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I've seen it cited that this was the ending Terry Pratchett had planned, the one that they had brainstormed when considering a sequel to the original book. And whether that meant Crowley and Aziraphale specifically being the ones to sacrifice themselves, I don't know, but I would believe that the end was indeed intended to be a complete reboot of the universe, to be without God, angels, or demons "messing it about," as Adam would say.

Because the thing is, while Crowley and Aziraphale may be why we love Good Omens, their romance was never supposed to be the point, and free will in the Good Omens universe is not as free as you think.

Adam, you may say, already saved the world, thereby preserving free will. A reboot was unnecessary.

But did he? Wasn't it?

During a scene in which they're eating together, Aziraphale is eating deviled eggs and later helps himself to Crowley's slice of angel cake. I know this was very clearly just put in for funny reasons, but... come on. Married behaviour.

When Aziraphale finds The Nice and Accurate prophecies and prompty runs back to his shop, kinda ignoring Crowley, the chapter ends like this:

We'll be in touch then, shall we?' Crowley called after him. 'What?' he said. 'Oh. Oh. Yes. Fine. Jolly good.' And he slemmed the door. 'Right' mumbled Crowley, suddenly feeling very alone.

He feels alone. The moment Aziraphale stops paying him attention he feels alone. Just kill me next time.

The bookshop fire is book canon. Crowley actually has to avoid several people trying to stop him as he walks into the burning bookshop. And then, when he calls for Aziraphale and gets no answer:

He scanned the shop urgently, desperately, looking for the angel, looking for help.

The building collapses on top of him. In the following scene, after hell threatens him horribly via radio, this is how he is described:

Beneath the ash and soot that flaked his face, he looked very tired, and very pale, and very scared.

Which sure, is due to hell, but also... he is alone. Again. For the foreseable future (which is not a lot of time, but still).

On to Aziraphale. This is him after finding Adam's whereabouts.

Aziraphale was dithering. He'd been dithering for some twelve hours. His nerves, he would have said, were all over the place. He walked around the shop, picking up bits of paper and dropping thwm again, fiddling with pens. He ought to tell Crowley. No, he didn't. He wanted to tell Crowley. He ought to tell Heaven.

The tension. Wanting to do one thing but knowing he ought to do something else. I love him so much.

When Shadwell asks Aziraphale whether the Antichrist would be harder than a demon to get rid of, this is Aziraphale's train of thought:

'Not much more' said Aziraphale, who had never done other to get rid of demons than to hint to them very strongly that he, Aziraphale, had some work to be getting on with, and wasn't it getting late? And Crowley had always got the hint.

They are so domestic. I can't.

When Crowley sees Aziraphale again (in Madame Tracy's body), he asks (after Aziraphale has gotten rid of the pesky american guard stopping them from entering the airbase):

'Aren't you going to introduce me to your new body?'

Damn, lover boy, aren't you at least gonna buy him dinner first?

Last but not least: when Satan is coming and they are saying their goodbyes (holding hands! Pointing out the niceness in Crowley and the not-so-niceness in Aziraphale! Saying 'here's to the next time'!) they are interrupted by Shadwell who, and I quote directly, says

'I wouldna' trust you two Southern nancy boys to kill a lame rat in a barrel'

The original story was about being able to fix things and save things. Without destroying them and starting over.

Although there was a point about not messing with people's heads and just letting them be people.

Well, this line is technically also a win for atheism, but the whole "getting upset with people for acting like people" is on point and clearly the finale was referencing this line.

Crowley, as always, asking questions. What's the point of heaven and hell and all that. He always wanted to know. This was his one question.

Chess/Solitaire thing also rings a bell.

What I can't understand that for the entire story the Ineffable Plan was something real, something that existed and Crowley and Aziraphale could in the end always trust it. Whenever they did what they thought was the right thing, even if it went against what their respective offices had been telling them (flaming sword, Job, Elspeth, Armageddon't), it seemed that it all had to be according to Plan. It gave them a moral highground over hell and heaven. It was in a way something that made them right and the system wrong. It allowed them to get bolder and be themselves.

Crowley even suspects everything that happens, has to be happening because god wants it to happen. And if something wasn't meant to be, it wouldn't.

