‘Lucifer’: This Season 6 Episode Was Inspired by ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’
Lucifer Season 6 marked the end of the popular series, giving showrunners Joe Henderson and Ildy Modrovich 10 episodes to bid farewell to the story and its characters. The final season, which arrived on Netflix on Sept. 10, got to embrace several experimental storytelling methods. Not only does it feature an animated episode, but it shows the characters revisiting the series as Lucifer relayed it to Linda (Rachael Harris). As it turns out, the latter idea stemmed from a Nickelodeon series: Avatar: The Last Airbender.
[Spoiler warning: This article contains spoilers for Lucifer Season 6 and Avatar: The Last Airbender.]
‘Lucifer’ Season 6 revisits the show’s past
Lucifer Season 6 Episode 8, “Save the Devil, Save the World,” isn’t the final episode of the show, but it does reflect on everything that happened ahead of the series finale. As the characters attempt to stop the end of the world, they sift through Linda’s manuscript — a book she wrote based on her sessions with Lucifer.
As they revisit some of the show’s biggest moments, the group sees how Lucifer views each of them. They also get to reflect on their own decisions, leading to some comical developments — and some emotional ones.
During an interview with Collider, Henderson said the creators wanted an episode that would serve as a “love letter” to the first five seasons — and Linda’s manuscript provided an opening for them to have fun with that concept:
“So then it became, okay, if the book is our device, let’s play with perspective, let’s play with how everyone saw different moments happening and try to find a way to explore each one. Like here’s how Lucifer sees the world. Here’s how Dan and Maze see the exact same scene, but from different perspectives.”
It’s a unique angle to tackle an episode from. However, the concept did come from another show: The Last Airbender.
The creators were inspired by ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’
While “Save the Devil, Save the World” includes narrative elements crucial to Lucifer‘s main plot, it spends time poking fun at its characters and their story arcs. According to the showrunners, that aspect of the episode was inspired by the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Specifically, Lucifer‘s creators drew from The Last Airbender episode “The Ember Island Players.” Another “love letter” that takes place just ahead of the show’s finale, “The Ember Island Players” finds Team Avatar watching a play about their lives. The acting troupe performing it exaggerates their personalities to comical proportions, revisiting past events in a way that allows the characters to comment on them.
Henderson told Collider the creative team attempted to craft their own iteration of that episode in Lucifer Season 6:
“I mean, I’ll tell you where I was coming from on it, which was, there’s an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, where towards the end of the season, all the characters go to a play and they watch themselves being dramatized onstage. And you get all of these in-jokes in the sense of how other people see them and all this. [Executive story editor] Jen Imada and I in particular were obsessed with that.”
It’s a clever way to pay homage to the series as a whole. Of course, Lucifer‘s version is a bit different than “The Ember Island Players.”
‘Save the Devil, Save the World’ is an emotional addition to ‘Lucifer’ Season 6
Despite taking place in the midst of the apocalypse, “Save the Devil, Save the World” actually brings some levity to Lucifer Season 6’s emotional ending. That aspect of the episode is similar to “The Ember Island Players.”
However, Lucifer‘s take on this concept proves more emotional than the episode it’s based on. Not only does Ella (Aimee Garcia) need to come to terms with the fact that her friends have been lying to her, but the other characters are forced to confront their own demons. In that sense, it’s more dramatic and emotional than The Last Airbender episode it draws inspiration from.
That aligns with Lucifer‘s themes, though, and allows the show to properly let go of its past. Fortunately, fans can still revisit it by rewatching the show. All seasons of Lucifer are currently streaming on Netflix.
