Lucifer showrunners say Season 6 still has 'one giant story' that needs to be told

Lucifer, the devil-centric show that fell from grace only to be revived and made stronger by Netflix, surprised fans when it was renewed for a sixth season. After already seeming to make a deal with the devil for more episodes on its streaming home, the unexpected continuation was a bounty for the Tom Ellis-starring show — the only problem was that the creative team had already written its series finale. Oops.

But after heading back to the celestial drawing board, showrunners Ildy Modrovich and Joe Henderson found purpose for the 6-6-6th season from a few different places.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly about the renewal (and the bonkers, twin-filled trailer for Season 5), Modrovich and Henderson explained how they went from being happy with their fifth and final season's finale to rewriting everything after getting an unexpected sixth run at their demonic procedural. "What we realized is that the last bit of that [series] finale episode was actually a lot of great stories sped up just to give us a satisfying ending for all our characters," Modrovich said. "We literally lobbed off Act 6 and went, 'Let's take what happens in Act 6 in a scene and dive into it, and really explore how our characters end up where they ended up.' So, that ended up being our nugget for Season 6."

This nugget from the original finale grew into a more fleshed-out version of the same arcs, just over the course of a season. But if that sounds more like a storytelling luxury than a justification for a bunch more episodes, Modrovich has fans covered: "In addition to what we're opening up from that ending, we thought of one giant story that just needed to be told, so that's what really stuck the landing for us."

What is that story? The showrunners are keeping mum. But it'll really, truly be the end of Lucifer. "When they were like, 'Can you do one more?' we said, 'Yes, but this our last story,'" Henderson explained.

But until that time, fans have a two-part fifth season to enjoy... featuring Lucifer's twin brother Michael. Modrovich says Ellis "plays [the roles] with very different physical mannerism and speech patterns, so it is this weird back-and-forth where he's having this weird schizophrenic conversation with himself. He's brilliant."

Fans can expect this dual role, a black-and-white noir episode, and more when Lucifer returns for the first half of Season 5 on August 21.