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Who Is Lucifer?

Lucifer is a character from the action-adventure fantasy horror American television show ‘Supernatural’ that aired from 2005 to 2020. He’s been played by 13 different actors as he’s an angel and angels in Supernatural possess different human bodies (vessels) to be able to walk on Earth. During most of his time on the show Lucifer is possessing Nick (played by Mark Pelligrino), though also possesses Castiel/the body of Jimmy Novak (played by Misha Collins), Vince Vincente (portrayed by Rick Springfield), Jefferson Rooney (portrayed by David Chisum), and in an alternate future possess Sam Winchester (played by Jared Padelecki). Like many characters and creatures in Supernatural, Lucifer is based on existing mythology/religions, in this case Christianity.

Before getting into Supernatural, I feel it’s important to know the show went through multiple show runners and writers. The first 5 seasons are often regarded as the best, as they were conceived together and made by the same team. I do agree with this, though there are episodes and moments in the later seasons that I still enjoy but overall the later seasons have a very different less-serious tone and in my opinion lose most of the depth and heart the show and characters had.

He is one of the main antagonists of the show, being mentioned in the first three seasons and finally appearing at the end of season 5. He appears sort of in season 6 as Sam’s hallucination (which is usually seen as not being Lucifer, but Lucifer/Nick’s actor Mark Pelligrino said in the ‘Season 7 Companion Guide’ that it could have Lucifer psychically projecting himself into Sam’s mind) and then comes back in seasons 7 and 11-15.

I feel it’s pointless to write out a character summary when a perfectly good ones exist elsewhere and I’d just be rephrasing what they’ve written so if you want a full character summary (including spoilers) here is his Supernatural Fandom Wiki page.

Why I Like Him

Lucifer is such a more complex character than the later seasons and writers give him credit for. Watch him in season 5, really watch him. Mark Pelligrino and Jared Padalecki do such a good job at conveying deeper layers and emotions in Lucifer. He’s not just some big, bad, unfeeling evil. He kills his brother Gabriel, but you see the grief on his face afterwards and realise he still loved his brother, perhaps he still loves all of them, even Michael, but he’s doing what he feels like he has too. There’s something so elegantly terrifying about season 5 Lucifer. It’s the only season where I feel so drawn to him, where I’m the most in awe of him, but also fear him the most.

In an interview I am region-locked out off and so will quote the Supernatural Fandom Wiki, series creator Eric Kripke described Lucifer’s initial portrayal as “"gentle, almost sympathetic", a "Devil who has a doubt" and "a lot of affection for God and the angels," and who "speaks really tenderly and gently and... doesn't lie. This supports my interpretation of Lucifer in season 5, and I wish they had continued with this characterisation of him.

I like to imagine what if he’d given up on the apocalypse, and yes a redemption arc might seen cheesy, but I think it would have been a more interesting direction than what happened to him. If you’re into Supernatural, you know the who went through different eras with different showrunners and writers to the point that the stories became… in my opinion, not as good.

After season 5 Lucifer was no longer terrifying nor elegant, but a silly, sassy child throwing temper tantrums. And don’t get me wrong, I love the sass and the silliness and humour in later seasons Lucifer, but I wish they’d balanced that by keeping the nuance and hidden, deeper emotions he’d had in season 5. I think by making Lucifer more watered down and silly, they failed at keeping him a threatening villain, and yet were still having him be a villain. I personally think if they wanted to lighten him up then a redemption arc made the most sense, or keep him villain and let him be terrifying again. But honestly even if he’d had a redemption arc in the later season, it wouldn’t have brought back the hypnotising allure of season 5 Lucifer.

But perhaps the show had gone so off the rails and overall failing at a serious tone when it was trying to be serious that a redeemed or terrifying Lucifer wouldn’t have fit with the rest of the show anymore. I guess I just wish the quality of the writing in the later seasons did justice to characters who were so much more complex in seasons 1-5. But I’ll still wonder what it could have been like if Lucifer’s story had gone differently. I find that sad, that as he tries to upset his father, God, by destroying humans and the Earth, he is ultimately doing exactly what his father wants as the apocalypse was part of God’s plan. So what if he’d abandoned the apocalypse, what if he had to sit with himself, learn how to live with himself and with other people, make honest connections with humans and hate that he’s making connections, wanting to be trusted, wanting people to not flinch when he reaches for him, wanting to be loved but not trusting anyone and being scared to let anyone in.

I think any portrayal of Lucifer can always be looked at through a queer lens, or anyone who’s been othered or ostracised can find something to relate too in his story. Or at least, I always have. Seeing a character who had been outcast from his family, called an “abomination”, felt misunderstood and othered, was the black sheep of the family… These were all things I could relate to at 13/14 years old, when I first started watching the show. At the time I knew I was pansexual, but still felt like there was something wrong with me, something different, that I couldn’t work out but also felt like I couldn’t tell my family from fear of being cast out. The things were being trans and autistic, but I didn’t know that yet.

Getting back into Supernatural in 2024, now I’m 26, and looking at what else was added to Lucifer’s story, while I don’t personally love the later seasons as I stopped watching around the end of season 6, there is an addition I find interesting. In season 10 it was revealed that Lucifer rebelling wasn’t ever his own fault, but that God had chosen him to bear the Mark of Cain, a magical seal that Lucifer would bear in order to lock away The Darkness, but it ended up corrupting him and influencing his thoughts, causing him to become angrier and more jealous of humanity until he rebelled and was cast out of Heaven. So now Lucifer’s story is that his father corrupted him and rather than accept the responsibility and trying to help him, he cast Lucifer out and allowed everyone to believe Lucifer had turned evil all on his own.

The show had changed from God being absent, to God helping them, to God being the final villain of the show and ultimately proving right everything Lucifer said about him. This changed Lucifer from someone who could have been misunderstood by his family and punished unjustly, to someone who’d actively been abandoned and potentially abused by his father (depending on whether you see putting a seal on your son that curses him into becoming evil and then leaving him to suffer instead of trying to help him as abusive, I personally do). Him being othered, not accepted by his family, hurt by a parent who refuses to acknowledge they did anything wrong… these are sadly all things I find very relatable and thus have always been drawn to him.

At first when I got back into Supernatural I let my own religious trauma and cringe culture judgement insist that it was embarrassing of teenage me to have liked Lucifer, but the more I got back into the show I couldn’t help but fall back in love with him again, perhaps most of all because I see him as someone damaged by his parents, a black sheep of the family, othered but deep inside desperately wants someone to love him. And despite the evils his character has committed (they are fictional evils after all), I see all of that and I see myself. I am all those things, I was all of those things and deep down I loved Lucifer because I wanted to believe I was capable of being loved. I suppose this all got a bit deep for commentary on a character from a silly show that the writers couldn’t be bothered to see any depth in by the end, but I’ll continue to see the depth in a character that I found comfort in as a very depressed teenager who needed to believe he could be loved.