Lucifer - S2E16 - God Johnson

Previously on Lucifer, “Deceptive Little Parasite”

Images: Fox

Samael, I Am

This week’s episode opens with Lucifer on a gurney in a hospital intoning that he’s not the devil and he made it all up so it seemed like we were in for Lucifer’s version of Normal Again. But alas, Lucifer knows exactly who he is and he’s in a mental institution because there’s a patient who claims he’s God.

God Johnson, guest star Timothy Omundson, was placed in a mental institution after he claimed he was God and gave away all his money. When an orderly ends up dead, Lucifer and Chloe show up to investigate, but because of the patient’s mental health issues Chloe is barred from interviewing them without special dispensation. Of course, Lucifer decides he’ll just get himself committed to find out if God Johnson is really his father. After Johnson calls him Samael and he sees him heal a nurse, Lucifer starts to believe he may be God.

 The Parent Trap

Once Lucifer realizes that God is on Earth and may still have feelings for his mother, Lucifer reconfigures his plan to have his mother and father fight each other in heaven. Instead he breaks God Johnson out of the mental institution and sets them up on a blind date. It’s ridiculous, but also endearing. Lucifer cannot settle on what he feels for his mother and father. He hates them for their manipulation, but part of him wants them together and happy. And when God Johnson apologizes for casting Lucifer down to hell and says he’s proud of him, it’s obvious how much Lucifer needed that validation. It makes it that much sadder when God Johnson turns out to have been brainwashed by the missing piece of the Flaming Sword.

Over in the B-plot, Chloe is struggling with Maze’s version of friendship, which is basically Maze becoming obsessed with Chloe and habitually line-stepping in every area of her life. Part of this is because Maze and Lucifer have drifted apart and because she broke up with Amenadiel. What makes Lucifer and Maze good friends is that they both have a child-like connection to the world, but their responses to emotional hurt are also child-like. Lucifer wants his father to suffer for manipulating him and Maze’s response to Amenadiel lying to her is to cut him and Lucifer out of her life.

The Devil Is Laughing 

ELLA: What if God was one of us?

CHLOE: Just a slob … like one of us

ELLA: Exactly! Or just a …

CHLOE: Just a stranger on bus

LUCIFER: My father would never use public transport.

Timothy Omundson was the perfect God. Although he might not have been speaking for God, he said the things that Lucifer and The Mother needed to hear from God. Hopefully when God shows up for real he’s a little bit contrite because Lucifer’s anger has grown in the wake of this encounter. The Mother’s response to God Johnson shows that the potential for forgiveness is there, but a few millennia in hell is not going to be an easy thing for either of them to move past.