On The Lady, Free Will, Questions & The Apple Tree - GO3 Meta/Analysis
It’s long but please, stick with me. <3
This is not meant to be an endorsement for the ending of Good Omens. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings on the tone and direction the ending went, and I’m still working through them. Part of my method of processing these feelings is to analyze. To pull in missing pieces and try to reframe the story we *did* get so that it makes sense for the characters we saw. I spent a long time over the last two days rewatching, writing out thoughts, and talking to other fans and writers. So I’m sharing where I am at the moment. I hope at worst it’s interesting and at best can provide a small bit of comfort.
Much of the discussion I’ve seen around the ending is that there wasn’t enough. Too little said, too little done, too little time. I agree with that. I think there was a (potentially necessary) expectation in the writing that the fandom would be able to naturally follow the interiority of Crowley and Aziraphale’s thoughts without having those more strongly rooted in what we saw and heard. A lot of media translated from books has this pitfall because prose lets us go inside a character’s thoughts in a way visual media does not. Even productions with more time and larger budgets struggle with this. I think this is among the myriad of reasons many of us do not feel there was a satisfying reconciliation, and I believe that’s a valid criticism. My intention is to layer in theories and context that I think can be inferred, but aren’t as strongly presented as perhaps we’d like them to be.
There’s a *significant* tonal shift in S3 of Crowley moving from general optimism and agency to pessimism and predetermination. S1 and S2 suggest that Crowley has believes that people (and to an extent angels and demons) have at least some aspect of free will. S2 started with “what’s the point” and yet Crowley still rallied to help Aziraphale defend humanity. He saw a purpose that wasn’t inherently futile, even if that was only because Aziraphale still believed change was possible.
That purpose was absent at the start of S3 and showed a shift in Crowley’s belief in his own autonomy. We see this in one of the Bentley scenes with him shouting “you can’t change anything” at Aziraphale. We have it insinuated with the card game over and over again and trying to find the lady. The game is rigged, you can try, you’ll never win both in the smaller scale with retrieving the Bentley and the larger cosmic sense. And it comes back in the bookshop at the end of the world when Az even finds a question for god and Crowley tells him “you won’t get an answer”. On my first watch Crowley’s (imho) massive shift in his sense of agency wasn’t supported enough in his actual actions. He’s still helping Aziraphale, still going through the motions to save humanity. The inevitability of the universe as an overarching narrative theme wasn’t strong enough to make me believe Crowley’s world view had shifted so drastically.
Going in to the bookshop at the end of the world and the apple tree scene the lack of clarity in Crowley’s character progression makes the decision making of the finale feel hollow and ill reasoned. We need the *context*, we need to understand what these characters are thinking and *why* as they stand under that tree. So, what were we shown, and what can we infer?
We’ve effectively had a love confession (or as close as we’ll get) from Aziraphale, about Crowley, announced directly to god. It’s a big moment, and it’s a distinct change in Aziraphale’s willingness to acknowledge he and Crowley as partners. From that context it’s heavily implied beneath the apple tree that Aziraphale is going to choose Crowley. I think that’s exactly why Az doesn’t speak first. *This* Crowley—this broken, beaten down former demon who may have forgiven but hasn’t healed—there’s no fucking way he’d choose free will for humanity if this angel has finally chosen him. He’s too raw to do that having finally heard from Az what he’s been waiting to hear for thousands of years. And I think we’re meant to understand inherently that Az knows this. He learned from the final fifteen, once Crowley has managed to work up the courage to speak, let him, because the only thing that has ever been able to move Crowley is Aziraphale. And even when Az *does* let him speak first and express what he wants, Crowley *still* has doubts. He still asks Az “did I say the wrong thing?” And Az absolves him, even though it is clearly painful to him to give up their eternity. Aziraphale is making amends, or attempting to with what little is left to them.
