I suppose Crowley and Aziraphale are still two sides of the same coin. In the sense that GO3 Aziraphale is a character that got screwed over by writers who refused to care about his positive qualities or emphasize his personal growth while GO3 Crowley is a character that got screwed over by writers who refused to engage with his flaws and thus didn't give him any sort of personal growth at all.
I already went over how the GO3 narrative feels like it romanticize Crowley’s increasingly self-destructive dedication and sees any problem caused by it as Aziraphale’s fault more than a mental health red flag that Crowley should grow past regardless of the behavior of his romantic partner. Especially as his whole story ends with him doing yet another grand gesture of self-sacrifice-as-love, just with the target changed from Aziraphale to Humanity and Aziraphale going along with him is framed like a beautiful show of his love and… it’s all very dismal if you try to think about it…
But now I also want to talk about another trait of Show Omens’ Crowley that kinda relates to that previous point. Crowley tends to express his love via heroic rescues and little miracles and self-sacrifice and wordless dedication because he is so so bad at expressing it with words.
The Emotionally Closed-Off Prickly Person Who’s Bad at Expressing Their Love Verbally So They Express It Through Actions is a well-worn and beloved romance Trope for a reason. When GO1 added that trope to Crowley in its attempt to flash-out and make the Ineffable Husbands’ dynamic more overtly ‘Romantic’, I think it worked really well. You could tell both Crowley and Aziraphale were enjoying the way that Crowley was spoiling Aziraphale rotten, Aziraphale didn’t seem particularly bothered with Crowley’s more toothless insults, its balanced out with his little moments of emotional vulnerability (“I’ll give you a lift. Anywhere you want to go”), it wasn’t generally the thing causing the most friction in the relationship… and like a lot of the Husbands’ character flaws, taking GO1 as a self-contained story with no continuation, like it was originally intended to be, Crowley did kinda have an Arc regarding it.
Not a very overt one, and Crowley never gave some sort of teary-eyed love confession or looked into the camera and said “and now I realize… it’s okay to be emotionally vulnerable sometimes”, but it’s definitely there if you’re paying attention.
Crowley started out as the person who responds to Aziraphale’s attempts to compliment his kindness like this. Which like, might be hot, but is not generally considered a healthy way to express your emotions.
And then Crowley tries to be more emotionally open with Aziraphale due to the oncoming Armageddon, calling them 'friends', asking Aziraphale to run away with him, but when those attempts fail and Aziraphale rejects him, he's back to that safer, more familiar prickliness…
Only to find him gone, only to spend a few horrible hours thinking that these are the last things he will ever said to Aziraphale.
He’s already more emotionally open in that pub, he probably intended for Aziraphale to get the subtext that he was calling him his best friend, admitting he kept the Agnes Nutter book as a souvenir… but he is also very drunk, so…
But then he offers Aziraphale to stay at his place, actually gets to repeat the ‘our sides’ bit in a soft and emotionally calm moment instead of shouting it in the middle of an argument, and this time his emotional honesty and vulnerability is actually rewarded…
… So when we see him after everything, openly laughing and enjoying himself with Aziraphale…
…And going full-circle, responding to Aziraphale once again talking about his kindness and goodness with a clever retort spoken in the sweetest most loving way possible...
That's enough to infer that he's learned some sort of lesson about emotional openness from this whole affair.
…You can also say that another result of the combo of Crowley’s fear of emotional vulnerability and only being able to express his love via protecting and doing things for Aziraphale is that he can come off as a bit condescending, even if it’s “”justified”” by him being correct about the Important Things in the Plot (they should try and work together to stop Armageddon, Heaven is not to be trusted anymore than Hell, they are on their own sides)…
(Of course, Aziraphale is not Immune to being condescending either, and not listening to Crowley and not understanding his viewpoint for various reasons. That’s a Problem they both had to work on in their own way, Aziraphale more clearly when, well, he comes to understand that Crowley is right that they should try and work together to stop Armageddon, Heaven is not to be trusted anymore than Hell and they are on their own sides…)
But I think you can make an argument that the Bookshop Fire was also important for Crowley in that exact same way. After all, what was their first Big Argument about? Aziraphale refusing to give Crowley the Holy Water. And neither of them really acted stellar in that moment, but looking specifically at Crowley here, he just didn’t really engage with Aziraphale’s perspective, that having your friend ask you for the Killing You Juice is just really really scary and he wanted to protect Crowley.
