I'm glad to hear that you and other middle-aged, married queers felt represented and not unnecessarily sexualized. I'm happy to hear that you didn't feel like GO failed you.
I'm just a lonely bisexual woman in her early thirties, but I think me and a number of others aren't upset about the kissing (although we would've liked to see it, of course. Especially as a bookend/fix-it to the distraught, last-ditch-effort kiss from season 2). We're more upset about the fact that we were heavily led to believe that we would get another kiss and, more importantly, we're upset that we didn't get to see the chemistry and latent love between our ineffables in the finale. They ended season 2 estranged, heartbroken, and with unresolved issues. Those issues never really get resolved at the end of the finale. Instead, they just get wiped away. They don't get to work things out together, they don't get to live another 6,000 years together, they don't even get to say "I love you" and enjoy living together without Heaven and Hell at their backs. Instead they fade to dust and, for all intents and purposes to many of us, "die".
They do live as 'reincarnated' Universe 2.0 versions of themselves as humans. Some of us believe the human versions are them, others believe they're sort of them, others still believe they're not them at all. Regardless of what anyone chooses to believe, what we saw was an affectionate middle-aged, married queer couple and yes, we should absolutely celebrate that!
However, many of us still feel like we were ripped off and, even worse, led on and played off as a joke. Once again turned into a common queer trope from the entertainment industry where the vibe is "yeah, we get that you see chemistry and we won't deny that. They're cute, they're fun to watch, but they're never going to be a *real* couple. They're just here for entertainment but they're not a *serious* couple."
It reminds me of how Supernatural treated its fans of Destiel (Dean and Castiel). They play that and other queer relationships off as 'quirky' and 'amusing' and good for a laugh, but not anything serious. They kill off the queer characters (most notably Charlie).
In GO, they put their views in the script when God tells Aziraphale his fawning for the last 6k years over Crowley was "amusing" and "silly" and "predictable". She calls him selfish and a terrible angel, and that's for a lot of things but I think one of those reasons is for his selfish love for Crowley. It's not very angelic, especially since Crowley's a demon.
And then instead of getting to revert the universe back to the way it was, they ask God to create a new one and sacrifice themselves to do it. So whether you believe the Universe 2.0 human version of them is Them, to any degree, or not, we saw them sacrifice themselves. They died, for all intents and purposes. At least temporarily.
Which means that our angel and demon that we've been following for two seasons *died*. And we saw them turn to dust. Whether they returned as humans or not, that's distressing. And after SO many queer films showing unfortunate, unlucky, sad-ending couples, it sucks to see yet *another* couple, in 2026 no less, follow in their footsteps.
And it's not just with Aziraphale and Crowley, either. Look at every straight or straight-passing relationship. And by 'straight-passing' I mean, by my definition anyway, male-presenting and female-presenting partners). Anathema and Newt are a straight couple and they have a happy ending. Shadwell and Tracy are straight and get a happy ending.
One could argue that Gabriel and Beelzebub are a queer couple and that they get a happy ending, but I'd argue (and understand that others can and will debate this, and that's understandable. Mine is just one take) that Beez's non-binary coded character gets a new, young, more femme, 'sexy' face just in time to have a romance plot with Gabriel. In which case, they're at least straight-passing. They get a happy ending, though.
Then look at the queer couples in the show. Nina is in an abusive queer relationship and can't get out of it until the abuser breaks it off. Then she's so traumatized by the ordeal she doesn't feel ready to date again, even though she does like Maggie. Wee Morag dies and Elspeth is so unwilling to live without her that she tries to off herself.
So I don't want to invalidate how you feel and most definitely don't want to take away that joy you feel at seeing the ineffables happy and getting to see happy, married, middle-aged queers, I just want to explain that for most of us it's not that they didn't kiss that makes us feel like GO failed us. It's a collection of the things listed above. It's just not as simple as "boo hoo they didn't kiss" and I hope we all just try to remember as we deal with the finale in our own ways and the end of our show that we all have different takes on the ending. And all of those takes are valid. We need to remain respectful and supportive of one another regardless of our takes on the finale and remember not to trivialize or invalidate how others interpreted things. You might not agree with why we feel hurt, but just remember that you can empathize with the fact that we do feel hurt because this show meant a lot to all of us regardless of our stances on the finale.
dededos
theartofmadeline
jacobvanloon
blakekathryn
annaxmalina
vaporwave
