Fox debuted a series unlike anything else on television back in early 2016 with Lucifer. Tom Ellis stars as the Devil himself in the show that is part police procedural, part fantasy adventure, and part dramedy. Lucifer is set in Los Angeles, where Lucifer assists with LAPD investigations. The series filmed its first two seasons in Vancouver, but Season 3 will take the whole crew down to sunny L.A. on a permanent basis.
Despite being set in Los Angeles, the show has actually only filmed one full episode in California. After shooting the pilot in L.A., the entire production moved up north to Canada. The move is undoubtedly good news for set designers who won't have to try and find new ways to make Vancouver look like L.A., but Fox isn't sending Lucifer south for the weather. In fact, the move to L.A. is all about the taxes.
Lucifer was one of several shows submitted to the California Film Commission in its latest round of TV project applications, in which relocating series have an edge over series already filming in California. The application window for the tax credit that would give Lucifer the money to film in L.A. ran from February 10-17, and it's probably not a coincidence that Fox gave the official order for Lucifer Season 3 on February 13. Luckily for the network, that pesky lawsuit doesn't seem to have set back the application process at all.
Although the move from Vancouver to Los Angeles has not yet been confirmed by either Fox or the California Film Commission, Deadline reports that Lucifer will be announced as one of the TV projects that has been approved to receive tax credits in the next season. Announcements from the California Film Commission are set to come down during the week of March 20, so we need only to wait a couple more weeks for official confirmation.
Lucifer is the only drama that Fox renewed during the application window, but freshman series Lethal Weapon landed the order for Season 2 shortly after the window closed. Lethal Weapon actually already films in Los Angeles, but the show does not currently receive a tax credit. It's possible that Fox submitted a tax credit application for Lethal Weapon as well as Lucifer; considering that priority seems to be given to relocating projects, however, the odds of a tax credit for Lethal Weapon may be considerably lower than the odds were for Lucifer.
We'll have to wait and see. Lucifer has drawn reasonably consistent ratings for Fox, so it wasn't a huge surprise that it scored the renewal order even before news broke of the tax credit. Unfortunately for fans, Lucifer is currently on hiatus until its spring premiere on Monday, May 1 at 9 p.m. ET. Take a look at our midseason TV premiere schedule to see everything you can watch on the small screen in the meantime.
