Lucifer recap: 'My Brother's Keeper'

Brothers. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t kill ‘em without risking an eternal curse.

Several of our favorite Lucifer characters struggle with fraught family bonds this week, starting with Lucifer, who realizes the key to ending Pierce’s immortality may be removing the mark of Cain on his arm. (Pierce prefers to keep it covered up and gets it re-tattooed every few months as his body heals, which…ouch!)

Lucifer turns to his big brother for help, but Amenadiel refuses, arguing that God put the curse there for a reason. Lucifer delivers the bad news to Pierce, grumbling about how lucky Pierce is that he got to kill his brother, which is mad insensitive, even by Lucifer standards.

Ella’s having brother trouble, too. She can’t reach Jay, the oldest of the Lopez clan and Ella’s role model, so she asks Maze to use her bounty hunter skills to track him down. Maze calls her “Ellen” and won’t agree until Ella offers to pay.

Once she’s on the case, Maze tracks Jay to the home of a diamond dealer, which makes sense because Jay’s a diamond authenticator. Then Ella gets the scare of her life when she spots a body on the floor, but it turns out to be the dealer. Bad news, though; that means Jay’s a murder suspect.

When the police arrive, Lucifer has plenty to say about older brothers who stand on pedestals talking down to you and refusing to help you kill someone, while Ella works the crime scene and concludes that the shooter was a leftie, which clears her right-handed brother.

Chloe orders Ella away from the investigation and then links the serial number etched into a diamond recovered at the scene to a local jewelry store that recently reported a robbery. (Lucifer quips that he usually has crude drawings etched into his gems, and Chloe gives him an A+ irritated brush-off.)

At the store, Chloe tells the clerk that she and Lucifer are engagement ring shopping and trots out every ounce of diamond snobbery she picked up from Real Housewives episodes. Lucifer’s just fine with her affectionately petting him but takes offense when she calls him cheap and shows the clerk the crime scene diamond as proof.

Her plan to rattle the guilty party with the allegedly stolen diamond works, and the culprit reveals herself as store owner Tiffany James, who swoops Chloe and Lucifer into her private office for a chat.

Once there, Chloe turns away to reprimand Lucifer for letting his brotherly spat interfere with the case. Ironically, her distraction would’ve given Tiffany the perfect opportunity to pull a gun on them both.

Thankfully, Tiffany’s villainy doesn’t extend that far, and when Lucifer hits her with the “what do you desire” whammy, she announces that she wants to punch every Millennial in the face for ruining the diamond industry with their ethics. (Poor Millennials!) Furthermore, the theft was an insurance scam, with the diamond dealer planning to sell them back to Tiffany after she’d gotten her payout and he’d had the diamonds cleaned and new serial numbers applied.

So Chloe talks to Tiffany’s insurance investigator, Don Zeikel, a stylishly dressed former cop who confirms that a diamond authenticator would be able to clean the diamonds. When he asks if any authenticators are involved, Chloe covers for Jay and says they don’t know of anyone.

Meanwhile, odd couple Maze and Ella have tracked Jay to a sketchy hotel in a sketchy neighborhood, where some combination of Maze’s menace and Ella’s earnest familial loyalty convince the sketchy clerk to point them to Jay’s room.

On the way there, the pair have an amazing cross-conversation about families: Maze says she has thousands and thousands of siblings who tortured her, and Ella agrees that it sure can feel like that sometimes, but of course, it’s nice knowing they always have your back. Maze’s expression suggests she doesn’t know that particular feeling.

When Ella picks the lock, they’re greeted by Jay swinging a baseball bat, which Maze quickly turns around on him. Once everybody calms down, Jay says he was hired to authenticate the diamonds, he didn’t know they were stolen, and he was in the bathroom when somebody came in and shot the dealer.

Then Chloe calls Ella to ask if she’s found Jay yet. Ella says no, which Chloe and Lucifer immediately recognize as a lie, and Dan and Lucifer suggest spots where Ella might take her murder suspect brother: strip club, comic con, forensics convention, strip club again. (Guess which ones Lucifer contributed!) But Chloe says no, Ella would take him to the scene of the crime.

