A working-class Latino Catholic girl trapped in a life of drudgery was hailed by nuns and priests as a miracle at her birth. She was born with stigmata-like scars on her palms that looked to have long since healed over, and ring-like scars around her neck. Her family believed that she was a sign of the Second Coming of Jesus.
But as she grew up, watched family members be deported, tried unsuccessfully to get into college, and finally settled down to a tiny apartment shared with two roommates and a minimum-wage job at a laudromat, all that got forgotten. Lucia Cardenas no longer believes there's anything special about her, and she has taken precautions to make sure no one finds out about her once-upon-a-time prophecy. People get way too riled up about that stuff. Her family, meanwhile, is no longer a problem after they disowned her for sleeping with an emotionally manipulative boyfriend out of wedlock. For now, she is deeply committed to her Catholic faith: indeed, it just might be the one meaningful thing in her life right now. But if she slips up, and someone finds out, she probably won't be able to fit in at church ever again.
So, Lucia divides her time between the laudromat and its petty politics and soul-draining work, her beloved church and its kind priest and shrewish but tolerable churchgoers, and hanging out with her two roommates, Mia Chavez and token white girl Emily Stewart. For now, life is fun, if directionless.
That all changes when sweet, charming, and gorgeous Luis Fierro walks into her life.
He's suave, charming, and yet still kind and genuine. Compliments she's never heard directed at her roll off his tongue. He's college-educated and wealthy, just like she's always wanted to be, and he plies her with both expensive gifts and fascinating conversation. Yet he's never pushy or unkind. He is the dream man all her friends are jealous of.
Oh, and he's Satan, and he's secretly gunning for her soul.
The problem (for both of them) is that she's genuinely in love with him... and it just might be requited. The newly soulless Lucia Cardenas sets out with her demonic boyfriend to cause as much chaos as possible while still keeping her secret from her community.
Except, of course, that it can't just be that simple. Even after selling her soul, Lucia finds her faith uninterrupted. If Luis finds out, God knows what will happen. But she just can't seem to stay away from church. Exactly what happened at her birth, and why do the forces of Heaven and Hell seem to be waging a war over her soul?
- Abstract Apotheosis: Satan became a being of pure evil after falling from Heaven. Lucia becomes a martyr of pure good after sacrificing herself.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Played with in that Lucia originally falls in love with Luis because he presents as the ultimate Nice Guy, but she still loves him after he reveals himself as the Devil, and his Satan-ness even becomes one of his charms to her.
- All-Loving Hero: Lucia ends up as this, after her share of Character Development.
- Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Lucia.
- Alpha Bitch: The main villainess of Lucia's life before she got mixed up in the eternal battle for humanity was Gabriela Aquinas, the spoiled, manipulative Princess of Hidalgo County. Her father's wealth mostly Fell Off the Back of a Truck heading north from Mexico, which is used against her when she runs afoul of Satan. Gabriela had no idea what she was getting into when she tried to Honey Trap Luis, the ultimate manipulator. He steals her soul, of course, but not before he gets her father murdered by the Mexican mob he works for and all her wealth taken from her by the DEA. The Archangel Gabriel, who had previously witnessed Gabriela's bitchiness firsthand (and was very upset by her having his name), actually lent Lucifer a little help in this.
- And Now You Must Marry Me: Luis' plan. Of course, as Satan he couldn't actually force her into giving up her soul, only tempt her, and he couldn't exactly marry a non-soulless woman. But persuasion, genuine kindness, sly mind games, and diamonds go a long way.
- Archangel Gabriel: The first of the angels (besides Lucifer) to show up. Accidentally. Accident-prone and clumsy, but otherwise brilliant: he has Deadpan Snarker tendencies, is good at talking his way out of a fight, and is often the one to come up with the mysterious ways (a.k.a zany schemes) for Heaven to achieve its ends. He's also the fastest flier of the angels.
- Archangel Michael: In this work, Satan's identical twin. Obviously, their personalities are very different, as Michael is a first-class stoic and hardass with a stick up his butt, and Satan is... Satan. Out of all the angels, he probably hates Lucifer the most, partly because the success of Lucifer's big rebellion was predicated on pretending to be Michael, which almost got Michael kicked out of Heaven instead.
