Big Leaf

a romance between two men does not automatically make a story good representation. especially when those characters are reduced to a set of generic traits: they are kind, they love each other, and that is basically it. we have already seen countless stories like that, and this is not just about gay relationships. people loved aziraphale and crowley not because they were a couple. they loved them as individuals: complex, contradictory characters with their own dynamic, history, and personalities that developed over many years. that is why it feels so strange to watch them be replaced with a flatter version of the same idea

a BOG is a wetland that is acidic

He didn't fight for humanity. He abandoned it.

We should have gotten a BAMF scene where Aziraphale delivers the smackdown to God a la the Crossword scene, with Crowley looking on in awe, maybe even after Crowley decided to sacrifice himself. For the emotional drama and and impact.

We start with their first bitter exchange, Aziraphale’s hurt pride leading him to say,

“Look, I know you’re upset with me.” “Yep.” “But I’m willing to overlook that.” (Oh come ON, angel. Come ON.) … “Close the door on your way out.” “But... you don’t have a door.” (Priceless.)

Then, though. Then. Crowley goes after Aziraphale almost immediately. And Aziraphale doesn’t expect it. Doesn’t know, at first, that it was Crowley who’d opened the door to the bookshop. Aziraphale’s “Crowley!” once he realizes it is an exhale—startled, gentle—and it absolutely murders me, the way he says Crowley’s name.

Their confessions start before that, of course—those rough, pained, raw confessions. Confessing their loss to others—sometimes, at the most inopportune times.

“I’ve lost worse things than that.”

“Heartbroken. World broken. What’s the point of anything?”

Muriel asking Aziraphale, “Why don’t you ask your… friend friend to help?” and Aziraphale hurrying to say that no, no, it’s out of the question—with that whole journey his face goes through as Muriel persists, “He might like to see you, anyway. Last time I saw him, he wasn’t in the best way, to be honest.” Then, Aziraphale finally turns to her, focused so completely on what he hears. “He seemed a bit… lost,” she goes on—and in a heartbeat, before she’s even gone out of the room, Aziraphale is miracling himself to Earth.

We go immediately from Aziraphale saying, “I needed Muriel. I needed someone to work with me in Heaven who was… nice.” “Ah.” to Crowley’s “You weren’t here. I wasn’t going to lose this place as well.” (Please, I beg of you. Somebody make a gif of the way Crowley says it, of the way he swallows at the end of it, turns his head.)

“I’ve come to get my friend back. And our c—his car.” (djkdfjkdf Aziraphale, you’re perfect.) “You’re a friend of his?” Brian Cameron says in disbelief. “No, he’s not.” “I rather think I am. I’m rescuing you. And liberating our Bentley!” (Perfect.)

Crowley hovering over Aziraphale’s shoulder for the whole competitive crossword solving business and his little smirk when Aziraphale brightly says, “Finished!”

How proud is he of his angel, do you think?

Years. Literal years that Crowley has been taking care of his bookshop. Has been dusting it, protecting it, keeping away vandals and rats. (Has he been dusting it by hand, this last while after his miracles were cut off? Aziraphale doesn’t know this yet, but if he knew.)

All these years, Crowley waited, and Crowley cared.

(Love the way Aziraphale announces to Brian: “I’ll take the car… and my friend.” I just bet that some part of Crowley, angry and hurt though he is, is warmed by this. By Aziraphale rescuing him, at just the right time. By Aziraphale repeating, over and over: my friend. my friend.)

And their car ride is key, I think, to them starting to understand each other. Nothing like a bit of forced proximity to begin untangling things. 

There is still plenty of hurt on both sides. They bicker. They exchange barbs and pointed comments.

“Right, let’s get it over with. So, where is Jesus?” “I don’t know.” “You don’t know?” “Well, no. Otherwise, I wouldn’t need to find him! And I wouldn’t need y—“ “Wouldn’t need me. Nice. Gotcha.”

Aziraphale isn’t done speaking when Crowley interrupts him, but is anything he might’ve said better than anything else? “Wouldn’t need you to drive me goodness knows where?” “Wouldn’t need you to help me find him?” “Wouldn’t need you?”

Crowley has made his point, though. They go on.

