens after Chloe unequivocally learns the truth in “A Devil of My Word.”  Tracie and Emily take some time to investigate and overthin...

Send us Fan Mail “Quintessential Deckerstar” & “Devil of My Word” are so packed full of goodness to unpack we had to make notes for our conversation to make sure we didn’t miss anything.  When it comes to storytelling, these episodes provide some deeply satisfying (and tear-jerking) character development, especially for Dan (Kevin Alejandro), Charlotte (Tricia Helfer), and Maze (Lesley-Ann Bra...

Send us Fan Mail When you aren’t binging, “Anything Pierce Can Do I Can Do Better” & “All Hands On Decker,” are painful episodes to watch. Lucifer’s obliviousness is torture to Chloe Decker, who simply wants to be seen and loved.  Tracie gets her Toms mixed up, Emily cannot abide the notion of a 20-min delay in Los Angeles, and the incongruous hair texture of actor and character are once again...

Send us Fan Mail “Orange is the New Maze” and the “Angel of San Bernadino” provide some interesting character development for Maze and some reminders that Lucifer is, in fact, the devil. Emily explores the ADHD-esque behavior of both Lucifer and Maze (hyper-fixation, missing social cues, etc) while Tracie appreciates Lauren German’s acting (for once). In true Guy Girl form, the sisters crack one a...

Send us Fan Mail “Let Pinhead Sing” & “The Last Heartbreak” make for some satisfying overthinking. Tracie and Emily delve deep into literal and figurative mirroring in the show, the sociological and evolutionary benefit of Tom Ellis’s devastated face, and the need for another character to alert the audience to the so-called romantic chemistry between Pierce (Tom Welling) and Chloe (Lauren Germ...

Send us Fan Mail “High School Poppycock” and “Infernal Guinea Pig” are fun episodes with some serious overthinking potential.  In conversation about “High School Poppycock,” Emily relates her experience unhinging her jaw and swallowing the Twilight series whole. In fact, that brief conversation on Emily’s thoughts about Twilight became the pilot for the Guy Girls’ other project, Deep Thoughts abou...

Send us Fan Mail “Til Death Do Us Part” and “My Brother’s Keeper” provide some delightful storytelling and some missed opportunities around the world’s first murderer and his relationship with the devil.  In the first of these paired episodes, Emily notes the similarities to an X-Files episode where Scully and Mulder pretend to be married in suburbia, and both sisters share an appreciation for Tom...