It just always felt very thematically important to me that Crowley and Aziraphale demonstrate the Theme of Humanity being kinder than any Angel and eviler than any Demon by being the most Human Angel and Demon and thus also being simultaneously the best and worst Angel and Demon.
Like Aziraphale is a covetous lazy hedonist easily swayed by mortal pleasures into disobedience, he is kinda jaded about Heaven in the book, he is the one willing to deceive a pair of Humans to go assassinate an eleven-year-old for him and the one willing to pull the trigger when it comes down to it⊠But heâs still also the only Angel who cared more about saving Humanity and the Earth than the beef with Hell, and even in the book he did managed to talk himself into having faith that Heaven will do the right thing and even his first act of disobedience, his lie to God, was because he just cared about humans so much, and he still does, more than any other Angel.
And Crowley is a Demon who has just as much if not more affection and care for Humanity, he often doesnât have it within himself to actually cause meaningful harm to anyone, as the Serpent of Eden his greatest act of Temptation actually gave birth to human morality⊠but heâs also very much a slothful hedonist, he Rebellious and self-interested to the point it makes him rebel against Hell itself, and he is still Hellâs most effective tempter and corrupter by far and he did destroy a fellow Demon in cold blood, which was established in the Book as a huge Moral Taboo even for exceptionally cruel and sadistic Demons like Hastur and Ligur.
And then also, their âgoodâ and âbadâ actions are full of gray areas. They try to save the world and humanity mostly out of their hedonistic self-interest, both of their most âimmoralâ actions happened for understandable reasons; Crowley destroys Ligur in what is clearly self-defense and Aziraphale plots out the assassination of a grade-schooler out of a sincere belief this is the only way to save the world. Moral ambiguity and humanity, thatâs what this whole story is about, right?
And since GO1 sticks fairly close to the book, I think this idea is preserved⊠pretty well there as well. Like, Iâd say that actually getting to see Aziraphale interact with other not-Metatron Angels helps drive the point even better. But also⊠Aziraphale lost his jadedness, while his sweetness, softness and faith in Heaven was emphasized, but so were his hedonism, pridefulness and hypocrisy. So it still evens out, just a lateral move, I think. Having Crowley be the first to explicitly mentions the concept of killing Warlock kinda lessens the importance of Aziraphale resolving to do it all on his own, but itâs done to heighten the drama around the subject, so thereâs still plenty of impact when Aziraphale actually pulls the triggerâŠ
And Crowleyâs effectiveness in and fondness of Modernized Sin Spreading has been greatly de-emphasized butâŠ. At least the new emphasis is on his laziness and deceit, which would still be âHellishâ qualities, although I think this is still a much⊠safer variation of hellish qualities than letting him be a shameless little shit. On the other hand, Crowleyâs rebelliousness and self-interest is emphasized greatly even compared to Book!Crowley, the whole Alpha Centauri plan showcases that he can narrow down the world to just himself and his Angel when things get dire.
âŠBut even at the time it kinda bugged me how the concept of Crowley crossing some sort of Moral Taboo by destroying a fellow Demon with Holy Water was basically entirely gone. Not only was Hell 100% fine with publicly executing Crowley by Holy Water, they killed that other tiny random Demon basically just for the lols!
But, yâknow, the Body Swap Sequence was otherwise so fucking Peak by Basically Every Other Metric (including furthering other important themes with Aziraphale and Crowleyâs characters) that I was wiling to forgive it. Now, like, I still love all the Body Swap stuff to bits, but I also worry that it was an⊠omen of things to come. A Bad Omen, if you will.
Because by the time we get to GO3, this through-line is⊠maybe not exactly entirely gone, but definitely frayed and torn and jumbled. I suppose you can say this whole sequence plays on the whole âAziraphale is simultaneously the Best and Worst AngelââŠ
But, like, both this scene and the whole Finale in general gives so little attention to Aziraphaleâs good qualities, to that kindness and sweetness and courage, to the fact faith and trust and hope donât have to just be foolish naĂŻvetĂ© (And GO3 is not a Subtly Written TV Movie Thingy). And like, it's not just that wanting to enjoy Earthly Pleasures doesn't 'negate wanting to do the right thing, Aziraphaleâs âsinsâ intersect and blend with his âvirtuesâ. His Hedonism fuels his genuine kind love of Humanity, his lies to God and Heaven, always to protect innocent Humans, were a demonstration of his conviction and bravery. Only Aziraphale really stands up to his own defense, and quite frankly, it feels mostly to set up the segway to Aziraphale talking up Crowley.
Which honestly just makes the whole situation here worse. Like, first things first, it just demonstrates how much of Crowley's rougher edges have just been... sanded off and retconned out over GO2 and GO3. He is just "The Best Angel" (and by implication, the Worst Demon), no interesting gray-areas nuance there. And in addition to many many other things that are Fucking Terrible about Aziraphale's 'Best Angel' speech (the inability to give Aziraphale a satisfying conclusion to his character arc, invalidating Crowley's own conception of his identity and past, the supposed 'love confession' culmination of the relationship being entirely in PAST TENSE, the massive imbalance in how this narrative treats Crowley vs. Aziraphale...), it also highlights how much we've lost the plot on this Theme of Humanity as it used to relate to the Ineffable Husbands.
In the book it was made very clear that living alongside Humanity has had a big effect on Crowley and Aziraphale, that it shaped them into the Beings we see play things out in the main storyline...
