Lucifer reveals the Devil's 'first case' in new photos from season 5's noir episode
Lauren German playing a man. Aimee Garcia in a mustache. New details about Maze's past. These are just some of gems awaiting fans when Lucifer travels to the past in the fifth (and no longer final) season.
EW is exclusively debuting new photos from the black-and-white fourth episode of the Netflix drama's upcoming season. Titled "It Never Ends Well for the Chicken," the noir homage recounts what happened when Lucifer (Tom Ellis) visited Los Angeles in the 1940s and dives into Maze's (Lesley Ann-Brandt) past.
"Whenever you play [with] flashbacks, the question is always, 'What's the time frame that can reflect a person?' What's nice about noir is it's detective stories, but Lucifer isn't a detective yet. So what we're almost seeing, to a certain extent, is Lucifer's first case," co-showrunner Joe Henderson tells EW. "There is a case, there is a mystery to solve, but it's just more filtering our [show's] language through noir."
"Tom Ellis is made for this style. He kind of is Cary Grant. I think there's always been something about his portrayal of Lucifer [that's] old school, that harkens back to the extravagance and elegance of old Hollywood and just noir," says co-showrunner Ildy Modrovich, explaining why they picked this era."There was a moment in our arc where Lucifer needed to give us a little backstory on a character and tell us what happened to [him] a long time ago and we thought, 'Perfect moment for a Princess Bride moment. So, let's open it up and have Lucifer tell this story to someone. And if we're really doing an homage to Princess Bride, that person should be Trixie [Scarlett Estevez].'"
JOHN P. FLEENOR/NETFLIX
JOHN P. FLEENOR/NETFLIX
Coming into season 5, the writers didn't plan on telling this tale, but then Netflix expanded the season's episode count from 10 to 16, which gave them more room with which to play and led to this story.
"When we went from 10 to 16, [at] first we were like, 'How do we do this?' But literally within three days we were like, 'How could we ever had told the story without these stories?'" says Henderson. "This was a big one because it ended up giving us such an opportunity to explore Lucifer in an early version of himself. Also, the big fun of the Princess Bride device is, as he's telling the story, he's basically putting the characters we know and love into it. He's replacing a hard boiled detective with Chloe Decker [German], another character with Dan Espinoza [Kevin Alejandro]. The fun of it is, who Lucifer chooses to be who and what that says about how he sees them. [It's] also super fun getting to see actors play wildly different roles than we're accustomed to seeing them."
Case in point: German portraying a man. During story time, Trixie asks Lucifer why the detective had to be a man and so he casts her mother in the role. "The fun of it is you get Lauren German playing a guy who happens to look like Lauren German," says Henderson. "It's just amazing to watch because it's such a tricky line to walk so that you don't go parody, but also so you understand the conceit, and Lauren just nails it. It's so cool and so deceptively hard, and I think people are going to love it."
"Ella in a mustache is awesome," adds Modrovich. "Everybody, in like two days, had to come up with a completely new character, and everyone is so funny. Dan's character is just extra douchey."
The producers are particularly excited for fans to see Lesley-Ann Brandt's performance, especially because she has a couple musical numbers. Says Modrovich, "Lesley-Ann is going to break your heart for sure."
Check out more photos below.
Courtesy Aimee Garcia
NETFLIX
The first eight-episodes of Lucifer season 5 arrive Aug. 21 on Netflix.
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