And with him apparently mistaking the Bookshop Fire to Hellfire, he got a little taste of some of what Aziraphale was afraid of. And not just with the Holy Water argument! Since only Demons have access to Hellfire normally, Crowley probably assumes they’ve come after Aziraphale because of him. He already heard that Hastur knew of the Arrangement…
The most logical conclusion is that they decided to come after Aziraphale as revenge for Crowley fucking up Armageddon both intentionally and unintentionally. And Crowley was the one who pushed for their friendship the most, the one who pushed for the Arrangement, while dismissing all of Aziraphale’s concerns about what will happen if their superiors will find out as either needless fretting or an excuse to push him away.
(That’s the ironic thing, isn’t it? Crowley is so dedicated to protecting Aziraphale, but he always has a hard time accepting it whenever Aziraphale tries to protect him…)
So for these horrible moments before Aziraphale’s Discorporated Spirit showed up at the pub, Crowley was living through the exact nightmare scenario Aziraphale was always worried about and Crowley often didn't take seriously. Even if it all turned out okay at the end, it did kinda force him to see where Aziraphale was coming from all these centuries.
And then their main actual contribution to helping Adam save the world, that was Aziraphale’s idea as well, coming from his uniquely rebellious-and-still-kinda-Angelic perspective that, sure, Heaven might suck, but certainly the Almighty doesn’t actually wants to destroy the world, does She?
And also I’m pretty sure the Body Swap plan came (mostly?) from Aziraphale (Special Interest in deciphering prophecies, has a lot of recent experience in wearing another person’s face) even if we never got explicit textual confirmation of that. So that whole beautiful sequence shows not just Aziraphale listening to Crowley and trusting him (that Heaven and Hell are Not So Different), but also Crowley doing just the same.
With just GO1, as, well, the self-contained miniseries it was supposed to be, I think the implication is clear - Crowley is still Crowley, still kinda prickly and snarky, but he is more willing to be emotionally open now, he understands Aziraphale a little more, having gone a mile in his shoes in more ways than one, and this will only solidify as these two are going to live happily ever after.
…I still have some conflicted feelings about the way GO2 kinda goes back on a lot of Crowley and Aziraphale’s character resolutions. Like, it is actually realistic writing for these two to be very set in their ways and need more than just a few Big World Ending Catastrophes to actually change that, it is actually realistic for change and healing from trauma and unlearning indoctrination to not be linear. But…. Knowing now this was all done just so the characters could have a massive breakup, spend three years becoming the Worst Versions of Themselves and then die without meaningfully resolving their character arcs? Including the parts that were already resolved in GO1? That makes it much harder to accept.
But, yeah, GO2 leaned much harder into the communication issues in Crowley and Aziraphale relationship and the complex network of character flaws from both of them that facilitate them. Aziraphale taking Crowley for granted, being more than a bit Selfish in this one space he ever felt allowed to be Selfish, not always listening to him and on the other hand, Crowley still being emotionally closed off, snappy, and still treating any idea of Aziraphale he isn’t found of like it’s exactly the same as him running around during the Reign of Terror to get himself Crepes. And neither were particularly good at seeing things from the other’s perspective. The Final Fifteen is probably the perfect example of that for both of them… but for this post, I want to go a little earlier and focus on Jim.
Why is Crowley so upset about the idea of hiding Gabriel in the shop? It’s because he cares so much about Aziraphale, loves him so much, that when he had to wear his face and watch Gabriel be so horrible to him, he was furious. He couldn’t say anything at the time, he had to keep up the act of being Aziraphale for both of their sakes, but boy, could you tell he was dying to tear into him.
