Just trying to make sense of GO3

... Meaning, I'm pretty sure Neil Gaiman did it ON PURPOSE, knowing how much it would upset the fans.

Neil knew how badly we wanted Aziraphale and Crowley (OUR version of Aziraphale and Crowley---the specific version of them we met in Season 1) to be together. He knew we wanted to see them resolve their issues and ultimately choose to be with each other in the end.

Instead, Aziraphale and Crowley forgo that emotional journey in favor of unnecessary pain. Neither of them experience real character growth in the finale; they are shown to be the worst and unhappiest versions of themselves, without getting a real shot at redemption. They never fix their communication issues. They don't express their true, authentic feelings for one another (don't @ me with that bullshit hand kiss thing). They never manage to get on the same page emotionally---even when they both agree to commit suicide (which I'm pretty sure was not the "one thing" Aziraphale wanted).

"Why give me Crowley? Why make me complete and then take it away?"

EMOTIONAL WITHHOLDING is a common abuse tactic utilized by men like Neil. They enjoy creating ATTACHMENT in their victims and then "TAKING IT AWAY".

It's easy to see how much Neil enjoyed frustrating his fans in retrospect. He actively taunted us on social media with the catchphrase "WAIT AND SEE" and threatened to make Aziraphale and Crowley kiss---but in a way we "wouldn't like". He loved dangling the implied promise of a happy ending over our heads, which we now know he never planned to deliver on.

Neil was unkind to his audience. He was also unkind to his characters. Aziraphale and Crowley are treated as punching bags throughout the entire series---shown to be "messy" for the sake of entertainment, but not as a real obstacle for either of them to overcome. God herself says she enjoys seeing how much Aziraphale values his relationship with Crowley. And this turns out to be her justification for "taking it away". (Tell me THAT isn't some fucked up shit.) Aziraphale and Crowley experience real emotional pain as the result of her actions---and this is demonstrated by the incredible acting of Michael Sheen and David Tennant.

Neil explicitly sold this as "a love story" when he created the show. Based on the tone of the book, an eventual union between Aziraphale and Crowley would have made the most narrative sense. It would have emphasized the overarching themes of love, agency, and the futility of "choosing sides". But that would have required Neil to possess the same ethos as Terry Pratchett---meaning LOVE AND RESPECT FOR FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS.

We were never going to get a good love story out of Neil. Men like Neil get off on "PUNISHING" people for no apparent reason; he obviously did this with our beloved characters, to disastrous result. Nonetheless, we still manage to ascribe deeper meaning to Aziraphale and Crowley, thanks to the phenomenal acting team and the dedication of this fandom. Aziraphale and Crowley remain the greatest love story of all time, not because of anything Neil actually wrote, but because of everything that was projected onto them by the people who cared. We assigned their relationship a depth "Neil himself" never could have imagined---one that exemplifies our maximalist ideals of love and the decision to choose it again and again, in spite of everything. It is never going to "end" on Neil's preferred terms. In this rare instance, fan interpretation STILL MANAGES TO ECLIPSE THE SOURCE MATERIAL---and that is because LOVE is always a more powerful story than ABUSE.

They actually didn’t come back at all, but that’s part of the gallows humor.

I couldn’t decide which one I liked better, so you get both 😊

Most of us agree that God in Season 3 feels different from the one in Season 1. I think that's because this version is an embodiment of how Aziraphale imagines God. After all, it is Aziraphale who summons God using the Book of Life.

To support this argument, note that God accuses Aziraphale of being lazy, gluttonous, and so on. These are things he has always been anxious about. And the mention that he was the first one to lie? That's another indication. God's description of Aziraphale seems to reflect his worst fears about himself. It reinforces the idea that he was a poor angel, or even THE poor angel.

Simultaneously, this God is still the one who made Crowley for him, right? The one who created his soulmate. If so, God must have enjoyed their love story. This adds up to me as well.

[Is God referred to as "her" in the finale? I can't bring myself to look for it. But if that's the case, it would be another indication, since those are the pronouns Aziraphale uses. Not Crowley.]

Now, if this interpretation is correct, help me understand why. Why did we need to witness this version of God? That's the part I don't understand. Honestly, it feels devastating if you think that this is what Aziraphale hears just before he evaporates. Was it meant to reinforce his fear that he is selfish? To push him into rejecting what he wants and follow Crowley without hesitation?

I think for a lot of us it utterly failed and we are left with exactly that - a cruel writing choice that people tried to pad to make it a bit less hurtful. The analogy that’s coming to mind is cushioning broken glass with cotton candy so you can eat it. Like, that’s not how that works. If someone tries to feed you broken glass you refuse and then try to make sure they don’t do that again. And also cotton candy dissolves with the slightest moisture so it’s ineffective anyway.

