Mostly Good Omens

~ the demon Crowley deciding what to do at the end of the world.

I will get the urge to watch this one scene sometimes - I mean, I start it at the "DO SOMETHING", naturally, and let it run until Adam confronts Satan - but there is just something about the whole sequence that makes my heart race and my stomach flip. It's how unified Aziraphale and Crowley are and how it shows us that despite the charade, they are so in sync and want the same thing. And the music and the way it all builds adds to it for sure. Plus, I love seeing their wings out and them in full angel and demon mode, but also, seeing just how powerful they are and how much they care. It's up there as one of my absolute favourite scenes, I love it so much.

Oh I just had to comment on this because I LOVE celebrating my favorite things about S1. There is so much love and joy in this story and there always has been and always will be. Everything has been building up to the realization that you don’t need to be purely good or flawless or perfect, you just have to be your own messy, flawed self. Human Incarnate. And OP said it best, this scene is so representative of Aziraphale and Crowley. They’re not some grand heroes, they didn’t invent the perfect plan to thwart the apocalypse. They just finally came together on their own side and stood with each other and with humanity. Promising that whatever happens, love and hope will save them all. Someone said in a reply “when I think of who they are, this is what I see.” When I think of what good omens truly is, this is what I see.

Adding on the second in my top 2 favorite Moments I adore in Good Omens (TV series). Another soaring powerful scene with gorgeous music. The moment when Adam finally discovers his true power and who he really is. When he discovers what is important to him and uses the power of that love to burn away all traces of hell inside him. All the things he cherishes about the world that he doesn’t want to lose. His friends, his dog, his parents, his home. Our love for the world is strong enough to save it. The power of humanity’s love is stronger than a 6000 year-old plan written by God herself. Love is stronger than any ethereal, occult, or celestial power ever could be.

The original, shitty post is here.

The apology for that shitty post is here.

This is closer to the way I should have said what I was trying to get at:

Several days ago I read a tweet criticising Good Omens 3 because "Good Omens is SUPPOSED to be a comedy" [emph. ret.].

I disagree on two fronts.

Front One

Despite their marketing categories in bookshops and on Amazon's streaming platform, book!Omens and show!Omens are not comedies in terms of literary genre. They are cosmic horror.

The fact that a story is funny does not make it a comedy in genre. Literary genre is determined by inclusion of genre conventions, or hallmarks: the motifs, the allusions, the themes, the plot, the characters, the ending, the tone, the mood, etc.

So e.g. John Dies at the End is funny. Its genre is cosmic horror. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Gay Dead is funny. Its genres are revenge tragedy and existential drama. (It's also queer Hamlet fanfiction.) The novel Good Omens is funny. But its chief genre is cosmic horror.

It even has a straight-up cosmic-horror ending for Aziraphale and Crowley. Crowley realises that no one's choices are free because God is in control of all circumstances that lead to those choices, and that God has been manipulating everyone, playing a game of solitaire with people's lives as the cards and the survival of life on Earth as the object. Then God deletes Crowley's memory of realising this and deletes Aziraphale's memory of Crowley having explained it to him so God can continue puppeting everyone. (In my version of the book, ISBN 978-1-4732-0085-2, this occurs on pp. 399-401).

The last birthday present I bought myself when I lived in the UK

Like its mother novel, show!Omens lays out cosmic horror allusions and world mechanics from the very 1st episode, and continually reminds its audience through motif (e.g. dinosaurs; con games, card games, and magic tricks; astrology, tarot, and prediction; title cards), implication (e.g. Aziraphale's diaries, Crowley's 1862 cane, missing time in the show's chronology), allusion (e.g. Hastur, Ligur, Dagon, maggots, eternal suffering, mind violation, time control, reality deletion, all human life and the lives of other species besides as insignificant pawns in a plot of much larger scale, etc.), and direct depiction/exposition (e.g. God) that cosmic horror is one of the show's literary genres. I would say even its chief genre.

Needless to say, stories written in the genre of cosmic horror only rarely have happy endings, and the happiness of their endings is, to my knowledge, never unqualified. (I haven't read every work in the cosmic horror genre, so I'm speaking of the ones I know. If you know any cosmic horror stories with happy endings, tell me, I'd love to read them!)

Additionally, show!Omens (but not book!Omens) fully locates itself in three other literary genres: romantic comedy, romantic tragedy, and dystopian fiction.

Only one of these genres generally features happy endings. Dystopian fiction is specifically about how happy endings (and happy middles, and freedom, and often survival) are not possible under authoritarianism. Romantic tragedy, as the term implies, features tragic endings for the main pairing as its whole thing.

And show!Omens warns us about relying too heavily on its romantic comedy genre for our predictions about its ending: the only romantic comedies referenced are Richard Curtis films.* Of Curtis' oeuvre I've seen Notting Hill; Bridget Jones' Diary; Love, Actually; The Boat that Rocked (Pirate Radio in the U.S.); and About Time. Not all of these films have happy endings for all of their main pairings; and, somewhat unusually for romantic comedy, these films all feature heavy sorrow or loss, even for characters who are "good guys."

Further, given that the sole story writer and chief screenwriter of S2 and Sn't3 of Good Omens is a famous horror author, I don't think we should be entirely shocked that the show has strong horror elements in its final instalment.

I absolutely agree that there was an artistic responsibility on the part of the show's creators to match the mood and major events of book!Omens to the show in S1, which adapts the book.

And they did. Beautifully.

But after S1, we're off the edge of the map. We are not offered any guarantees by the author of the work of S2 and Sn't3's genres. We are not offered any guarantees that the ending will please us, or even that the author will not play a cruel trick on us. That's what you sign up for when you consume fiction: it's the author's story, told the author's way.

And we can hardly say we didn't know that Neil Gaiman's way is cruelty. Anyone who knows anything about the allegations against him or anything about any of his other work knows cruelty is his way both personally and artistically. We went into this with our eyes open, and as I have stated elsewhere, Gaiman delivered 100% on brand.

And he's not subtle about warning us. The story's narrator and controller, God, tells us flat-out in S1E1, 1 min. 4 s in, that Her universe does not feature happy endings for anyone:

I play an ineffable game of my own devising. For everyone else it's like playing poker in a pitch-dark room, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules and who smiles all the time.

This is an overt statement that no one, not even our blorbos, is ultimately going to win the game God is playing with them. A happy ending in this universe is simply and clearly not possible given the world mechanic of the ultimate Authoritarian: an omnipotent and omniscient Villain who operates beyond time and controls literally everything that happens including the choices everyone makes bc She knows what those choices will be in the situations She has arranged.

