"Princess Tiabeanie...You are hereby cursed, from the deepest depths of the underworld!"
Luci is the deuteragonist in Disenchantment. He lives in Dreamland, is Princess Bean's "personal demon", and is the owner and bartender at Luci's Inferno.
Luci is a demon from Hell who has been magically summoned by the Enchantress and Emperor Cloyd of Maru to act as their "emissary". He is presented to Bean in the form of a wedding gift.
Name
The name Luci is evocative of Lucifer, meaning "light-bearer" which is one of the name's associated with the Devil. Whilst an apparent contraction of Lucifer, the name Luci could derive from Lucius, which itself comes from the Latin lux meaning "light". His name is ambiguous and paradoxical much like Satan's: it is perhaps a nod to his shadow-like visage, or his role in guiding Bean to her destiny.
In Swamp and Circumstance, Elfo refers to Luci as "Lucille". It is unclear why this is, as at no other time does Luci or anyone else refer to him with this feminine name. It may have been a jab at his ambiguous gender, or a small-minded way to undermine him due to jealousy of his easy friendship with Bean.
Appearance
Luci looks similar to a shadow, though it is shown that he can cast a shadow of his own, which seems to mirror the direction he is facing. Like many demons, he has a spear-head tail. However, when compared to the demons released in The Princess of Darkness, which all have wings instead of limbs, Luci has arms and legs. Luci's figure has very little form or depth, and is accompanied with a large singular eye (that is shown), horns on his head, and fangs. His form often causes people to confuse him for a cat. While he, Bean, and Elfo are in Hell, he is temporarily changed to a Level 2 demon (bigger and with wings) and then into a Level 4 (even bigger and with larger wings).
Morphology
Being a demon, Luci doesn't have a biological form. As such, there is no way of knowing whether his smoking, drinking or drug taking has any effect on his "health". Being an infernal creature, drugs may not harm him, although they clearly have an effect on him. Luci is immune to fire, and is able to manipulate shadows at whim. His shadow abilities are shown in Castle Party Massacre, when he makes out with a girls shadow, but not the girl herself.
Behavior
His role is to guide Bean towards her destiny which he does by generally encouraging her towards mischief and leading her astray. His actions are usually subtle, sometimes seemingly trivial and often significantly advance the plot. It is unclear whether he knows precisely in what way to guide Bean, but it is clear that he expresses no personal agenda throughout season 1. It is possible that the mischief-making antics of demons act as a catalyst for destiny, which is why the Maruvians chose to use him for such purposes.
In season 2 we are shown more of Luci's character, and we learn that he very genuinely cares about Bean and Elfo. Throughout season 1, many are lead to believe that Luci is only acting as a puppet for Cloyd and Becky, or that since he is a demon, he is purely evil and not capable of love or compassion. In the episode Stairway to Hell, Luci and Bean travel to Hell in order to try and find Elfo. When they arrive, Bean and Luci then travel to the Infernal Stronghold to find the Book of the Dead so they can pinpoint Elfo's location. While in the Stronghold, the pair are confronted by Asmodium, Lord of Darkness, who is also Luci's superior. Luci then exposes Bean as a human and tells Asmodium that he got "a dumb elf" to come down from heaven. Impressed, Asmodium promotes Luci to "demon level two", which causes Luci to grow slightly bigger and earn his wings. Bean is dragged away appalled, realizing Luci's sinister plan all along. However, Luci later then breaks Bean and Elfo out of their bonds and attempts to fly them out of Hell. They are confronted by Asmodium again, and Luci drops Elfo and Bean to fall into a river of lava. Asmodium then promotes him to “uber-demon level four”, which causes Luci to grow larger. Luci then again betrays his boss and kicks Asmodium into a cliffside. Asmodium warns Luci “Leave now and you’ll lose your powers, your immortality, your parking space, everything!”. Luci responds with “It’s a price I’m willing to pay!”. He then swoops down and catches Bean and Elfo, exiting hell through a volcano, Luci shrinking and losing his wings once they reach the surface. In the next episode ‘The Very Thing’, when the trio is rowing back to Dreamland, Elfo expresses indignation at the fact that Bean chose to save her mother over him. Luci, upset with the fact that Elfo was not appreciating their sacrifice, angrily exclaims “I gave up so much for you…” but then sulks and says “...I gave up a lot.” Ending on a more somber note.
