Lucifer star Aimee Garcia previews how Charlotte's death 'rattles' Ella in season 4
When Lucifer returns for season 4, Chloe (Lauren German) seeing Lucifer’s (Tom Ellis) devil face at the end of season 3 won’t be the only dangling thread that the series will address. There’s also the matter of Charlotte Richards’ (Tricia Helfer) death, which profoundly shapes the arcs of a couple characters — specifically Ella (Aimee Garcia) and Dan (Kevin Alejandro).
As the new season picks up, Ella is on the outs with the Big Guy because “Charlotte’s death really rattles her faith, and she starts spinning a little bit because she’s so lost,” Garcia tells EW. “She starts becoming a little more cynical about the world and thinking you can die at any moment. She just starts being a little bit more macabre, hopeless, because she doesn’t have faith anymore. It’ll be really interesting to see this ball of sunshine and light still have energy for days, but be rattled in her faith and have more of a bleak filter. This season for Ella will be [about] how she deals with her loss of faith, what decisions that means for her personally.”
How will this shift manifest itself in Ella’s actions? Well, she’s going to let loose a lot more this season. “She starts to unravel a bit, and she starts doing drugs and gets into party mode with ecstasy and making out with girls and having this carpe diem attitude,” says Garcia.
For the most part, Ella has been one of the show’s most consistent characters, so Garcia had a blast with this story line because it gave her an opportunity to let lose a bit.
“I really got to live out all of my fantasies,” Garcia says. “[Ella is] usually pretty unapologetic in who she is and is in her own lane and has no filter and is such a fun character, so they give me, as an actor, a lot of leeway, especially at crime scenes, so that’s really fun. But then to have Ella have a crisis of faith and sex, drugs, rock n roll on her mind is so much fun because she actually gets to let her hair down.”
Dan also has a somewhat extreme reaction Charlotte’s death. Last season ended with him remembering and embracing the fact that he is a dirty cop, and we’ll see him continue down that road this season.
“We’ll be playing with Dan wondering, maybe it takes a bad guy to do good things. Basically, if he had been the bad guy, maybe Charlotte would still be alive,” co-showrunner Joe Henderson tells EW. “Maze [Lesley-Ann Brandt] will sort of be working with them while he starts his descent into darkness. In this season of devils and angels on shoulders, Maze is the devil on Dan’s shoulder.”
In many ways, Dan is reverting back to season 1 Dan. With that comes his renewed animosity toward Lucifer, whom he blames for Charlotte’s passing.
“Detective Douche is back,” says Henderson. “Now the antagonism is two-sided because Lucifer resents being blamed for anything he doesn’t feel responsible for. A big part of Dan’s arc is dealing with that and spiraling. Kevin Alejandro is such a great actor, so we just wanted to give him a little darker, a little meatier stuff to play this season, and he knocked it out of the park.”
Lucifer’s entire fourth season debuts Wednesday, May 8, on Netflix.
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