And back in S1 you could... insinuate that this was still the case. Obviously with the bigger focus now being drawn to Aziraphale and Crowley's relationship, you expect there to be a mixture of influences from both each other and Humanity as a whole but... As GO2 and GO3 went along, any sort of influence from being around Humanity got minimized more and more for the both of them. Like, Aziraphale already got so many of his positive traits and character moments attributed to being 'thanks to Crowley' and that absolutely includes his most 'Human' traits. Aziraphale couldn't even figure out how to eat food just from blending in among Humanity, Crowley had to tempt him to that first...
And with Crowley, this whole speech is about how great Crowley WAS, before his Fall, before the Beginning, before HUMANITY. If we see this Stupid Ass Speech as an accurate judgement of Crowley, then he basically burst fully formed out of God's Brow with all of his traits just inherent to his being from the start. Nothing of the things that made him so great were anything he also learned from Humanity or even just subconsciously rubbed-off on him.
Like, y'know, naive ol' me, when GO1 said Crowley was the only Demon to have an 'Imagination' in a piece of dialogue that seemed to deliberately call back to Book!Crowley's inner monologue saying Imagination is one advantage Humans have over Demons, I stupidly assumed that this means Crowley honed his Imagination from being around Humanity! That it was a cool, thematically-poignant moment because despite Crowley's Magical Miracle Power being what is literally keeping the Bentley going, the actual real Superpower behind this iconic badass feat is an inherently HUMAN trait!
...When instead I should've obviously realized that Crowley is just an inherently imaginative uniquely artistic soul who was like this since before the dawn of time and we humans have nothing to do with it, silly me!
It just drives home just how much Humanity has been diminished in this story, that is now trying to conclude itself with a Big Poignant Thing about Humanity. The agency of Humans is all but gone from the narrative that led us to this moment, no representative of Humanity is here to bring in our perspective while those four supernatural beings discuss the fate of the world, and the qualities and influences of Humanity that used to define our two main leads were gradually wiped out to glorify one of them as So Great and Wonderful and the Most Special (and thus also the least interesting version of one of my favorite characters...).
Maybe in a Better version of this scene, Crowley and Aziraphale could've realized that they are actually not that different from Adam Young. That much like him, they are technically 'divine' beings that have lived so long amongst the Humans, shaped by them, have been basically 'adopted' by Humanity, that both of them have much more in common with plain ol' mortal folks then they do with the two other supernatural beings sitting in the bookshop with them, and try to make their arguments from a point of Empathy, from the angle that they do kinda know what it's like to be a Human Person in a world jerked around by the whims of God...
(Something like that would've definitely lead into a 'Turning Human' Ending in much more satisfying and thematically coherent manner. Although I will emphasize that I'm talking about Crowley and Aziraphale turning human AS THEMSELVES, none of this reincarnation mindwipe bullshit that skips over all the emotional catharsis. But also like... maybe not inherently? Adam rewrote reality so that he was always Human and yet he still got to keep his powers, so....)
Instead all of Crowley's observations about Humanity and how much he cares about them is all in the third person, distant, pitying more than it is empathetic.
And Humanity is also diminished in the resolution of our story. Like, both in the sense that, like I said many times before, this whole âasking God to kill Themself and create a new universeâ thing is just not⊠actionable enough, at least not how they played it in the show, to be anything the Human viewers could feel like they could achieve to escape their own problems with systems of oppression, even metaphorically. It mightâve worked if we had more focus on how Crowley and Aziraphaleâs Human qualities were the things to defeat God in any meaningful way.
But itâs also about how this conclusion is all about this Big Dramatic Gesture of Purely Selfless Self-Sacrifice for the Abstract Greater Good, which is⊠obviously there have been cases of Humans acting like this, thatâs the whole âmore grace than Heavenâ thing. But⊠for the climatic ending, the culmination of a series that supposed to be celebrating Humanity, and moral shades of gray, it is kinda weird for it to end on something so straightforwardly⊠Heavenly.
Especially when you compare it to the Book/GO1, how Adamâs victory over his Demonic âDestinyâ is this very human mixture of wanting things to be better, but also wanting things to be better for your own sake, because youâre the one whoâs going to be living in this worldâŠ
And love, not just generally for some vague abstract concept of âHumanityâ, but to the specific people around you that you love, to the places that you love, to the small world youâve made around you to make sense of the hugeness of the universeâŠ
And, yeah, a bit of selfishness, to avoid the burden of responsibility that comes with being in charge.
And Crowley and Aziraphale, for what little part they actually contributed to saving the world, did so, like I said, out of a mixture of kindness and selfishness. And all of the other Humans who contributed to saving the world did so out of an obvious, yet heroic, desire for self-preservation, and they each had their own quirky self-contradictory mess of virtues and vicesâŠ
This all feels very discordant when compared to Noble Suffering Hero Crowleyâs Ultimate Selfless Sacrifice as an Ultimate Act of Universal Love to Humanity.
The conclusion to Crowleyâs character shouldnât have been about how heâs the Worst Demon because heâs just too damn selfless and caring, it shouldnât have been about he was the Best Angel either. It shouldâve been about how heâs a fundamentally Human Occult Being (and so is Aziraphale!) And not just in a tacked-on ambiguous maybe-reincarnation Human AU way, in the way the culmination of their story (and them saving the world, if you really must leave these two bozos in charge of saving the world, anyways) should have emphasized the inherent complicated self-contradictory selfless selfishness Humanity that they possess regardless of their literal species.
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