Lucifer season 5B is here! And as we strive to bring you more coverage, Raquel and I are dividing up the episodes. I reviewed 5×11 “Resting Devil Face,” and Raquel brought you the scenes you can’t miss for that episode, and now it’s the other way around, Raquel has reviewed the episode and I want to talk 5 scenes you can’t miss from Lucifer 5×12 “Daniel Espinoza: Naked and Afraid.”
So, without further ado, here are the five scenes from Lucifer 5×12 “Daniel Espinoza: Naked and Afraid” you absolutely can’t miss:
Dan asks Lucifer for help
This is the setup for the entire episode, and also the culmination of so many moments in this friendship that at times hasn’t felt like a friendship. And yes, Dan is actually truly defeated as he decides to reach out to Lucifer. And he knows Lucifer‘s going to laugh, and probably lord the fact that he had to help him, over him forever. But Dan still doesn’t hesitate, because Dan also knows …Lucifer will help.
For such a simple scene, in what is arguably a filler-episode meant to advance character more than plot, this is a poignant moment. It matters a lot that Dan – even after just literally shooting Lucifer not so long ago – feels like he can reach out to the man, and that Lucifer will help. It shows that, despite the many wrong choices both have made, despite the ways they’ve never truly seen eye to eye and how they’ve made fun of each other …they’ve come to actually care for each other. And that means a lot.
Commiserating about bad fathers with Lucifer
Everything in this scene is hilarious, from the way Lucifer just guides the conversation with his Daddy issues, to the way everyone else’s Daddy issues come out to play, to the fact that you can see that, despite the fact that Lucifer is doing this for a reason, that he’s playing these people, he isn’t actually lying. He never lies, after all.
We al know his daddy issues are very, very real.
They can all feel it too, that’s why we end up with a group hug, as Lucifer shares some of hard-earned Linda wisdom with the group: “we need to be gentle with ourselves, before we’re gentle with anybody else.” And though this is all about distraction, and it doesn’t involve any of the characters we have come to love, the scene is still touching, even within its simplicity. And that we get to laugh as Dan runs away, at the end …that’s just the icing on the cake.
Amenadiel, the Uber
One of these days I will get over how Dan literally calls Amenadiel the celestial Uber, and that’s basically all Amenadiel gets to do this episode, but today is probably not that day. And again, like with Lucifer, this means so damn much. We all know how much Dan hates flying. We all know that he would literally take any other option, if he felt he had one. But we also know that Dan trusts Amenadiel, fully trusts him.
That’s why he can make the call, and involve Amenadiel in one of the worst days of his life. And yes, Dan is asking a favor, but he’s not asking for Amenadiel to fix the mess he got himself in, Dan would never ask that. Instead he’s just asking his best friend for a ride, so he can get back to the business of fixing his own mess.
“We killed a guy together”
Dan gets to bond with Maze in this episode too, and Maze, true to form, brings up her favorite anecdote ever, about the time she and Dan “killed a guy together.” Dan tries to correct her that they didn’t actually kill a guy, they just made sure bad people found him, but Maze isn’t taking any of his nonsense. Maze is being Maze – and unlike Amenadiel, that means Maze just cannot let Dan be.
The way this episode all develops shows not just how much these people care about Dan, but how much their relationships with him are firmly established, and how much he relies on them. He trusts Maze, implicitly, even if she’s a demon, even if common sense might tell him not to. And that’s something huge, not just for Dan, but for Maze. The rest …the rest doesn’t matter as much. This does.
“Because you fucking shot me, Daniel.”
Gold. Pure gold, that’s what the conversation at the end between Lucifer and Dan is. Because of course Lucifer wouldn’t have forgotten that Dan shot him, that happened a very short time ago for them. But the show uses the fact that we have all mostly forgotten to set up this episode, and that ends up being actually a very beautiful conversation between Lucifer and Dan.
He wasn’t trying to say nice things about Dan, he truly wasn’t. Just as the idea behind this wasn’t to help Dan out of the dark hole he’s been since Charlotte died. But the end result is still that both things end up happening.
“Well, I knew that you would never give up.” Lucifer tells Dan. “At every opportunity to quit, I knew that your oafish optimism would keep you going. I suppose I realized that whenever you’re given a choice, you always at least try and do the right thing.”
I’m fine, I just have a little something in my eye, like a tree or a branch, or something. Imagine trying to say you don’t care for Dan, Lucifer. Imagine daring to try that line after this. No one’s ever going to believe you. I certainly don’t.
What did you think of Lucifer 5×12 “Daniel Espinoza: Naked and Afraid”? Share with us in the comments below!
Lucifer season 5B is available to stream on Netflix.