He, like always, wanted to something for Aziraphale, but he couldn’t. Crowley’s love for Aziraphale metamorphed under the circumstances into anger and hatred of Gabriel, which was extremely understandable… but even if it was all ‘for Aziraphale’, it was not really what the Angel wanted or needed from him. Even before Jim arrived at the shop, it would have certainly been more productive of Crowley to channel his frustration-born-of-love in that Body Swap scene into comfort for Aziraphale, giving him the support that he now knows Heaven will never give him… But hating Gabriel is the easier, more emotionally ‘safe’ option for Crowley then telling Aziraphale outright ‘hey, the way Heaven treated you sucked and I will never do that to you, alright?’
But it was also the less useful option! It wasn’t useful during the Body Swap where Crowley couldn’t lash out at Gabriel, and it was certainly not useful when he showed up naked and amnesiac in the Bookshop. Because Aziraphale, the reason why Crowley why so angry in the first place, didn’t need that kind of anger right now. Because he’s not any more capable of actually harming the Archangel Gabriel now than he was during the Body Swap scene. Gabriel is barely even there, and he can’t actually stomach hurting the innocent person who is there.
And he does realize that, but Crowley’s very very understandable emotions are still there, he’s just bottling up and stewing in his frustration and resentment in a way that’s mostly hurting his mental state and his relationship with Aziraphale (who is, again, the reason why he’s feeling all of these emotions in the first place). Even as he’s still doing all this stuff for Aziraphale, because he always does things for Aziraphale, he doesn’t understand why Aziraphale isn’t as angry about Gabriel as he is, why he’s willing to forgive him, so those feelings that started as love for Aziraphale end up as frustration and betrayal. Even after he agrees to help Aziraphale and Jim, I don’t think he ever fully respected Aziraphale’s decision (which is different from understanding or agreeing to it) or been at peace, even relative peace, with the emotions he has been feeling.
It would’ve been better for everyone if Crowley could channel the emotions he felt during the Body Swap more into tenderness towards Aziraphale, or at least a willingness to understand why he’s making decisions Crowley disagrees with, but that’s scarier and harder for him than being protective and angry and continuing to do things for Aziraphale and making sacrifices even as it makes his resentment worse. It would’ve also been better for both of them if Crowley could explain why he was really feeling what he’s feeling, how much of it was tied into his feelings towards Aziraphale at the Angel himself. Maybe Aziraphale has some responsibility for not really trying to understand Crowley’s emotional reactions to Gabriel either, but this post is focusing on Crowley, who was more willing to explain himself emotionally to Gabriel then to the love of his life.
And then, the Final Fifteen happens. Crowley makes his first stumbling attempt at being truly emotionally honest with Aziraphale, and from his perspective, he’s just punished for it. Aziraphale leaves him, Crowley feels like he chose Heaven over him, on some level he probably feels like he never actually chose Crowley over Heaven even back in GO1. And Aziraphale also feels abandoned and hurt by Crowley, like he gave up on the best chance they had to make a better world where they could be together. For Crowley that just reinforced that no, emotional vulnerability is Not Worth It, but really this situation is one they’ve been slowly tumbling towards during the entirety of GO2, due to communication issues caused in part by Crowley’s fears of emotional vulnerability and his tendency to see any disagreement with Aziraphale as naivety on the latter’s part. Crowley’s attempts to actually be honest with his feelings were the right decision, but they just ended up being badly-timed, too little too late...
At least that’s what I get from a good-faith reading of GO2. Because… maybe it’s cause the creative team of GO3 were slipping farther and farther into Flanderization, maybe it’s because someone has been getting increasingly attached to Crowley being his self-insert, maybe it’s just really badly written, maybe it’s just that the shortened runtime forced them into cutting away any hint of nuance, shades of gray and balance (how ironic) and made them refine every conflict into what they thought is the most important point…. And then they decided all the important points in the Ineffable Husbands’ relationship are to be blamed exclusively on Aziraphale.
