Lucifer Showrunners Reveal How Season 6 Renewal Changed Season 5

Lucifer fans got a huge surprise last month when it was revealed that Netflix had decided to renew the fan-favorite series for a sixth season. While news that there would be more devilish adventures was welcomed by fans, it did pose some big questions especially since Season 5 has previously been announced that it would be the end of the series. The unexpected additional season is something that showrunners had to figure out as well. Now, Joe Henderson and Ildy Modrovich are opening up about just how that extra season changed things for Season 5 and it sounds like it didn’t change things in a huge way.

Speaking with Collider, Henderson said that when they agreed to the sixth season, they didn’t want the renewal to change Season 5, so they left things mostly the same.

“One of the big things that we said when we agreed to Season 6 is that we did not want to change Season 5 because we loved Season 5,” Henderson said. When the back half gets released from Season 5, when Season 5B gets released, I think people will see how much the whole season fits together like, I think, a beautiful jigsaw puzzle. I love it. We didn’t want to change the ending, but what we did is we just ended Season 5. We basically lopped off the act six that Ildy was in the middle of writing, and these stories that we sort of were speeding through anyways, we realized, in retrospect, we were sort of moving really fast on some things and summarizing moments that could actually be stories.”

He went on to explain that Season 5 still ends up where it was going to, just that now those final moments are expanded into their own season.

“Season 5 is exactly what it was always going to be, except the very, very end of it is now its own season, plus all these new ideas that we came up with as we dug into it and explored it,” he continued. “It was really important to us to make sure that Season 5 stayed its own story, and then challenge ourselves to find a new story where we didn’t think there was any. Once we found it, like Ildy said, it’s hard to imagine not telling it.”

While fans will have to wait a little bit to see exactly where Season 5 leaves off — the first eight episodes of Season 5 dropped on Netflix last week while the remaining eight will be released later — one thing we do know about the stories of Season 6 is that there will be a Black Lives Matter episode. Modrovich previously told ET that, as a police show, they wanted to address the movement and systemic issues of the police department.

“When we got back to the [writers] room, we started looking at the fact that we’re a cop show and in what ways we have contributed or not addressed the systemic issues of the police department,” Modrovich said. “And we decided we wanted to speak to it. So, we’re actually doing a story that speaks directly to it, and we’re super excited about it.”

The first half of Lucifer Season 5 is now streaming on Netflix.

Have you seen the first half of Lucifer Season 5? What did you think? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section!