(To the audience, their bickering is, as always, a delight. Even here. Even now. “What are we going to do? Ring a bell? Leave out snacks? Hang signs on lamp posts saying ‘Missing Messiah, can offer Small Reward?’”)

I do love Aziraphale trying to break the awkwardness by finding music that Crowley might like, in vain, and Crowley hitting right back. “Stop flustering me, I can’t—I can’t think straight!” Aziraphale wails. (Oh, I bet, angel. I just bet.)

Then, though, then they get to the real thing. The hurt. The “you can’t change anything, it’s all rigged, the entire universe.” The “you leave me to go back to sort out Heaven, and you’ve made it into more of a mess than it was already.” The “you could have avoided all this, I asked you to come with me.”

And Aziraphale finally, finally responds with something he'd never said this plainly before. “How could we have been happy, knowing that we were leaving all these people to goodness knows what awfulness? … I just wanted to save everything so that everyone could have a chance, including us!”

This is key. This is where Crowley starts hearing him, I think. Yes, things have gotten desperately bad, but also Aziraphale is finally admitting it openly: an ‘us’. He’d wanted an ‘us’, too, and he’d wanted everyone to have a chance. And he understands how important it is to Crowley for everyone else to have a chance, too—even if Crowley himself has given up on it, has resigned himself to the inevitable fate of the world.

Crowley starts hearing him.

“To Heaven? You most certainly are not!”

“You clearly can’t do this on your own, come on.” (The chucking of the ice-creams? Priceless.)

And the thing is, the thing is. Crowley says ‘you cannot do this on your own,’ because he would always say that. That’s what he does; that’s his armour. That’s him hiding vulnerability. And what he’s doing right now is very vulnerable: he is following Aziraphale upstairs, the one thing he said he would not do; going with him to the one place where he had said he would not go. What he is not saying, but what’s coming through so loudly in what he does is angel, I hear you. This time, I hear you, and this time, it’s going to be both of us, we are going to do this together. Despite the hopelessness, I am going to try. I’m with you, angel, I’m not going to leave you there alone.

Aziraphale said ‘this is for us’, and Crowley heard him.

(I wish we had more time. Of course I wish we had more time. To see a few more moments between them. It had to be Aziraphale, miracling Crowley an outfit for Heaven. Those skin-tight trousers, dear Someone. What else could we have seen, had we been able to follow their elevator ride? Have heard?)

And in Heaven, they’re both of them perfect. They could complete each other’s sentences. “Complaint duly noted and registered,” Aziraphale says to Saraquel’s objections. (A&C’s mirrored expressions in that moment kill me.)

“Will it make a difference?” Saraquel says, and Crowley answers in Aziraphale’s stead (this is what he thinks about all kinds of making a difference): “Oh, no.”

Aziraphale and Crowley start validating each other. “That’s brilliant,” Aziraphale says to Crowley’s suggestion that reality is being edited. Crowley, after arguing that Aziraphale is certainly NOT a master of disguise, has to concede “Oh, that’s actually rather good”—and coming from him, that is High Praise.

Crowley orders “enormous amounts of dim sum” for Aziraphale. Points out a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Aziraphale demurs, saying that actually, he is not going to it, that it’s now his responsibility to make good, upstanding choices—

“Right,” Crowley says. “Does that include choosing Heaven instead of me?”

But didn’t Crowley just ask that? Didn’t they already have at least some of this conversation back in the car, before Crowley followed Aziraphale straight into Heaven?

We can look at those preceding scenes differently, of course. Adjust the balances. Crowley following Aziraphale into Heaven has elements of a rescue: so much has gone wrong by now that Aziraphale, though right beside Crowley, could be in real danger. We can think that Crowley walking into Heaven was more about saving Aziraphale (which is also a declaration of love, as it always has been) than about Crowley having really believed that Aziraphale is fighting for the two of them as well as for everything else.  

But I actually think that with more time, we would have seen more of this back and forth. The no, really, but how could you? Why on Earth did you think that was a good idea? This process is not linear. And perhaps we’d have seen some of that from Aziraphale, too, although I do think that he forgave Crowley for not coming with him long before his hurt started to ease. And he did also find out that Crowley has been waiting, for years. With these two, actions frequently speak louder than words.