And in the end, I feel like the finale lowkey butchered it, because god said "nah there was no plan. No purpose. I just had a universe for 6000 years and now it'll stop existing so like sucks to suck guys" like she had absolutely 0 feelings about what she's created. She was neither happy nor mad. Like there was no goal neither achieved or missed. No good or evil. Ever.

So like... it's all been a lie?

She never says that she was right and satan was wrong. She never says that hell and heaven were both wrong and Crowley and Aziraphale were right... or even that they were wrong and hell and heaven worked as intended. In the end it seems like... everyone was wrong? Or maybe everyone was right???

I keep coming back to glibly describing the Ineffable Husbands’ arcs in the book as something along the lines of“Aziraphale gave up on an Eternal Heaven for interesting books and fine wine, Crowley faced Hell’s Wrath for good food and long naps”. The exact Earthly Delights aren’t important, there’s plenty of intersection anyways, but their relation to their respective sides is.

Book Aziraphale’s arc is about disconnecting himself from Heaven ideologically. He was already somewhat jaded about Heaven and aware that they’re Not So Different from Hell in some areas (“You'll be amazed at the kind of things they can do to you, down there.” ”I imagine they're very similar to the sort of things they can do to one up there.”) and disobeying his side obviously cannot be easy or safe for him - but the thing that's most important to his arc is that he did still keep insisting Heaven is fundamentally Good on some level, that Heaven’s victory in the Final Battle is assured and it’ll bring about a better world.

But for the sake of his individual hedonistic pleasures, he started working against this abstract ideas of a 'better world' and Heaven's ideas of 'goodness'. Because what's the point of an ideal world if it has no sushi restaurants or CDs? Gradually also getting more rebellious and morally disillusioned with his 'Side' and doing more 'unheavenly' and morally-gray things, until he was disparaging Heaven openly through the mouth of a preacher and passive-aggressively challenging the Metatron's authority at the Airfield.

And Crowley... well, the difference here was clear from the Beginning.

Aziraphale's worries about doing 'the wrong thing' seem to be mostly about... how he wants to make the right decisions because the right decisions are good. I'm sure he's got more practical worries about disobeying orders, but the focus is on the internal conflict between Heaven's orders and his personal sense of morality. Crowley however... doesn't want to have done the 'right thing', because it can get him into troubles.

Crowley always knew he’s working for ‘the Bad Guys’. He’s not totally ideologically disconnected from Hell either (‘“But it nearly worked," snapped Crowley, feeling he should stick up for the old firm.’) but he’s fully aware of what it means to be a Demon working for Hell tempting people into Evil deeds so that their Souls can be sent to Eternal Damnation. And he's got layers upon layers of rationalization and justifications for it, and he has found genuine passion and pride in his unique modernized form of sin-spreading that feels more mischievous than outright harmful, but underneath it all, Crowley just knows he's gotta keep pleasing Hell, or else.

His cool, confident, laid-back attitude is not exactly a façade, but it serves for a good counterbalance to what happens whenever he has to interact with his higher-ups (lower-ups?). Where even if he tries to still play it up like he's Cool Guy Crowley and he's totally chill and smug with higher-raking Demons, like Hastur and Ligur, the moment they break away from the area he feels is 'safe' (his MO as a tempter, in which he already proven himself to the Management) and shift to the End of Days, he clamps up and becomes nervous and 'haunted'. The narration, when describing his POV, sometimes tries to underplay it as just annoyance or frustration, the way that it tries to underplay his guilt in meddling in the affairs of Humans before the M25 and Adam plop that guilt right in front of his face, the way it tries to underplay his relationship with Aziraphale as a reluctant Arrangement of convenience despite all evidence to the contrary, but…

But Crowley’s fears about Hell are the most overt, probably because, well, his entire part of the plot is about being forced to accomplish a Very Important Task for his bosses (unlike Aziraphale, who until his ‘summons’ to the Final Battle, was perusing a personal side-quest no one in Heaven gave a shit about), and so they’re pretty much always breathing down his neck.

That’s what this whole ‘a Demon can’t have Free Will’ thing is really about. It’s less about him being Ontologically Evil, and more about, well, the Cold War Spy metaphor, he’s forever stuck in a shitty morally-compromising job, that despite all of the perks that allow him to live his affluent and effortlessly cool life, he could not leave, escape, disobey or fail at without suffering horrible horrible consequences.

