(Warning: This post contains major spoilers for the “Lucifer” Season 5A finale.)
Five seasons into “Lucifer,” Kevin Alejandro’s Detective Dan Espinoza finally found out Lucifer’s (Tom Ellis) secret that that Lucifer himself has never actually tried to keep secret: He is truly the devil himself.
And come the end of Season 5A — which launched Friday on Netflix — Chloe’s (Lauren German) ex appears to be taking the hellish news even worse than she did in Season 4. Of course, that’s partially Lucifer’s twin Michael’s (also played by Ellis) doing, as he’s playing on Dan’s fear to try to manipulate him into killing Lucifer.
TheWrap chatted with Alejandro about Dan’s reaction to Lucifer being the Lucifer, as well as the actor’s experience directing that huge fight sequence between Lucifer, Michael, Amenadiel (D.B. Woodside), and Maze (Lesley-Ann Brandt) in the Season 5 Part 1 finale.
We also pulled a few details out of him about “Lucifer’s” musical episode, “Bloody Celestial Karaoke Jam,” which will air when Season 5B drops at a later date.
TheWrap: What was it like for Dan to find out Lucifer is really the devil and how will he deal with it in the second half of Season 5?
Kevin Alejandro: He is just out of his mind. When we end in Episode 8, the last episode of the first half of Season 5, he doesn’t quite know what to do. He’s running on pure manipulation right now. And you really get to see him struggle and figure out who the hell he is. And it’s not until almost the end of Season 5 where he sort of finds within himself where his reality lies. The rug is pulled from underneath him, you know? Like, he’s just as confused as I am explaining the answer to this question.
He doesn’t know how to handle it. And you’ll see just how much more unraveled he becomes by it.
You directed the Season 5A finale, “Spoiler Alert,” which included that huge fight sequence between Lucifer, Michael, Maze and Amenadiel. How long did it take to shoot that and what did you have to do to properly film Tom Ellis fighting Tom Ellis?
That fight took three days to shoot. But you know what, our stunt coordinator, Vlad Rimburg — our entire stunt team is amazing. So Tom would shoot in one direction and fight his stunt double, and on the next day, he would switch clothes and do all the Michael stuff. So it was long, it was tedious. But it was so well choreographed. We knew exactly what shot we needed to do. They would do the pre-visual, which is all the stunt team doing it, and we would take screenshots from this angle, this angle, this angle, this angle. And we put them all on a giant map. I think it was like four poster boards full of all these shots. And we just started checking off lists. We got that one, we got that one, we got that one. It was so well planned though that even though it took that long, it was necessary, but we just continued to move forward and it was good. And I think it turned out to be one of the strongest fight sequences we’ve had.
What does Dan get to do in the big musical episode in Season 5B? Singing? Dancing?
I got to do it all! This was an episode where all of those years of doing theater and mime classes and clown classes and movement classes and ballet and dance and all those things, they decided to peak their head out a little bit. I think all of us were just like, “Wait, a giant playground? Uh, yes please.” So Dan gets to be in all of it. It’s going to be so fun. I cannot wait for people to watch us do that. We’re just a bunch of clowns.
“Lucifer” Season 5A is streaming now on Netflix.