And that’s exactly what she does. Jay tells her the shooter was wearing a black ski mask and red wingtip shoes, but Ella realizes the positioning of the bathroom door means Jay couldn’t have seen the killer from inside. Maze provides an alternate explanation by punching through the wall to reveal a stash room full of laser engraving equipment to etch new serial numbers on diamonds.

Chloe and Lucifer show up in time to hear Jay break Ella’s heart by telling her he was cleaning the diamonds, although he swears it was a one-time thing. Then he grabs a gun and holds it on Chloe, and Ella steps between the two, allowing Jay to escape.

Ella then gets another disappointment when Maze gets ready to bounce, having successfully located Jay. Ella is confused that Maze is leaving after the connection they forged, but Maze says she isn’t interested in helping Ella’s murderous brother who just pulled a gun on them. Ella insists that family members help each other. Uncomfortable, Maze storms out. (Next page: Pierce and Amenadiel talk with their fists.)

When Chloe and Lucifer arrive, Ella’s in despair over everything she knows about Jay turning out to be a lie. Chloe suggests that Jay could’ve seen the actual murderer on the stash room monitor, and Ella’s comment about the killer’s red wingtips trips Chloe’s memory.

Then we cut Jay holding a gun on the fancily dressed insurance investigator, Don, who quickly disarms him and announces that Jay is now his personal diamond cleaner. Ella, who’s been instructed to wait outside of Don’s hotel while Chloe makes the arrest, spots them when Don frog-marches Jay out.

“Get the hell out of here, crazy woman who I don’t know!” Jay shouts, but Ella refuses to back down. Don confesses that he wrote the bogus claims and split the insurance money. He’s about to shoot Ella when one of Maze’s knives thuds into his chest, dropping him. Maze is gone before Ella can react.

Afterward, Ella tries to convince Chloe that the weapon just appeared out of thin air, but Chloe cuts her off. “Ella, I know it was Maze. She’s my roommate. I recognize the knife.” Ha! Lucifer looks on enviously as Ella and Jay hug, then tells Chloe that she did well. “I’m sure if you had a brother, he would be very proud of you.” And as for the stolen diamonds? Chloe’s sure they’ll turn up.

And they do just that when Jay sneaks into the diamond dealer’s place to retrieve them. Lucifer’s waiting there, and Jay babbles an explanation about starting his life of crime because his family relied on him to bail his brother out of jail and pay for abuela’s surgery and so forth.

Lucifer is distinctly unimpressed that Jay makes himself look better than he actually is and tells “evil Lopez” that Ella should never, ever have a reason to lose faith in her brother. “If you ever disappoint her again, I’ll come for you,” Lucifer promises. Awww, Lucifer wins this week’s award for best/scariest brother/brother surrogate!

Hookay, now to two big brothers with big chips on their shoulders: Amenadiel is sulking at Lux when Pierce strolls up to tell Amenadiel that he’s visited everywhere, eaten all the food, had all the sex, listened to all the music, and lost all the people he loved. “It’s been a literal hell on Earth,” he says, arguing that his punishment doesn’t fit the crime.

And then we learn that Amenadiel’s the one who branded Pierce with the Mark of Cain at God’s orders. Amenadiel argues that God had His reasons, although the slight hitch in his voice makes you wonder how sure he is about that. Pierce isn’t interested in excuses and pulls his gun, threatening to shoot an innocent club-goer if Amenadiel doesn’t help. (He plans to start with the guy wearing a scarf inside because “no one will miss him.”) Amenadiel backs down first, shouting that he has no idea how to remove the mark.

In the end, they’re both exhausted, and Pierce has an entire broken liquor bottle jutting from his abdomen. Amenadiel finishes the fight by tossing Pierce onto a set of wrought iron spikes, telling him to accept the punishment he deserves.

“Yeah, notice anyone else in here who plotted to kill his own brother?” Pierce taunts. He says the only difference between the two of them is that Amenadiel failed and pawned the task off on somebody else, and Amenadiel looks stunned when he realizes this is what Pierce was after all along.

Lucifer returns to find his club wrecked, and Amenadiel fills him in on the Pierce developments. Lucifer’s grateful for Amenadiel’s concern that he’s going against God’s will but says he’s going to keep trying to break the curse.

“Well, brother, then I guess I’ll be in your way,” Amenadiel warns, leaving Lucifer to clean up the mess.

Stray feathers