a sprinkle of stardust

One of the main arguments I see people bringing up is the Job argument, that while yes, you could replace the children you have lost with new ones, and they could look, act, and sound exactly the same, but it wouldn't be the same because the trauma of losing them is still there, and they are not the kids you raised, just copies. This I get in terms of the ship, but this does not fully hold water when you realize that the ship has been canon since the beginning, they just never made it "official". The thousands of years worth of working together, of laughing together, protecting each other, risking their lives for one another, that's what makes them a couple, not a love confession and a romantic kiss. The thousands of years worth of pining already exploded with that first kiss, what good would it do for them to suddenly work things out and spend eternity together doing exactly the same thing they've been doing? They couldn't go back to that. It was never in the cards, and God quite literally made sure of that.

I think a lot of people missed the part where Crowley had asked about the free will of humans, and where Aziraphale asked why give him Crowley only to take him away. God was shipping them, God planned for them to be together. They were ineffable, preplanned, predicted. And while one could say that that's just how a story goes, things are preplanned and predicted, that was God writing their story, not just Neil. And they realized that when they got their moment alone. So them being together wouldn't have been of their own choice, it would have been God's choice. The same way that humans had a false sense of free will, so too did everyone apart from God herself.

I saw some mention that the story is focused on a sense of self, a sense of soul, owning ones self and being their own person. That's exactly what they did, and what they couldn't do as angel and demon. Even if they brought back the world exactly how it was, shaped heaven and hell into what they wanted or even written them off entirely, the only things that would be the same in that universe would then the two of them. But that's all anyone seems to care about is weather or not Crowley and Aziraphale are together romantically.

The show has been building up to some sort of Armageddon, some sort of world ending catastrophe that was meant to wipe out all of existence, and it happened. Almost. Crowley and Aziraphale survived, as well as God, and Satan for some reason? Crowley has talked non stop about how the universe was a beautiful place, how much he loved humans (even if he didn't outwardly say it too much), and how shitty of a time they've had due to the false sense of free will. How some humans get an easy ticket to heaven while others get the short end of the life stick and have to work to get into heaven.

Restarting the universe they came from where everything was exactly the same would have felt more like a cop out than a brand new universe.

Now let me tell you why I think that. We just went through a gut wrenching montage of everyone we've come to love die off because they were being erased from the book of life. We were left with just Crowley and Aziraphale in the aftermath of everything that has happened. If they had chosen to reinstate the universe to exactly the same as it was, or even with the minor mortifications, it would have felt far too pandering to the audience, far too safe of an option, and would have felt like all we just went through was for nothing. That happy ending wouldn't have felt deserved. It would have felt more like a Band-Aid being placed over a scar.

This is where the beauty in their choice to make a new universe is. It gives everything the chance to be its own thing. For humanity to go its own way without the influence of God having a direct hand in making all the decisions that lead up to their choice of recreating the universe. A world without angels and demons and God means a world they could not live in, but one that could be what they always wanted. They sacrificed themselves for the one thing they loved as much as they loved each other, and I hate that everyone is making it out to be a bad thing because they "didn't get together" as Crowley and Aziraphale.

If they had kept their memories, they would have likely still had the memory of being a planned event, and would have made their relationship felt forced even to them. The fact that they too were reset into a world that didn't have an ineffable plan and still found and chose each other makes their ending relationship feel so well deserved and a perfect send off to their characters, a literal love letter to their former selves.

The ending is also, to use some words I saw used elsewhere, a love letter to humanity, to us outside of the show. We need to form our own paths, we have free will, we have the choice to make for ourselves. Weather God exists or not (because we didn't see her reincarnated in the ending, so it's possible she is still at least observing), we need to make the choices for ourselves, not because it's part of some big plan, but because we're human, because we have free will, because whatever choice we're going to make is what we want to make. We need to live for ourselves, not what our deaths will be.

