Hello, it's me again...Complaining about Good Omens season 3... again.
I still cannot really grasp who thought it was a good idea to make Aziraphale say that Crowley was the best angel. I understand the sentiment, and I appreciate that his speech gives us some semblance of acknowledgement that Crowley's fall was unfair.
Crowley isn't an angel. I even dare to argue Aziraphale isn't really an angel either. They aren't on heaven or hell's side, in Crowley's words: "we are on our side." Meaning, their identities don't align with heaven or hell's ideologies.
Both characters are on a grey area. Crowley just some guy who disagrees with heaven annihilating Earth as much as he disagrees with hell's innate heinous plans. Aziraphale is just some guy who happens to share the same ideals of perserving humanity, even if he has to lie his way around heaven in order to do so.
And this isn't even a subtle thing, like, it's quite literally the basis on the characters and they even verbally acknowledge this.
In season one, Aziraphale makes emphasis on Crowley being a good person deep down, Crowley responds that Aziraphale on the other hand, is just enough of a bastard worth knowing.
In season 2, both of them toast in the name of "shades of grey." and this season also establishes Aziraphale and Crowley both funcitioning outside of heaven and hell, defying it in their own ways. (hiding gabriel, lying to angels and demons, etc.)
So for Aziraphale to call Crowley "the best angel" just falls flat for lots of viewers. This isn't season one or two, where Aziraphale is still unlearning Heaven's worldview and struggling to separate goodness from obedience.
By this point, he has spent millennia watching Crowley be compassionate, self-sacrificing, and deeply human despite no longer identifying as an angel. If anything, Crowley's rebellion is what makes him...well the Crowley that Aziraphale grew to love and care about.
Why is this dialouge framing Crowley's highest virtue to his connection to Heaven, even though so much of his story has been about rejecting the labels and roles that Heaven imposed on him in the first place?
Heaven isn't the absolute definition of good, it never had been. Aziraphale knows this. The reason he decided to go back to heaven wasn't because he genuienly believed heaven was good, but because he wanted to protect Crowley and the humans on earth.
Associating Crowley with his angel status and presenting it as an emotional payoff feels disconnected from the journey both characters have actually been on.
To add on, Aziraphale saying: "angels aren't killers" in go3 is insane because yes they are??
The audience has watched Heaven repeatedly endorse or attempt mass destruction. The angels were prepared to support Armageddon in season one, they treated humanity as expendable, and characters such as the archangels have never shown much concern for the lives that would be lost in pursuit of "the plan."
More importantly, Aziraphale himself knows this !! He's the one who spent millennia becoming disillusioned with Heaven. He's witnessed its cruelty firsthand. One of his defining traits is that he often has to wrestle with the gap between Heaven's rhetoric and Heaven's actions.
In one moment, you have him say things like, "I chose Heaven because of you," which aligns with the interpretation that he returned to Heaven not because he suddenly believed in the institution again, but because he wanted to protect Crowley and prevent the Second Coming.
But then the story turns around and gives him lines that seem to frame Heaven and angels as inherently "good," and that's where I lose the thread.
It's not like the finale is exploring some grand emotional conflict with Aziraphale's relationship to Heaven either, which is why this repeated association of "angels = good" and "Heaven = good" feels so strange.
If the story wanted to examine Aziraphale relapsing into old beliefs, struggling with internalized loyalty to Heaven, or wrestling with the fact that part of him still wants to believe the institution can be redeemed, that could be a compelling conflict. But the finale doesn't really spend much time interrogating those ideas.
Instead, it often feels as though the narrative itself is speaking through Aziraphale and expecting the audience to accept these statements at face value.
The problem is that Good Omens spent years teaching the exact opposite lesson.
The series repeatedly showed that moral worth is not determined by whether someone is an angel or a demon. The entire story is built around the idea that people are more than the labels imposed on them.
So when the finale suddenly treats "angel" as a meaningful shorthand for goodness again, it doesn't feel like a culmination of the themes.
Especially if you have Aziraphale refer to Crowley as an angel, to me it seems like a softer version of the whole "I forgive you" bit in season 2. It suggests that Crowley's worth is tied to the part of him that Heaven once approved of. It feels like Aziraphale is still, however unintentionally, evaluating Crowley through Heaven's lens rather than his own.
Like, even if that wasn't the intention, the dialouge still ends up falling flat. Crowley being Aziraphale's best angel shouldn't have been the cathartic realization. Aziraphale loves Crowley because he's kind, because he cares too much, because he's brave and inpires Aziraphale to be brave too.
