(Warning: This post contains major spoilers for the Season 5A finale of “Lucifer.”)
“Imagine running a marathon and then getting right to the end and then they go, ‘Oh, by the way, the finish line is a little bit further.’” That’s how Tom Ellis described to TheWrap Netflix’s decision to renew “Lucifer” for a sixth and final season, after previously picking it up for a fifth and final season, after rescuing it for a fourth season following its cancellation at Fox after its third season.
“We’ve been through this whole journey of cancellation, then #SaveLucifer, which was obviously incredible, and then when they renewed us, they said it was going to the be final season,” said Ellis, who plays Lucifer Morningstar on the supernatural drama. “And it was only going to be 10 episodes, but then it was 16, and then they split it in half. So it’s this constant moving thing. But I have to appreciate that the reason it is a constant moving thing is the show has become so popular, so they just can’t kill it. It just won’t die (laughs). It’s been incredible.”
He continued, “The #SaveLucifer campaign was just the most incredible thing that’s happened. And then the fact that it’s been vindicated by how popular it’s become on Netflix. I mean, I think it was already popular, but its popularity has grown. And that’s the thing that keeps me going. Because if it was just down to, ‘There’s the finish line. Oh, no it’s further and further, and they keep moving it — it’s quite exhausting emotionally, as well. But I’m happy that people are watching the show and it’s become the success that it has.”
The first half of “Lucifer’s” fifth season launched Friday, eight episodes that were originally intended to be the beginning of the show’s end. But given the fact that Netflix renewed “Lucifer” for its sixth and “final, final” season — as Ellis puts it — in June, showrunners Joe Henderson and Ildy Modrovich and their writers have already gotten to work transforming what would have been the Season 5B finale into Season 6.
“Season 5 isn’t actually completed,” Ellis said. “The plug got pulled because of the coronavirus with about five or six days left to shoot. So we haven’t quite finished the Season 5 finale, which is what we start with when we go back.”
No date has been set for production to resume on the Warner Bros TV-produced “Lucifer” yet, but when it does pick back up, Ellis says they “would start with what we’ve got left to do on the Season 5 finale and then we go straight into shooting Season 6.”
And that means taking the Season 5 finale and turning it into the series finale, while still having enough story to tell throughout a 10-episode final season.
“I had a Zoom meeting with the writers last week, so I got a complete outline of Season 6,” Ellis told TheWrap. “It’s interesting because obviously we thought Season 5 was the final season for pretty much the majority of the time. So we were headed in a particular direction and we spent a lot of time thinking about what the end of our show would be. And then Netflix said, ‘You want to do some more?’ And we said, ‘OK, let’s just hold on a second.’ But basically, where we finish our show in Season 6 is where we were going to finish in Season 5 — but we obviously got another story to tell in between as a breaking off point.”
Ellis said that where “Lucifer” would have finished before, “there’s now 10 episodes of another story that then ties in and comes back to where we were going to finish it. That’s what I can tell you.”
And truly, the devil would give us no further details.
“Lucifer” Season 5A is streaming now on Netflix.
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