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Before anything else - I could have handled a similar ending, in which they die and then either they’re dead and gone and only humanity remains, or we see a vaguely Aziraphale and Crowley shaped pair of humans come together against the odds. I enjoy bittersweet tragedies, I almost would have preferred if Tennant and Sheen hadn’t played the new versions, and they’d found two actors who looked just close enough but not quite there to sell the idea. But it doesn’t pay off in my mind - because not only do Crowley and Aziraphale die. Everyone dies with them. The world ends, that isn’t fixed. They just blow it up and start a new one. That isn’t a good ending to the moral of the first season, or the book, or in general.

I’m going to point out some of the themes of the book and a few issues I think have been poking about in the background since season 1 (lost subtleties on the humanisation of characters, and how I believe this weakens the central theme), but this is not an anti-good-omens-TV-in-general post. I came to love season 1 as an adaption, it’s simply interesting to examine how small deviations may have affected the ending.

One huge theme of the book that people keep pointing out is how it emphasises Terry Prachett’s very humanist ideals, which I totally agree with. S1 follows these values (it was bound to, given how close of an adaption it was), but in a way that loses a few subtleties from the book. Not only is it a commentary on Cold War politics, it’s a commentary on how people do not have to be constrained by the position they’re born into and then beaten into shape against by the world. You do have free will, and it’s wonderful! And ultimately the good of humanity will prevail against the bad, if we can only be bothered to act. The book emphasises this through a few British classist stereotypes. The “accents” of the Them and Shadwell, Crowley’s young sleek corporate businessisms (reflected again in the four horsemen), Aziraphale’s old-money Eton boy aesthetic, the role of the “Postie,” after his “death.” All of these characters are humanised, and purposefully - it pokes fun at stereotypes surrounding class, and station, but each and every person no matter where they’re from fills a role. Aziraphale and Crowley, as part of these two different reflections of the upper-class, frequently indulge in the “exotic commonality”of humanity. The food, the love, the life. Yet they see still themselves, and their distance from humanity, as “better.”

In the show, everyone (bar a few demons, Shadwell, and Aziraphale) seems to have the same amorphously middle-ground British accent. There’s no statement being made against the back drop.

This might not seem majorly important - but bear with me.

Another important facet of the book, is the way in which Heaven and Hell are portrayed at once as a contrast against and a mirror to humanity. They’re different from us in that they’re stuck trying to be “good,” or “evil” - there’s no middle ground, no complexity. And in trying so hard to stick to their rigid and inflexible values of what constitutes “good” and “evil,” Heaven ends up doing more harm than good and neither side makes much progress against the other. But that’s also where they mirror us - not in the inability to be morally flexible (that’s the thing that gives humans the leg-up in the end), but in their stubborn inability to consider that what they’re doing might be “wrong.” Again, very Cold War appropriate. The book hammers home again and again that this is wrong, as does s1.

Crowley and Aziraphale directly contradict this portrayal of Heaven. They’re at a mid-way point, deep down a nice person, and just enough of a bastard. They’re still fairly representative of their respective sides, Crowley enjoys making mischief and Azirphale is kind to a fault (until he’s too righteous to be), but in many ways they’re just as human as the rest of the actually-human characters. They’re also… just two guys/creatures. EVERYONE in good omens (the book + s1), is at their core “just some person” even the important people! People with status - presidents, the antichrist, witches, high-ranking demons etc, they’re all very human. They groan and moan about paper work as much as Azirpahale and Crowley. The only difference is that they haven’t spent enough time around humans to realise it, so they don’t exhibit the same moral “greyness,” as A and C on top of their “regular-guynes.”

But even more than being regular people in their general disdain for work - they’re just regular people! They’re not nobodies, given their respective roles in Eden, but it’s been 6000 years since then and they’ve fallen considerably out of favour. They, like the average person reading the book, are totally beholden to the whims of the the two hegemonies puppeteering both them and their peers and more than anything are a window for us to peer through. They don’t actually *do* much of anything, that’s the beauty of it - and this is yet another example of angels and demons and Heaven and Hell not actually controlling fate. Nothing they do matters, and the only time it does is when humanity helps them along.

S1 of good omens has been pointed out, again by other people, as focusing more on a modern neo-capitalist perspective than a Cold War perspective, and I don’t dislike this. It’s extremely relevant, and still allows for a similar premise (it’s also why I’m mystified that everyone is a part of the same gentrified upper middle class background, again barring Shadwell and Madame Tracey). Crowley and Aziraphale fail spectacularly at trying to avoid the apocalypse, and it’s saved by a young boy who loves humanity as much as they do. But whereas in the book, chapters and chapters are devoted to developing the importance of Adam and the Them, the show focuses more on Aziraphale and Crowley, culminating in a finale that involves them much more than the original. Again, I get this decision, and I love seeing them together, but it takes away somewhat from the idea that humans have had all the agency all along, and it’s only by being more human than anyone else that Crowley and Aziraphale have any free will at all.