But when faced with the prospect of losing Earth, and all of the experiences that come from living on it, even the most basic ones like a long sleep after a heavy meal, he tries anyway. He knows the consequences, he feels helpless and terrified, but he still risks Hell’s Wrath for food and naps.

...Well, his first plan is one that he convinced himself is relatively ‘safe’. An underhanded, cowardly trick worthy of one of Hell’s best tempters, but also informed by his very Earthly understanding of how the world works. If he performs his job as the Antichrist’s ‘Godfather’ as exemplary as he’s expected to, but places Aziraphale in to ‘thwart’ him then Armageddon could fail without Hell being able to place the blame on him. Probably. Hopefully.

And when it all falls apart and Hell does start coming for him. Well, first of all, it’s important that it’s in the same sequence that introduces us to Crowley’s idea of indoor gardening, which within the context of the book is absolutely him venting what he feels about the way Hell treats him…

And Crowley keeping that thermos of Holy Water in his flat shows that he’s been clearly paranoid of something like that happening for a while now. It’s a fear that’s been growing for longer than just the eleven years of the plot. And now it’s coming true. And Crowley has no choice but to face it. And he succeeds. Like, that’s part of what’s important about...

Crowley was outnumbered against two more powerful Demons. He was scared and he was underpowered and he faced one of his constant nightmare scenarios and he won. He outsmarted these two technically-more-powerful Demons with a little bit of foresight and a goofy pop-culture reference and a clever use of his natural Demonic abilities but mostly his natural (and very Human) cunning and knowledge of then-modern technology and his ability to play it cool even when he is scared and then he WON.

And from here on out, his road to Tadfield, to trying to stop the Apocalypse openly and directly, is basically him doing increasingly brazen and brave things, increasingly facing even more of his fears now that he's already got Hell pissed and after him. First trying to find Aziraphale at the burning Bookshop (clearly not as dangerous to him as it would be to a normal Human, but I won't say there was no risk of Discoporation), and then resigning himself to sacrificing the Bentley, and then crossing through the M25...

Like, the reason why this famous quote is so important...

Is because Crowley's optimism is truly 'underneath it all'. It's absolutely not self-evident. His inner monologue is always full of anxiety and fears and worst-case scenarios leaking through, thinking about how he can do nothing to stop Armageddon, thinking about how screwed he'd be if Hell finds out he fucked up Armageddon, thinking about how screwed up he is now that Hell found out that he fucked up Armageddon. One of the lines proceeding this one is literally "All was black, gloomy and awful. There was no light at the end of the tunnel-or if there was, it was an oncoming train." For the most part he might seem like a total pessimist, but he just... keeps going. He's cynical (that's his job!) and he's terrified and he just keeps going!

It's, y'know, layers. On the surface Crowley is this confident, laid-back and cool Demon that loves excitement and is costing through life not worried about anything, traffic cops chasing him around for speeding is just good fun so he can dunk on them. Below that, he's stressed out and scared, fretting about what will happen to him if he falls out of relative favor in Hell. But below even that, he is an optimist. A confident and utterly cool optimist.

And then he makes it to the Airfield, in the coolest way he possibly could, and... like, there are so many little character moments during the Airfield Climax. His insistence, with 'fatalistic gloom' that Adam stopping Armageddon wouldn't make a difference, but then his glee when he realizes that Aziraphale had found an out and joining him, even though it's clear how afraid he is of Beelzebub and that he is pissed with him... And then Satan comes.

Aziraphale's decision to stay and fight Satan is about his ideological disillusionment arc. Sure, fighting Satan might technically seem Angelic, but he makes it clear that he does it to 'make up' for all the troubles he caused Humanity as a representative of Heaven, explictly putting his 'Job' and Crowley's 'Job' as equally problematic, with no attempt to make himself morally superior. But for Crowley, when Aziraphale asks him to stay and help him fight, Crowley realizes that with all of his greatest fears already realized, all of his worst-case-scenarios having already come true, with nothing more to lose (well, I suppose he's still got Aziraphale to lose, but since the Angel already made up his mind to try and fight the Adversary, it's not like Crowley can do anything to stop that)... He is actually 'free' now.

Crowley realizes that deep down, he can and he wants to do such a brave and selfless thing.

