On soulmates, sacrifice, and alternate universes: why Arcane and Good Omens feel so different
A week has passed since the GO finale came out. And while I’ve already talked about whether the ending fits the story’s internal logic and core values, now I want to focus specifically on the tropes the finale uses.
Because when I saw people saying, “in every universe, in every timeline, they still find each other,” my first thought was of Jayce and Viktor’s ending in Arcane. And it made me wonder: why does the exact same set of tropes feel like the perfect culmination in one story, but completely wrong - almost like a genre violation - in another?
On the surface, these endings really are similar:
self-sacrifice to save the world;
alternate universes where the characters still find each other.
But the more I think about it, the more convinced I become that tropes by themselves mean nothing. They are neither good nor bad. Their meaning depends entirely on the story they exist in.
In Arcane, the connection between Jayce and Viktor feels almost cosmic from the very beginning. They save each other and destroy each other at the same time. Their destinies become both the cause and the consequence of one another. In the end, it turns out Viktor was the mage who once saved young Jayce, while Jayce, trying to save Viktor, also helps doom their world.
The idea that “they will always find each other” strengthens the story because inevitability and cycles of fate were built into its DNA from the start.
But Good Omens was the opposite. Aziraphale and Crowley were never supposed to be together. No destiny chose them for each other. They stood on opposite sides of the system and spent thousands of years slowly and carefully choosing each other despite that system. That’s what made their relationship so meaningful. It wasn’t fate - it was choice.
So framing them as “soulmates destined to meet in every universe” doesn’t elevate their story for me. If anything, it takes away from the uniqueness of the long journey they made toward each other.
The same thing happens with the self-sacrifice trope.
In Arcane, tragedy grows naturally from the story itself: incurable illness, the price of progress, of playing gods. The characters are not simply “choosing self-destruction” out of nowhere - they are pushed toward it by their own decisions, mistakes, and the internal logic of the world. And in the end, they leave everything behind to save the world they loved and knew. That’s why the tragic and metaphysical ending doesn’t break the story’s identity - it concentrates it, bringing together its central themes: progress as both blessing and curse, and the endless cycle of choices and consequences.
But Good Omens was built on completely different values. And here I’m talking specifically about the book and season one as the only canon fully created by both authors, because that’s where the emotional and philosophical foundation of the story comes from:
an optimistic and comforting tone;
love for life and small everyday joys;
choice instead of destiny;
the idea that real lives matter more than “great plans”.
That’s why self-sacrifice for the sake of a new universe - one where everything they fought for and everyone they knew would cease to exist - didn’t feel like a natural conclusion to their journey. It felt like another story’s genre logic being forced into a narrative that had always resisted that kind of logic.
The same applies to alternate universes.
In Arcane, alternate realities preserve the continuity of the characters’ identities. They are still the same people, living through variations of the same path, trying to find the one version of events that doesn’t end in catastrophe. The alternate universes don’t erase the story - they deepen it.
But in Good Omens, the new universe feels less like a continuation and more like a replacement. Not another layer of the same story, but an entirely different story using familiar images.
That’s why I don’t think endings - or tropes - can ever be judged in isolation from the stories they belong to.
The same ideas can become the perfect culmination of one narrative and feel completely alien in another, depending on the themes, tone, and emotional logic that story was built on from the beginning.
In Arcane, soulmates, sacrifice, and metaphysical transcendence feel like the natural end point of a tragedy about inevitability and obsession. In Good Omens, those same tropes clash with a story that was always about choice, ordinary joy, and choosing each other and life over cosmic narratives.
And I think that difference matters more than the tropes themselves ever could.