God is a metafictional character as well. She is aware of us, the audience; She is aware she is presenting us a show; and She controls not only things that happen within the story but things that happen to us wrt that show. The statement She makes here in her opening voiceover is in first-person, and She continues, "To understand the true significance of what that means, we need to begin earlier." We. That's God and us, the people to whom she is telling Her story. She gives us meta-plot images, information, and audio, and She continues to do so throughout the show with title cards.

So God's opening statement--I'm playing a trick on a game with everyone, and everyone is going to lose everything by the end of that game--applies to us, too. She is playing a trick on us--just as she is playing a trick on the paleontologists and on Jesus and on Aziraphale and Crowley and on every other one of Her creations whose lives and fates She controls utterly--and we too are going to lose everything dear to us (with respect to Her show) by the end of that trick.

And She is true to Her Word: She takes everything from us and from Aziraphale and Crowley and from every other being in Her universe, just as She is true to Her Word to Job that She will answer the questions of someone who was there when the morning stars sang together and all the angels of God shouted for joy; out of whose mouth leap sparks of fire; and who can send lightning bolts and get them to report back to him.

(No word on whether Aziraphale taught the ostrich to run, but when he meets the Starmaker he's seen the plans for the humans, so he was at least tangentially involved in the biological side of Creation. And that sickass ostrich-feather coat might be his too, and God answers Aziraphale's question as well, so I'm thinking maybe Aziraphale spent his early days on Earth with his knees bent backwards like that kid in 1996's The Arrival.)

So. Based on the conventions of three of its four genres; on how its fourth genre is referenced; on its origins in a novel whose genre is cosmic horror; on the fact that the chief writer and sole storyteller of S2 and Sn't3 is a horror author who always includes horror in, to my knowledge, all of his stories; on the overt and implied content of S1 and S2; and on the show's narrator's bald statement of how things are going to end for everyone, including the audience, it is my opinion and the main thesis of this post that It is unreasonable for a viewer who has seen S1 and S2 of show!Omens to expect the show to have a happy ending for Aziraphale and Crowley or for anyone else.

Which is not to say that the ending of Good Omens 3 isn't a surprise. Of course it is, and the show's creators and marketing team obviously put some effort into keeping it that way, which is standard for shows and films.

I was very surprised by the ending--not by Aziraphale and Crowley's choice, but that the show had the spine to fully play out the conventions of cosmic horror, dystopian fiction, and romantic tragedy instead of giving its audience the warm snuggly happy ending we all wanted--just as surprised as I was that the show had the spine for the ineffable kiss. But Good Omens 3 fits snugly against the groundwork the show lays in the first 2 seasons. The elements that inform the ending are present and clearly visible throughout the show from its very first moment of runtime, and are a development of some of the same elements in the novel.

Witnessing the reaction of the fandom be, overwhelmingly, total surprise and considerable outrage over the way Good Omens ends has for me been a more shocking and painful experience than watching Good Omens 3 was. I admit I expected a higher degree of genre awareness (an advanced literacy skill) from fans of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, because the former writes almost exclusively in the horror genre and the latter wrote exclusively genre send-up and subversion, and the reader has to be aware and mindful of genre conventions in order to understand what either author is doing in any of their respective works. (Jtac, I don't think people who do not have this literacy skill are idiots or bad people or crazy; I just expected it to show up more strongly in the ineffable fandom than in others.)

None or this information or my feelings about it, separately or in total, justify my original post's unkindness. I'm sorry I was an asshole.

Front 2

Most importantly, I think it's entirely unreasonable to claim what the tweet I read claims, that show!Omens is "supposed to be" a comedy. If this revised post can impart only one of its messages to the reader, I want that message to be this: The author of a work is the only party who gets to decide what goes into it. There is no "supposed to be" about someone else's work. Even if that work is a sequel to an earlier one. Even if the earlier work is in a different genre. Even if the earlier work was written by someone else. Even if the earlier work's author would have written something different for the sequels. Even if you don't like the work and think it's a betrayal of everything the previous work stood for.** To suggest otherwise is to say that other people should have control over what art you make, and 🎆 No the fuck they should not. 🎇

The tweet is not the first time I have encountered this idea in the ineffable fandom, that artists owe their audiences specific content. It worries me deeply. If we haven't learned from the entire goddamn history of the world and everything happening in it today that it's one of humanity's Worst Ever Ideas, everyone who's read this far in a Good Omens meta on Tumblr dot com has presumably read or seen Good Omens and should have picked the theme up there: A world where other people get to control what you make and what you do is not a good place to live, even for the relatively privileged.

------

*The genres of the novels of Jane Austen, despite their marketing categories, are comedy of manners and romance. Comedy of manners is the genre that gave rise in the 20th century to the genre of romantic comedy.

From the authors themselves:

But I still don't understand them, and here I want to talk about one of the reasons why I never will.

In the finale, Aziraphale is portrayed as a naive, stupid idiot who simply doesn't understand that "everything has already been decided, you can't change anything! There will always be someone above you pulling the strings, so there's no point even trying. You should have just run away to Alpha Centauri and forgotten about everything. But no, you, you foolish, naive sheep, decided to keep fighting, and look where that got you! You should have listened to Crowley! He told you so! Now do the apology dance, because he was right and you were wrong!"

Practically every character in the film drags Aziraphale through the mud, just as the writers do through the story's narrative. Even though I personally interpret the ending of season two differently, for the sake of this post I'll be looking at it from season three's perspective, that Aziraphale really left because he genuinely wanted to change something (and, for some reason, immediately believed the Metatron without recognizing the threat hidden in his words), while the ending presents his hope and faith as something genuinely stupid.

For two entire seasons, Aziraphale did everything he could to protect Crowley. He loved him sincerely and tenderly, but he understood perfectly well the circumstances they were trapped in. He expressed his love subtly and carefully, afraid of taking one step too far and risking them being discovered and destroyed. Aziraphale always tried to keep their relationship balanced on that thin line where they could care for one another without putting either of them in danger. And Crowley always understood that. He knew the rules of the game, and he willingly accepted them just to stay by the angel's side, to spend time with him, to protect him and help him. He loved Aziraphale just as sincerely, even if his way of expressing that love was more obvious to the audience.

