Ships. In entertainment, and especially, in fandom, we live and die by them. Which is why every Friday, we’ll be focusing on a couple, analyzing why we ship them, and overall, just proclaiming our eternal love for those couples that make us say:
I will go down with this ship.
Lucifer and Chloe are not your typical ship. There’s nothing typical about the devil and – well, anyone, if you want to be brutally honest. We’re talking about the devil here! And yet, this version of Lucifer has really and truly found his match, and shall we say, his better half, in the form of Detective Chloe Decker. So let’s examine the journey that took them there, and what makes us say that we will really and truly go down with this ship.
RELUCTANT PARTNERS
These two didn’t get off to the best start. In fact, despite the fact that Lucifer was clearly trying more than he usually did (because he usually did not try, he was on a vacation!), these two clashed and clashed and clashed and the beginning, and in a way, that was okay. They had to get used to working together, get used to being a unit. This is not your typical love story, after all. We wouldn’t want it to develop the usual way.
Because even when they both were looking for something else from their relationship, they quickly became, well, partners. Real partners. The kind that, no matter what else is going on, can rely on each other. The job always came easy to them together, even when the rest didn’t, and though we can’t really say the rest is history (a hell of a lot happened, pun intended), one of my favorite things about this relationship, and about what these two have managed to build together, is that …well, it wasn’t there from the beginning.
Even if the attraction was.
WOULD BE FRIENDS
No lasting relationship – romantic or otherwise – has ever been built on just attraction first. For Lucifer and Chloe to work, at any level, even the partners one, they first had to learn to be friends. To actually care for each other without expectations. And though that wasn’t even easy for Chloe, who had trust issues and Dan issues, it was even more complicated for, you know, the literal devil. What did he know about real emotional connections?
The progression of their relationship is, in many ways, the progression of Lucifer’s relationship with the human world. Through Chloe he learned about humanity, about feelings other than lust, about what it means to want the best for someone just because you care, and not because you want something in return. Through Chloe, the devil learned how to be, well, something other than the devil. And she, in return, learned that, sometimes, it’s okay to rely on someone other than yourself.
I TRUST YOU
First, it came with trust. Lucifer’s life hadn’t exactly been filled with trust, and Chloe had been burned so many times that trust was harder for her than it had any right to be. And it didn’t happen overnight, because that’s not the way trust is built. Not really. They worked at it, even when it didn’t seem like that’s what they were doing.
Every case, however, every minute they spent together, every time they both chose to move forward, to try, to give each other an inch, they built something together. And yes, there was always attraction, but that’s not what they were building towards, or at least, not the only thing they were building towards, which is what makes what we ended up with so much sweeter.
I CARE FOR YOU
But they inevitably got there, because …well, there’s this thing called humanity, this thing Lucifer ended up learning about by letting Chloe, and through the crack that he opened for her, so many other people enter his heart. You can’t go through life spending time with people, relying on them, laughing, crying and going through ups and downs and not care about their well-being. Life isn’t an endless hell loop, after all, life is just …life. With the good and the bad.
Not to say that Chloe had the caring part down pat, either. She might not have had God shaped issues, but that doesn’t mean her issues weren’t valid, and that she didn’t need her own realization to accept that caring for someone else was fine, it didn’t make her any less of a badass. The best part about this story, after all, it’s that it isn’t the story of the devil and the woman he fell in love with, it’s the story of Lucifer and Chloe – and how they came together.
I SEE ALL OF YOU
They still had one big obstacle, though, and that was Lucifer’s identity. You know, the one he hasn’t ever, one day in his life, lied about, but the one she didn’t believe, because you don’t believe the weird dude that shows up to help you solve a case is the devil, no matter how many times he insists he is. That’s just not what happens. I wouldn’t have. You wouldn’t have.
His true identity, however, was always going to come out. She was always going to, at one point, see him and actually see all of him, not just the façade he put up, or what he wished he was (much less what his father wished he was), but the man he’d always been, devil, angel, and everything in the middle. Just like he always saw her, even when he didn’t care to see anything other than her beauty.
Because this was always their destiny …the strings that tied them together were always leading them here. To the kind of love you can only feel when you know every part of the person in front of you, and you not only accept them, you love them for every little thing they are.
TURMOIL & ACCEPTANCE
Accepting that one was always going to take some time, even if Chloe really and truly did know Lucifer. But hey, the bad propaganda has always kind of dominated the coverage of him, so how could she look at the man who she now knew was the devil and not see the torturer of humans, the root of all evil?
Easy. Because she knew him. Because she’d already been through the hardest, most important journey with him, and through that journey, the one they took together, she’d learned to trust him, she’d learned to depend on him, she’d learned to care for him, and he’d done the exact same thing. And his devil face or what he’d done in the past – well, that had nothing on what he’d already shown her he was.
Chloe knew Lucifer, better than anyone, and she just needed to remember that to be able to turn to him and fully embrace everything he was.
WHAT NOW?
Being that this is TV, though, a twist was thrown their way, and as things stand, Lucifer is now stuck in hell and Chloe is left alone on Earth. But we don’t for a moment believe their story is over. The show isn’t over, after all, and this show is many, many things, but above all, it’s the story of two people who, together, found the strength not just not live, but to love and to laugh and to be.
That is the story of Lucifer and Chloe. This is what makes them the stuff OTP dreams are made of. And these are just some of the many reasons that make us say: We will go down with this ship.
Lucifer Season 5A is coming to Netflix on August 21st.