- Archangel Raphael: The youngest of the angels, an innocent, infuriatingly pure Pretty Boy whose only fault is his penchant for healing people willy-nilly without regard to whether they should be healed. Luckily for him, God is currently out of the way, so he can do this as much as he wants.
- Archangel Uriel: The only really decent angel. Uriel was always the Butt-Monkey of the family, even more so than Lucifer (who was more feared). Most people don't even remember his name. After Satan fell from grace, Uriel got saddled with his job: he had to cause all necessary deaths, choose who went to Hell or Heaven, bring bad weather, lead people to sin (or convince Lucifer to) when a sin needed to happen, create illnesses and suffering, bring divine retribution, and generally be the bad guy. However, millennia of being the brunt of people's jokes, being forgotten, and simulatenously seeing humanity at its worst and best took a serious effort to survive without falling from grace, and Uriel lived up to the challenge. He developed a massive capacity for patience, humility and wisdom, which eventually led him to a small parish where he (secretly) became a preacher in his free time. Upon seeing that Lucia was changing Luis from the better - not to mention finding out about the unfortunate happenings in Heaven - he joined the main characters and served as their conscience, while trying to convince the angels to let Lucia go.
- The Armies of Heaven: Show up at the end, in a big way, to carry out their (very) misguided plan.
- Attention Whore: Luis, all the way through.
- Babysitter from Hell: Luis is a rare literal example. When entrusted with taking care of a baby (due to a chain of events no one could forsee), he proceeds to feed it a mixture of vodka and his own blood, teach it to say "damn" and "slut," and sit it down in front of a TV playing an extremely violent and near-pornographic movie. (Luckily, the baby is much too young to understand what any of this means.) True to form, he draws way too much amusement from doing exactly the opposite of what he's supposed to be doing.
- Badass Preacher: Uriel. He is, after all, the Angel of Death.
- Beautiful All Along: Lucia. For the longest time she generally neglected and sometimes even sabotaged her appearance. Once she marries Luis, she starts taking care of herself - and jaws drop. (Of course, part of this - though not all of it, mind - is that the soulless naturally inspire lust.)
- Big Beautiful Woman: Juanita, who runs the laundromat, is this. Men have been throwing themselves at her since she hit puberty - and she has never once accepted, being the only Old Maid in the cast.
- Blasphemous Boast: Luis is fond of these, usually just to mess with his brothers.
- Brainy Brunette: Mia Chavez.
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Sofia Diaz, Valentina's daughter, fits this trope to a T.
- Break the Haughty: Luis goes through this as he first realizes he's actually in love, then realizes the woman he's in love with is the Messiah, then realizes she's going to be murdered, then watches her take a bullet for him, unable to do a thing, and finally finds out she's going to Heaven, and he will never see her again.
- …But He Sounds Handsome: Most of the characters, being Catholic, occasionally talk about the Devil in a religious context. Luis simply can't restrain himself from making disturbingly complimentary comments about him.
- The Caper: The soulless Lucia and Luis plan a bank robbery at one point - which is ruined when Lucia goes to confession and backs out.
- Captured Super-Entity: Things get awkward when Lucia comes home to find Luis gleefully torturing a tied-up Angel Gabriel.
- The Casanova: Luis is definitely this. Almost every night he ends up with at least one beautiful woman. Subverted in that he never sleeps with them, being much more interested in their souls.
- Celestial Paragons and Archangels: They begin to show up more and more as the series goes on, building towards The Reveal and eventual Downer Ending.
- Challenge Seeker: Lucifer enjoys stealing the souls of good people more than bad, which is one of the reasons he originally comes after Lucia.
- Character Development: Lucia, over the course of the story, goes from a cynical, slightly cowardly Action Survivor just trying to make it from day to day, through a straight-out Fallen Hero phase, and eventually comes out the other side as a selfless, wise All-Loving Hero.
- The Chase: When Luis finally goes too far messing with his (former) brothers' heads, the archangels spend a whole arc trying to hunt him down. Lucia, of course, ends up caught in the middle.
- Chivalrous Pervert: Luis, to an extent. He views forcing people into sin, rather than tempting them, as a violation of his role as Satan - and also a lot less fun. Thus, rape is out of the question for him.
- Claimed by the Supernatural: Lucia's scars mark her as chosen by Heaven. When she sells her soul, they turn from faded-white to livid red.
- Collector of the Strange: Luis collects souls.
