Drabbles for winter time.

Since his first appearance, Amenadiel was introduced as a proud and duty-bound angel, who saw humankind as inferior and was determined to keep his brother Lucifer in check. His ability to slow time and his fierceness made him a force to be reckoned with, but his emotional growth was what truly set him apart.

I didn’t even like him very much at first. His holier-than-thou attitude made him completely insufferable (to me) for most of season one. The fact that the actor, D.B. Woodside, also used to play Principal Wood in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (a character I couldn’t really stand) wasn’t helping the situation. I know it’s nonsensical. One character had nothing to do with the other, but the second I saw Amenadiel, my brain went “Oh, great. Principal Wood.”

Luckily, Amenadiel’s storyline quickly evolved into what made him a truly compelling character and I was finally able not only to separate the two, but to appreciate Amenadiel as a complex, layered character. So far detached from the unidimensional devoted servant of Heaven he was at the beginning.

The moment when he stepped into a very gray area was what set in motion his path of true, emotional growth. He seemed to be the perfect warrior, but he ended up realizing he was as flawed as anybody else, and that was a great story choice.
And as the show goes on, growth becomes his biggest strength because he goes from “blindly” enforcing divine justice to learning what it really means to care about other people. Those same human beings that he used to deem inferior to divine creatures like angels.
Losing his celestial powers and his wings certainly helps with his growth in this department because he has a real brush with humanity and he’s forced to stay on earth with his brother Lucifer. This is where his relationships evolve with him, and allow him to bond with the people who are closest to his brother.
With time, their brotherhood evolves from rivalry to deep, mutual respect. His friendship with Dan turns out to be one of his most meaningful connections. And his friendship with Chloe is pivotal on many occasions—although it goes through a rough patch when she learns that Amenadiel blessed her parents so they could conceive, making her a “miracle” and (allegedly) God’s gift for Lucifer. [More on this in my entry #14 about Chloe/Lucifer]
In all this, Amenadiel has a strong moral compass and always strives to do what is right, but eventually he learns that sometimes, doing the right thing means bending the rules a little.

Amenadiel starts off as Heaven’s golden boy, but by the end of the series, he’s so much more. He’s the angel who learned to walk among us.