... Meaning, I'm pretty sure Neil Gaiman did it ON PURPOSE, knowing how much it would upset the fans.

Neil knew how badly we wanted Aziraphale and Crowley (OUR version of Aziraphale and Crowley---the specific version of them we met in Season 1) to be together. He knew we wanted to see them resolve their issues and ultimately choose to be with each other in the end.

Instead, Aziraphale and Crowley forgo that emotional journey in favor of unnecessary pain. Neither of them experience real character growth in the finale; they are shown to be the worst and unhappiest versions of themselves, without getting a real shot at redemption. They never fix their communication issues. They don't express their true, authentic feelings for one another (don't @ me with that bullshit hand kiss thing). They never manage to get on the same page emotionally---even when they both agree to commit suicide (which I'm pretty sure was not the "one thing" Aziraphale wanted).

"Why give me Crowley? Why make me complete and then take it away?"

EMOTIONAL WITHHOLDING is a common abuse tactic utilized by men like Neil. They enjoy creating ATTACHMENT in their victims and then "TAKING IT AWAY".

It's easy to see how much Neil enjoyed frustrating his fans in retrospect. He actively taunted us on social media with the catchphrase "WAIT AND SEE" and threatened to make Aziraphale and Crowley kiss---but in a way we "wouldn't like". He loved dangling the implied promise of a happy ending over our heads, which we now know he never planned to deliver on.

Neil was unkind to his audience. He was also unkind to his characters. Aziraphale and Crowley are treated as punching bags throughout the entire series---shown to be "messy" for the sake of entertainment, but not as a real obstacle for either of them to overcome. God herself says she enjoys seeing how much Aziraphale values his relationship with Crowley. And this turns out to be her justification for "taking it away". (Tell me THAT isn't some fucked up shit.) Aziraphale and Crowley experience real emotional pain as the result of her actions---and this is demonstrated by the incredible acting of Michael Sheen and David Tennant.

Neil explicitly sold this as "a love story" when he created the show. Based on the tone of the book, an eventual union between Aziraphale and Crowley would have made the most narrative sense. It would have emphasized the overarching themes of love, agency, and the futility of "choosing sides". But that would have required Neil to possess the same ethos as Terry Pratchett---meaning LOVE AND RESPECT FOR FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS.

We were never going to get a good love story out of Neil. Men like Neil get off on "PUNISHING" people for no apparent reason; he obviously did this with our beloved characters, to disastrous result. Nonetheless, we still manage to ascribe deeper meaning to Aziraphale and Crowley, thanks to the phenomenal acting team and the dedication of this fandom. Aziraphale and Crowley remain the greatest love story of all time, not because of anything Neil actually wrote, but because of everything that was projected onto them by the people who cared. We assigned their relationship a depth "Neil himself" never could have imagined---one that exemplifies our maximalist ideals of love and the decision to choose it again and again, in spite of everything. It is never going to "end" on Neil's preferred terms. In this rare instance, fan interpretation STILL MANAGES TO ECLIPSE THE SOURCE MATERIAL---and that is because LOVE is always a more powerful story than ABUSE.

They love humanity precisely because humans have free will, the ability to choose who and what they want to be. Humans had the very thing Aziraphale and Crowley believed they themselves lacked — free will. But they had it all along. Otherwise, Aziraphale would never have lied to God, never given away his sword, never interfered with the divine plan by saving Job’s children, never made the Arrangement with Crowley, never chosen Crowley over and over again, never agreed to stop Armageddon in the end. Crowley would never have asked questions, never helped Aziraphale save Job’s children, never talked Elspeth out of suicide (which, ironically, he himself ended up committing in the finale), never saved his angel time and time again, never kept choosing Aziraphale, never done good deeds when he was explicitly told to do evil instead, never stood side by side with his angel to stop Armageddon. Free will always existed, absolutely. For angels and demons alike.

And free will doesn’t belong only to them. All angels and demons have it — it’s just that, unlike Aziraphale and Crowley, none of them spent enough time on Earth to become more human and fully realize that free will, enough to stand against the system that kept telling them they didn’t have any in the first place.