But the show is relying on us to follow these shifts in characterization with minimal situational support. It’s subtext and with *everything else* that has happened and will happen, it’s not the easiest to pick up between the lines. The narrative was further muddied because Crowley changed his question to god. He *originally* asked why she made humans just to punish them for being human. This is the substantive question for the decision he ultimately makes but it isn’t the last question before we go to the tree. No, when god doesn’t answer about the humans Crowley reverts back to his very first question: why make a universe just to end it in 6000 years. And while personally I love that he went back to what started his doubt all the way at the beginning, it split the thread of the story and the motives that led to the final choice in an already complex conversation about free will and predestination.
So, let’s step back from the apple tree for a moment and look at why they’re there. God gave them a choice, a single option: return the universe exactly as it was. She’s offered a bargain which is…unusual and our ineffables have to consider it. Again, the context of their world is important. The entirety of S3 (and a good chunk of S2 and S1) indicate that Crowley does not trust god and Aziraphale has also, in my view, lost some of his faith in god by this point. The decision to take themselves out of play feels out of character. Crowley would *never* trust god to play by different rules, especially with no oversight and the overt “game is rigged” theme for S3! He and Aziraphale are the only real protection to humans and now they’re going to destroy themselves on *trust* in god’s word?! It’s a wild suggestion! But, that’s only if you take god at her word that she is who she says she is and that she won’t interfere.
I’ve seen the theory that the god in the bookshop is the god of Aziraphale’s creation because he is the one who wrote in the book. I agree with the theory. They’ve known god longer even than they’ve known one another. I think Aziraphale needed to believe that the god in the bookshop is his God, and I think Crowley may have understood (or at least suspected) that Aziraphale needed to believe this, but it may not be true. That’s why he handed the book over. I’m very curious what god would have been like if Crowley had written in the book.
If the god in the bookshop is Az’s manifestation of god, then the entity in the bookshop isn’t God, not really, not entirely. Just like Metatron wasn’t god.
But, Gaia, bookshop god offered to restore the universe! How can she do this if she’s not God? If we follow the line of free will is a fallacy that S3 has tried to establish then this universe was on the track to destruction regardless of interference. The universe was over. Regardless of Adam renouncing Satan, Michael destroying the book of life, Jesus trying to come again, Gabriel and Beelzebub hindering Armageddon 2.0, or Aziraphale and Crowley being *them*, the end of the universe was predestined. There was never a bargain to be had. It was a three card Monty where the game is played in the dark by rules only the dealer knows. The choice was a fallacy, a misdirection of attention. Another sleight of hand. Ineffable.
There is the line from ‘god’ to Az when he asks why she would give him Crowley, why she would make him complete, only to take him away. Interestingly, this is the only question she answers: “Because you were able to value what most people never even know they have.” Is that love? Or is that free will?
God is everywhere in the Good Omens universe. Just because they don’t see her doesn’t mean she isn’t listening. If the god in the bookshop is not God, and clearly Satan is Satan, then we know where both the two’s are in the three card Monty. Crowley picked Satan once already. Aziraphale has chosen his god again and again and again. They’ve played the game and they chose the two’s. But, by not accepting the options presented, by refusing to take the gamble, by *choosing* to stop *looking* for her, in that I think Aziraphale and Crowley finally found The Lady.
They learned from humanity what humanity never managed to teach themselves. That Love, above all else, survives. That choices matter because, even if they won’t change anything, that doesn’t make the choice any less right.
I don’t believe She took herself out of the picture in the creation of the new universe. It’s telling that the only question god answered was Aziraphale’s, because it was the only question where the answer still mattered. As for Crowley’s questions, he answered them himself under the apple tree. There wasn’t a reason that would ever satisfy him, he didn’t need the answer. He needed the choice.
I posit that real God made the new universe. And She honored Aziraphale and Crowley’s request for her to stay out of it. To keep it free of Heaven and Hell, angels and demons, because they earned that. They may not have won the game, but they at least drew with the house.
And their reward—however bittersweet it is, however unsatisfying it may feel to us after millions of years of pining, after countless eons spent at arms length—is that a piece of Aziraphale and Crowley are always there, reincarnated again and again. She puts them in places where they have a chance to find one another, she owes the best entities she ever created that much. But that’s all. She respects their free will to find one another in their own time. Their souls will always eventually call to one another. *Always*. After all that, too, is ineffable.
