Our Side

like, they see this gay (??) couple, and they decided crowley is the "man" and aziraphale is the "woman", because that's how deep they understand queer relationships (don't even get me started on what it means to take the female expression out of crowley). So, automatically, crowley as the man becomes the ProtagonistTM, the long-suffering victim, always right, rational and pragmatic, while aziraphale, as the woman, is the vain, silly, hysterical love interest. You know when in a show the love interest says something irrational and impossibly stupid to generate misunderstanding and/or cheaply drive conflict in the story? THAT. It's never the man. It's always the woman being unreasonable and emotional and childish and whatnot. and generally mean, too, because that's what women do, right?

to be clear, there's absolutely nothing wrong with aziraphale playing damsel in distress with crowley, like he did for example in s1, and that's specifically because it's a play. because he IS a competent and intelligent and relatively powerful being, and you know that he is in fact perfectly in control all the time.

in s3 (and s2), it's not like that! the narrative takes his choices seriously, treats him as actually stupid, and crowley as actually the only reason he thrives at all.

that's the s3 (and s2) ship dynamic. that's how they see our beloved aziraphale. that's why he doesn't get to choose. that's why "why give me crowley?" is his most pressing question, TO FUCKING GOD, because he has no identity anymore besides being Crowley's love interest. no matter that this is an angel, an archangel at some point (yuck), that their sexualities and genders are amongst the most fascinating and complex aspects of the show, they're treating him as the "woman" in a gay relationship.

...but S3 is like Flood too. I'll kill you all. Or have one of my mindless, free will- less minions do it. Apparently. If rain can't manage this time. Apart from you two. You get a wish. Noah - I mean Crowley and your silly wife. And now bye. Gotta get new toys to play with. Yes - I promise I won't kill these. They'll get the heat death of the universe if you wish.

"I'm a demon, I lied."

The Ways Aziraphale Saves Crowley

The Ways Aziraphale Saves Himself

The Ways Aziraphale Saves Others

Why was Crowley there in the first place?

Did Crowley blame Aziraphale? For where he was?

Were we meant to blame Aziraphale? Because it sure feels like it. If Aziraphale insisted he does something for Crowley immediately, would it be a proof of love or guilt?

My point is:

Aziraphale could never win. If he helped, people would still blame him for not coming earlier. I can see it. Too little too late Aziraphale. What did you expect, a warm welcome? Cheater. Amiright?

Was Aziraphale not abandoned for years? Why do people only blame one for not checking on the other?

Was Aziraphale not hurt by Crowley not coming to help him?

Why are we all still blaming just him? Was Aziraphale wrong for leaving?

Aziraphale saved Crowley and Earth from terrible eternity. Crowley did nothing. And yet Aziraphale is blamed for not doing more.

And then they died. (And Aziraphale is questioned for not fighting harder.)

So yes, I pick sides.

And I pick sides because of all of the begging I could not escape watching or reading Aziraphale do for years after F15. Because he was the only one wrong. The only one apologising. The only one explaining. The one being punished and being painted as a monster.

Both the book and Season 1 emphasize that, while Aziraphale and Crowley can influence events, humans ultimately retain the power to choose. Adam works precisely because he was raised by humans. He isn't the embodiment of Heaven or Hell; he's the embodiment of humanity.

Season 3 abandons that idea. First, by declaring that free will was an illusion all along, an interesting (read: bad) creative decision, and by framing humanity as though it never had a meaningful chance to begin with. If GO3 wanted to stay true to the themes it had already established, it could have had Jesus (part human) confront his mother. It could have given humanity, collectively, more agency or at least a choice in whether they wanted to live in a new, godless universe. Perhaps people should be asked if they're cool with the idea of no Heaven, no Hell, no afterlife. What about the people who were, I dunno, hoping to see grandma again someday? Shouldn't they get a say?

Instead, we're asked to accept that the "humanist" ending is one where humanity is erased, never had any real agency, and two non-human entities make a world-altering decision without consulting a single human. Right.

And the supposed lack of free will is never portrayed as a problem. We aren't actually shown anyone struggling in any way because they're prevented from acting by a force beyond their control. Crowley seems to think they can't make a difference (even though they already did in season 1?), but his epically destructive levels of depression make his conclusions questionable at best here. I'm talking about actual evidence we have witnessed with our eyeballs.