- The Con: Luis convinces Lucia to cheat the rude, wealthy woman trying to buy the laudromat amd turn it into a fancy spa - which would result in Lucia losing her job - out of all her money.
- Consummate Liar: Luis.
- Contract on the Hitman: Luis' job as an angel was to be the "prosecutor" of humanity, and thus to do all the dirty work no one wanted to be associated with Heaven. Finally Heaven decided to finish up and usher in the Messianic Age, which naturally meant getting rid of the angel who knew how to do nothing else than kill, torture, and generally cause havoc. Luis disagreed with this plan. Strongly.
- Cool Old Lady: Juanita.
- Cowardly Lion: Lucia is this for much of the story: she's exactly the opposite of brave, but goes in with her sleeves rolled up. Only in the final battle does she at last outgrow this.
- Crisis of Faith: Lucia has an ongoing one after she loses her soul. Eventually resolved when she catches a bullet (well, a shaft of holy light) for Luis in order to prove that he is worth saving, and ends up in Heaven.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Uriel.
- Cute Clumsy Girl: Emily.
- The Day of Reckoning: When Heaven finally realizes that Lucia is in love with Satan and cannot be recovered, one of these happens. It ends with Lucia dead, and a miserable Luis slinking back to Hell with a doubly bitter attitude towards... everyone, really.
- Daytime Drama Queen: The characters, especially the women at the laundromat, are really, really into their telenovelas. Luis once threatened to strangle a cable guy with his own intestines after the TV went out in the middle of "La Corrupcion De Corazon."
- Deal with the Devil: The whole plot.
- Deconstructed Character Archetype: The Messianic Archetype. No one can be good enough to be the Messiah. They will always either go astray, rebel, get themselves killed or burn out.
- Defecting for Love: Lucia defects to the side of Hell after falling in love with Lucifer. Lucifer comes tantalizingly close to defecting to the side of Heaven for love of Lucia.
- Dirty Business: Everyone in Heaven considers the Angel of Death job to be this. Luis is excepted, because he spent so long in the job (and, of course, subsequently became a Fallen Angel) that he barely knows the difference.
- Doomed Moral Victor: Lucia dies at the end, just like the original Jesus.
- Drama Queen: Luis has shades of this.
- Gabriela Aquinas.
- Sofia Diaz, Valentina's daughter.
- Dumb Blonde: Emily Stewart, all the way through.
- Earthy Barefoot Character: A hippie shows up like this to have his clothes laundered at the laundromat. Unfortunately, he has a laundry list of criteria for exactly how they need to be washed. The women at the laundromat spend an entire episode trying to accommodate him... and they do so well, he decides to make that laundromat his regular one.
- Education Mama: Mia Chavez becomes this to her daughter, pushing all the dreams she lost on the little girl. It's the source of a lot of drama.
- Empire with a Dark Secret: Heaven turns out to be this when it's revealed that Lucia is far from the first "Second Coming of Jesus," and Heaven keeps killing them off (by turning the local civilization against them) after sending them to Earth, because they keep going rogue.
- Empty Shell: Lucia at first appears to be this after she sells her soul. She loses all drive and becomes socially nonfunctional, and aside from her love of Luis, she appears to have no emotions whatsoever. It turns out that she is merely in what is analogous to a state of extreme depression, and manages to function, even retaining her ability to pray. Apparently, being soulless is supposed to be akin to being drunk, with dramatically lowered inhibitions and sometimes even mania. Lucia's unusual reaction makes Luis very worried about her - not that he'd ever say so.
- Enemy Mine: When he realizes that Heaven is going to kill Lucia, Uriel agrees to team up with Satan & Co. to protect her, believing that not only can she be salvaged, but she might be their best chance in millennia of bringing Lucifer back to the fold.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: This is true even for Lucifer himself, as the angels find out the hard way when they kill off said loved one.
- Everyone Loves Blondes: Plenty of guys hit on Emily, the resident Brainless Beauty. Only to realize that she's too phenomenally dumb even for guys who like dumb girls. One Guy of the Week is warned by Camilla Espinosa about this, but he brushes her off with a laugh and a "Good, that's what girls are for." He subsequently watches as she cooks him eggplant cinnamon oatmeal (and burns it), washes a red wool sweater with a white lace top, is unable to wear the shoes he bought her because she can't tie them, and displays a lack of understanding of how to properly use a toilet. He drops her off at work the following morning looking frazzled, and sprints in the opposite direction, never to be seen again.