As Crowley once said in season 2: "we don't need heaven or hell, they're toxic."
We were waiting for Aziraphale to fully articulate what he has been demonstrating for three seasons: that Crowley's value has nothing to do with Heaven's approval. That he is good because of the choices he makes. That he is worthy of love exactly as he is.
And just as disappointing as Aziraphale's admission about Crowley being "the best angel" was, Crowley doesn't really get a moment to express what Aziraphale means to him.
There's no heartfelt acknowledgment. No moment where Crowley looks at Aziraphale and recognizes the immense courage and selflessness that have defined him for six thousand years.
Which is especially frustrating because Aziraphale's journey is every bit as remarkable as Crowley's.
We are talking about the first angel who lied to God, giving away his swoard in order to protect humans. The person who, despite being terrified of losing everything, kept finding the courage to do what he believed was right. Aziraphale was someone who stood against Heaven when it mattered.
Yet the finale doesn't really allow Crowley to acknowledge any of that. He doesn't tell Aziraphale that he's brave or that he's proud of him. He doesn't even tell him that he's the reason Crowley never completely gave up on goodness.
That leaves the impression that the story spent more time telling us what Crowley means to Aziraphale than what Aziraphale means to Crowley, even though the relationship has always been built by both of them.
And that's strange because Crowley, perhaps more than anyone else, understands exactly how difficult Aziraphale's journey has been.
While i'm not a fan of Aziraphale's whole "you were the best angel" speech, Crowley's side of the emotional conversation feels comparatively absent.
So not only do we get an inaccurate framing of why Aziraphale loves Crowley, we don't really get a meaningful articulation of why Crowley loves Aziraphale either.
One half of the relationship gets a declaration that many viewers find thematically questionable, while the other half barely gets a declaration at all.
It seemed like Aziraphale was doing most of the emotional heavy lifting for the relationship in Go3, when Aziraphale says "why give me Crowley? Why make me complete and then take it away?" it pulls at my heartstrings. He's saying that Crowley changed him, fulfilled him, and became an essential part of who he is.
But then Crowley's response is essentially, "You know you won't get an answer."
Which is a practical response. It's in character in some ways. But it isn't an emotional response.
For most of the series, Crowley is arguably the more emotionally expressive of the two when it comes to their relationship. He's the one who suggests running away together. He's the one who confesses in season 2. He's often the one pushing for honesty about what they mean to each other.
So when the finale arrives and Aziraphale ends up carrying the bulk of the explicit emotional dialogue, it can feel like their dynamic has unexpectedly flipped.
The result is that Aziraphale spends much of the finale explaining why Crowley matters, while Crowley rarely gets an equivalent opportunity to explain why Aziraphale matters.
And duh, Crowley loves Aziraphale, we know this. The problem, though, is that in a high-stakes emotional climax, knowing something and hearing it are not the same thing.
The audience has spent years watching Crowley demonstrate his love through actions. We aren't missing that, we are missing is the payoff.
This was the culmination of a relationship that had been developing for six thousand years. If there was ever a time for Crowley to tell Aziraphale that he's brave, that he's kind, that he's the best thing that ever happened to him, that time was now.
Not because the audience didn't already understand those feelings, but because Aziraphale deserved to hear them.
After everything Aziraphale had sacrificed, trying to do the right thing in a system that punished him for it, many viewers expected at least one moment where Crowley looked at him and said, in whatever words Crowley would use: "I see you. I know how hard this has been. I know who you are. And I love you because of it."
Instead, much of that affirmation remains implied rather than spoken. And while implication can be powerful, it's frustrating when the story is simultaneously asking the audience to invest in explicit emotional declarations from the other side of the relationship.
For a relationship that has always been built on mutual devotion, that asymmetry can feel surprisingly noticeable in what was supposed to be their final chapter.
Both characters have always been equally important in this series, and while Crowley gets more praise (albiet, the dialouge was not it.), Aziraphale literally gets paid dust.
The finale seems oddly uninterested in articulating why they love each other in a way that reflects the journey we've actually watched them take.
I didn't need Aziraphale to call Crowley the best angel. I needed him to recognize that Crowley is good because he chooses to be.
I didn't need Crowley to give a grand romantic speech. I needed him to look at Aziraphale and acknowledge the courage, kindness, and selflessness that defined his entire journey.
Both characters are extraordinary because of who they chose to become, not because of what Heaven or Hell once called them. And that's the emotional payoff I never quite felt the finale delivered.
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