If you had paused the show at the moment Crowley and Aziraphale landed in the bookshop on a first watch and had to brainstorm the problem that they needed to resolve in that moment, I doubt anyone would have seriously presented the existence of god and the lack of free will inherent because of god's existence as a serious suggestion.

I'm just saying 12 episodes and an hour in, we're suddenly told our main characters have decided they need to give up each other and their entire selves so they can... get rid of a presence that hasn't had any active impact on everything we've watched so far? So they can resolve a problem that we didn't even know existed (and I could argue that we have plenty of evidence that proves the exact opposite is true in this world, actually)?

And then we're shown the result of their sacrifice and... it looks exactly like the old earth. So getting rid of god and giving humans free will didn't have any noticeable impact AT ALL, as far as we're shown, on how human history turned out?

I'm just saying, you can't ask me to get on board with my favorite characters doing a self-sacrifice for a problem that contradicts everything that came before it and wasn't actually even discussed until the actual moment when they decide how to resolve it.

First of all, I never wanted to see God. I think God has to be an offscreen character for Her to work at all because the whole POINT of God in Good Omens is that NO ONE actually knows who She is or what She wants. It’s INEFFABLE. But what makes me even more upset is that they took away the mystery behind her motivations and just made her cruel.

In S1 and the book, you get the sense that God is well-meaning, but perhaps got a bit carried away as time went on. She’s a workaholic parent that might have started off with good intentions, but is ultimately an absent parent, and her children all suffer for it. Heaven and Hell don’t actually KNOW what God wants, they’re just doing what they think God wants because she’s left them all alone at home with no instructions and no babysitter.

God is a CEO with too many projects on their plate and doesn’t check their email, and Heaven and Hell are middle managers doing their best not to become the reason she starts checking it again.

And so in S1 and the book, it’s easy to see God as more indifferent than cruel- in fact, I’d argue that’s one of the main themes of the book, that indifference is often just as harmful (or even more so) than “pure evil,” if that even exists. The whole POINT of Good Omens originally was that there’s no such thing as “pure good” or “pure evil.”

But God in the finale is undeniably cruel, because she is fully aware of what she’s been doing and what’s been going on. She’s been watching gleefully through it all. She’s not the absent parent with good intentions anymore, she’s the parent manipulating and encouraging her children to fight and hurt each other for her own amusement. It’s sick, it’s evil. It’s cartoonishly evil. There is no way to argue that it was all “ineffable,” because she explains it quite clearly: she wanted to watch them suffer.

It’s like the CEO has gone from not knowing what happens in the office when they’re gone, to a CEO purposefully hiring terrible managers and underpaying staff so they can LAUGH ABOUT IT.

Now, of course, you could have interpreted God that way all along. But the point was that you had a choice- you, the reader/viewer, got to decide if God was aware of what was going on, or fully “checked out.” You were able to argue that God isn’t fully good or bad, She just is. But a God who sits there and knowingly, gleefully watches her Creation play out just for pure entertainment? That’s intent. She did this to keep herself amused when She got bored.

When Aziraphale and Crowley ask for a new world, and that world is about to be shown on screen, I expected to see actors we’d never seen before, and that would be it. But I was surprised to see the exact same actors on screen, playing doppelgänger versions of their old characters; seriously, the new universe doesn't even bother giving Crowley's doppelgänger a new name: he’s literally called Anthony J. Crowley.

And then there’s "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper playing. Remember when the music mattered in Good Omens? Like when "You're My Best Friend" by Queen played in S1xE5 as Crowley headed to Aziraphale’s bookshop (a song John Deacon wrote for his wife!), when he finds the bookshop on fire and thinks he has lost the angel that was precious to him (And then they play it again as the end credits theme for that finale? Why?). We just took it for granted that musics was significant for this show context. So why use "Time After Time" too?

"Caught up in circles, confusion is nothing new"/"Flashback warm nights almost left behind"/ "Suitcase of memories, time after" / "The second hand unwinds" / "If you're lost you can look and you will find me"/ "Time after time"/ "If you fall, I will catch you, I'll be waiting"/ "Time after time".

And why put the snow globe in the ending scene with Asa and Anthony? If the goal was to say the old universe was destroyed forever, how does anyone remember enough of it to build that snow globe with the bookshop and Bentley of Aziraphale and Crowley?

