Sympathy Earned One Episode at a Time

Read Time:5 Minute, 25 Second

TV SERIES REVIEW
Lucifer: The Complete Series
TV-14 –

Genre: Crime, Fantasy, Drama
Year Released: 2016–2021, Warner Home Entertainment Blu-ray 2026
Runtime: 93 episodes, 5,580 minutes total
Director(s): Nathan Hope, Eagle Egilsson, Louis Shaw Milito, Sherwin Shilati
Writer(s): Ildy Modrovich, Joe Henderson, Chris Rafferty, Mike Costa, Jason Ning
Cast: Tom Ellis, Lauren German, Kevin Alejandro, D.B. Woodside, Lesley-Ann Brandt
Where to Watch: available now, order your copy here: www.moviezyng.com or www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: What happens when a network genre show refuses to stay canceled, survives a reinvention, and ends up preserved as a single entertainment staple? That question sits at the center of LUCIFER: THE COMPLETE SERIES, a release that captures both the strengths and the excesses of a series that thrived on personality more than precision..

At its core, LUCIFER was never subtle about what made it work. From the pilot onward, the show understood that Tom Ellis wasn’t just playing the lead; he was the show’s heart and “soul”. His Lucifer Morningstar isn’t simply charming or mischievous. He’s calibrated, self-aware, and consistently entertaining in ways that allow even the show’s weakest stretches to remain watchable. Ellis gives the series a confidence it doesn’t always earn in concept, but often earns through sheer performance.

The early seasons, particularly the Fox era, benefit from restraint. The procedural framework gives the mythology boundaries, and those limits actually focus the character work. The cases aren’t groundbreaking, but they’re functional, and that functionality gives space for relationships to develop organically. Lauren German’s Chloe Decker works best here as a grounded counterweight rather than a narrative puzzle box. Their dynamic thrives when the show lets it breathe instead of forcing escalation.

As the series transitions to Netflix, ambition increases, and that ambition cuts both ways. The mythology deepens, the stakes widen, and the show becomes more serialized. At its best, this allows characters like Amenadiel and Mazikeen to step out of their confinement and assert real emotional arcs. D.B. Woodside, in particular, benefits from this expansion, turning Amenadiel into one of the show’s most consistent presences. Lesley-Ann Brandt’s Maze also gains complexity, even if her arcs occasionally feel like circular spirals instead of progressing forward.

The downside is bloat. With more freedom comes repetition. Themes of destiny, choice, and self-acceptance are revisited so often that they sometimes lose their impact through overexposure. This is the same thing that happened to SUPERNATURAL. The series begins to explain itself instead of trusting the audience to keep up. This is where LUCIFER starts to feel less like a tight, character-driven genre hybrid and more like a show determined to resolve every thread, whether or not it needs resolution.

That tension carries through to the final season, which is sincere to a fault. The ending isn’t careless, but it is divisive, largely because it prioritizes emotional closure over elegance. For some viewers, that earnestness provided what they needed. For others, it feels like a series negotiating with its own legacy rather than standing on its own ground. What’s undeniable is that the show commits to its ending without irony, and that commitment matters, even when the execution isn’t satisfying to everyone.

As a physical media release, LUCIFER: THE COMPLETE SERIES is about preservation, not prestige. Warner’s Blu-ray set doesn’t present itself as a lavish archival project. There’s no attempt to recontextualize the show or elevate it through extras-heavy curation. Instead, this is a comprehensive package designed for fans who want the entire journey in one place. The presentation is clean and consistent, and the sheer scale of the set reinforces the sense of completion that streaming alone never quite provides. There are over 3 hours of bonus content, which is nice to see for a Blu-ray set! That matters, especially for a show with such a fractured broadcast history. LUCIFER lived on Fox, was resurrected by Netflix, and found its audience largely through word of mouth and fan persistence. Owning the series physically restores a sense of authorship to the viewer. It turns a once-fragile property into a fixed object, no longer subject to licensing shifts.

Taken as a whole, LUCIFER works because it understands its own appeal, even when it occasionally indulges its worst instincts. It’s funny, self-serious, romantic, and sometimes messier than it needs to be. But it’s also anchored by performances that never phone it in and by a central character who remains compelling long after the novelty should have worn off.

This set doesn’t pretend the series is flawless, and it doesn’t need to. What it offers is the full experience, preserved in a format that respects the viewer's investment. For fans, it’s a long-overdue consolidation. For collectors, it’s a reminder that even sprawling, uneven television can earn its place on the shelf when the connection is real. Not because the series is perfect, but because it consistently delivers more than it promises, survives its own excesses, and earns its ending through persistence rather than polish.

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