Gwendoline Christie’s Sandman Lucifer and the show Lucifer are the same

There’s quite a bit to take pleasure in in Netflix’s The Sandman collection. The present is sweet! The comedian is nice! It’s wealthy with meaty allusions ripe for discovery. It’s a narrative with fascinating mysteries and fantastic messages.

It’s additionally created a fantastic scenario for me personally, one the place I get to level out that Lucifer of the TV present Lucifer and Lucifer of The Sandman are the identical character.

And I don’t imply due to the Bible.

Picture: Netflix

In case you’re not accustomed to Lucifer, it’s the Tom Ellis-starring dramedy that ran three seasons on Fox and three extra on Netflix. And in case you are accustomed to the present that’s equal components detective procedural, supernatural drama, and love story, you might nonetheless be unaware of its connection to DC Comics’ The Sandman.

Lucifer stands as a piece of its personal, however its central framing — that Devil acquired bored with ruling in hell and stop to run a piano bar in Los Angeles — is DC Comics canon. And the story that made that DC Comics canon is within the pages of The Sandman.

[Ed. note: Spoilers for The Sandman comic, I guess? It’s… very old, though.]

Viewers who’ve completed the primary season of The Sandman on Netflix have been left with Lucifer — performed by Gwendoline Christie — swearing vengeance on the lord of Goals for making her appear to be a chump in entrance of each demon in hell. Lucifer even has a plan, and within the comics, we all know precisely what that’s.

It’s to abdicate rule of hell and open a piano bar in Los Angeles. The vengeance half is the place he items Dream the keys to hell, making him the proprietor of a bit of metaphysical actual property so precious different entities are prepared to threaten his life over it — which initiates the majority of the plot of The Sandman’s third story arc. However that’s inappropriate, which is that the Lucifer of the DC Universe tickles the ivories within the Metropolis of Angels all due to Gaiman’s The Sandman.

Lucifer the TV collection by no means wore its origins on its sleeve — it was a case of “impressed by the DC Universe” moderately than “based mostly on the DC Universe.” There have been some Lucifer spinoff collection within the DC Universe, however none of them are particularly just like the present. (My favourite is 2015’s Lucifer, during which he’s compelled to research the homicide of God.) As an alternative the present attracted cult standing by springboarding confidently off of the completely strong pitch of “Certainly one of them is a police detective, the opposite is a cheeky piano bar proprietor and secretly Devil. They resolve crime… and fall in love????”

As Polygon’s reviewer describes it, the present was “the story of an angel who rebelled in opposition to God and was despatched to hell for his crimes, and the mortal feminine detective who’s proof against his devilish charms. Early within the collection, the circumstances Chloe and Lucifer labored on collectively have been nearly all human-on-human violence, with no demons or biblical baddies. The principle battle was whether or not Chloe would discover out that Lucifer was, in truth, the satan, not just a few wealthy man dwelling out a bizarre fantasy.”

By the top of the present’s remaining season, it had blossomed right into a cheeky and loving meditation on forgiveness and alter, saying that “typically destiny is malleable, and typically a future that looks like a punishment is known as a blessing. However none of that’s true for individuals who don’t open themselves to self-improvement and self-reflection, as Lucifer does.”

Lucifer discovered an viewers by being the whole lot it could possibly be, from a goofy mess to a dramatic will-they-won’t-they. And that’s why it’s no shade to level out its origins in The Sandman. I don’t want Christie’s Lucifer to battle Ellis’ Lucifer for supremacy — until it’s in a Roger Rabbit-style piano battle.

However I want to see them excessive 5.