Empty Spaces

I wanted to organize my many scattered thoughts after watching the new season today, and try to put my finger on just what made the finale so disappointing as a queer story.

I find Aziraphale and Crowley to be queer in four major ways:

1. Most obviously, they are both male-presenting beings in love with each other.

2. They are magical/incorporeal beings that canonically lack human gender.

3. They actively work to counter the dominant systems in control of their lives to forge their own way forward (especially Crowley).

4. Their story spans countless times and places, weaving through different eras of history and prehistory and defying linear time.

In order to explain points 3 and 4, I'm going to perform the classic trick of pulling out Jose Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia. Part of Cruising Utopia examines the concept of queer time, which Muñoz characterizes as a time that is never fully arrived at due to its constant diversion from the status quo (which, of course, changes throughout time, rendering the queer experience ever-striving). Queer time is a continual process with no possible end, but one that is nonetheless carried out with hope and care despite its impossibility. It dovetails neatly with the philosophy of positive absurdism where, despite the chaos and cruelty of a random universe, the best thing to do is live anyway with all the love and kindness you can. This is a theme that is incredibly prevalent in Terry Pratchett’s parts of the Good Omens book, specifically the storyline of Adam coming into his powers as the Antichrist.

Adam is constantly cajoled by a thrum of deep voices goading him to start the world afresh. The world is rotten and falling apart, they tell him. The only thing to do is destroy it all and rebuild it in your own image. It’s a selfish outlook, and one that is incredibly easy to fall into as humans with limited time on Earth. There’s no shame in having this outlook as far as Heaven and Hell are concerned. But Adam resists with Aziraphale and Crowley’s help, insisting that the connections he has with his friends and family and the inherent messiness and complexity of humanity is precisely why the world should remain the way it is. It’s a really beautiful sentiment (and a very Pratchett one). If we all gave in to apathy about changing the world and loving those around us, then we wouldn’t be living much of a life at all. In encouraging Adam to make his own human choices, regardless of what Heaven and Hell (the status quo) want, Aziraphale and Crowley demonstrate a queer ethos and an alignment with queer time. They may never see humanity fully at peace, but they can do their best to shepherd them on that quest.

When God gives them the “choice” to remake the world in S3, it doesn’t feel like much of a choice at all. Throughout the book and the previous two seasons, Heaven and Hell are depicted as overstuffed, underperforming bureaucracies who often aren’t aware of their own goals due to the indecipherable power structures. All they seem to be concerned with is sticking it to The Enemy. There are some occasional scenes where they are seen punishing humanity, but never on a scale strong enough to show that they’re actually good at their job of policing human morality (and it’s almost always to prove their cruelty to each other, like when the story of Job ends up being a bet between the two organizations to see who’s truly the best. Humans are just collateral in this eternal beef). When Aziraphale and Crowley opt to “remake” the world without Heaven and Hell dictating human actions, it feels like a fool’s errand. Heaven and Hell were never effective in policing humanity previously, and so it doesn’t change much when they are erased at the end of S3.

Additionally, by doing this, Aziraphale and Crowley abandon their pursuit of queer time, no longer fighting against the status quo and essentially giving themselves up as sacrificial lambs. It’s admirable that they’re willing to be on each other’s side so much that they will cease to exist, but it also means that their millennia-long pursuit of shepherding and loving humanity comes to an end. It’s a really hard pill to swallow for me, personally, and I feel like I can’t pass informed judgement on it with how short the scene was and with how out of character they both acted. (It’s extra heartbreaking to have them decide to do this under an apple tree and then never delve into the significance of that.)

The issue of there being no kiss is a really nuanced one. As someone on both the aro and ace spectrums, I’m all for different expressions and explorations of what love can be. Aziraphale and Crowley are really interesting characters for this since they aren’t human, and have been confirmed to be asexual/sexless beings. I enjoyed the novelty of the finger kiss, especially since Aziraphale has so many Victorian dandy-esque tendencies that could understandably lend themselves to such a gesture of affection. However, it felt incredibly flat and narratively unfulfilling for a few reasons.

Firstly, while there was potential for exploration of how an angel and demon might show their affection for each other in contrast to two humans, that was sadly never shown. Their love story was intentionally paralleled with a human one (Nina and Maggie in S2), so there was every reason to expect that they would mimic human social customs after living among them for so long.

Secondly, it perfectly encapsulates a major issue I have with the finale, which is that it is clearly a well-meaning story made by allies, but one that lacks any true queer substance. The finger kiss and hand holding happened without Aziraphale ever apologizing for his patronizing attitude towards Crowley and without him ever explicitly telling Crowley that he loved him. God states that They were always amused by Aziraphale’s love for Crowley ever since the Beginning. Aziraphale states that with Crowley, he was complete, but that that was taken away from him after Crowley’s Fall. All of this dialogue is clearly meant to be unassailable proof of their love for each other, especially when combined with the millennia of acts of service for each other. However, it doesn’t actually delve into the heart of their love, and fails to give it proper substance. The screenplay is content to let the audience know that Aziraphale and Crowley love each other without actually showing us a moment where the two explicitly verbally confirm it. Again, this could be interesting if the angle of a queer connection outside of human customs was explored, but since that isn’t delved into, the confirmation of their love ends up feeling rushed and unsure (and it never comes straight from their own mouths, which feels incredibly disappointing). It’s yet another instance of an issue that has cropped up in recent years now that queer media is more mainstream, which I like to call Being Gay Is Fine As Long As You Don’t Do Any of That Kissing Stuff.

Rachel Talalay, the director of this season, said in an interview that she, Michael Sheen, and David Tennant felt that showing another mouth-to-mouth kiss would have “the same or less” impact as the one in the S2 finale. Complete mismatch of stakes aside, this quote shows a fundamental misinterpretation of how to depict queer intimacy. Talalay says in the same interview that “they [the fandom] desperately want [a kiss], and they can write their whole sex scenes in fanfic.” In doing so, she equates showing a queer kiss or makeout scene with sexual activity, and subconsciously reveals that she feels that such queer intimacy is too “on the nose.” This feels to me like a clear watering down of queer desire in the service of what allies feel to be “more meaningful” — aka These People Really Love Each Other (We Promise!) But Not Enough To Kiss Onscreen (Don’t Be Ridiculous). It’s a sort of unintentional infantilization and refusal to let queer couples stand on common ground with straight ones. (You never hear this kind of thing being said about cishetero couples.) This stings even more because she, Sheen, and Tennant are demonstrably great allies to the queer community, but this interview shows the fundamental disconnect between well-meaning allyship and true, firsthand queer experience (what’s that Crowley said about the road to Hell?). I’m in no way saying that anyone on this show had malicious intent, but the subtext of the season and cast/crew interviews is still very telling of the storytellers’ biases.

This is carried even further by choosing to reincarnate Aziraphale and Crowley as humans. In gaining corporeal, human forms, the queer significance of their nonbinary, magical forms is stolen away from them. The millennia of queer time they spent arguing and questioning and striving and laughing together is erased, and they are sentenced to a few linear decades of marriage, looking feebly up at stars they once created. I won’t lie and say that it wasn’t touching to see an older gay couple have a meet-cute resulting in marriage onscreen. It’s true that there’s a beauty in the fact that they’ll find each other in every universe — but we only see two of those universes, and they won’t get to live in the one they helped create and cherish together. If that’s the case, then what’s the point? (And fuck that nightingale!!)