- Evil Costume Switch / Evil Wears Black: After losing her soul (not to mention coming into quite a bit more money), Lucia exchanges her tank tops, jeans and sweatpants for a Little Black Dress.
- The Face: Lucia.
- Face Your Fears: Lucia's worst fear is letting people down. It's why she stays away from deep friendships, why she wants a relationship where she's taken care of, why she views her rape as her greatest failure, and why she doesn't want anyone to know about her "prophecy." In the end, however, she must face up to the idea of letting absolutely everyone down. She must betray Luis by accepting who she really is, betray her God by saving the Devil, and be denounced as an agent of the Devil by her friends and family - all to break the two-thousand-year-old vicious cycle and force Heaven to realize their mistakes. Only by letting down everyone she cares about can she do the right thing. Doing it lands her in Heaven.
- Fallen Hero: Zigzagged with Lucia. She goes from faithful and hardworking to soulless and apathetic, but still retains bits and pieces of her former self, and spends the rest of the story trying to decide her allegiances. Ultimately subverted, as she gives her life to prove that Satan is still redeemable, and ends up in Heaven for the effort. Played straight with Lucifer.
- The Fashionista: Gabriela Aquinas.
- After they marry, Luis tries to get Lucia to be this, constantly buying her new dresses, furs, Prada shoes - anything that takes his fancy. Lucia, however, is not only very dispirited at the time, but was a bit of an Empty Shell even before that. She does dress better, and takes care of herself more (beginning to wear makeup and jewelry and style her hair, which she never did before), but Luis still worries.
- Finding Judas: Turns out that Lucia's wise, kindly priest is actually the Archangel Uriel, or the Angel of Death (who took over Luis' job when he fell from grace). However, he's the best of the angels, as he is trying to stop Heaven from killing Lucia for her "betrayal," and furthermore, trying to get Luis to come back to the side of the light. He's even willing to stay the Angel of Death, the job no one wants, afterwards.
- Fish out of Water: The angels are decidedly this when they first show up. Not only have they not been on Earth in thousands of years, but they are largely incapable of understanding sin, much less committing it... which leads them to stick out like a sore thumb in the human world.
- Frame-Up: Part of Lucifer's original plan was impersonating his twin Michael to get close to God.
- Freudian Excuse: Lucifer has one, sort of. He was the one who started out with the Angel of Death job, meaning that he never really experienced morality the same way that anyone else did. To him, morality was always the excuse for making him do awful things. Yet the fact that he was the scapegoat since the beginning of time means that he never developed the perspective necessary to make him into a Woobie. Instead, he's literally just too immature to understand the consequences of his actions.
- Lucia also has one. Her family groomed her as the perfect Messiah for her entire childhood, and then immediately abandoned her after she was raped. Needless to say, she has a reason to be cynical.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Lucia, to the human world. Played with in that from the point of view of Satan, she's no nightmare, and from the point of view of Heaven, she was never a nobody.
- Functional Addict: One of the women at the laundromat (the same one who's cheating on her husband) is a nicotine addict. This leads to drama anyways, as she gets cigarette smoke all over people's clean clothes and is under threat of being fired.
- Genre Blindness: The angels treat the humans they run across as intelligent, mature, good-hearted people and are horrified when they discover Dark Secrets and corruption. Clearly, they don't realize they're in a soap opera.
- Genre Refugee: Unusually, all of the main characters are this, since the actual world the story takes place in is basically a soap opera. Lucia is the only one who knows the rules of this world, and everyone dislikes the "loco strangers" she hangs out with.
- God and Satan Are Both Jerks: From a certain point of view. Heaven still has good aims, but its means are often... less than complimentary.
- Godhood Seeker: Lucifer went through a phase... Basically, after the fiasco where Heaven planned to kill him, he promptly Jumped Off The Slippery Slope and tried to replace God Himself. The other archangels combined forces to put a stop to that soon enough. Later, the archangels finally get fed up with Lucifer and decide to go after him, consequences be damned. This being against the will of the boss, the archangels promptly take over.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: Obviously, knowing that the Second Coming of Jesus is dead - not to mention that there have been multiple ones before - would not do wonders for people's faith. So, the whole story must be hushed up. Having the literal Archangel Gabriel go around telling people it never happened works pretty well.
- Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?: There's a time when Lucia tries to convince Luis (read: literal Satan) to come back to the fold. It doesn't work, of course, and she eventually realizes that their total moral incompatibility is one of the main reasons she loves him.
- The Heart: Uriel. Later, as Character Development sets in, Lucia becomes this.
- Heaven Seeker: Lucia is this before she meets Luis.
- The Hedonist: Luis.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Ends with one of these.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Averted. It's just about impossible to tell Satan from the perfect man until he reveals himself.
- Horror Hunger: Luis is normally a laid-back slacker with a Casanova streak, but when he hasn't had a soul in a while, he becomes first moody, then erratic, and finally violent.
- Hot as Hell: Luis.
- If I Can't Have You…: When Luis finally finds out that Lucia is the Second Coming of Jesus, and thus basically incorruptible, his first response is to try to put her down.
- Improbably Female Cast: The main (human) cast is made up almost entirely of the employees of the laundromat, who are all women. To wit: Juanita Mendez, the owner; Camilla Espinosa and Valentina Diaz, Those Two Guys, Lucia Cardenas and Mia Chavez, the unmarried girls (at first); and Emily Stewart, the token white girl.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Lucia and her priest. This friendship is complicated, but by no means erased, by The Reveal - which, in itself, makes the friendship span a few more generations.
- It's Personal: Luis is not happy when he realizes that Heaven is going to try to kill Lucia.
- Jaded Washout: Lucia is this at the beginning of the story. Having been raised to be a saint and martyr, she instead ended up working at a laundromat in middle-of-nowhere, Texas, and her worldview reflects it.
- On a larger scale, Satan is this. Goes along with The Devil Is a Loser.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Satan, a long time ago. Not wanting to die was reasonable, leaving Heaven was morally ambiguous at worst, but he didn't stop there. Oh no.
- Knight Templar Parent: Lucia's parents were this when she was a kid - except that their priority was making her a saint, not keeping her safe.
- Letting Her Hair Down: Lucia gets rid of her ponytail after getting rid of her soul, and begins taking better care of her hair.
- Long Game: Heaven is playing one, sending Messiah after Messiah in hopes that one of them will be worthy, and killing off the ones who turn out not to be.
- Lost Wedding Ring: Happens to Mia Chavez with her engagement ring. Turns out it ended up in a customer's dry-cleaned pockets.
- Louis Cypher: Lucia's new boyfriend, Luis Fierro...
- Love Redeems: Uriel, and to a lesser extent the other angels, try to invoke this trope on Luis by way of Lucia. It comes so very close to working, too...
- Love Triangle: Emily is head over heels for Luis. Unfortunately, he sees that as an opportunity for an amusing toy. Emily just barely makes it out with her soul intact.
- Ma'am Shock: Averted. The show takes place in small-town Texas, so every woman on the show is referred to as "ma'am."
- Madden Into Misanthropy: Happened to Satan. Granted, he was a bit of a Jerkass even before that, but it got much worse after the Fall.
- Mafia Princess: Gabriela Aquinas.
- Make Up or Break Up: Mia Chavez spends a while wondering whether to break up with her boyfriend, Javier Martinez, when she finds out that he doesn't think women should work after being married. They end up agreeing to stay together when Mia becomes pregnant, but tension remains until Javier agrees to try to pay for her to go to community college, provided that she studies something "useful."
- Mayfly–December Romance: The relationship between Luis and Lucia starts out as this - however, it is stated that once a human loses their soul, they can live for hundreds or even thousands of years.
- Messianic Archetype: Lucia, obviously.
- Morality Chain: Lucia, to Luis. Played with in that Luis has no idea she's still good, and she has to sabotage his plans in secret to keep him from finding out.
- More than Mind Control: Lucia is genuinely in love with Satan. Manipulation had a little to do with it, but not everything.
- My God, What Have I Done?: The reaction of the angels when they realize (too late) that Lucifer was really in love with Lucia.
- My Greatest Failure: Even though it wasn't in the least her fault, Lucia still sees her rape as this. It isn't until she finds out that Heaven and Hell are fighting over her and she just might have a chance to save the world that she realizes she isn't Defiled Forever. Luis calls her on this early on ("You're not the asshole here, so stop stealing my thunder"), but it takes a lot more to get it to sink in.
- Never My Fault: Luis is prone to this.
