The eternal wait is over. The complete fifth season of Lucifer is out on both Blu-ray and DVD today, and thanks to our friends over at Warner Brothers Home Entertainment, Cherry the Geek TV was given a free advanced copy of the DVD set to look at before today’s release.
Based upon the characters created by Neil Gaiman, Sam Keith and Mike Dringenberg, Lucifer stars Tom Ellis as the original fallen angel Lucifer Morningstar, who after becoming bored and unhappy as the lord of Hell, abandons his throne to become a nightclub owner in Los Angeles where he also moonlights as a consultant to the police department.
Lucifer began on Fox, where it was cancelled after three seasons. Netflix stepped in to save the show, where it continued for another three seasons and just recently ended its six-year run. While most Netflix shows do not end up being released on DVD or blu-ray, Lucifer‘s complicated history makes it an exception as Warner Brothers produces the show and already has released the show in the format already, and fans are eager to complete their collection. Is it worth buying? Well that is also complicated.
Let’s start with the show itself. Here’s the official synopsis of season 5 from the Warner Brothers Home Entertainment press release:
In the fifth season, the stakes are higher than ever. Secrets will be revealed, Lucifer makes a tumultuous return from Hell, Chloe rethinks romance, Ella finally finds a nice guy, and Amenadiel adjusts to the whole fatherhood thing. In the first half of the season, Lucifer’s twin brother Michael secretly takes the devil’s place on earth while he’s back in Hell. Eventually, Lucifer must face the mess his brother made with his life. He’ll also finally confront his feelings for Chloe, and answer a question that fans have been asking since the very beginning: “will they or won’t they?” Then in the second half of the season, God makes his grand appearance. Except, Lucifer never prayed for this, and he already can’t wait to send dear old Dad back where he came from. Unfortunately for Lucifer, God isn’t going anywhere, and wants to get into every aspect of Lucifer’s life. But our heroes will soon discover that God is here for more than just some family bonding time!
Lucifer has always been a solid procedural show–with fantastic performances from the cast including Tom Ellis, Lauren German, Kevin Alejandro, DB Woodside, Lesley-Ann Brandt, Aimee Garcia, and Rachel Harris. It is full of humor, has cool supernatural elements, twists and turns, and season-long arcs that keep you watching. Season 5 continues that legacy, AND adds a couple of standout special episodes– a black and white film noir episode straight out of the 1940s, and a musical episode where the cast gets to show their singing skills. The show is fun and if you like the previous seasons, there is more to like to here.
But….the show is on Netflix, and if one has Netflix, there must be some great bonus features to get you to buy the set to get episodes you can watch with your subscription, right? Well..that’s where the set falls short. There are only two bonus features in this set– a four minute gag reel, and about four minutes of deleted scenes. That’s it. What makes this even more of a disappointment is that Warner Brothers generally puts out fantastic sets for their DC content–full of short docs and comic con panels and behind the scenes featurettes and audio commentaries. They really dropped the ball here. There absolutely should have been SOMETHING for bonus features in regards to the film-noir episode and the musical episode. An audio commentary, a featurette–something. There was a Lucifer panel for DC Fandome regarding the musical episode. Why was this not included?
The show is streamed in HD on Netflix, so the quality of the video on DVD is inferior to what you might see by streaming it, so that is another strike against adding the set to your collection. (The blu-ray from Warner Archive probably fixes this problem and looks great but that wasn’t the set I was sent to review). If you don’t have Netflix and like the show–by all means, buy the set. I’m a big proponent of physical media over streaming–I just wish this set had more to it. The good news is that there is still one final season of Lucifer that has yet to be released. Hopefully, Warner Brothers will put some effort into producing some quality bonus features for that set to satisfy the fans. The show is too good not to.
LUCIFER:THE COMPLETE FIFTH SEASON DVD
Lucifer Show Quality: A
DVD Video Quality: B-
DVD Audio Quality: B+
Bonus Features: D-
Overall Value: C
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