Agent of Chaos
Luci's behavior is chaotic and seemingly random in places, yet in others it is pivotal to moving the plot forward. Luci's actions vary from encouraging worse-than-normal behavior and actively disrupting events to being helpful in a crisis. Even though he is meant to steer Bean's destiny, he does so by influencing the actions of Zog and Elfo. For example:
Getting Bean drunk before her wedding in S1E01 results in her being free to pursue her own destiny, free from that which had been determined by Zog.
pivotal; without it, she would have married Guysbert and moved to Bentwood, and the story as we know it would not have occurred.
bizarrely; encouraging Bean to take the "easy way out" in S01E02, as well as hatching murder plans to kill Merkimer.
Luci's influence corrupts Elfo who encourages Merkimer to drink his (Elfo's) impure (half-elf) blood and thus turn into a pig.
Getting Bean intoxicated in S01E6 and soon afterwards encouraging her to hang upside-down from a chandelier thus insulting the Dankmirians.
Leading Bean to a sleep-deprived day of snake root intoxication resulting in the desecration of the family crypt in S01E03.
He is discovered to be the cause of her behavior and summarily exorcised.
pivotal; it allows Bean to unfreeze her mother, Queen Dagmar, and to begin to learn about her destiny, which was Luci's purpose.
Re-acquires the crystal ball from Tess and, after replacing it, discovers the truth about Dagmar in S01E10.
Important for Zog (and by extension, the audience) to realize Dagmar's true nature - not so perfect after all - at least from his perspective.
Friend to Bean
Despite his chaotic nature, he is also shown to be a loyal friend to Bean, as seen when he comforts her in times of pain, fights beside her, and even saves her life on one occasion.
Intoxication
Luci frequently imbibes drugs. He is seen smoking (Twinkletown Gigglebud / Dreamland Ditchweed) and drinking (beer and wine), as well as partaking in "Bliss" in Love's Tender Rampage. His claim to be "pretty high" at the end of Castle Party Massacre and his hallucinations whilst on Bliss indicate that drugs have an effect on him.
The Exorcist(1973): Bean's possession by Luci and revolving head are references to this classic supernatural horror movie. (S01E03)
Lucifer: the name given to the planet Venus when it was still the "morning star" (heralding the break of day) and linked, somewhat confusingly, to Satan in Christian, Jewish and Islamic theology. (Consult the wiki for more detail.)
How to Train Your Dragon franchise (2010-2019): While not a direct reference, the running joke of Luci being mistaken for a cat by others (more notably Zog) and at one point sleeps like a cat is similar to the cat-like behaviours of some of the dragon characters (particularly Toothless) in the franchise.
Trivia
He likes to ride people's back like horses.
Human girls find him attractive. They think he is ugly-sexy.
He once went on a date with Stacianne LeBlatt, which he ended up regretting.
Luci once said he isn't comfortable in churches: although he had no physical reaction to it, perhaps being a demon alters just his state of mind.
Luci is not pure evil: he starts off more sinister, but mellows out after getting down with the Twinkletown Gigglebud. He also becomes more caring as the series progresses.
Luci's sole purpose is to steer Bean towards the darkness. Once he has wrecked her wedding, meaning she doesn't relocate to Bentwood (which was where she would have ended up moving to) he had pretty much served this purpose. It isn't until later on when he accidentally discovers the record-keeping nature of the crystal ball that he becomes useful again.
Luci makes a cameo appearance in a vision in Matt Groening's hit show The Simpsons, during the episode Treehouse of Horror XXIX.
Luci, though constantly deprecating others, particularly Elfo, does seem have a good side, though he refuses to ever give in to it, he saves Bean from fire during an exorcism, and feels genuinely sad during Elfo's funeral
He appears to be a good tracker as he is accurately able to deduce that Elfo ran into a tree, cried, stubbed his toe on a rock, stomped away and got his shoe stolen by a demented squirrel - the last being ironically based on the fact a demented squirrel stood nearby holding Elfo's shoe in his mouth.
Quotes
"You know that little voice in your head that tells you to do the right thing? I'm the guy yelling over it. Yeah. I'm the guy that makes you feel good about doing bad things"
"Do it! Do-it-do-it-do-it!"
"I'm here to get rid of all the things plaguing mankind and replace them with worse ones."
"I'm gonna drink flaming grog from a baby's skull!"
"Shut up! Silenzio! First up: not a ghost. Ghosts are losers that got murdered. I am a demon."
"Yeah! Work those scrawny nerd arms! Jiggle that demon back to Hell! Noice!"
Hey, I'm still naked! I'm naked all the time, and you just didn't know! And now you can never UN-know!"
