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They've been through some shit.

I’m tired of queer characters being reduced to sacrificial lambs.

I’m tired of queer couples never getting a happy selfish ending, and you know what? Aziraphale and Crowley are selfish beings. And not selfish in the bad sense but in the human sense. They have never been selfless and that’s a good thing— they wanted each other when they technically shouldn’t have, they wanted to indulge in earthly delights like food and gambling and cars and music.

I’m sorry, but you just cannot convince me that Crowley out of the two of them would do such a 180 and abruptly choose another universe over his angel, or over a life with his angel that wasn’t doused in fear. I just don’t buy it. It’s not the fact that they became human, which I actually wouldn’t have minded— it’s that they were annihilated. Asa and Anthony are not Aziraphale and Crowley. There is no explicit evidence to prove otherwise and people are who they are because of their experiences and pasts. If there had been then this would be an entirely different matter, but there was nothing. Aziraphale and Crowley and all the people and things they fought for over thousands of years are gone. That’s it. Poof.

This wasn’t a comedy and it wasn’t a romance; it was a tragedy. It was a gloomy sort of tragedy, the exact thing Crowley always hated from Shakespeare. All of their love was scrubbed away in the name of a humanity they never knew, and the one who had always wanted to choose Aziraphale, chose death instead.

Everyone already had Free Will, including the two of them, which was one of the majors points of the first two seasons. But now they have nothing. They’re nothing.

And I’m just so fucking angry. Everyone deserved better and queer folks deserve a queer story with an unambiguously happy ending without the pressure of accepting destruction as something to be celebrated. We deal with enough destruction on a day to day basis.

Imagine finding out you have 90 minutes to tie up a love story that's developed over thousands of years. You create something beautifully in character and completely on point for the plot. You pay homage to the original writer's legacy in a fitting and poetic way and create an ending that not only shows the depth of two people's love for each other but the wider love they have for the thing that brought them together in the first place.

And then you go online to find the loudest outcry is that everyone hates it and "THEY DIDN'T EVEN KISS!"

Aziraphale and Crowley, who spent over 6000 years learning to love each other and themselves and humanity, straight up don’t exist anymore. The people that exist in their place are barely even husks of who they were.

The writing was so horribly paced, because it’s clear that they smushed 6 episodes together instead of treating this like a feature film instead of a last-ditch effort to get a finale. Jesus was practically inconsequential to the plot. The resolution and debate about free will is harping on things that were wrapped up in previous seasons,. They had so many ideas that went nowhere (the card game and the new book of life that Aziraphale started writing). The lore was inconsistent (if everything was erased, why does the devil still exist?). There’s SO much to talk about

But focusing on the ineffable husbands of it all— the whole point of the characters is that they love humanity because of their centuries of living amongst them. The ‘choice’ they made was the worst possible option, there were a million other ways they could ask for things that actually made sense. The new versions of who they are don’t have the same appreciation for any of it— the food, the books, space, ANYTHING. They exist only as mortals, rendering EVERYTHING that happened in seasons 1 and 2 and outside of the show utterly pointless

It’s possible to tie up everything in 90 minutes. They almost did it. (Not very well, mind you, but it almost worked), and then they went and spoiled it all by doing that thing.

That thing, of course, being ending the series on a wish. Wish-granting is the laziest way to wrap up a story, second only to “and then they woke up.” I know it wasn’t really a wish, and that they were having a dialogue with god, but ultimately it came down to god granting them a request, and to wish for a world without heaven and hell shouldn’t be possible in that universe. It metatextually changes everything, and it’s too easy of a win. Essentially they asked “we wish everything ended happily,” and then didn’t have to solve anything themselves.

#OP talking about “paying homage to the original writer's legacy” made me laugh because like. that's the opposite of what S3 did#S1 already established humans have free will (see Adam picking humanity over fulfilling his destiny)#and I doubt Pratchett would like the idea of nuking the whole entire world because it's imperfect and we might as well start from scratch#the whole point is embracing humanity#“let's make every single person's life as they knew it end without a say in the matter” is not exactly a humanist message about free will

I think it's quite telling that criticism of the finale is often reduced to "just people being mad they didn't kiss"; because I truly believe the only way to enjoy this finale is to not care about Good Omen's narrative and themes beyond Aziraphale and Crowley's relationship.

Because on a surface level reading of the plot, if you're seeing Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship as the sole focus of the series, the finale is fine. They get to spend their life together in another universe, falling in love and growing old without having to hide their feelings for one another.

(And there is a point to be made—like prev does—about how those aren't the real Crowley and Aziraphale, because everything that made them who they were—their memories and their experiences—was lost. And I agree with that analysis, but it's beyond the point I'm trying to make here)

However, if you consider what it means for the broader Good Omens universe, the finale is straight up a betrayal of the ideas expressed by Pratchett in the original material. Good Omens has always been a story about larger than life supernatural beings falling in love with humanity, but one in which ordinary people are just as prominently featured as angels and demons. Crowley and Aziraphale are not the true protagonist of the story, humanity is. This is why the story culminates in Adam refusing to take part in the Divine Plan and choosing humanity instead. The S1 ending is both about how humanity is worth preserving and about human agency. No one, on either sides, expected Adam to oppose the divine plan. Because they didn't understand Adam would have agency over his life and what he wanted to do with it. They didn't even consider he could choose humanity.

The S3 finale expresses the exact opposite message. The fate of humanity is not dictated by humanity itself, but rather sealed by a handful of divine beings that treat their lives as an afterthought. Crowley and Aziraphale are incredibly OoC throughout the whole fianle, but their final wish to god is particularly aggravating. The original material expressed several times that the idea of giving up on people and create "new ones" is not an option, so the idea of the two of them suddenly deciding it's the right thing to do is extremely poor writing. It's justified as a way to give humans "free will", but it was already established in S1 that they did, so that doesn't even hold up. And I know that them asking to just bring everyone back would have been (rightfully) criticized as bad writing, but the solution here would have been to just.. not write themselves into a corner in the first place.

Very heavy spoilers ahead!

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