He loved Aziraphale precisely because he loves good food, precisely because he's not entirely immune to hedonism, precisely because he sometimes behaves like just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing, precisely because he can be a little selfish at times, precisely because he isn't perfect. He loved both Aziraphale's strengths and his flaws. He fell in love with Aziraphale's courage, his desire to help others, his kind and pure heart. He values and loves the fact that Aziraphale is willing to stand by his principles until the very end, willing to fight and keep going even when there seems to be no hope left (which is exactly what Aziraphale taught Crowley over the centuries, because deep down, I think Crowley remained an optimist largely thanks to Aziraphale), willing to put himself at risk if it meant protecting even just a handful of innocent people like when he gave the flaming sword to Adam and Eve, or when he saved Job's children while believing that lying to Heaven would send him to Hell.Just remember the way he portrayed Aziraphale at the end of the first season, it reflects how he sees his angel. Brave, courageous, compassionate, full of hope, and never losing his composure even in the face of danger or bastards like the archangels, who treated him terribly.

The ending portrays absolutely everything Crowley loved about Aziraphale as something bad, laughable, and utterly worthless. He was wrong for hoping. He was wrong for refusing, over and over again, to run away with Crowley to Alpha Centauri and leave everyone else to fend for themselves.

(Although I think the foundation of their arguments has always been that they both simply want to be together and left alone, but because of who they are, they pursue that goal differently. Aziraphale might have wanted to run away with Crowley, but he knows that neither of them could ever abandon Earth and the people they've grown attached to. And Aziraphale doesn't want to give up. Crowley, just like Aziraphale, simply wants a peaceful existence away from Heaven and Hell with the angel he loves. But when he panics and believes nothing can be fixed anymore, he's more inclined to give up and focus on saving the most precious thing he has, without really thinking about what comes afterward.)

He's stupid and naive for believing that anything can actually be changed, that they might still find another way. Of course you should have run away with Crowley, you foolish angel! Can't you see you're breaking Crowley's heart? You selfish bastard! Look how poor and miserable Crowley is!

(I want to make one thing clear here: I love and appreciate both Crowley and Aziraphale. What I hate is that the story went from "they're both right and wrong in their own ways, shades of gray" to suddenly trying to tell us that Crowley was the only one who was right, and that only Crowley suffered, because we were never shown Aziraphale's suffering during all those years he spent in Heaven.)

After everything literally disappeared and the two of them were left alone in the bookshop surrounded by nothingness, Aziraphale performs the damn "I Was Wrong" dance. It's as though the writers are trying to tell us that Crowley was right in his speech about everything being predetermined and nothing ever being changeable, which directly contradicts what the book and season 1 based on it were about.

Everyone hates Aziraphale. From the characters to the narrative itself.

And that leads me to one question...

How can you love this film while also loving Aziraphale?

From my perspective, loving this film and loving Aziraphale are complete opposites that simply cannot coexist in the same sentence. The entire film is saturated with absolute hatred toward this character. It portrays him as a stupid, naive bastard who doesn't care about the person he loves, the one he spent 6,000 years beside.

"If it weren't for Jesus, I wouldn't need you," and "Angels aren't killers" - those two lines tell me loud and clear just how "deep" the creators of this "masterpiece" understand Aziraphale as a character.

That's why I feel that the people who enjoyed this film either don't understand Aziraphale as a character, or they hate him, or they're simply not as emotionally attached to him. As someone who identified with him for five damn years, I want to say that the Aziraphale in this film is a pathetic, disgusting, unbelievably stupid parody of that wonderful, brave, courageous angel who was full of hope, full of pain from having to suppress his feelings, who did everything he could to survive, to stay with Crowley, and to do the right thing. The angel who absolutely melts when Crowley calls him a bastard, because that one line contains all of the demon's love for every one of the angel's flaws, flaws he loves just as much as all of his virtues (though honestly, I think Crowley puts them on exactly the same level as his virtues, lol).

The angel who deserved every word of love this world has to offer, deserved to be accepted for who he is, deserved to be loved, deserved peace and warmth.

The finale certainly did its fair share of mistreating Crowley as well, but that's a topic for another post.

The fact that a story is funny does not make it a comedy. Good Omens the novel has a horror ending for Aziraphale and Crowley (a fact everyone seems to conveniently ignore), and the motifs and themes of the novel are 100% cosmic horror. The show lays out cosmic horror allusions, motifs, and world mechanics from the very 1st episode. It's written by a horror writer. No plot points or story outcomes were revealed after S1 .

"Good Omens is a comedy!" is a bullshit idea the fandom made up instead of paying attention to the material in the novel or the show, and now people are melting down bc reality didn't conform to their baseless belief.

Good Omens is a fantasy comedy television series - Wikipedia

IMDb (owned by Amazon) classifies it as both “buddy comedy” and “dark comedy”, among other things.

It won an award from comedy.co.uk for Best TV Comedy Drama and Best Comedy of the Year in 2019 and the former again in 2023. That ^ link is from TP’s website.

It was nominated for a GLAAD award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2024.

David Tennant was nominated for a BAFTA TV award for Male Performance in a Comedy in 2024.

David and Michael were both nominated for an Astra award for Best Actor in a Streaming Comedy Series in 2024.

People on tumblr created at least two polls asking if it was a comedy after season 2 aired and NG (🤬) confirmed it was a comedy. CW: there’s a video of NG accepting the award at the top of the post linked above ^^ There are screenshots below the cut for anyone who wants to see the relevant parts without his face. They still show two extremely short (6 words or fewer) posts from NG.

And even genre isn't necessarily reliable! Show!Omens technically fits the genre of romantic comedy as well as the genres of cosmic horror, dystopian fiction, and romantic tragedy, but it doesn't fit in the romantic comedy genre in a typical way, and certainly not in a way that feels like romantic comedy.

"I don't even know where you people want to come at us calling us idiots and media illiterate while trying to gaslight us into any kind of wild headcanon from 'the finale is good writing' to "good omens is not a comedy."

There are a number of problems with this statement. I don't represent any group, I'm not speaking for anyone else, and I can't answer for things other people have said, so I can't claim to be a "you people." It's just me.

My op is not intended to "come for" anybody. It's definitely venting, but it's not targeted at amyone or any post specifically, and I made it on a different platform than the one where I saw the latest "Good Omens is supposed to be a comedy" statement that inspired it.

I did not call anybody an idiot. This is something you made up. I didn't even imply anything about anyone being an idiot. I do not think that.

Also--and you're the 3rd person I've seen misuse this term today, so you're not alone--media literacy and literacy are not the same thing. I didn't say anything at all about media literacy.

Media literacy is awareness of the sources and biases in media as part of distinguishing reliable information from unreliable information. Literacy is the ability to glean information from a text and analyze that information in order to reach conclusions about it.