Aziraphale was foolish to trust Heaven again, Aziraphale is too naive, Aziraphale is not listening to Crowley, Aziraphale is selfish, Aziraphale is too much of a ‘Taker’, Aziraphale has not done enough to prove his love to Crowley. And… again, this is a Crowley post, so I don’t want to litigate how much of this assessment is accurate or fair to our book-loving Angel. But what it also means that there is no time to explore Crowley’s flaws, except to justify them, no narrative attention given to portray him as capable of moving past them, of triumphing over them - the way we saw him do in GO1, and arguably in GO2. You can say that he did eventually understand Aziraphale’s kindness to Gabriel, especially when it eventually turned out the both of them were Not So Different after all, but in GO3…
Crowley never stops being condescending to Aziraphale, there’s never a point where has to consider where Aziraphale was coming from. That the situation was more complex than ‘Aziraphale chose Heaven over me’. The narrative just considers it unnecessary, because Crowley was ‘right’, so all the need for understanding falls purely on Aziraphale and its ‘okay’ for Crowley to treat him as a fool who needs to be lectured at. As if understanding where your partner was coming from (even if you still disagree with them, even if they ARE 'in the wrong') isn't an important part of solving a relationship fracture like the Final Fifteen
Even in moments where Aziraphale is making good points or explaining his own mindset, the narrative does not take time to dwell on Crowley understanding what Aziraphale is saying. In him having some sort of emotional reaction to Aziraphale saying that he chose Heaven ‘for him’ and pointing out that running away to Alpha Centauri is just as much of a bad solution as trying to reform Heaven. The latter being an especially bizarre writing choice for a story that ends with Crowley giving up on the idea of being with Aziraphale selfishly forever in favor of his own idea of ‘the Greater Good’.
Like, even if we accept the premise that Crowley was simply ‘right’, it’s bizarre to not give any consideration to him understanding what it seemed like for Aziraphale. That this apparently wasn’t important for the process of healing and forgiveness, for making the forgiveness feel like actual forgiveness and not just…
But instead the focus is just on Aziraphale and what the narrative thinks he’s done wrong. Crowley gets the final word and the direction and acting implies that this is the ‘point’ of that scene, that all of Aziraphale’s reasoning don’t matter because, well, things didn’t turn out like he expected so now he has to think about how he should’ve listened to Crowley.
When Aziraphale explains why he left to Heaven, it’s meant as a step towards his arc of being better at expressing his love for Crowley and better at loving Crowley, more then it’s meant as a healing moment for Crowley, to understand what Aziraphale was trying to do and that in his eyes, he never really left him. Again, he doesn’t have to agree with this perspective, but understanding it should be part of the process of healing for him, of his growth.
And Aziraphale has this whole arc about ‘proving’ that he really loves Crowley, while Crowley’s love is taken as self-evident (when Aziraphale sacrifices his relationship with Crowley for what he thinks is the Greater Good, that’s Bad because it shows he Doesn’t Love Crowley Enough, when Crowley sacrifices his relationship with Aziraphale for what the narrative wants us to think is the actual Greater Good this is beautiful and selfless because he obviously loves Aziraphale so much). And this is absolutely related to how GO3 romanticizes Crowley’s toxic self-sacrificial self-destructive selflessness so damn much. Crowley's lack of emotional vulnerability doesn't 'matter' as a character flaw in the eyes of the narrative, because he is ‘proving’ how much he loves Aziraphale by sacrificing the Bentley and living this utterly miserable life without him, and now Aziraphale ‘needs’ to do the same (starting with the Dim Sum speech, continuing with all of the moments with God and then culminating in agreeing to that self-sacrifice at the end).
And this is… really shitty for both characters for so many levels. It sucks that when Aziraphale is written as callous, it’s neither to argue that he also had a point and a reason to be hurt nor to really show Crowley standing up to himself long-term. It’s just so that Crowley can continue to martyr himself in the relationship. It sucks for Aziraphale that Crowley’s bad mental health and acts of extreme sacrifice that he neither asked for or expected is treated kinda like it’s his ‘fault’ and like he should be expected to do something equally self-destructive in ‘return’. And it also sucks for Crowley that he never gets an opportunity to grow past this. That he can’t prove that he can insist on his own boundaries without it being a F15-style disaster, that he can love while saying 'no', that he can also ‘Take’ in the relationship and more importantly, that he can ask for what he wants ‘Given’.
