Lucifer bosses tease new mystery in season 3 

After mysteriously getting his wings back in the season 2 finale, Lucifer (Tom Ellis) will be suffering an identity crisis this year, making him even more dangerous.

“It’s really Lucifer exploring who he is, what it means to be the devil and in doing so, embracing his devilish side more than ever,” executive producer Joe Henderson says, promising that Lucifer will still keep his promise of revealing the truth to Chloe (Lauren German) in the premiere. “It just might not go as smoothly now that he has his wings,” EP Ildy Modrovich adds.

Making matters more complicated is the interestingly timed introduction of a potential new love interest for Chloe, Marcus Pierce (Tom Welling), a devilishly charming police lieutenant. Could his arrival have anything to do with Lucifer suddenly getting his wings back? Below, the

bosses tease the new mystery hanging over season 3:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Where does the new season pick up?

ILDY MODROVICH: The standalone episodes that we made at the end of last year, we’re going to actually sprinkle them throughout, so we’re not going to just bang them out to begin with. They’re going to hopefully seem very seamless in their airing. Every time we air one, we pick up a thread from whatever it is and fold it into our ongoing story, so our new season picks up exactly pretty much two days after our last one ended. So Lucifer, when he wakes up in the desert with his wings, that’s where we start.

Is there anything you can tease about the unknown assailant who knocked Lucifer out?

MODROVICH: That’s really the mystery of the whole season, is who put his wings on? He thinks, of course, it’s his dad, but he believes that his dad has an emissary on Earth, because dad never gets his own hands dirty. He spends this season searching for the cause of his return of his wings. So the first episode is really centered around that. The mystery is who took Lucifer to the desert, and not who knocked him out and put him in the desert where he woke up with wings, and that’s where we start.

HENDERSON: Yeah, and at the end of the first episode, we get this first clue as to who this person might be, and realizing it might be a darker force than he’s encountered previously.

It’s Marcus, right? It’s totally Marcus.

What does it mean now that Lucifer has his wings again?

MODROVICH: He’s having an identity crisis. He doesn’t want what anybody tells him to do. He’s all about free will, so if God is taking his wings and throwing them out of heaven, he’s pissed off, but if God suddenly puts his wings back on, he’s pissed off. He’s nobody’s puppet, so he’s really having an identity crisis through most of the season. It’s up and down for him.

What themes will you guys be exploring this season?

HENDERSON: The big theme of the season is identity, and exploring the idea that Lucifer embraced the idea of being the Devil, but here he is with angel wings on his shoulders, and he feels like God is trying to tell him to be one thing. When the Devil is told to do one thing, he runs the other way hard, so it’s really Lucifer exploring who he is, what it means to be the Devil, and in doing so, embracing his devilish side more than ever.

Lucifer was planning to tell Chloe everything, but why would it be any different now? Why would she actually believe him now?

MODROVICH: Well, the main difference is he does have his wings back, and that takes center stage for him. At the very top of the season, he does find a moment to pick up with his promise, so you can tune in to that in the first episode. He made a promise at the end of season 2, and he’s going to honor that.

HENDERSON: Yeah. It just might not work out the way he had planned.

MODROVICH: Exactly. It just might not go as smoothly now that he has his wings.

HENDERSON: Yes. Everyone can see them. That’s a very good question.

MODROVICH: Yes, if he were to whip them out…

What are we going to be seeing for Decker this season?

HENDERSON: A big thrust of it is her trying to step away from identifying herself based just on Lucifer and trying to figure out what makes herself tick, and so part of it is “Well, is Lucifer my partner? Am I his partner? Or should I just focus on me being Detective Chloe Decker?” Also, part of it is putting herself back out there, moving on from her emotional attachment to Lucifer, and so when she first meets Marcus Pierce, he is very much someone that rubs her the wrong way, because he’s very much a no-nonsense, calling-it-like-it-is-guy, and he’s not much for social mores, if you will. What’s interesting is he also represents a lot of truth and justice and very much a lot of the things that draw Chloe to the side of law, so Pierce is very much the exact opposite of Lucifer, but also very similar, and so that duality is a big reason for the two of them to start coming together.