- New Ability Addiction: Emily gets a food processor and starts trying to make everything with it. When she serves Luis homemade mashed potatoes - into which she accidentally dropped a whole spoon without realizing it - Lucia has to stop him from killing her right then and there.
- No Sense of Personal Space: Emily.
- Not Herself: Lucia, naturally, acts dramatically different after she loses her soul. Everyone comments on it, but dismiss it as ordinary differences arising out of a new relationship. Mia believes that Lucia is being abused, and repeatedly offers to do whatever she can to help, up to and including calling the authorities, but Lucia refuses the offer (for obvious reasons.)
- Obviously Evil: Lucia, after she sells her soul. A stunningly beautiful Latina in a Little Black Dress, with livid red scars and a streak in her dark hair, who is utterly indifferent to her many suitors and indeed seems to be apathetic in general? Gee, she must have been sent by Jesus! Subverted in that... well... she actually was.
- Oddly Common Rarity: Being the Messiah, apparently.
- Old Maid: Juanita, an older woman at the laundromat, is this. Subverted in that she's thoroughly proud of it, and uses every opportunity to lecture the younger women on the pointlessness of chasing after men.
- The One Who Made It Out: Everyone wants to be this, including Mia, who wants to go to college, Lucia, who wants to marry a rich man, the women at the laundromat, who pool their money every week on lottery tickets, and even the Archangel Uriel, who wants the hell out of the Angel of Death job. Only Emily, the resident Cloud Cuckoo Lander, seems happy where she is. By the end of the story... they're all in the exact same place they started, except for Mia, who is married to an "okay" (if controlling) man and working her way through college, albeit not in the way she wanted, and Lucia, who is dead.
- The Paragon Always Rebels: Lucia, of course. In fact, every other Messiah has done the same thing.
- Parents for a Day: When someone leaves a baby in the laundromat and asks them to take care of it, the women who work there (all of whom have had enough experience with kids to last a lifetime) push the baby off on Lucia, Mia and Emily for a day. Unfortunately, this means having the baby be in close proximity to Lucifer, who is delighted at the prospect for all the wrong reasons.
- Playing Both Sides: Uriel.
- Plot-Driving Secret: There are two - the first, kept by the main characters from the rest of the world, is that Lucia has sold her soul to the Devil. The second, kept by Heaven from Lucia and Luis, is that Lucia is the Messiah.
- Poster-Gallery Bedroom: Played with, in that while Emily's room is full of scribbled-on posters of her favorite celebrities and Mia's is plastered with college ads, Lucia's room is almost unnerving by contrast, having only a single print of the Sistine Chapel and nothing else. This fits perfectly with her general lack of ambition or hobbies.
- Premature Empowerment: Averted. Satan may back Lucia up against the kitchen counter and reveal that he wants her soul, he may bribe her, seduce her, threaten her, and beg her, but he can never force her soul out of her.
- Pretty Boy: Luis appears to Lucia as a tall, slender man with perfect teeth and perfectly manicured nails/hair/skin, fitting the stereotypical Latino ideal of the green-eyed, light-skinned Latino man. Especially notable as she and Emily are the only two who see that appearance - almost every other woman in the show sees a Hunk. Raphael plays this straight.
- Prodigal Family: Lucia's. They show up very, very rarely after disowning her, and they're not... very nice people. They disowned her because she slept with a boyfriend out of wedlock, never mind that that boyfriend was an abusive, manipulative cheat, because they believed that she was destined to become a saint by martyring herself just before the Second Coming of Jesus, and had been raising her with that goal in mind - only for her to "dirty" herself with sex. Needless to say, when they come to visit, it's not a good time.
- Race Fetish: Lucia for white (or whiter) guys, Emily for Latinos in general.
- Rage Against the Heavens: Made of this trope.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking: Applies in the Archangel Michael's case, who is always the one to deliver whatever beating Luis needs to stay out of Heaven's business.
- Rape as Backstory: Lucia was abandoned by her family and finally became convinced that she was not special after an emotionally absuive boyfriend manipulated her into sleeping with him out of wedlock. This kicks off her cynicism, her estrangement from her family, and her crisis of faith and identity, all at once.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Averted. After Lucia is killed, Luis is way too overcome with grief and dejection to kill anyone - not that the people responsible could be killed anyway. Instead, the Archangels are forced to watch him - the Fallen Angel whom they didn't think was even capable of empathy - sobbing uncontrollably over Lucia's body. It doesn't help his outlook on life, but no one dies as a result.