"The finale is good writing," which I also did not say, and "Good Omens is not a comedy," which I did, are not examples of "gaslighting." They're just opinions--subjective statements. People having different opinions--even bad ones--doesn't mean they're trying to gaslight you. That's not what gaslighting is.

Gaslighting is denying events in physical reality to make the victim feel crazy. "There were never any cookies" spoken around a mouthful of cookies is an example of gaslighting.

Opinions also aren't "headcanons." Headcanons are beliefs about in-universe events. "Neo cuts his own hair with nail scissors" would be a headcanon. "The Matrix is religious allegory" would be an opinion.

Aziraphale wouldn’t have kept fluttering around Michael, endlessly talking about forgiveness. He might have tried that for a moment—because compassion is part of who he is—but the second it became clear it wasn’t working, he would have switched modes and done whatever was necessary to fix the situation. That’s exactly the pattern we’ve seen from him throughout the story.

Good Omens was such a slam dunk of a best love story of all time.

I think it might be rooted in the fact that it wasn't originally written as an obvious love story, but it slotted easily (some might even say perfectly) into that genre when it was nudged in that direction.

It should have been enemies to lovers, except Crowley and Aziraphale were so compatible they just immediately dropped the enemies part in every way except for keeping up appearances. And it was the slowest of slow burns because they both knew that was the only way they could be together on Earth as themselves.

100% agreed like there were a thousand other and better ways to end this series, as fans have demonstrated time and time again on ao3 and with headcanons

i didn’t expect my cosy romantic comedy show to send such a dark message but here we are. and maybe they didn’t mean it in a ‘suicidal’ way but in a ‘self sacrifice’ heroic (bitter-bittersweet) way but intent doesn’t matter if that’s the takeaway. really irresponsible tv if you ask me, apart from being badly written ooc edgelord nonsense

pls take good care of yourself.

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?

That being said, whenever I do encounter the discussions about this ending in relation to Pterry, could this have been his ending, why he might’ve thought this ending was a good idea, how this ending is supported or not supported by his previous ‘Good Omens’ writing, as well as general discussions about how this ending could’ve been done better, it always strikes me how many of the factors here were things that were already changed or removed as early as GO1.

Like, while GO1 is clearly systematically critical of Heaven and Hell as institutions, pretty much all the lines where directly arguing for the possibility of a world where they are gone entirely were all cut in adaption.

Same with the lines where Adam calls Crowley and Aziraphale out for their complicity in Heaven and Hell’s Cosmic Imperialism. Instead, the framing in GO1 suggests they have a much more positive relationship with him, and by extension, humanity.

In general, while every version of Crowley and Aziraphale has some level of being both complicit in the system and victimized by it, Book Omens certainly emphasizes the Husbands’ complicity, while GO1’s reframing of them from ‘Cold War Spies’ to ‘Corporate Drones’ also coincide with a reframing that emphasizes their victimization. That makes the audience root for an uncomplicated Happily Ever After for them much more than feeling like they’ve got to ‘sacrifice’ something.

There’s also a lot to say about the shift in their characterization from the Book to the Show and how it effected the build up to the ending, but even on the most basic level, while the TV Omens version of Crowley and Aziraphale are still hedonists who try to save the Earth for mostly self-interested reasons, they also struggle with selflessness to some degree. Aziraphale thinking he should give up on his happiness with Crowley for the greater good, and Crowley being unhealthily self-sacrificial in the relationship. That makes a Heroic Sacrifice maybe a less ‘necessary’ conclusion to their characters compared to something that emphasizes the balance between selfishness and selflessness.

And the increased focus on romance and invoking the structure and tropes of a Romantic Comedy, both with the way the Ineffable Husbands Plotline goes in GO1 as a standalone narrative, and the way that GO2 seems to sell itself as the first half of a bigger, this-time-for-all-the-marbles Romantic Comedy with the post-Third-Act-Break-Up resolutions happening in GO3… that also makes a more uncomplicated ‘And They Lived Happily Ever After’ feel like the most appropriate ending.

In addition, making the Ineffable Husbands’ relationship so tumultuous and full of Mutual Pining, unlike in the book where they seemed pretty stable and you could infer that they were pretty satisfied with whatever relationship they had, makes it all so much more tragic. Unnecessarily tragic maybe. Like, sacrificing a centuries-long relationship would also be pretty sad, but sacrificing the possibility of even getting a chance to be together after 6000 years of doubts and fumbles and yearning and desires that never came to be is on a whole other level.

This romance-centric angle also makes it a story that’s…. at its most charitable interpretation is about how systematic change requires sacrifice sometimes, and making that thing that has to be sacrificed ‘a queer couple’s only chance at a Happy Ending’. Which is… certainly a choice.

And if we are doing, like, an Asa and Anthony thing, keeping Crowley and Aziraphale’s more functional and stable relationship might make Asanthony feel more like ‘aww, they’re picking up right where they left off’ and less like a stupid magical solution to the very realistic and human problems in the relationship in an ending that’s supposedly all about the beauty of mundanity.

And, y’know, GO2 generally giving so much focus to Crowley and Aziraphale’s personal and interpersonal struggles and how healing and solving them is a complicated and non-linear process is another thing that makes an ending where they actually live and get to work on these problems the actual mundane normal way feel like the most appropriate one.

GO2 also has generally a lot of focus on further ‘Humanizing’ (for the lack of a better word) other Angels and Demons. Again, emphasizing that they can all be victimized by the system, rather than just extensions of it.

And GO2, and GO1 to a lesser-but-still-definite extant, really putting the Humans and Humanist themes on the back-burner for the sake of cool supernatural drama and indulging in just being the Crowley and Aziraphale Show (as well as Human characters being written with less and less vibrancy and uniqueness in general)… that all makes the swerve to suddenly making Humanity the Most Important Thing and the thing that the audience needs to be invested more in then in Crowley and Aziraphale’s happy ending to be very discordant and jarring. And I think it runs the risk of being that even in an ideal version of GO3 where it had the full six episodes to build up to it's ending.

Also GO1 being as self-contained as it was and clearly framing itself as a happily ever after and a satisfying ending for Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship problems and to their affiliation with Heaven and Hell makes it harder for GO3 to sell its at-best-very-Bittersweet ending as ‘the only way they could be happy’. Like Book Omens also ended with them happily dining at the Ritz and a nightingale singing at Berkeley Square, but they were also still employed by Heaven and Hell, but there was a much bigger emphasis on what’s going to come next and whatever or not the Husbands are ready for it.

