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TV Tropes calls it ‘The Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work’. That’s when an action that would be beneficial for our heroes but is morally unscrupulous in some way is done by a Villain instead. Obviously Tropes are Tools so this is not exactly Inherently Bad, but this is often done as a way to keep the protagonist up to an expected ethical standards without necessarily dealing with the actual ramifications and implications that come with this ethical code. Like, you don’t want your hero to kill the villain, because Killing is Bad, but you’re also not interested in actually committing to what it would mean to spare their life (risk of them harming people again? An attempt at a redemption arc?), so the villains’ minions turn on them and kill them instead! Now you’ve got all the neat plot resolution and Punitive Justice Undertones of killing your villain while keeping your hero ‘clean’!

You might recognize this concept as, like, basically one of the central linchpins to Crowley and Aziraphale’s conflict in S1. They both think that killing the Antichrist might be the only way to save the world, neither of them can bring themselves to do it, and Aziraphale keeps insisting that Crowley must be the one to do it because he’s ’the Bad Guy’.

Obviously, GO1 portrays this attitude as deeply hypocritical, and while killing the Antichrist turns out to not be necessary at all, it is super important that at the end, Aziraphale does end up being the only one willing to pull the trigger.

So I think it is rather ironic how much Michael’s Big Cosmic Breakdown kinda feels like a twisted version of this Trope. Like, their wiping of the entire universe is ‘convenient’ for the plot, it provides the characters with a blank slate without any of them being actually to blame for a destruction of a whole universe.

Because we are told that Crowley wants a ‘Real Universe’ with ‘Real Free Will’ more than anything else, and apparently this can’t be achieved by modifying the current reality (like restoring the previous world and telling God to Fuck Off), but only by starting over from scratch. So… what would’ve happened if God showed up and made Their offer while the old universe was still ticking along just fine? Or even if it was a more 'traditional' Armageddon/Second Coming where Earth as we know it is gone but Heaven/Hell and all the sapient ethereal/occult beings in there are still around?

Would Crowley be willing to actively scrap that universe for the sake of the ‘Real Universe’? Would he refuse that opportunity despite apparently honestly believing this would be the only chance for Humanity to be ‘free’?

The show basically tried to skip any of the implications of these possibilities because the universe was already destroyed. There wasn’t supposed to be any real ramifications or implications for Crowley's character because the world was gone and it totally wasn’t his fault!

To me, what was so beautiful about the relationship is that by any reasonable standard it should not have occurred. Heaven and Hell were diametrically opposed in the extreme, but through shared experiences, Aziraphale and Crowley built a deep love for each other and for humanity, growing past what was expected of them and building something truly unique all on their own. We never got to see that growth through to completion.

There were so much narrative potential there to explore: what it looks like for characters with this type of past living with this kind of expectation to come together and grieve together and grow together. I would think most of us expected that, and in my opinion, it was stolen from us.

Aziraphale and Crowley feel like complex characters and they’re so interesting because of what the writers (the book authors, the fandom, even God) can do with them (corporation-wise, timeline-wise, plot-wise). They’re characters and they’re meant to entertain us! They’re meant to entertain God.

Asa and Anthony are not complex characters, not if you just take what canon offers. Their love story is predictable, not exciting. But that’s the point! Their story is theirs, their love is theirs. It’s not there for viewers pleasure but for them to experience, just as every real life love story.

I keep going back to what Rainbow Rowell said about the ending of Eleanor and Park, because I think this is a similar situation, where the narrator starts pulling back and describing less and less of what’s happening because the rest of the story is not meant for viewership, but for the characters themselves.

This was supposed to be a wacky comedy with a later addition of a romantic arc between two dearly beloved (for decades!) characters. I’m completely uninvested in this romance of two random humans without the dynamic I was watching for, who actively erased the characters I actually cared about.

As for the story itself, by the end it wasn’t a comedy and it definitely wasn’t wacky. And yeah, I kind of do expect a fictional story written for entertainment with the intention of being watched to be entertaining…