- Saving the Orphanage: Well, save the laundromat. It's not quite the same, but the snobbish rich lady who wanted to turn it into a spa would still turn several poor women, a few of whom have young children, out of their only means of livelihood.
- The Scapegoat: Before the Fall, it was Satan's job to be the scapegoat for Heaven's dirty work. Afterwards, Uriel took the job.
- Secret Relationship: One of the women at the laundromat is cheating on her husband. Luis takes great amusement from snidely hinting at her.
- Sex Is Evil: The viewpoint of some of the characters, which Heaven doesn't seem to share.
- Sex Equals Love: Averted with Mia and Javier. They agree to marry when Mia gets pregnant, but they never really fall in love.
- Shapeshifting Seducer: Luis. Lucifer knows exactly what Lucia likes.
- Show Within a Show: All the characters love "La Corrupcion De Corazon," a (fictional) telenovela. Even Luis gets into it, although the other angels don't get it at all.
- Silent Scapegoat: Uriel. Unlike Lucifer, he understands that there has to be a "bad angel" for people to pin suffering on, so that they can believe that Heaven is all good. At first he wants Lucifer back in Heaven so that he can take the job, but by the end, he realizes that he makes a better Angel of Death than Lucifer ever could, and begins working to bring him back to the fold for his own sake.
- The Social Expert: Lucia, as she's the only one of the main characters who actually gets that they're in a soap opera (not like that, though) and acts accordingly.
- Soul Eating: Lucifer. Apparently they're like drugs to him.
- Taking the Bullet: At the end, Lucia does this for Satan.
- Talking Your Way Out: The Angel Gabriel attempts this on Lucia after Satan captures him and ties him up in their apartment. It doesn't work, as Lucia is an Empty Shell by this point.
- Teach Him Anger: Luis tries to do this to The Ingenue and favorite son, his little brother Raphael, the healer. It works, unfortunately for everyone around him... briefly, until Raphael repents.
- Team Dad: Uriel.
- Time to Move: Emily finds a nearby apartment with cheaper rent, and all of them prepare to move... until Luis, who has made himself comfortable where he is and dislikes the idea of moving, sabatoges the new apartment to make it look like it's run by a slum lord.
- Twin Switch: At one point, Luis impersonates his twin, the Archangel Michael. No one is fooled, and he is immediately and painfully thrown out of Heaven. Also happened long before, in order to frame Michael for his big rebellion.
- Undying Loyalty: Lucia to Luis, and vice versa.
- Unholy Matrimony: Lucia and Luis.
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal: When Lucia finds out that Raphael, the sweet, petite, long-haired kid in a white dress... is a boy.
- Unwanted Gift Plot: Lucia really, really doesn't want the stripper outfit Luis keeps trying to foist on her. And yes, he knows exactly how uncomfortable it makes her.
- Utopia Justifies the Means: Heaven's point of view. (After what happens with Lucia, they get better.)
- Vampire Refugee: Averted. Losing her soul makes Lucia too apathetic to want a cure, not to mention that she gave it up willingly in the first place.
- Villainous Crush: Luis has one on Lucia.
- Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: Luis. Justified (sort of) in that he's literally Satan, and thus even "basic decency" is rare and difficult for him.
- Witch Hunt: One happens at the end when, thanks to a little "help" from Heaven, Lucia's friends, family and coworkers all realize what's actually going on here. Lucia doesn't survive it.
- Work Hard, Play Hard: The characters may live and work in basic drudgery, but when they get their hands on booze... The archangels - even Uriel - are utterly shocked by what humans will do for escapism. At one point, Gabriel turns to Michael and says, "We need to hurry up. They're going to destroy themselves."
- Wrong Genre Savvy: The angels act like they're in a religious epic or passion play. They're actually in a soap opera.
- Xanatos Gambit: Heaven has been playing one repeatedly. They send a possible Messiah. If they do their job right, great. If not, they become either a martyr or a lesson to be learned, and either way re-affirm Heaven's power.
- Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Luis almost succeeds in making sweet, innocent Incorruptible Pure Pureness healer angel Raphael into a fallen angel after the aforementioned Teach Him Anger episode... but is too quick about complimenting him on his "progress," and shocks Raphael back into his usual state.