I mean, I won’t say to the level where Book Omens feels like an unsatisfying, incomplete or ‘bad’ ending to them in a meaningful way but… maybe it is one that would do a better job of convincing the audience that a GO3-style ending is the two’s best shot at true happiness and freedom. While the pure complete happiness of the GO1 ending is much harder to sell as a temporary respite, even if that’s what it was retconned into in-universe as of GO2, because the audience is aware that this is not what the narrative was trying to communicate to them during GO1 (and GO3 is clearly trying to engage with things from a meta-narrative perspective so it’s hard to look at things purely in-universe).

(And this is just counting problems in GO1-2 as the lead-up to GO3, that’s not counting the writing issues of GO3 itself, as it was absolutely not the best-executed version of its own concept, even considering its less-than-ideal circumstances.)

… The thing I'm still having a real hard time even trying to justify is the Full Universe Reset thing though. Like, the idea of using "the world is better off destroyed, let's start from scratch" as a metaphor for the massive societal change that's required for dismantling oppressive and harmful systems that seem inescapable is maybe not inherently bad, but it's certainly a hard sell as a sequel to a work where "the world is better off destroyed, let's start from scratch" was a metaphor for… destroying the world.

Plus, the idea that the entirety of human existence happened pretty much identically in the "Real Universe" feels even more implausible and hard-to-suspend-disbelief within the Book Continuity, where Crowley and Aziraphale (and especially Crowley) have been doing a lot more meddling in Human Affairs (even if it's silly goofy meddling like inventing various annoying taxes and game shows).

Then there's also still "the first day of the rest of their lives", "the first day of the rest of the world" (as the Husbands' part of Sunday calls it), the constant implications that Adam still has a long future ahead of him, Agnes' ghost laughing at the sight of Anathema burning her second book (which is not the reaction I'd expect her to have if this book was basically about how Anathema and all of her family and everyone she knows and the whole world is gonna Fucking Die.)

That part of the Finale still feels like a hard sell in pretty much every version of Good Omens, and maybe makes even less sense with Book Omens.

But, like, well, first and foremost I guess this really just proves what I said above about the execution being more important than just the vague Idea of the ending. An idea could be… I think still emotionally difficult but potentially thematically resonant and bittersweet in one version of the Canon, but transplanted into a slightly different version of the story and it becomes a dismal and depressing mess.

But also I can't help but feel like it's kinda ironic, like, okay, for all that I said of how a version of this ending could've gone better under another context, I can't pretend like I prefer it to "and then Crowley and Aziraphale lived happily and self-indulgently ever after for literally forever". But if there is one version of the Ineffables that could thematically support this ending it's their Book Omens version, and they're the version who just got to live Happily Ever After. And meanwhile, the one version of Crowley and Aziraphale who most needed a romantic Happily Ever After, narratively, thematically, are the TV Omens version and they got the fucking GO3 ending.

Asa isn't a guardian angel wrapped in self-indulgence who's just enough of a bastard to be perfect.

Anthony's co-workers probably actually like him. He probably drives a perfectly reasonable car and when he turns on the stereo it almost certainly plays music that hasn't been transmuted into Queen.

Asa is excited at the thought of selling books. He offers discounts as a form of flirting. He doesn't own a bookshop with incomprehensible opening hours.

They'll never drive through London at 90 miles an hour while bickering. They'll never show up at the Ritz expecting a table has just miraculously opened up. They'll never reminisce about something that happened thousands of years ago that no one remembers except for them. They'll never talk through their issues. They'll never retire into a peaceful life full of the love that they both saved up over all the years when they had to hide how they really felt.

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.

And like, Crowley isn't giving any grace to any angels or demons who could have the same opportunity he has always been fighting so hard to earn. He spent thousands of years carving out a life beyond Heaven and Hell's expectations, yet his decision denies others the chance to do the same.

I always end up circling back to this, but Beelzebub and Gabriel are exactly why this choice doesn't work. Their story proves that angels and demons can change, choose each other, and walk away from the systems they were born into.

And Crowley and Aziraphale aren’t just witnesses to that, they are living proof of it. They are their own example. They know, firsthand, that despite being celestial beings, angels and demons are capable of questioning, changing, and choosing differently.

There's also Muriel, who grows curious and fond of humanity. And if we include those sweet little interactions Muriel seemed to be developing with Eric in the finale, that's yet another example of a demon beginning to form a dynamic outside of Hell's expectations.

A choice like this also deprives Eric of the opportunity to grow beyond the only world he's ever known. Just like Crowley once did, these celestial beings deserve the chance to question the system he was born into, form meaningful relationships, and decide for himself who he wants to be.

So while yes, it was Michael who destroyed the Book of Life, Crowley choice in the end was just as bad. They took away every angel's and every demon's chance to grow beyond the roles they were assigned.

And not just that, but refusing to save the world they loved makes Adam and Jesus role in the story even more futile. Their entire purpose was to prove that the world was worth saving despite its flaws, that humanity, with all its messiness, was worth fighting for.

And what about Maggie and Nina? In Season 2, they quite literally confront Crowley and tell him that his meddling in their lives wasn't appreciated. Their lives and relationships are theirs to figure out, not his. Crowley respects that.

Which is why his choice in GO3 feels so contradictory to me. He chooses a godless and angelless universe without giving anyone else the chance to decide whether that's what they want. Humanity doesn't get a say. The angels don't get a say. The demons don't get a say.

Not even Aziraphale gets a say. Which also bothers me because they are a team. So why does it end up feeling like Crowley’s perspective is the one that defines the outcome? Why is his vision of what the universe should be the one that gets imposed on everyone else, even Aziraphale?

I saw a tweet that said that Aziraphale's lack of agency in that moment and his tendency to go along with Crowley's "righteous" choice even when he's not fully certain, parallels how Aziraphale used to follow Heaven.

That’s what makes it uncomfortable for me. Because if both Heaven and Crowley end up occupying that same space of “the one who decides,” then the story risks repeating the same dynamic it critiques, just with different names attached.

There is something so somber about Crowley’s “no us.” This phrase lands like a final severing of the possibility they’ve spent millennia building together.

Framed through the idea of “free will,” it becomes even more complicated. A decision meant to preserve autonomy ends up erasing the very people who have been fighting for their own future all along.

For a lot of viewers, that’s what makes the ending so sickening. These are characters we’ve watched consistently choose the each other and the world. So the idea of their entire shared existence being removed in the name of freedom feels deeply contradictory to what the story itself has been building toward.

