"Erase that mark if you like."
I was thinking about 
selenak's post from some years back about Lucifer, and her comment that Lucifer himself is an essentially static character who is not touched or altered by anything that has happened to him throughout the course of the story. And to a certain extent, I agree; the final issue of Lucifer can be read as Lucifer stripping himself of everything but his defining characteristics, those things that make him his own person. But I have also read this fairly compelling counterargument that Lucifer does achieve a kind of peace with himself by the end of the series:
[In the last issue] Yahweh tried to make a the final bargain appealing - as if it were the only thing left to do between a father / creator and his son. He said: “If you agree, you would be The Maker, and you would be perfect again. Unfallen. Unscarred by experience.“
A statement that jarred Lucifer into his final realisation. “Unscarred? You teach me, father, the difference between knowledge and understanding. This face is mine. This scar - is mine. You may not have them, not without my permission. My answer is no.“
He finally achieves liberation from his Father / Creator. He made a choice to disengage. Not as an act of rebellion against his father but as an act of acceptance of himself - everything that he was and is, scars and all.
I say a "kind" of peace with himself, because this limited form of liberation might not be what Lucifer ultimately wants, but we've already established over and over that what Lucifer wants is not within the realm of possibility, and this is closest to freedom he will ever get, and I think he is okay with that.
What I love about this interpretation is that it places Mazikeen soundly in the role of the catalyst. Lucifer's answer to Yahweh echoes the final argument between him and Mazikeen (their parting scene), where he announces his intention to let "everything...fall from [him] like sloughed skin". Mazikeen's reply:
“You think that walking away from your life makes you free, my Lord? That you can be born again so easily? You’re wrong, you will remember my love. Erase that mark if you like, but you prove yourself coward if you do. Coward and liar. The past made us, Lucifer. It continues to make us. Travelling light doesn’t change your origin. Or your destination.”
So the ending of the comic leaves us with Lucifer, stripped of his powers, flying into the emptiness with just his wings, leaving all of Yahweh's creation behind; and yet he carries with him the scar that Mazikeen gave him, as an acknowledge of what he has been through - the acknowledge that his experiences are what ultimately define him as an individual, separate from Yahweh. It's an awareness and a realisation that doesn't change his final decision to leave everyone and everything, but that scar, that imperfection, he keeps with him, a symbol of the irony and the paradox of that ending: of him, holding on, even whilst letting go.
This entry was originally posted at http://the-grynne.dreamwidth.org/938366.html and has
comments.
selenak's post from some years back about Lucifer, and her comment that Lucifer himself is an essentially static character who is not touched or altered by anything that has happened to him throughout the course of the story. And to a certain extent, I agree; the final issue of Lucifer can be read as Lucifer stripping himself of everything but his defining characteristics, those things that make him his own person. But I have also read this fairly compelling counterargument that Lucifer does achieve a kind of peace with himself by the end of the series:
[In the last issue] Yahweh tried to make a the final bargain appealing - as if it were the only thing left to do between a father / creator and his son. He said: “If you agree, you would be The Maker, and you would be perfect again. Unfallen. Unscarred by experience.“
A statement that jarred Lucifer into his final realisation. “Unscarred? You teach me, father, the difference between knowledge and understanding. This face is mine. This scar - is mine. You may not have them, not without my permission. My answer is no.“
He finally achieves liberation from his Father / Creator. He made a choice to disengage. Not as an act of rebellion against his father but as an act of acceptance of himself - everything that he was and is, scars and all.
I say a "kind" of peace with himself, because this limited form of liberation might not be what Lucifer ultimately wants, but we've already established over and over that what Lucifer wants is not within the realm of possibility, and this is closest to freedom he will ever get, and I think he is okay with that.
What I love about this interpretation is that it places Mazikeen soundly in the role of the catalyst. Lucifer's answer to Yahweh echoes the final argument between him and Mazikeen (their parting scene), where he announces his intention to let "everything...fall from [him] like sloughed skin". Mazikeen's reply:
“You think that walking away from your life makes you free, my Lord? That you can be born again so easily? You’re wrong, you will remember my love. Erase that mark if you like, but you prove yourself coward if you do. Coward and liar. The past made us, Lucifer. It continues to make us. Travelling light doesn’t change your origin. Or your destination.”
So the ending of the comic leaves us with Lucifer, stripped of his powers, flying into the emptiness with just his wings, leaving all of Yahweh's creation behind; and yet he carries with him the scar that Mazikeen gave him, as an acknowledge of what he has been through - the acknowledge that his experiences are what ultimately define him as an individual, separate from Yahweh. It's an awareness and a realisation that doesn't change his final decision to leave everyone and everything, but that scar, that imperfection, he keeps with him, a symbol of the irony and the paradox of that ending: of him, holding on, even whilst letting go.
This entry was originally posted at http://the-grynne.dreamwidth.org/938366.html and has
comments.