Lucifer season 6 spoilers: Was the series ending fate or free will?

Lucifer season 6 took maybe all of five minutes to bring to mind a quote from another beloved series: “In the end, we all are who we are, no matter how much we may appear to have changed.” (In case you don’t know that one like the back of your hand like the nerd currently writing this does, it’s from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)

The season started off with both halves of the Deckerstar whole avoiding what they thought was the inevitable: He was going to be God, and she was going to be his partner. That was the whole point of the epic battle at the end of Season 5B…right?

But it wasn’t that simple. Because nothing ever is. Chloe stepped down from the LAPD, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from becoming involved in a murder investigation in episode 1. The Devil, for his part, thought he wanted to become God, but he was actively avoiding actually claiming the throne.

Then, of course, came Rory with news from the future: Lucifer was just going to disappear one day. She was going to grow up without a father, and her mother wasn’t even going to get to see the love of her life again. He was just destined to be absent.

Did Lucifer ever have a choice or was his fate set in stone?

No amount of denial changed reality, and even when the Devil’s “last day” ended with him managing to stay right where he wanted to be, he still wound up running an errand to Tenth and Swanson.

That wound up being the place where he saved his daughter’s life (and kind of participated in an epic battle fit for the big screen in the process) and not the last place anyone saw him. But he still made the choice to leave.

Did he really, though? Was there ever any free will involved, whatsoever?

After all, if he truly loved Rory, how could he possibly have decided to do anything other than what she, surprisingly, needed in the end? How could she have been able to come back in time, had every single supposed decision not led her to exactly the point that she left from?

Was there ever really a choice for any of our beloved characters, or was the pull of destiny just too strong? Wasn’t Chloe Decker always meant to be a cop, not whatever she would have been had she lived her life as Luci-God’s right hand woman? Didn’t it make perfect sense that Amenadiel would have wound up leading the flock?

And wasn’t Lucifer Morningstar, the character we first met when he was avoiding his responsibilities as the King of Hell, when he was guilt-ridden and felt unworthy and lost, simply just meant to be the one to help all the lost souls like himself?

This series, from the very beginning, has raised—and never quite answered—the question of what free will really means. Right near the very end of the series finale, we get a quote that, like the one from that other show mentioned above, maybe begins to give us something resembling an answer:

"But you see, fate is just the result of the choices that you make."

Basically, it’s up to you, the viewer, to decide. It always was. You’re being told, in the same sentence, that both fate and free will are real, and what that means to you might be very different than what it means to someone else.

Maybe our hero was meant to rebel, to fall, to come to Earth where he could learn, and love, and grow…only to wind up right where he belonged because he was who he was, no matter how much he may appear to have changed.

Maybe there’s a world out there where our favorite Hot Devil just vanished one day, and Rory’s choice to travel back in time to kill her dad, only to fall for him the way we all did, caused just the tiniest ripple in the timeline. But somewhere, down the line, we were always meant to end up right here at the end.

Or were we? The absolute brilliance of Lucifer season 6 and the way everything ended is that, well…You still get to wonder, just a little.

It’s all wrapped up with a nice, little bow. Except for the parts that aren’t.

Lucifer season 6 is now streaming on Netflix.