Season 1 and 2 show us that they’re always thinking about each other, and the fragile world they’ve learned to care about together.

Crowley adores Aziraphale—there’s no question about that. And Aziraphale adores Crowley just as deeply. They’ve spent so long building a shared life, forming memories in a world they both came to love and protect.

And in that sense, both of them are smart enough to understand what’s at risk when the Earth is on the line. They’ve spent too long on it, lived too many moments in it, to treat it as something disposable.

In the end, however, we get a strange choice that arguably parallels the Biblical Flooding: a sweeping, top-down reset in the name of fixing what’s broken.

Instead of allowing the story’s central theme of free will and change to play out through its characters, the resolution feels like an external intervention that wipes the slate clean rather than letting the world continue to evolve.

This ending frames Crowley as a hypocrite, and it reduces Aziraphale from a co-equal participant in their shared story to someone who is simply carried along by the decision rather than choosing alongside him.

Like, on the one hand, you could make an argument here in favor of the GO3 ending. That this shows that Crowley and Aziraphale can be heroic and selfless and self-sacrificial towards Humanity, and not just lovable selfish hedonists, that the reason why this Epic Sacrifice Moment fizzled-out casualty-free is because the Actual Joke is that this wasn’t really Crowley and Aziraphale’s story, so if there was a Good Omens sequel that was actually Crowley and Aziraphale’s story, it would make thematic sense to loop back to that sacrifice…

But mostly, comparing this scene to the ending of GO3 just showcases just how much the latter sucks and fails in everything it attempts to achieve. Even if Adam didn’t come in to save the day and remind us that he’s the actual Hero, that Heroic Sacrifice would be a much more satisfying conclusion to these characters than the “”Heroic Sacrifice”” at the end of GO3.

Like, first things of all, the stakes and the reason why the Book sacrifice is even needed are obviously much clearer. GO3 is clearly going for a much more… philosophically ambitious, original and abstract kind of sacrifice than “Big Fuckoff Evil Guy comes to smash all the squishy Humans, we’re not squishy Humans, so we should try to hold him off”. But, still, the fact is that the Big Fuckoff Evil Guy situation was better-established and much more intuitively understood as to why Crowley and Aziraphale feel the need to do a Heroic Sacrifice in the first place. While the necessity of a Total Universe Reset where Crowley and Aziraphale have never even existed is…. not really well-explained within the text of GO3.

Going down fighting Satan with a Flaming Sword and a Tire Iron is also a much more badass mental image than solemnly wordlessly dissolving into stardust. Even if they truly think that there’s no chance for them to get out of this fight alive, they’re not exactly Going Gently Into That Good Night. There’s still that sense of fighting for your world and hope that the story was all about. Also, while the main goals of fighting Satan were certainly selfless, like, are you telling me Crowley wouldn’t get any sort of personal enjoyment out of giving his shitty boss he’s been afraid of for most of his existence in the Ultimate Fuck You?

To quote Crowley's (internal monologue) from a bit earlier:

Like, GO3 was supposed to be about refusing to play rigged games, defying God’s rules, and winning against the Narrative… but then the Finale wants to also emphasize the sheer selflessness and tragedy of the sacrifice, so there’s really no sense of determination or triumph against God (despite this being what the narrative is supposed to be about). I mean, I said it in a previous post, but it is hard to make your story both about a changing the rules of a rigged game and a tragic selfless sacrifice. It feels like if ‘changing the rules’ was really the theme, they should’ve found some sort of loophole or alternative solution, rather than God’s ultimatum being one game they apparently can’t change…

But, like, not even letting the characters revel in the fact that at least She’s not going to be part of that new universe either. Or, like, saying something cool or hopeful or flipping the bird to Her as they dissolve if they really are supposed to have ‘changed the rules’ of Her game or… something defiant like that. It is staged and directed to emphasize the tragedy, how much Crowley and Aziraphale are going to lose, and so this feels like a surrender, and not like a brave struggle, and not just because this situation doesn’t involve (the potential for) Physical Violence.

And Book!Crowley’s Optimism! Like, I have seen people try and interpret this line…

As being, like, some sort of Foreshadowing or meaningful to the Lore of GO3 and how the ‘Real’ Universe works. But I really think it just means what it seems to mean on the surface. Despite acknowledging there’s no way they’d win this fight in both dialogue and inner monologue, Crowley still cannot let go of the hope that he and Aziraphale will make it out okay, that there will be a ‘next time’ for them, no matter how irrational it seems. And, you know, he was right. But even if he wasn’t, that classic Crowley defiant cynical optimism gives the scene a much more triumphant feel. The kind of feel that’s pretty much entirely absent in GO3.

Also, they are risking themselves for the actual Humans they’ve come to know and appreciate. They are still trying to preserve the Earth and the Humanity that they’ve known for 6000 years, and they are also specifically fighting to protect the specific humans at the Airbase, the other main characters of the story. The specificity here is important, the specificity of love for the Humanity they came to know for as long as they knew each other, the readers being invested because they care about the characters Crowley and Aziraphale are trying to defend. The specificity of Love just feels so much more Human, and thus more on-theme, then this idea of loving a Distant Abstract Idea of People that you don’t actually know and will never actually know.

And then there’s the way that, y’know, this moment is also a culmination of their very specific character arcs in the Book. How these two complicit hedonists trying to stop Armageddon because they benefit from the Status Quo learn to admit their own complicity and do something selfless for these beings they always had an affinity for but have never truly been beneficial for.

How Aziraphale becoming fully disillusioned with Heaven also means he has to admit he’s been kinda causing just as much problems for Humanity as Crowley has. Crowley has to face actual consequences and actual guilt for the mischief he gleefully caused to Humanity. Aziraphale rejecting Heaven’s idea of ‘Good Behavior’ and embracing moral gray areas allowing him to side with the Humans fully and embrace his legacy as the Angel who gave away his Flaming Sword, for good and for bad. Crowley being so afraid of Hell, and then having to watch all of these fears come true, having to do increasingly brazen things to even get to the airfield, and then, when he was finally left with nothing more to lose, feeling like he’s already basically doomed, realizing that he can and he wants to do such a brave and selfless thing.

