I Don't Know Where To Put All These Feelings Anymore
I am genuinely glad for the people who loved S3 and found it magical or emotionally satisfying. I don't want to take that away from anyone. I think a story this loved was always going to mean very different things to different people. I'm not trying to argue this as objective truth... just sharing how it feels for me emotionally.
Mostly, I just hope fandom can keep doing the thing we always wanted Az & C to do better... communicate! Communicate with each other kindly, honestly, and giving some grace for the fact that we are all bringing our whole hearts into this.
I'm still processing S3 and I think part of why it hit me so hard is that it retroactively changed the emotional meaning of S1/S2 for me in ways I really struggle with.
Before S3, I believed the F15 was tragic, but layered with meaning. I thought Az understood exactly how dangerous Heaven and the Metatron were. I thought he was making a desperate, complicated choice: trying to protect Crowley, trying to change the system from within, maybe trying to buy time. And I thought Crowley, in that moment, could see exactly how bad this was going to go, he cared so much and couldn't stand to watch Az walk back into the Heaven that had tried to destroy his only friend. I never thought either of them was right or wrong, I thought the tragedy came from two different people with different survival strategies who loved each other deeply and could not bridge the gap in that moment. So seeing an Aziraphale who leaves Crowley and Whickber Street behind for years without seeming to look back. An Aziraphale who returns mostly because he needs something. It genuinely does not feel like the same character to me. Not "flawed" or "messy". Just unrecognizable.
This is someone who, for two seasons, was defined by attachment. To books, food, his 180+ year old jacket, music, ritual, Earth, Soho, humanity. To Crowley. The emotional core of this character was always that he loved too much and cherished what he cared for, not forgot it or ignored it.
And Crowley feels off to me too in all of this. Crowley who has always been one step ahead... always looking for a way out. Even when things were terrifying or hopeless or entirely his own fault... his instinct is always defiance and movement... not surrender. Not giving up.
So the idea that he would end in a place of quiet resignation, or anything that even vaguely reads like accepting a mutual erasure just doesn't sit right with me. Even if he was backed into the worst possible corner (and I don't think he was), I can't see him choosing something that also takes Aziraphale down with him. That doesn't feel like the love I've seen for two seasons.
And honestly, this is only one of the things that has been bothering me. It's this whole accumulation of moments where something suddenly stopped feeling emotionally true to the characters I knew.
There were also narrative choices that left me confused... inconsistencies in the internal logic, the futility of side plots that come to naught, the almost casual way humanity itself ends up being treated by the story. Some of that left me feeling genuinely cold in a way Good Omens never used to.
A lot of S3 felt like that to me in general. Like the story knew what thematic point it wanted to make, but lost hold of the characters along the way. And that's what's been the hardest part for me emotionally.... just this growing feeling of "these are not quite the people I fell in love with anymore."
And that's the real grief underneath all this. Not just that the ending was sad, or there was no kiss, or no wings. But that something about S3 disrupted the emotional continuity of the story for me in a way I'm struggling to reconcile. When I think about these characters, it's book!Omens and S1/S2 that feel emotionally true to who they are in my head and my heart. As for me, I need to hold onto the version of Aziraphale and Crowley that made me fall in love with this story in the first place.
A lot of my thoughts have been shaped and clarified by chats with the @ipb2026 Discord Vent channel crew and the @whickberstreetwriters "What we did NOT like about S3" channel, as well as with discussions with @di-42 and @naturallyteal and @greatgreyowloftheshire --who has been very patient as I process this whole thing. And especially an absolutely unreasonable number of DM's with @thinkinginscripts who has had to endure most of my overthinking in real time and somehow survived it. 😉
