Honestly, I can’t bring myself to hate the Good Omens finale. It reminds me more than anything of rushing out that final essay for a college course during the worst semester of your life, with a professor who initially seemed cool but revealed himself to be evil incarnate, and it’s 10:45 PM and the thing’s due at midnight so you’re speed running through your outline to just get it over with. It’s not good, but it’s DONE, and you never have to think about that class again, and it’s a miracle you got something out at all.
I’m never going to revisit this, and I’ve been out of this fandom long enough to not have the emotional investment to muster the vitriol I might have had three years ago, and I expected even less from them under the circumstances. I’m just glad they got to put out SOMETHING. I felt the same way about Brooklyn 99 season 8 back in the day, where there was no way they could wrap up a long-running show during a still ongoing pandemic while simultaneously addressing the cultural reckoning of the role of American police in an adequate way. In the same way, this show couldn’t deal with resolving a 6,000 year relationship, the second coming, the end of the world, God’s motivations, and the systemic issues in both heaven and hell in one episode.
I hope this episode gave the cast and crew a form of closure for this project that they’ve put a lot of work into over the years, but it was never going to be a satisfactory story for the rest of us, given how much was left open in season 2 and how little runtime they had. At least there’s always ao3 where fans can properly focus on story and character/relationship resolution without the burden of all the practicalities of a troubled tv production.
Anyway f*ck Neil Gaiman. This is his fault. I’m glad it’s done. I just started reading the Discworld books and they’re great. It’s time to move on.
