A Case for the Good Devil
Why the new Lucifer show is a step in the right direction.
By MARTIN REZNY
Only two episodes in, it’s hard to say definitively that we’re dealing with a great show here, but it certainly has me intrigued. If you’re looking for a review, you should like it fine if you’ve liked for instance the recently cancelled Constantine. The reason why I welcome this take on the classical Christian myth has to do with the concept of the show — the good Devil.
Without spoiling anything you wouldn’t get out of the trailer, the Devil decided to take a vacation from his duties in Hell and moved to our plane of existence. Specifically to Los Angeles, because of course. As he meets a female detective immune to his supernatural powers, he becomes fascinated with her, starts helping her catch bad guys, and inflicts some ironic punishment.
It may seem relatively new and fresh to most American audiences, but as many other ideas in film or generally storytelling, this is actually a very old trope in my particular national culture, in medieval Czech folklore and a good chunk of our cinematography. As a (previously) very Christian people, the Lucifer and Hell loom large in our mythology, but with this precise twist.
The Czech devils (as well as Lucifer, which is *the* Devil), while funny, are still intimidating and intent to inflict terrible punishment on sinners after dragging them to Hell, however the key word here is sinners. The predominant take so far on devils in American culture is that they are the source of evil, tormenting innocent people, but you see, that’s retarded.
Hell in its logically consistent interpretation is supposed to scare people away from doing evil deeds, and for that purpose, punishing or randomly tormenting innocents makes no sense whatsoever. In the Czech stories, devils often tempt the hero of the story, try to trick him into selling his soul to them, but the primary rule is that they have no power or jurisdiction over innocents.
The evil comes from the people, us humans. A deal with the Devil is a metaphor for making a morally reprehensible choice, succumbing to the temptation of personal gain or base cruelty. In American stories, this would generally be limited to the imaginary shoulder Devil, while any manifest Devil even in better stories like The Devil’s Advocate is malicious and causes harm.
I don’t know about you, but to me, evil Devil is boring, mainly because the focus is on his destructive powers and his simplistic primal motivation. On the other hand, a good Devil has to try to accomplish things through his intelligence and wit, which already are a great basis for strong dialogue and rich characterization, involving a lot of misdirection and moral dilemmas.
Making the evil human is also very important storytelling-wise, because that makes the whole idea of punishment for sins work. For starters, the Devil is much more compelling when he has a point, that it is just or maybe even necessary to punish some people who truly deserve it. He’s an embodiment of the part of all of us that wishes bad things to come to bad people.
The questions of what is justice, whether evil is real, or what it even is, should be right at the heart of any story involving Lucifer, and the rest of mythology backs that up. In principle, Lucifer, the Lightbringer, the most perfect of all of the angels and creation, is given the Book of Sins by God, and that leads him either to despise humanity, or start sympathizing with it.
Whether you interpret him as a zealous God’s servant only fulfilling his role in the universe as the necessary evil, or choose the romantic interpretation of him rebelling against God to free humanity from the tyranny of morality, even if you want him to try to win a wager with God that humans are not worth the life they were given, he needs to believe he is the good guy, to have morals.
As for the Lucifer show in particular, the dialogue certainly is fun, and all the key elements are there, the human evil, the punishment dilemma, and some metaphysical intrigue. If it focuses on all that and doesn’t become about CGI battles with demon monsters, even if those would be escaped evil souls and not devils, I think it has a lot of untapped potential in this particular subgenre.
