As has become custom for fantasy shows of a certain stripe, Lucifer will air a musical episode in the back half of its fifth season. Titled “Bloody Celestial Karaoke Jam,” the entry will find Tom Ellis’ Big Red Meanie cutting a rug with Chloe (Lauren German), Dan (Kevin Alejandro), and Ella (Aimee Garcia), among others. In a preview of the episode that played during Lucifer’s DC FanDome panel on Saturday, the four put their own spin on Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust” as a poisoned referee rots beneath a dancing horde of jocks and cheerleaders.
Co-showrunner Ildy Modrovich said during the panel that the seeds of a musical episode were planted while making the season two episode in which Lucifer and Ella sing “Luck Be A Lady.” She also said making the episode “almost broke our show,” citing an entirely revised production schedule.
Modrovich, co-showrunner Joe Henderson, and director Sherwin Shilati played coy about the justification for all the singing. and dancing, except to say that it’s “genius.” Henderson added, “To me, in these musical episodes you’ve got to have the story-based reason that everyone breaks into song. Our show has people breaking into song all the time, but it’s because they’re at Lux or reasons like that. So, one of the challenges was, ‘What element could we introduce that is organic to our story that allows all of our cast to burst into song?’ And when we found that…that’s when it came together.”
“There’s a lot of funny, but there’s also a lot of emotion,” said Modrovich. “There’s a great range of feeling being expressed.”
Ellis elaborated on the episode’s creation in an interview with ET. “We tried to find some connection, rather than just being random songs,” he said. “Music is the way into people’s souls a little bit, and it’s an unspoken language. It taps into a place that maybe the spoken word does not.”
ET also teases a duet of some kind between Ellis’ Lucifer and his pops, God (Dennis Haysbert). “They are having huge issues, huge unresolved issues,” he said. “[Lucifer] has sort of a revelatory moment in this episode where he is like, ‘Maybe, for the sake of other things in my life, I should try getting along with my Dad.’”
Netflix has yet to share the preview, but you can watch it via the panel here. We’ll update with the individual clip when it goes live. In the meantime, why not watch this newly unveiled season four gag reel?
Lucifer was recently renewed for a sixth and final season. The first half of the fifth season premiered last month; a premiere date for the season’s remaining episodes has yet to be announced.