So looking at the dim sum scene with that in mind, how much actions speak louder or alongside words, I think the messages here are very loud.

There is what Aziraphale actually says: he chose Heaven because of Crowley. And sure, that is useful to discuss.

But there is what both of them actually do.

Crowley gets wine for himself. He gets food for Aziraphale, and he ordered that food. It’s a return to what they had once been, but also—as Aziraphale refuses the offer at first—a question. A string of questions.

Are you with me, Crowley is asking here. Are we on the same side? Have you really chosen Heaven, or are you still choosing Earth, and me, and us? Do you remember the steps to our dance? Will you dance with me? I am tempting you, will you be tempted?

And Aziraphale, giving in to the offer, answers: Of course, my dear. Of course.

There is also, of course, the unspoken Angel, I know you have not had this for years, that you have deprived yourself for years. Take this, do this, this is for you, this is yours.

(“I really have missed food,” Aziraphale confesses, and Crowley just goes, “Mm.”)

(Look at him, that poor angel. He missed food so much.)

And to add to all that, I love the way they communicate in this scene, working things out, arriving at an answer together so that by the time Muriel arrives, both of them know it without speaking it aloud.

“What… do you mean, it’s been three days?” Jehoshua will ask as he looks around Soho, his newly reincorporated hands still tingling as the stigmata of light fade. “Days? But—there wasn’t anything, there couldn’t have been anything, not even the sun—“

“Nnh, don’t go asking me,” Crowley will say to one side of him. “I didn’t make the rules, he did. I thought it was taking him a while, writing in that book.”

And Crowley will point a thumb at Aziraphale, there on Jehoshua’s other side, and will smile that proud crooked smile—that’s my angel—as Aziraphale preens, and flushes, and says with all the brightness of a new beginning,

“Well—dear boy! Welcome back! God’s elsewhere this time, I’m afraid, and we’re on our own. You can choose to join Her, many have, or—ah—”

“Or you could stay here. You could stay and figure out what you actually want.”

“Oh,” Jehoshua will say. “Does that mean that I... get a go, this time around?”

“Don’t need to. ’S better than that. You get a choice.”

“This time around, you can just be you,” Aziraphale will say, very gently. “Figure out who you are.”

And Jehoshua will stay. Despite the loss and the being lost, I absolutely think he will choose to stay on this resurrected Earth, woven of rules and determination and wonder and awe and love. 

Muriel will stay, too. And Saraquel. And so many others, demons and angels, ready to try and figure out who they are with no Heaven or Hell—not any more—and with no roles to play.

The Bookshop will become a place for outsiders, those needing a haven before they venture out into the mundane glory of the human world. Some of those outsiders will be people.

Crowley and Aziraphale will help rebuild Whickber street—Crowley grumbling all the way, but secretly pleased—because, even if Aziraphale was thinking about his love for Crowley when he said “but I love... Whickber street”, what he actually said was also true.

Even Mr. Brown will be back, with his world of carpets.

And Aziraphale and Crowley… well.

They probably won’t talk about it all for a while, not properly. They’ve spent a while not talking, after all, they’re well-practiced—but they will never be apart through any of this.

One morning, Crowley’s half-dead plant will find itself growing a new leaf. Then another one, and another. Then, it will find itself with a neighbour—“Angel, you have no idea how to care for a plant.” “Well, no, dearest, but you do. I thought we could—but if you don’t want—“ “Oh, I do. Just... put it down and come here, will you?”

They will grow a garden, all their own. It might not—gasp!—even have an apple tree, not for a long while. And they will get that cottage. The Bookshop’s a little crowded, these days, even if it is bigger on the inside, and it’s good—it’s great—but so is them finally, finally getting to be an ‘us’. 

They will wake up together—Aziraphale still doesn’t need to sleep, but he will do it, just for this new experience: waking up with the love of his existence, with the one who completes him, and looking into his gorgeous, honey-gold, slit-pupil eyes.

(Crowley had been an angel, once. It was a long time ago. He doesn’t need to be an angel, or a demon, or anyone but himself for Aziraphale to love him—and by all the nebulas in existence, Aziraphale loves.)