It sucks for Crowley that his GO2’s confession is apparently not his first stumbling attempt at being emotionally honest with Aziraphale, that he can grow from, but is now the peak of this emotional honesty with him and neither characters apparently ‘need’ anything else. Well, Crowley has been ripping out pieces of himself (almost literally in the Bentley’s case) for Aziraphale, why would anything else be needed? Why would Crowley need the emotional catharsis of expressing not just his hurt, but the love and admiration that his hurt originated from in the first place? Why would Aziraphale need anything else in the relationship if he’s got a guy (gender neutral) who will self-destruct himself over and over if he’s not there? Why should he need comfort or affirmations?
Because unlike GO1, it’s much harder to argue that Aziraphale is simply content with mostly reading between the lines of his acts of service.
This is really the big moment for me, the big moment for a lot of people. I mean… is this not just a reprise of Crowley’s experience during the Body Swap? To see his Best Friend (the love of his life) disparaged like that by his superiors? Only now this is bigger and badder, both in terms of the things that are said and who’s saying them. The one part of Heaven that Aziraphale did actually always try to have faith in, and She’s just listing all of his insecurities and flaws. And now, Crowley doesn’t have to keep up appearances and ‘stay in character’, he doesn’t have the risk of hurting no one but an amnesiac innocent, and so he…
Does nothing but linger quietly with an ambiguously neutral sneer on his face.
Would that not be the perfect point for catharsis and a parallel to the Body Swap scene? Crowley finally gets his chance to defend Aziraphale from Heaven’s insults like he clearly always wanted, which could then also naturally segway to him giving some kind words to Aziraphale, and realizing he does understand what Aziraphale has been going through and what he was trying to do. Leading him both to finally express his emotions in the open way he’s been stumbling through in GO2, and to actually forgiving Aziraphale because he now wants to, and not just because he was asked?
Instead that scene gives Aziraphale a really weak and isolated attempt to stand up for himself (that feels like a weaker and less thematically resonant version of the Quartermaster scene in GO1, but this is veering into the discussion of how GO3 botched Aziraphale’s arc again) and then immediately goes to talk about how great Crowley is. And I’m not saying that Crowley didn’t need some words of affirmation too (although I wish there weren’t all in past tense), and maybe you can say that this gave him some understanding of what Aziraphale actually meant with the whole ‘you can be an Angel again’ thing that clearly hurt him before, or that it shows some growth and emotional vulnerability from Crowley’s side that he can just listen to those words of praise and goodness quietly without arguing. But… it feels like more was needed, for both of them.
And I guess Crowley does eventually make his teary-eyed love confession, just not towards Aziraphale, but the Abstract Concept of Humanity and Free Will.
Which again! Sucks for both of their arcs! Aziraphale’s own struggles with emotional openness and vulnerability were also not rewarded, just like Crowley in the Final Fifteen, and he ended up dying feeling like he fumbled the love of his life so hard that he basically rejected him after 6000 years of mutual pining. And with Crowley… again, I think the intention is supposed to be that his love for Aziraphale is so wonderful and self-evident and that’s why it’s so beautiful that he’s giving up on this relationship for the “”Greater Good””, but it also just kinda comes off like he… gave up on the relationship in general. Or that he never learned how to be truly emotionally open about his feelings to Aziraphale and he died still afraid of actually trying to say what he means to him.
And this is just dismal, it’s just a dismal narrative, for both characters. It’s dismal that Aziraphale was denied character growth so that he could be made to revolve entirely around Crowley. It’s dismal that Crowley was denied character growth so that the narrative can act like he was always perfect and right all the time forever. It’s dismal that this narrative acts like being ‘correct’ justifies condescending to your partner and refusing to see things from their point of view. It’s dismal that Crowley spend 90 minutes acting like loving Aziraphale is some sort of Curse that forces him to perform over-the-top romantic actions without any sense of affection or joy. It’s dismal that Crowley’s self-destruction and toxic selflessness are romanticized and he never gets a chance to grow past them. And it’s incredibly dismal that Crowley is now ‘canonically’ the kind of person who loves in the sort of way where he will develop a burning hatred towards anyone who disrespect their loved one, even if said loved one doesn’t agree with it, but won’t actually comfort them when they are hurt.
The only thing I’m thankful for is that this shit is so OOC, and GO1 was so wonderfully self-contained, that I really just don’t have to acknowledge any of this shit as the ‘real’ Crowley and Aziraphale.
