Tom Ellis has been saying for months that won’t be appearing in The CW’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” the ambitious crossover event which connects its DC shows, despite him being spotted on the set in looking most Lucifer-like in October. Following this week’s episode of The Flash, Ellis can finally admit he was lying.
“So yes, he is in the crossover,” he said of his character in an interview with ET. “When I went to go and shoot the scene, we were talking on set beforehand, myself and Matt Ryan, and we were like, ‘This is so exciting. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could keep this a secret for the fans until they actually see it onscreen that night?’ Of course, these days that’s not that possible with social media at all. I think there were a few people hanging around the set who noticed that I was there and put stuff out that I was going to be in it, so I kind of was like, ‘I would still really like to surprise some people.'”
The official story Ellis put out there was that he was visiting Vancouver for a friend’s birthday, which was technically true. “I was actually genuinely there for my friend’s birthday… I was just economical with the truth,” he said, adding that the opportunity to return to Vancouver, where the first two seasons of supernatural detective drama Lucifer were filmed, was too good to pass up.
“It was an opportunity to go back, see some friends and do all that sort of stuff. Also on the work side of it, we talked over the years about Lucifer being a DC character and, ‘Is there any chance of this happening?’ And I honestly thought there wasn’t… I know Matt a little bit as well and we’ve talked about it in the past, so we made it happen! Indeed, we manifested it!”
He also explained that the version of Lucifer encountered by Constantine and co. in the brief scene is a far cry from where the character is at now, on the verge of the show’s fifth and final season: it takes place in the past.
“We’re playing it as if it’s in the five years before the show, Lucifer, started, so when Lucifer spent five years in L.A. before meeting the detective and all those things unfolding,” he said. “This is him in his proper playboy, don’t-give-a-damn-about-anything stage in his life. He is very irreverent with our characters when they turn up in the scene and obviously, with Constantine, there is some history there.”
With Lucifer primed to end after season five, Ellis’ cameo in the “Arrowverse” will be most pleasing to fans of the show, as it leaves the door open for future appearances on any one of The CW’s comic book series. After all, you can’t keep the Devil down.