Things get even weirder when we realize that there aren't just doppelgangers of Aziraphale and Crowley, but there are doppelgangers for every person by the previous universe, including Adam. If it were just Aziraphale's and Crowley' doppelganger, we could say it was a mere coincidence. But everyone? How can this be justified? And all of them together, in the same place, at the same time? Maintaining relationships that seem to replicate not only a physical resemblance, but also the dynamics of their original counterparts in some aspects? It seems a little… too unbelievable… a little "Ineffable" doesn't it?

The thing is, the reason so many people started talking about "reincarnation" is that they were trying to find an explanation for what was shown in that ending. We looked at these doppelgängers, at this "new universe" that indiscriminately recycled elements from the previous one, seemingly mirroring the old universe in some way, and some tried to come up with a theory to explain and contextualize what they were seeing. "Reincarnation" seemed like the simplest and most concise term, even if it might not be the best or most accurate description of what was actually happening here.

The truth is, the ending doesn't seem to have been very well thought out. In general, I saw only three options for Crowley and Aziraphale to choose from:

(A) Restore their universe, but with the mandatory condition that all supernatural beings become human, including God and Satan, thereby putting an end to Heaven, Hell and any supernatural interference in that universe, with the laws of physics governing that universe now, rather than anything supernatural.

(B) Restore their universe, where humans would no longer go to any heaven or hell, nothing supernatural would happen to them after death. Anf force supernatural creatures to choose between living on a parallel plane far from Earth, where they could never interfere with it, or choosing humanity and becoming human. A more "Tolkienian" ending where the immortals would have to depart forever, never to return, or stay and face the consequences (death or fading away).

(C) Choose a new universe, as they did. But when this new universe is reveal to the audience, it shouldn't have featured any previously known actors. They could have simply shown the production team, people who never been seen on screen, walking, talking and celebrating. This would have conveyed the message that the new world was truly new and the people "free" just as Crowley and Aziraphale "wanted".

The problem is that the actual ending does none of these things! It’s more confusing...

... it tries to tell the audience that it’s a new universe and that Aziraphale and Crowley’s sacrifice "was worth it", yet simultaneously creates highly complex and unstable paradoxes by putting the same actors on screen with similar faces and names, all while "Time After Time" plays.

And yes, some might argue that Tennant has already denied that those doppelgängers are actually Aziraphale and Crowley. However, it is worth noting that effective storytelling conveys its message through the elements on screen, within the narrative itself. When cast or crew members have to step in during interviews to offer their own interpretations of what transpired on screen, it suggests that the intended narrative message was not successfully executed. Furthermore, it creates the impression that the actors, creative team and writers lacked a consensus on what they actually wanted to convey with that ending, leaving the door open for conflicting opinions on its meaning, given that the on-screen message lacked a clear logical thread.

I don't think the cast or production team gave much thought to the narrative implications of it to the audience. I think they just wanted to film something to provide an end, whatever that might be, and claim they finished the project with some merit.

It’s strange that they didn't conduct any audience research to find out what viewers wanted for the finale.

Regardless, it’s quite common, in my view, for productions to think they are above the audience, believing their vision of the work is superior and that "good art" shouldn't "give the audience what they want", or something to that effect. I, on the other hand, believe that the function of an entertainment show is to deliver a service, this service should align with the expectations of the target audience consuming it.

However, I also think the perspective held by creators, production teams, and actors often differs significantly from the audience's perspective. This leads to conflicts regarding interests, expectations and interpretation.

The point is that, regardless of whether one liked the finale or not, all of us wanted a happy ending for Aziraphale and Crowley and their world, not a new world filled with doppelgängers (even if those doppelgängers are very cute). But, some accepted this "finale" (considering that it is the only ending received, and that received it despite all factors that impacted this production), while some refuse to accept all it. Both reactions are entirely understandable!

Overall, I think that, whether people loved or hated this ending, most of us are just considering this finale (and season 2 by extension) as a merely side story. Even among those who embraced "season 2, the finale and the Asa/Anthony dynamic" as a box set, I don't think that the majority of us view it as a "canonical" ending, because the "official canon" to Good Omens consists solely of the book and extends, at most, to Season 1 Episode 6.

But I discovered that if I consider the storylines from book, season 1, season 2, and finale, as separate materials, I can actually enjoy a little bit of each, taking the things I like and discarding what I don't. But, if I try to think of it all as if it were the same story and a sequence of events, I start to have great difficulty making it seem believable (especially in relation to season 2 and the finale).

If two people wrote it together and one is dead, then it’s impossible for subsequent portions to have the same authorship.