To me, Good Omens also reflected our own reality — how many people in positions of power use God and the “divine plan” as a shield for their terrible actions. I always saw God in Good Omens as something like a bored but merciful being who genuinely loves Her creations — and that’s exactly why She gave them free will. That was her original plan all along, otherwise, as Crowley himself said at the beginning of season 1, She would’ve put the Tree of Knowledge on the Moon, on a mountaintop, or simply never created it at all if She didn’t want humans to have free will. That is Her Ineffable Plan — to give humanity free will. When Aziraphale says in the finale that they want a universe where there is “nothing ineffable,” he is literally saying “no free will.” It feels like the people behind the finale heard the phrase “Ineffable Plan” but never actually understood what it meant.

And when She made the wager with Satan during the Job story, She already knew Crowley wouldn’t destroy the goats or kill the children. She knew Aziraphale wouldn’t allow it to happen either. She knew he would lie in order to do the right thing. Precisely because he has free will. She is omniscient — She knew everything from the very beginning. She knows what was, what is, and what will be. She is not cruel — the cruel ones are those who speak in Her name. The Great Plan does not belong to Her; only the Ineffable one does. The “Great Plan” was invented by those claiming to speak for Her.

The original theme, free will as part of the ineffable plan, felt lost and replaced with cheap drama. What began as a comedic story with religious motifs that satirized the idea of total self-sacrifice for a “better” world instead of actually trying to fix things, ultimately ended with exactly that kind of sacrifice, along with a strange, inconsistent drama that doesn’t align with established characterizations.

God designed it exactly that way from the very beginning. She knew everything in advance. She knew they would stop Armageddon. That was her Ineffable Plan all along.

But in the finale, we see all of this being forgotten, crossed out, and literally erased.

i keep trying to shout how much i reject the finale. i am filling up every space i can with all of the reasons it doesn't make sense to me, doesn't work for me, doesn't feel canon to me. not because i'm trying to convince myself of my position, but because i'm trying to convince myself that i will be able to move past this feeling by just rejecting it. but in truth i don't know how to unsee it. and i do not know if i can enjoy good omens anymore. because while those issues of taste and media literacy surrounding the convoluted philosophies about free will and reincarnation, and the whole not kissing or not saying "i love you" issues can all be debated as intellectual, matters of logic and judgement and comprehension... there's a big chunk of this schism that comes from perception and emotion, and not all emotional responses/reactions can be logic'ed or be correct or incorrect.

and one of the most impactful for me is what feels like multiple instances of extremely out of character dialogue and choices. and because of aziraphale and crowley's characterization and choices in the finale, i was very quickly drained of the feeling of comfort in them and their love. i can't love that aziraphale with how he speaks to that crowley. i ache too much for that crowley. i don't feel that their love as presented is that powerful or beautiful anymore because now it just radiates what from my experience feels completely toxic. and so i'm left with wondering why would toxic love save the universe. why is it good to get reincarnated back into a toxic relationship. and even if you try to make the logical argument that that toxicity is only there because of the angel/demon opposite sides thing, it doesn't feel like enough to excuse the fact that it happened. it destroys for me the beauty of it.

so even if "that is them," i don't know how to care about asa and anthony getting to be happy and in love if I wouldn't have been peacefully, comfortably happy with crowley and aziraphale getting together after what i saw in that episode.

Crowley: we need to die in the name of the universe. to give humanity free will

Aziraphale: I concur.

God: So be it…

RECORD SCRATCH

Adam: hey guys it’s me Adam from season 1 from years ago I am 12 years old 67 skibidi toilet and hey did you know you don’t have to choose humanity or yourselves you can do whatever you want because you have a new book of life also I’m pretty much the main character but everyone forgot about me

God, Aziraphale and Crowley: you’re right Adam we’re sorry Adam

Satan: I (the devil from the Bible) too am in this finale

I received an anonymous ask that told me to “get tf over” myself, told me I was “stupid as shit” for liking the end of Good Omens, that trying to encourage other people to get along was “delulu”, implied only bad writers could think S3 was any good, and finished up by using slurs to refer to my oldest child and implied that if I’d been a better parent, perhaps they wouldn’t have turned out that way.

They gave us Aziraphale and Crowley being all but useless in S1 and partly in S2. They should've been wrapped up in their own personal things while trying to find the Christ and Antichrist, talking about their problems and actually communicating but mostly fumbling their way through it all.

In S1 they gave us "you don't destroy the world if you want to save it; you put in the work to make it better" and then in S3 they just said "fuck it; let's burn it all to the ground."

They gave us an Antichrist powerful enough to revert the world he was more than capable of destroying. I guarantee they could've given us a Christ + Antichrist (with help from Aziraphale and Crowley) powerful enough to undo what Michael did.

And none of that even gets into the constant out of character behavior or the massive, gaping plot holes.