MODROVICH: And then of course Chloe, on her path to find her own identity, even though she’s attracted to Pierce at some point, she’s going to think, “Dang it, this would be number 3 in the workplace — I married Dan, I came close to dating my consultant, and of course, the feelings there that still are present, and now I’m going to date my Lieutenant? Oh, red light!” So she’s going to have to kind of contend with that.

So Tom Welling teased that Marcus may actually be older than Lucifer. What can you tease about who or what he is?

[Editor’s note: Check back Monday for our full Q&A with Tom Welling!]

HENDERSON: I would say yeah, I think Pierce is probably like two years older than him, because Pierce has been around. He’s been a Lieutenant. He’s seen a lot, he’s seen it all, and so he’s more world weary, whereas Lucifer loves seeing everything new and is always excited about the next big surprise. So what you get is Lucifer being the eternal teenager and Pierce being the guy who’s been on every crime scene, has seen everything happen, so that’s a lot of the fun.

MODROVICH: Yeah, because even though Lucifer’s been around since the beginning of time, he’s only been on Earth five years.

When Tom teased that, it seemed like Marcus might not technically be human.

HENDERSON: I’ll tell you what, Marcus Pierce is human.

Tricia is sticking around as Charlotte, so what will we see her deal with in the wake of all she did last year?

MODROVICH: Well, in her missing time, if you will, Charlotte went somewhere, so there’s really only a few choices then, and one choice is very boring. [

] She wasn’t the best person when she was on Earth. She wasn’t a great mom, she was helping criminals get free with zero guilt. She’s haunted by where she’s been, because for three months, she was hanging out in the bad place, so she doesn’t know if that was real, she doesn’t know was she in a walking coma? But she knows that she’s going to do everything she can not to go back.

Will we see mom’s other world that was created in the finale?

HENDERSON: Yeah, it’s funny. It’s something we talked about a lot. If we can figure out a way to make it work, we’d love to see it. We have no plans yet.

MODROVICH: In the comic book, there are like centaur people in this other world, and so it always comes down to that. Do we want to introduce the centaur people?

HENDERSON: I think that’s your pull quote right there: Centaur people. [

Can you tease what we’ll be seeing for some of the other characters this season?

HENDERSON: Amenadiel went through a big crisis of faith in the last two seasons, and he realized that he kind of failed, and it really hit him in the face when learned that he’s actually God’s favorite son. So season 3 is him going, “I keep getting tested and I keep failing, so you know what, I’m going to pass these tests. I’m going to move forward. I have faith in my father again. I am going to be the son that is deserving of being the favorite.” But as it turns out, that’s a lot harder than it looks like, so we’re going to have some fun with a newly sort of confident Amenadiel getting punched in the face a lot.

MODROVICH: We like to call him Zenamen or Amenazen this year, because he’s trying to just chill and have faith as much as humanly possible. Then with Linda, since she went through the crazy trauma that she went through, because she’s a therapist, she thinks she knows how to handle trauma, but the problem is she doesn’t have somebody else on the other side of the couch, so she’s dealing with it herself at first, and she finally realizes she needs somebody to sit in the proverbial chair for her, so she seeks out an interesting partnership or friendship, new friendship, that I think will be very exciting.Then Maze is gone bounty hunting for the first part of the season, i.e. having her child and spending time with her new baby, but when she comes back, she’ll find her best friend with this new friend, so she’ll be very, very jealous of that because hey, Linda’s her best friend, so that will be fraught with drama.

HENDERSON: And poor Dan has to deal with the woman he really fell for back, but maybe not back, because she doesn’t seem to remember a single thing about him. We love torturing Kevin Alejandro. And we’ve got a great episode coming up where Ella and Lucifer go on a road trip to Vegas, where we not only get to have a lot of fun of the two of them together, but we also learn a little bit more about Ella and what makes her tick.

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