Okay, a few days out from the finale I'm adding some more thoughts because while I'm seeing some completely valid criticism of the film (and I didn't think it was perfect) some people's reactions to the ending have been wild.
The latest thing I've seen has been people saying the ending is a plot hole, because A & C died to give humanity free will, which they already had in season 1, but that is not the issue they were trying to fix for humanity. The angels and demons don't have free will (except, arguably, A&C because they've spent so much time around humanity and each other they kind of do) but humanity does, God gave it to us because we're her favourites, but where does it get anyone? It's like the "find the lady" card game - if you agree to play, you have free will, no one is coercing you to choose one card over another, but if you're making your choice after a sleight-of-hand trick that makes you think you've kept the lady in sight when you haven't, then it doesn't matter. The dealer knows something you don't and doesn't have to threaten you at gunpoint to choose a particular card to make sure you lose. Freedom to choose a card is meaningless if the deck is stacked against you, and free will is a poisoned chalice if you're still going to be judged and punished for exercising it. "Why create people and then punish them for acting like people?"
And the thing is, the angels and demons don't have it any better - Michael is the one causing all the problems, but they're an over-worked, under-appreciated middle manager who's finally snapped after centuries of taking orders from idiots without a plan, how can you not have sympathy for them? When the system is rigged against everyone, there's no fixing it, sometimes you just have to burn it down and start again, and dying for a cause is not a waste of a life.
Speaking of - I still don't think we're supposed to assume they're fully, actually dead and their 6000 year romance was meaningless. If you watch the end credits, it gives you a little animated multiverse with different versions of the two of them, and one version is their angel and demon selves drinking in a garden. If we assume the new universe at least gets going in a similar way to the last one, for several million years there were no people, so it stands to reason all the souls were in some kind of holding pen/cosmic waiting room ("please hold, your soul is important to us") so there they are, in a garden, with millenia to spend together before they get sent back down to earth as people. And then, yes, they'll die - but whose to say they don't go back to that garden in between human lifetimes with their memories in tact for a short amount of time before they're reborn, again and again, watching each new romance they have together and waiting for the next?
One final thought, because it's a positive one and a detail I thought was very lovely - I’ve seen the headcanon in the fandom before (and possibly read soulmate fic about it) that the angels were created in pairs and the reason they're all so messed up after The Fall is that they lost their other half, so I thought it was a nice detail that at the end Michael and Dagon are running the bar together and Adam and Josh are friends/on a date, as well as Anthony and Asa being together. "Why give me Crowley? Why make me complete and then take it away?" She didn't "give him Crowley" She split them up, he found Crowley by himself, learned how to make choices and be brave and fell in love the messy, real, human way and they made themselves complete, and now they're free to do it again and again, like everyone else.
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