Lucifer is a show that defies expectations. It’s a police procedural/Biblical epic that balances over-the-top murder-of-the-week mysteries with romance novel vibes and an ongoing storyline about the battle for rule of Heaven and Hell. As if that’s not enough, the show has been known to unexpectedly venture into new territory, like last season’s jukebox musical episode. In its final season, Lucifer pays homage to another show that bent the idea of genre to its breaking point: WandaVision.
Yep, Lucifer goes full WandaVision for an episode in Season 6. In Episode 3, “Yabba Dabba Do Me,” Lucifer and Chloe embark on a journey to Hell so that the man who would be God can try to selflessly help someone that he clearly hates. That person? The murder-y record producer Jimmy Barnes, the guy who killed Lucifer’s friend Delilah. The wrinkle is, of course, that Jimmy Barnes is dead and serving out his sentence in an eternal Hell loop. No problem—Lucifer and Chloe will just take a trip down to Hell (and WandaVision).
Now, just to be clear to all the Luci-fans out there, I’m not saying that Lucifer ripped off WandaVision. I’m actually not even sure that this is an intentional homage to WandaVision. Lucifer’s sixth and final season began filming in either late January or early February 2021. WandaVision debuted on Disney+ in mid-January 2021. It seems unlikely that Lucifer would have time to produce a direct homage to a show that was airing at the same time that they were filming. But still, the similarities are wild!
The first similarity: upon entering Jimmy’s Hell loop, Det. Decker and Lucifer are transformed into animated characters in the style of classic Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera shows.
It’s a perfect tribute, down to all the sight gags and elastic slapstick that Bugs and Daffy are most known for. The attention to detail is downright immaculate. This cartoon sequence even ventures into surrealism, à la 1953’s “Duck Amuck,” as cartoon Lucifer tries his best to escape the confines of the TV screen.
This devotion to the specifics of a highly specific storytelling style is exactly what WandaVision was all about, period.
WandaVision also broke the fourth wall regularly, with Wanda using her chaos magic to pause, rewind, fast forward, and generally manipulate the story around her.
The similarities don’t end there. When Lucifer realizes that Jimmy’s Hell loop goes much deeper than just a wacky, animated recreation of a scene from the pilot episode. There is trauma to explore (another WandaVision connection) and that takes Chloe and Luci to the 1980s!
WandaVision also hopped through the decades and made a stop in the ’80s. In fact, Kathryn Hahn’s aerobics getup looks like it came from the same store as what that background extra’s wearing in the pic above.
While the Devil and the detective are spiraling down Jimmy’s personal Hell, they keep encountering individuals who flip through looks as if by remote control.
This aesthetic was also used in WandaVision every time Wanda’s illusion started to glitch out of control.
But those are just examples of aesthetics. Lucifer’s WandaVision connection is also thematic.
The final stop on our duo’s journey through Jimmy’s history takes place when he’s a tween who escapes the pain of life by watching television. Sound/look familiar?
He’s watching old cartoons at the inciting incident of his lifelong trauma. Wanda was watching The Dick Van Dyke Show during her inciting incident. And both of these sequences include moments wherein families watch TV together immediately before being ripped apart.
As in WandaVision, Lucifer shows television as a coping mechanism by tying Jimmy’s Hell loop to the cartoons he was watching when his mother abandoned him. Just like Wanda, Jimmy’s stuck in a pop culture purgatory.
So… was all of this intentional? Was Lucifer pulling a WandaVision on WandaVision by faithfully recreating that surreal show’s aesthetic? Again, the timelines suggest that all of these similarities are just a bizarre coincidence. Or maybe the visual style of the episode was influenced by WandaVision even if the script was already finalized before WandaVision premiered. No matter what, though, one thing is clear: this episode of Lucifer confirms that WandaVision, even though it’s not even a year old, has a genre/style that is as immediately recognizable as the TV classics it emulated.
Stream Lucifer on Netflix
Stream WandaVision on Disney+