Lucifer - S3E14 - My Brother’s Keeper

Previously on Lucifer, “Til Death Do Us Part”

Brotherly Love/Hate

Lucifer has dropped a few of hints about Ella’s backstory. She has a lot of brothers. She’s a nerd and a scientist with a deep faith. And she may have dabbled in some criminal activity (she can hot wire a car and pick a lock like no one’s business). But this week, the focus is on our favorite tech when her brother ends up a person of interest in a homicide case involving missing diamonds.

Ella’s brother is a diamond authenticator and when a diamond dealer turns up dead and the stolen diamonds he was authenticating are missing, it seems pretty obvious that Jay was probably the killer. While Ella and Maze try to track down her brother, Chloe tries to keep her mind open about possible other suspects out of deference to Ella, and Lucifer is all in on the bad brother theory because he’s projecting his own Amenadiel and Cain issues onto the case.

The Favorite Son

Lucifer asks Amenadiel to help him figure out how to remove Cain’s mark. But Amenadiel refuses citing God’s infallibility. If God sentenced Cain to roam the earth for all of eternity, the punishment must fit the crime. (Look I know there were only like four people on the earth at the time so killing one of them is pretty egregious, but c’mon, God)

There is an interesting parallel here between Cain and Abel and Lucifer and Amenadiel (and also Amenadiel and Cain). Part of God’s manipulation (or tests) is playing these brother’s off each other. Cain was jealous of Abel and lashed out. God’s prophecy of his favorite son having the sword led to Amenadiel first being jealous of Lucifer and then later Lucifer being jealous of Amenadiel when it turned out he had the key to the sword. Once Cain knows that Amenadiel is the “favorite son”, he realizes that Amenadiel was probably the angel that marked him in the first place and he confronts Amenadiel at Luxe. While the two come to a draw, after Cain points out that Amenadiel isn’t innocent in the brother killing department, Amenadiel doesn’t have a way to remove the mark so it’s back to the drawing board.

Meanwhile, Ella is desperately trying to save a brother she’s slowly losing faith in. Jay, as it turns out, wasn’t just authenticating the diamonds, he was rewriting the serial numbers on them so they could be resold. But he didn’t kill the diamond dealer; it was the guy who previously had Jay’s job and was upset at being cut out of the business. Lucifer is forced to eat a little crow because he’s been bad mouthing Ella’s brother throughout the investigation but he does ask a very important question, what ever happened to those missing diamonds? Jay stashed them to retrieve after the investigation was over and Lucifer catches him but doesn’t turn him in because he knows it would break Ella’s heart and her faith.

Although I joke about Lucifer projecting his personal life onto every case, it’s always more meaningful when all the threads of the story touch each other. While this week’s episode may have been lacking in laugh-out loud-moments, it wasn’t lacking in heart. Pairing Maze with Ella helped Maze work through some of her issues with Dr. Linda and Amenadiel as well. I think she’s realizing it’s not about them dating, but about her losing a sense of the family. There was also a C-plot about Charlotte coming to Dr. Linda for therapy. Even though Dr. Linda was terrified because she was attacked by the Mother, she moves past it to help Charlotte. These characters are one big family because only they have experienced these supernatural upheavals and like Ella says, they have to have each other’s backs.