What to Watch this Weekend: Lucifer rises again with season 5 premiere on Netflix

EW Staff
·8 min read
What to Watch this Weekend: Lucifer rises again with season 5 premiere on Netflix

What to Watch: RuPaul’s Drag Race: Vegas Revue; Love in the Time of Corona

Gerrad Hall and EW’s Sydney Bucksbaum, Joey Nolfi, and Chancellor Agard preview the new season of ‘Lucifer’ and check out two series premieres.

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FRIDAY

Lucifer

HOW/WHEN & WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Netflix

Season Premiere

Both the cast and producers of Lucifer are feeling very confident about the show’s fifth season, the first 8 episodes of which arrive Friday on Netflix. “Season 4 was the strongest season so far. I think season 5 is gonna be the strongest season so far,” Tom Ellis, who plays the titular fallen angel, tells EW. “The fact that I feel like we’re consistently getting better is a testament to our writers and to the rest of the cast.” Picking up where the last cycle left off, the new season begins with Lucifer stuck in Hell while Det. Chloe Decker (Lauren German) pushes on without him topside. “She’s doing her Lucifer-ian thing of avoiding dealing with that until she has to,” co-showrunner Joe Henderson teases. From there, it branches in many interesting directions: the introduction of Lucifer’s twin brother Michael (also Ellis), Ella’s (Aimee Garcia) crisis of self, Mazikeen’s (Lesley-Ann Brandt) search for connection. Even though it’s no longer the last one, season 5 is still rife with incident. —Chancellor Agard

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Chemical Hearts

HOW/WHEN & WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Amazon Prime Video

Warning: Chemical Hearts is not your average teen romance. Based on Krystal Sutherland’s YA novel Our Chemical Hearts, Lili Reinhart (Riverdale) stars as Grace Town, the mysterious new girl in school who wears baggy boy’s clothes and walks with a cane. Henry Page (Austin Abrams, Euphoria) can’t stop thinking her about as he begins his senior year, and as he grows closer to her, he’ll learn more about first love, heartbreak, and loss than he ever imagined. “I am not the typical person who loves rom-coms and I don't necessarily seek romantic movies either, but the fact that this is a love story but it's also about two individual people in their own journeys I think is beautiful,” says Reinhart, who also executive produced the film. “And young love stories that don't have happy endings are stories that need to be told. Chemical Hearts is the kind of movie that portrays young love in a realistic light in the sense that it f---ing hurts sometimes. And oftentimes it does not go the way you want it to.” Stock up on tissues now because this one’s a real tearjerker. —Sydney Bucksbaum

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RuPaul's Drag Race: Vegas Revue

HOW/WHEN & WHERE TO WATCH: 8 p.m. on VH1

Series Debut

After 12 seasons (plus five all-star cycles) of runway lewks, snatched wigs, untucking, and death drops, RuPaul's Drag Race sashays away from the studio and into the Flamingo Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas to open a permanent residency at the famed Sin City hot spot. This new series features the stars of the new Vegas Revue — Asia O'Hara, Yvie Oddly, Derrick Barry, Vanessa "Vanjie" Matteo, Kameron Michaels, and Naomi Smalls — as they werk hard (and play even harder) to launch the show earlier this year. Until that nasty queen Miss 'Rona showed up. —Gerrad Hall

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What Else to Watch

Streaming

Little Voice (season finale) — Apple TV+

The One and Only Ivan (movie) — Disney+

Beauty and the Beast (Summer Movie Nights feature) — Disney+

Find Me in Paris (season premiere) — Hulu

Hoops (animated series debut) — Netflix

Tesla (movie) — Digital/VOD

The Pale Door (movie) — Digital/VOD

The 24th (movie) — Digital/VOD

9 p.m.

20/20 — ABC

Being Reuben — The CW

Love After Lockup — WEtv

10 p.m.

Backyard Takeover (series debut) — HGTV

Dateline — NBC

SATURDAY

Love in the Time of Corona

HOW/WHEN & WHERE TO WATCH: 8 p.m. on Freeform

We’re not saying that watching a TV show about life in quarantine while you’re fed up about actually living life in quarantine is going to be for everyone, but you’ve got to admit that what Freeform pulled off with Love in the Time of Corona is impressive. The four-part limited series was filmed using remote technologies and shot in the cast’s actual homes, with all the stars doing their own hair, makeup, and using their own clothes for wardrobe, and not allowing anyone to enter their homes for safety reasons. It was created, filmed, and edited all during quarantine on an expedited schedule to show how different people have been living from when it started and we didn’t know much about the virus or how long the quarantine would last, through the extension of stay-at-home orders and then the events that ignited the Black Lives Matter protests around the world. It may be the most relevant TV series ever made about right now. It’s well done, well-written, beautifully shot. But whether people will want to watch it or would rather tune into entertainment that’s a little more escapist is the real question. —SB

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What Else to Watch

8 p.m.

Secrets in the Basement — Lifetime

Say Yes to the Dress — TLC

10 p.m.

Women Represented: The 100 Year Battle for Equality — CNN

SUNDAY

NOS4A2

HOW/WHEN & WHERE TO WATCH: 10 p.m. on AMC

Season Finale

Whether or not NOS4A2 is renewed, the conclusion of season 2 wraps up the plotlines from Joe Hill’s original 2013 novel, as Ashleigh Cummings’ Vic McQueen and Jahkara J. Smith’s Maggie Leigh face off against Zachary Quinto’s vampiric Charlie Manx in the latter’s fantasy world of Christmasland. So, we thought it right that Hill himself tease the finale. “There was once a summary of The Wizard of Oz that famously ran in TV Guide which said, ‘Teenage girl commits homicide, teams up with three others to kill again,’” says the author. “I always loved that. I would sort of invert it for the final episode of NOS4A2 to say, ‘Vic McQueen and Maggie Leigh attend amuse park and have pleasant evening riding all the rides, surrounded by jubilant adoring children.’” In other words? Things are going to get bad. —Clark Collis

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The Vow

HOW/WHEN & WHERE TO WATCH: 10 p.m. on HBO

Docuseries Debut

If anyone ever asks you to join a self-improvement group, you should definitely think twice. Especially after what went down with the group NXIVM, which disintegrated when its highest members were arrested on charges of sexual slavery. "What’s so chilling about The Vow, " EW critic Kristen Baldwin remarks in her A- review, "is how vividly it illustrates the seductive and insidious ways these groups lure intelligent, well-meaning people into servitude." —GH

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What Else to Watch

6 a.m.

TCM Summer Under the Stars (all-day celebration of Olivia de Havilland) — TCM

7 p.m.

Elena of Avalor (finale special) — Disney Junior/DisneyNow

8 p.m.

The Ticket: The First Interview (20/20 election special) — ABC

Big Brother — CBS

Fridge Wars — The CW

Love in the Time of Corona — Freeform

9 p.m.

The Real Housewives of Potomac — Bravo

Lovecraft Country — HBO

Yellowstone (season finale)— Paramount Network

The Chi (season finale) — Showtime

10 p.m.

Wynonna Earp — Syfy

*times are ET and subject to change