GO3 is obviously a different narrative with very different versions of Aziraphale and Crowley, and even GO1 didn’t quite follow all the beats of their original character arcs. But the arcs that GO3 did need to build up to its sacrifice… aren’t great on their own. First things first, the shift from the Cold War Metaphor where Crowley and Aziraphale are complicit in Cosmic Imperialism to a Capitalism Metaphor where they are victimized corporate cogs means that it just… doesn’t feel as necessary for them to give some sort of Big Display of Selflessness to culminate their story anymore. There’s a reason why GO1 felt like a satisfying self-contained story even with the original Almost-Sacrifice being cut. Maybe if Show Omens spent any meaningful amount of time exploring the idea that Crowley and Aziraphale are complicit in the System and are benefiting from it, that whole ending would feel a lot more earned…. But even taking into consideration the time constraints of GO3, it really didn’t. The 'Miracle Account', the one concept that really builds to that idea, is barely dwelled on and feels more like a conflict contrivance than anything thematically important.

Plus, despite still being hedonists whose original motivation for saving the world was at least kinda selfish, both TV!Crowley and TV!Aziraphale have had struggles related to selflessness, or at least needing to embrace certain selfish desires. Aziraphale being self-conscious about his hedonism when Heaven criticizes it, struggling between Heaven’s idea (and sometimes his own idea) of the Greater Good and being with Crowley even when it’s ’selfish’ of him, and Crowley being unhealthily self-sacrificial and self-destructively selfless when it come to his relationship to Aziraphale (and especially in GO3)…

All of this feels discordant with an ending that celebrates selfless self-sacrifice as a culmination of both of their character arcs and the ultimate act of goodness and love they can do. These bits of characterization seem to lend themselves much better to a story about the balance between selfishness and selflessness, rather than one that just glorifies the latter in such an uncomplicated way. And GO3 goes to great lengths to emphasize how undiluted and pure and lacking in any sort of self-interest or personal benefit Crowley and Aziraphale’s sacrifice is. To kinda absurd degree, really.

And as for the ‘arcs’ that are supposed to build up to it in GO3, Crowley jumped from still insisting that he and Aziraphale need to abandon Earth and all of humanity and escape to Alpha Centauri to suddenly being willing to sacrifice both of their existences for the Greater Good has no real build-up in the story. Even when Aziraphale tells him he’s being selfish, the scene still ends with Crowley having the last word and no indication in the direction, acting or dialogue that the words did have an effect on him.

Combined with Aziraphale being constantly given dialogue glazing Crowley as ‘brave’ and ‘caring’ and the ‘Best Angel’, plus the romanticization of Crowley’s own self-destructive, self-sacrificial behavior regarding Aziraphale, it kinda feels like the Narrative wants us to believe that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Crowley was always this amazing loving selfless martyr for all mankind rather than this actually being some sort of ‘arc’. Which makes the whole thing even less compelling.

And Aziraphale’s entire arc has been made to revolve around Crowley in some way, he needs to learn to be less selfish in his relationship with Crowley, he needs to listen to Crowley more, even his relationship with Heaven is about its affects his relationship with Crowley - how he views Crowley in light of Heaven’s indoctrination and how he needs to trust Crowley’s judgment and worldview. Everything about the Finale tries to make it very clear that agreeing to the sacrifice is supposed to be a culmination of his arc because it’s something he’s doing ‘for Crowley’. He doesn’t actually want it, but now he’s sacrificing things for Crowley! He’s listening to him! He’s trusting him! How romantic, right?

And there’s just… so much Wrong there as a character arc. This story of small subtle mundane imbalances being supposedly resolved with a Big Dramatic Fantastical Gesture. The idea of concluding an arc about communication issues and an uneven amount of self-sacrifice in a relationship with the character agreeing to a suicide pact without ever speaking of how he truly feels about it, and the narrative kinda acting like the self-destructive self-sacrifice that Crowley was doing before somehow means he ‘deserves’ this kind of extreme sacrifice in exchange is just… so fucked up on so many levels. And it’s just bad from a basic character standpoint that Aziraphale’s self-sacrifice is all about his relationship, when in the original Almost-Sacrifice, while Aziraphale was the one who asks Crowley to stay and fight alongside him, it’s not like Crowley was just doing it ‘for Aziraphale’, its a culmination of both of their personal arcs and their relationships with Humanity.

And there’s also a lot of other little character moments in the Book, Aziraphale becoming fully disillusioned with Heaven also means he has given up on having any sense of moral superiority towards Crowley. Which was not as a... dramatic problem as it was in GO1, but still Present, so it was nice to feel that thread got some closure

Crowley finally finding a good retort to whether Aziraphale brings up his inner goodness rather than just going “Yeah, yeah, but shut up, okay?!”

While also admitting that he likes him, which is a leap from his internal narration from the start of the book trying to present the relationship as purely one of convenience.

(Compare and contrast, Aziraphale’s internal narration about Crowley)

GO3 had… more of an uphill battle, with so much more C&A content to resolve and so much more time spent exploring Crowley and Aziraphale’s various issues and struggles, it would be hard for any ending to bring all them into a satisfying conclusion before they Fucking Die. But… all the time spent emphasizing how this Sacrifice is the Biggest Most Selfless Sacrificial Sacrifice ever takes time that could have spent giving a sense of resolution to some of these points. And at the end of the day, Crowley and Aziraphale agreeing to fight Satan side-by-side feels like a culmination of their relationship as well, while GO3 focuses on how much between of them was left unresolved and unfulfilled, emphasizing the ‘tragedy’ of if it all. Their love was worthwhile as a Poetic Sacrifice on the alter of the Greater Good, but not as a plot point that ever gets resolved. They die never have been exactly on the same page, ever.

And the Dramatic Hand-Holding is, in the context of the book, the peak of Crowley and Aziraphale’s open affection towards each other. It feels like a proper dramatic escalation to their relationship in this critical dramatic moment because it’s a step ‘beyond’ nudging elbows and grabbing arms. That same gesture feels… underwhelming in the context of GO3, when even adding the little finger-kiss, because this is far from the Most Affectionate they have ever been with each other.

Like, I don’t generally touch the question of “how physically affectionate/intimate. Crowley and Aziraphale should be with each other?” much, but narratively speaking it is bonkers (or ‘lunacy’ as TV Crowley likes to say) that for their Final Dramatic Death Scene to not have some new ‘peak’ in their affection towards each other. Something that feels as novel to GO3 Aziracrow as handholding was to Book Omens Aziracrow. Like, maybe they don’t actually want to express their love via making out (despite everything about the S2 Kiss clearly indicating that they do), but how about a long sweet hug? A verbal confirmation of their affection rather than talking around each other and at third parties? A very very last moment marriage proposal? Like, I dunno, something that feels novel and important and new for them in some way….

And then there’s the most important part, the human involvement! First and foremost, Crowley and Aziraphale’s decision, while thematically built up through all their scenes in the Book, was obviously most directly incentivized from Adam calling them out.