Well, at the end, he doesn’t actually need to, but, like, it’s the thought that counts, right?

Okay, so Hell was down on him. So the world was ending. So the Cold War was over and the Great War was starting for real. So the odds against him were higher than a vanload of hippies on a blotterful of Owlsley's Old Original. There was still a chance. It was all a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

"It izz written!" bellowed Beelzebub. "But it might be written differently somewhere else," said Crowley. "Where you can't read it." "In bigger letters," said Aziraphale. "Underlined," Crowley added. "Twice," suggested Aziraphale.

"I like the seas as they are. It doesn't have to happen. You don't have to test everything to destruction just to see if you made it right."

They'd come up with some stomach-churning idea that no demon could have thought of in a thousand years, some dark and mindless unpleasantness that only a fully-functioning human brain could conceive, then shout "The Devil Made Me Do It" and get the sympathy of the court when the whole point was that the Devil hardly ever made anyone do anything. He didn't have to.

"Serve everyone right if all the nucular bombs went off and it all started again, only prop'ly organized," said Adam. "Sometimes I think that's what I'd like to happen. An' then we could sort everythin' out."

"I just don't see why everyone and everything has to be burned up and everything," Adam said.

In the jeep, Crowley was cursing. Aziraphale laid a hand on his shoulder. "There are humans here," he said. "Yes," said Crowley. "And me." "I mean we shouldn't let this happen to them." "Well, what-" Crowley began, and stopped. "I mean, when you think about it, we've got them into enough trouble as it is. You and me. Over the years. What with one thing and another." "We were only doing our jobs," muttered Crowley. "Yes. So what? Lots of people in history have only done their jobs and look at the trouble they caused." "You don't mean we should actually try to stop Him?" "What have you got to lose?" Crowley started to argue, and realized that he hadn't anything. There was nothing he could lose that he hadn't lost already. They couldn't do anything worse to him than he had coming to him already. He felt free at last.

If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and his dog and his friends. And a summer that never ends. And if you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot . . . no, imagine a sneaker, laces trailing, kicking a pebble; imagine a stick, to poke at interesting things, and throw for a dog that may or may not decide to retrieve it; imagine a tuneless whistle, pounding some luckless popular song into insensibility; imagine a figure, half angel, half devil, all human . . . Slouching hopefully towards Tadfield . . . . . . forever.

Being a demon, of course, was supposed to mean you had no free will. But you couldn't hang around humans for very long without learning a thing or two.

@hellsite-hall-of-fame

Grace will never stop talking

What all five of my examples have in common is that they are minor elements in the text; they are not main ideas. In fact, your usual practice of reading which focuses on main ideas would dismiss them all as marginal or trivial. Another thing they have in common is that, although they are minor, they are nonetheless conspicuous, eye-catching: they are either surprising or repeated, set off from the text or too long. Close reading pays attention to elements in the text which, although marginal, are nonetheless emphatic, prominent—elements in the text which ought to be quietly subordinate to the main idea, but which textually call attention to themselves.

Most of you have been educated to ignore such elements. You have been taught to seek out and identify the main ideas, dismissing the trivial as you go. This has had to be trained into you: read to a young child sometime, you will notice she has the annoying habit of interrupting the flow of the story to draw attention to some minor thing. Close reading resembles the interruptions of that child. It is a method of undoing the training that keeps us to the straight and narrow path of main ideas. It is a way of learning not to disregard those features of the text that attract our attention, but are not principal ideas.

You may need to learn how to set up your paints and such… but this is what people did, live, while the show aired. That’s what the show was for. I had family members create lovely works of art they enjoyed, which I still have on my walls, because William Alexander and Bob Ross both said:

SCREW METICULOUS CLASSICAL ART PRACTICES — JUST GRAB A PALETTE KNIFE AND BIG OLD BRUSH AND PAINT!

They freed a whole generation of people who were taught to paint detail and realism and exact representation of reality — people who largely gave up this kind of thing because it got tedious.

I watched the joy of family members as they rediscovered art as a messy fun spontaneous half hour activity.

"This show is problematic because the hero didn't kill the villain at the end": When does he steal the bread?

"These two characters who were close friends throughout the series don't kiss at the end! What the fuck?": When does he steal the bread?