First, though, I'm going to have to go on a tangent about what I guess is going to be a point of reference on fucking up a perfectly good serialised story for a while yet, that is - Game of Thrones (btw was anyone else happy to see Mark Addy? I was happy to see Mark Addy). Because while I've yet to meet anyone who said the finale was good or even secretly good, the due bashing usually has two forms: either downright hating it for butchering Daenerys's character or mumbling something about seeing the point, it's just that the execution was rushed. I'm not going to spill any more binary code as to what Martin's ending is going to be, I'll just say this: good vs evil Dany is basically Aragorn with teats or Paul Atreides with teats. Both of those characters got perfectly solid stories and the problem with what we got in 2019 wasn't so much "it was rushed" as much as "it was bloody incoherent". While initially GOT kinda flew on rejection of plot armour and protagonist centric morality, since s5 we were basically getting only plot armours and protagonist centric morality. And while it's funny to mock Jaime's carbon fiber unsinkable armour, the second issue is more jarring. Like, ok, I can accept that Dany's actions against evil men were actually wrong all along, but not alongside Arya spending hours chopping up bodies, removing flesh from bone, grinding the bones, draining the blood and all that with medieval tools one day and having a perfectly functioning moral compass the next or the idea that the perfect alternative to a monarch that believes they're right is a monarch who everyone knows is right. But that's an even bigger tangent; the point is, the main contention was I hate what they did to the character vs I appreciate the story but not the execution.

Which seems to me to also be the case in GO3 disliked vs. liked discussion.

Like, those who liked it usually mention something about it being a fitting ending to the story while those who disliked it usually point to the characters of Aziraphale and Crowley not getting the ending they deserved. And while I would usually stop at "a good story is the best a character can ever deserve" (hi Martha Jones), in this case I would say what's best for the story vs. what the characters deserve is. kind of the heart of the finale.

Right from the beginning GO was largely about characters agreeing to be a part of the story or not. Obedient vs rebelling angels if you will. Adam's victory over his then-cgi-Benedict- Cumberbatch who's da bitch who can read British producers' minds on turning him into a more straightforwardly diabolical Toby Jones huh? father lies in him not agreeing to be a part of a story written for him in the time before time. Maggie and Nina went on a whole speech about how they aren't heroines in either a Jane Austen book or a Richard Curtis movie.

Even Jesus got a bit of it in what little time he got by going "how about I don't go on a plane to preach to the UN bigheads nor start smiting and destruction and instead just go to Earth and. be nice to those lost which doesn't mean banning sex work or gambling only getting people to reconnect with those who love them and share a pizza while I'm at it". Granted, he does end with the ultimate sentence of acceptance "Into thy hands I commit my spirit" but that's. Like, both Fyodor Dostoyevski and Tim Rice dug into this, I'm too humble to aspire to such a company.

So it's only fitting that Aziraphale and Crowley too would choose to not be a part of any story. And it coming with consequences to themselves is. you know. free will and all that.

Ask yourself, can there truly be free will when you have nigh-on omniscience of a pretenatural being?

BUT! But. Isn't this precisely them being a part of the most fitting ending to a story? Like, on the meta level.

Aye, there's a rub.

And I think it not sitting perfectly with everyone is what the text intended. There's an inherent irony to characters choosing not to be a part of story being the most fitting ending to a story.

This is unfortunately the point where the question of "what the author had in mind?" is relevant (don't worry, kids, more often than not what the author had in mind is "maybe I'll finally pay the rent", this joke isn't mine only excellent Polish satirist's). Because irony is by definition intentional. But but, Roxanne, can't life itself be ironic? Well, yes, but that's the life's reader's intention.

So, is the text self-aware of the irony just described? I would say, I find no evidence to the contrary and see some supporting. Like, the whole episode revolves around a book. A story. But more explicitly, Jesus keeps trying to tell stories and gets cut off. Yes, parables are some of the Bible fragments that can be appreciated unreligiously as literary texts, but that's not what the text wants or needs.

And then there's "but a kiss!!!", which I understand from a fan's perspective, don't understand from an asexual's perspective and can interpret as making sense for the text from a tired early career researcher's perspective. Because again, it's about wanting an element of a story. And yes, visuals of Michael Sheen and David Tennant snogging more pleasantly, but that's a worthy sacrifice to get the point across. You got the visual and the element. It didn't matter. And that's the point.

So, not to sound overly conciliatory, but if you are happy about the story or angry about the characters, you both got the text.

In a way, it's about characters sacrificing themselves for a story.