It’s humans that have led them to this personal transformation once again, they are doing this because the words of the Human Incarnate affected them. And it’s yet another example of Adam’s power, not just as the Antichrist, but as a Smartass Kid Calling Out Hypocrites and Asking Questions.

I… suppose Crowley’s little conversation with Maggie and Nina was meant to play a similar role here, but without Aziraphale also being present because Someone forbid Aziraphale’s own relationship with humanity would also be narratively important….

But it just doesn’t work as well as the Adam bit for several reasons. Like, Adam was calling Crowley and Aziraphale out for the jobs they were doing as Agents of Cosmic Imperialism, the jobs they were still doing and were actively proud out at the start of the story. Meanwhile, the Nina and Maggie situation was a result of a bunch of one-time wacky hijinks that happened after Crowley and Aziraphale were already trying to retire. While they still needed to knock it off and mind their own business, the ‘guilt’ from this moment doesn’t really feel like it extend past these specific circumstances.

And also, and that relates to one of my earliest points, which is that the need for a self-sacrifice in Book Omens was considerably more self-evident than the whole Universal Reset stuff, the logical connection of “oh, we were complicit in Cosmic Imperialism by two corrupt Superpowers who are equally shitty to Humanity, maybe we should make it up to them by saving these specific Humans from being killed from one of the biggest, baddest Cosmic Imperialists out there” is much much more solid when compared to, like… “Oh, Nina and Maggie taught me that it’s kinda Shitty when supernatural entities manipulate the lives of Humans and treat them like they’re not real people…. I should create a Real World where no supernatural entities who can manipulate the lives of Humans can exist, but fuck all the Humans who existed so far, including Nina and Maggie. Their world wasn’t ‘real’, so it’s okay if it’s totally replaced without even discussing the possibility of bringing it back and fixing it! Also, have I mentioned I’m the only one making this decision and there are no Humans here to give their input or perspective?”

And the human agency and perspective is the other important point! Even before Adam came around to override the need for a sacrifice in the first place, the other humans around Crowley and Aziraphale never stopped having their own agency. Shadwell, Newt and Anathema were all actively running to get involved in the fight with various degrees of enthusiasm and confidence. Because even when Crowley and Aziraphale are trying to be honestly selfless and pro-humanity, they can’t stop Humans from doing whatever the hell they want, from making that heroic sacrifice all on their own.

And, you know, at the end of the sequence, they can’t stop Adam from rewriting his own story and rendering their Big Moment of Selflessness moot.

And that’s also okay, it’s the thought that counts, I guess.

Trying to compare that to the GO3 Ending isn't even funny. Like, not only there are no Humans with agency in these scenes, they were NO humans in general, like, not anywhere in the universe, they have all been Literally Wiped From Existence. None of them have a chance to join in on something cool or heroic, or even to just voice their opinion of Crowley's decision...

Crowley and Aziraphale loving the humans they are actually living amongst, appreciating Humanity for the specific inventions and modern conveniences and foods and art that we have created over the centuries and that we love too, the text making it clear that humanity’s influence shaped them into the Beings they are now, that we taught them of Free Will and moral gray areas that allowed their bond to form, that despite their powers they still have relatable human problems and sometimes they are amazed by our kindness or morbidly fascinated by our depravity or amused by our sheer brazenness and sometimes they find us annoying and silly and sometimes they find us delightful…

That will always feel to me like such a better picture of ‘loving Humanity’ then watching this hollow martyr simulacra of Crowley talking about ‘People’ in such an abstract and distant way. Having this apparent pouring saintly selfless love and care for the Concept of Humanity that’s totally unconnected to the traits and achievements of the Humanity he has come to know over the years, because he’s willing to sacrifice everything for future ‘People’ that as far as he knows, will be nothing like the Humans he knew over the last 6000 years (and the fact that they are pretty much the same is its own can of worms), and just generally coming off as pitying and condescending. Not even having some sort of empathetic insight from the years he spent Miracle-less on Earth.

And Aziraphale and Crowley loving living on Earth so much that they were willing to betray their sides like that is such a beautiful way to make us the readers appreciate the experiences of being alive on Earth ourselves. Book!Crowley doesn’t even argue that life after Heaven’s victory will be ‘better’ by some sort of abstract scale, he just knows that it won’t be worth it for Aziraphale if it means giving up on good music and fine wine. When Crowley first starts thinking about how much he does not actually want Armageddon to happen, despite the rather luxurious lifestyle he leads, the first Earthly Pleasure he knows he’d miss is just… the experience of having a nice sleep after a heavy meal. Crowley faced Hell’s Wrath for the sake of having a nice sleep after a heavy meal. Because it is those kind of experiences that make life worth living.

I am actually tearing up just thinking about it now, it’s the perfect balance of silly but also poignant appreciation of being alive. For the kind of experiences we should linger on and enjoy and aspire to have as often as we can, even if we can't do it as often (or quite as long) as the Demon Crowley can. It is so so much better than GO3 trying to suddenly swerve into telling us that Crowley and Aziraphale’s life were an Existential Nightmare by some badly-conveyed metafictional philosophical standpoint, and we should be happy with our lives because it’s Objectively Freer and Better and More Real from that same abstract metafictional philosophical perspective.

Because much of what I loved about Good Omens was anti-metaphysical in spirit. The entire book is literally built on the idea: circumstances shape personality. Adam stops being the Antichrist because he grew up in a normal family with good friends. Aziraphale and Crowley change and grow closer because they've lived on Earth for so long. Cosmic roles, fate, and purpose aren't as important as the choices of a specific individual.

So if accepting the ending requires relying on things like:

souls recognize each other

love outlives personality

essence is more important than biography

people will end up together anyway,

then…

It turns out that the story that for a long time said: People are more important than fate.

Yep - those lines are another s3 Aziraphale characterisation choice that I hate.

Contrast it with s1, and the scene where we first meet present day(ish) Aziraphale. Gabriel appears unexpectedly, notices that Aziraphale is eating and states that he wouldn't 'sully the temple of my celestial body with gross matter'. And rather than agreeing, Aziraphale defends himself and also subtly points out Gabriel's hypocrisy - 'nice suit'.

This is one of my favourite moments and it tells us so much about Aziraphale - despite how uncomfortable Gabriel makes him, Aziraphale is a bit of a bastard in response. It's perfect, the comment goes straight over Gabriel's head - and on the off chance that it doesn't, Aziraphale has plausible deniability. That right there is one of the reasons Crowley loves him.