They will get each other through, as they always have. Through the trauma, and the fears, and the anger. Through the centuries of accumulated hurt. They chose this world together, back in the empty bookshop, Crowley’s hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder. They believed, and they made it be. They will get each other through.

They will kiss. That goes without question. But it won’t be Aziraphale who says do it again, I think—it will be Crowley, once he’s ready, his heart louder than any drum in a marching band. “Angel. Can I—can I try it again? Do it properly this time?” And Aziraphale’s answering smile will be brighter than any sunrise.

They will live, and love, and heal, and care.

And Jehoshua will send them postcards when he goes to see the Kingdoms of the World, with Adam and the Them, all of whom remember far too much. All of whom have chosen, once, to fight for this imperfect world, and all of whom would choose it all over again.

Break the narrative. Fight predetermination. Fill the blank pages of those books. Make your own choice.

SO SPITTING MAD ABOUT THIS i had to edit and repost from x/bsky

am i the only one who remembers this good omens sequel idea that was laid so beautifully at our feet in the year of our lord 1990? that was important enough to be quoted near verbatim in S1? the one where mortals of the world unite cuz we have nothing to lose but our chains??

"ohhh you're upset about the finale because you only care about aziracrow you don't care about the bigger picture" nah man don't pin that on me. i am 40 or 50 years old and i do not need this. you can't gaslight me into forgetting that one of the fundamental charms of GO is that aziraphale & crowley are actually very bad at saving the world, they cock up pretty much everything they try to do and it's only through serendipity (or implied providence??) that their actions end up facilitating HUMANS' efforts to save ourselves. you can't gaslight me into thinking that the universe getting destroyed & recreated on a whim with absolutely zero HUMAN input or agency is a happy ending, or that it's at all in keeping with the spirit of the original story.

the concept of the multiverse got traction in genre fiction via comics where it was introduced as a PLOT DEVICE to reconcile timeline inconsistencies (and an unnecessary one at that; the way to deal with "timeline inconsistencies" in long form serial fantasy is to IGNORE THEM). writers should have never started relying on the multiverse so heavily as a storyline foundation (MCU i am looking at YOU) because the logical end result is to make stories MEANINGLESS! what's the point of fighting for anything if you can just escape to another universe where things turn out better?! "we found each other in every universe" bitch i care about THIS ONE! how does that treacly platitude teach ANYONE anything meaningful or relatable or transferable about real life?!

We’re asking, where does the soul live?

For those who think that who we are is shaped by a life time of experiences. That we grow and change with each each heartbreak and trauma. We see the ending as something horrible. We’re witnessing the death of our beloved characters and we are grieving for them.

For those who believe in a soul, who believe that Asa and Anthony are Aziraphale and Crowley because of the something intrinsic that lives inside them, what they’re seeing is a rebirth and a second chance. In that sense the ending is beautiful. They both get exactly what they’ve always wanted. To live as humans without the pressure of heaven and hell. In that sense, the ending is a joyous one.

Sadly these beliefs are deeply held, often the roots begin as far back as our childhoods. No amount of screaming at each other about media analysis is going to change anyone’s mind. Please just accept that there are multiple ways that one can view the ending and that those who are upset are experiencing grief. This is an extremely normal and valid reaction to end of something so meaningful and should be treated with care.

That said, your grief is not an excuse to lash out and those who don’t deserve it.

He's God, isn't he? Part of the "triune godhead." Then we could have gotten a completely different version of the scene in the bookshop, one where Jesus defends the world he knows and the people he's met and the things he learned (in his short time back on Earth) about love and generosity and helping people become better people. 

Maybe Aziraphale and Crowley ask him to create a world without angels and demons. Maybe he says, but aren't they people too? Can't they learn about love, and generosity, and helping people become better people? Of course they can. Look at the two of you.

And we could have gotten a beautiful mirror to the end of Season 1, where Christ does the same exact thing as the Antichrist, where he doesn't destroy the world but puts it back just the way it was. Even slightly better. 

another thing that bothers me besides the 'they're not them' issue with asa and anthony is that the south downs cottage was a promised place of REST for Aziraphale and Crowley after all they'd been through

like michael says in the bts interview, good omens became throughout the years a place where anyone who felt odd, or alone, or hopeless, could find a place to rest and find community, to feel at peace even when the real world or our personal life were at their worst

and part of that comfort came from the assurance that this particular story could avoid total tragedy through perseverance, imagination and unbounded hope that there would always be another way, even at the face of the unimaginable horror of total annihilation

that whatever happens, for good or evil, someone will be beside you to face it and for once everyone will get their miraculous escapes, when in reality we know more than well that that rarely happens

and that didn't mean creating a false illusion that tells you everything will be okay no matter what, don't get me wrong, i don't think good omens' message was that reductive in the slightest. but it did take a look at the absurdity of being alive and experiencing all sorts of pain and living and loving even through moments of complete uncertainty

season 1 and 2 kept hammering the idea that individual lives matter. not replaceable copies. not "close enough." actual people, with continuity and memory and history. Crowley and Aziraphale repeatedly chose imperfect, messy existence over grand cosmic plans. so ending with "the universe gets reset and everyone is replaced by alternate versions" isn't just horribly depressing. it's philosophically backwards. like the story literally abandoned its own argument in the final act.

the Job parallel especially points that out pretty cleanly. The whole emotional weight there was: replacement children are not the same children. new children (even if they had, by some chance, looked and acted Exactly The Same) doesn't fix the tragedy of losing the original children. that mattered to them. so yea, this ending feels less like "hopeful transcendence to tear down The System" and more like “congrats on your happy ending! everyone is dead, but the cottage is cute!" bold creative choice ig. like serving tea with eccles cakes after detonating reality.

my frustration is basically: the story spent years arguing that personhood matters — memory matters, continuity matters, these exact souls matter. and then solved the finale with a cosmic reset that wipes out the very identities the narrative taught us to care about. very much like the nuclear apocalypse they were trying so hard to prevent. it goes against the very thing Crowley was staunchly opposed to during The Flood. against everything they did in the Job minisode. against literally the entire Jim/Gabriel narrative, about Jim not really being Gabriel without his memories. and also, to quote Crowley, "the angel you knew is NOT me."

"but they found each other again! we got them back at the end!" no we didn't. that is NOT them. and to say that they are is kind of insulting tbh. they LOOK similar and maybe have some of the same interests, but just bc a blonde and a red head are into books and astrophysics doesn't make them THEM. their memories, their history, everything they went through together and fought for, the experiences that shaped their characters, those 6000+ years — that's all GONE.

Also. people keep saying stuff like "it was the only right choice" as if there were only two horrible choices? if the story introduces negotiation and moral choice, we'll naturally start imagining alternatives. once “God offers options” enters the chat, people will obviously ask, “wait. why was this the chosen solution?” when they could've gone for idk, literally anything else. God literally offered to put things back as they were. they could've chosen to have THAT universe, THAT world —THEIR world— put back into place and then added their own conditions to tear down Heaven and Hell. they could've chosen to keep their memories. they could've chosen to make everyone human from then on if that's what the writers were so hellbent on. they could've chosen to make God erase her own memory for all i care idfk. but this ending feels like a bad consolation prize.

after EVERYTHING they did, and everything they went through, they deserved SO much better than this. THE WHOLE WORLD did.

i needed them to be happy in this universe

everything is so fucked and seemingly getting worse and something that comforted me was crowley and aziraphale being here too. through the wars and revolutions and cultures and everything. adapting as humans do, they would remain and persist and love each other no matter what

maybe the new universe is meant to be our current one and religon and everything else just happened to evolve the exact same way without interference but it kinda just feels like our universe was the one that had to be erased because it was too fucked.

maybe im just too pessimistic and missing the free will point but it feels like they were saying youre too far gone there is no way to fix this or build from it, it has to be destroyed for something better.

and maybe that wasnt the goal or intention but i just wish they had compromised with god to keep things as they are but get rid of heaven, hell, angels, demons (they were already ineffective as we saw in the book/s1), and they couldve been willing to sacrifice themselves too, only for god to keep them alive (and maybe make the bookshop a fixed point in the universe) because they cared so much about humans they already knew, warts and all, and believed we could eventually fix the all damage done, believed in our version of humanity

i guess i needed crowley and aziraphale to love each other, freely, constantly, as themselves, in our universe.