oh dirty river come let me in

They make a black hole: a star made so heavy and so gloriously much, so much star, that it’s ready to collapse under its own weight. Crowley nods at them to do the honors. Beelzebub closes their eyes, and reaches out, gathering gasses and metals and weight and light and sound, and packs it all into the star, more, they think to it, more, more, more, you want more, and then the star wakes up, as it were, and realizes it’s hungry, and with a roar it takes a deep breath in and holds it. The universe begins to slip and tug into it, faster and faster, and Crowley barely yanks Beelzebub back in time, a hand fisted in the back of their robes.

“Thanks,” Beelzebub says.

“Don’t mention it,” Crowley says, and then he says, “Fuck, Beez, look at what we did.”

“Should we have, do you think?”

“Well, it’s too late now,” Crowley says.

Words: 10,190

Status: Complete

Rating: Teen And Up

@mayhawk

Art Credit: Untitled by Anish Kapoor

something else that occurs to me is how one of the first things to emerge, when the allegations against NG went public, was his text to a victim. after she confronted him with what he'd done, he told her she couldn't trust her memory--that she was mentally unstable, and her recollections reflected that.

I think that memory is a terrifying thing for abusers--the thought that we know and hold the true narrative. the one who remembers takes power from the abuser by rejecting their omnipotence. you can't rewrite reality; I was there.

I refuse to let another manipulative, abusive asshole tell me what my reality has to be. Even if the script for S3 hadn't been as completely problematic and horrible from a purely narrative and writing aspect, had it still ended the way it did, I would STILL be rejecting it, because of the manipulation being perpetrated by an abusive, manipulative asshole.

I was really hoping, after NG was supposedly removed from the project completely (hah! What a joke. Amazon lied so hard on that one), that whoever they found to write S3 would give us something uplifting, that ended on a bright, hopeful note (much like S1 did), and could give us as a fandom and perhaps the survivors of NG's direct abuses a feeling that we, coming together as a community and protectively shielding the women he abused, were able to finally triumph over the systems that allow women to be abused by powerful men and create something that had the power to uplift us all and give us voice.

Instead, they hired two white, cishet men who are friends of NG and who write dark, horrific fiction, and who seemed to give not even a fig what Good Omens was SUPPOSED to be about (or who the characters really were, for that matter) before presenting us with NG's version of an ending that presented the world of fiction's biggest "Fuck you" to the fandom that has stood by this series for decades, starting with the book and leading through the agonizing wait between S2 and S3.

And now, it seems, we might implode, because of the division between those who enjoyed S3 (you're allowed to if you do), some of whom keep trying to call those who can't get past the betrayal and flaws in the script stupid for seeing what we see and feeling what we feel (you are NOT allowed to be rude to, threaten, gaslight, or hurt other people because they don't agree with you)... and those who absolutely hated it (I'm one of those), some of whom keep trying to insinute that those who enjoyed it are stupid (see above notes on what you're NOT allowed to do) or are harassing members of the cast/crew over S3 (leave them alone! The cast and crew are NOT responsible for this train wreck. In fact, I daresay they tried to mitigate what they could. The responsibility for S3 being a train wreck rests solely on the shoulders of the writers, and most especially on NG. If you want to be angry at someone for what happened, be angry at HIM!).

What we NEED to do, as a fandom, is find the common bonds on which I KNOW we all agree... our love of our Ineffables. Whether or not you see them in Asa and Anthony (I don't, personally, but if you do, I sincerely think that's a wonderful place for you to be), whether you accept or reject S3 as canon, etc... we ALL love our human-shaped celestial beings, and we all love that THEY love each other (whatever form you think that love takes), and we all love that they love their messy, weird human world and the human beings who inhabit it. THAT is what this fandom is about. There's enough room for all of us to have feelings and opinions about S3, but to be RESPECTFUL of them. Because if our favorite duo should have taught us anything, it's that we don't HAVE to have opposite sides. We can all CHOOSE to be on our own side. An Us.

100 percent. I wish I could remember where I first read this (if you know, do give me a shout!), but there's this idea that an authentically happy ending somehow lacks depth or maturity--but the truth is, real joy has gravitas.

one of my greatest writing peeves is when someone takes an easy out and calls it tragedy to forestall criticism. it's lazy. it insults your audience. it's a failure of imagination masquerading as serene acceptance. this is the real world.

except it isn't. to engage with fantasy at all is to seek something other, somewhere other.

I think there's something really insidious in the assumption that the fantastic is somehow more real, more true-to-our-world, when it consigns itself to despair. sure, you can write tragic fantasy! but do it well, in a way that's not discordant with the story. no one really thinks Antigone ends with a wedding. Hamlet doesn't commune with the dead to give us false promises.

the principal fact, the one no one can dispute, is that NG fathered the finale. that in itself should make us critical; it should alarm us. because we know what he's done, what he is. and he's ventriloquizing to say "true freedom comes from being removed from everything you love, everything you are and were. it looks like the end of memory. obliteration. everything that informed you to this point? just your mind playing tricks. I'm the one who decides what's real. I'm the one who says what's happened to you."

Ok so it's been several days now and I feel the need to articulate some of the things that left me unhappy with the Finale. Please note that this is not in any way me trying to convince you to dislike GO3 or forcing my personal interpretation of some of the things we saw on you: this is just a way form me to articulate my thoughts and give some order to my feelings.

I'll start by saying that I didn't hate the entire thing: of course there were shortcomings and many things that didn't make sense, which was a little sad in the context of a show that had been so carefully crafted before, but I was willing to overlook it considering the difficult conditions in which it was produced - plus the fact that I desperately wanted to like it and could never not adore to see Michael Sheen and David Tennant bring those characters to live one last time. I was genuinely enjoying it up until that fatal "there were four in the bookshop" line.

But now that I had some time to reflect, there are three things that I can't bring myself to accept.

The palingenetic ending, done poorly

In general, I don't dislike the palingenetic ending in principle. I don't think it automatically falls into the "it was all a dream" category, but it needs to be done properly. For reference, there are at least two great anime that do it magnificently: I will not say the titles because it would very obviously be a major spoiler, but the thing that both have in common and that is relevant to this narrative choice is that the "radical end of the current universe" moment can be very profound, tragic, and powerful if it is the only possible option left. In order to function as a meaningful closure, all agency must be lost, the entire story must have come to a point where there is no alternative, no other path forward, nothing at all. In GO3 we have two characters whose entire arc was centered around saving the universe from destruction in order to enjoy the beauty of existence together, and these two characters happen to have the (new) Book of Life and several pens to write on it. They find themselves with such an extreme amount of agency that they are able to force God to manifest. And the fact that, with so much power in their hands, they chose to put that power back into the hands of an apathetic and cynical God who immediately starts restricting their options ("only one question"), makes no sense. I can accept the extreme narrative option of erasing the entire universe if it is narratively necessary, but this was entirely unnecessary and, to me, it came off not just as absurd, but as cheap, self-important, and worst of all meaningless.

The fanservice homework

Now I love fanservice as much as the next person, and I can even say that I appreciate when writers wink at the fandom, but during the last part of the finale I started to feel like I was being manipulated. It felt like someone from the writers room was sent to scan tumblr and AO3 and make a checklist of "things the fandom wants" that were later forced in the script as poorly done homework. Aziraphale asking forgiveness, the casual Muriel and Eric ship, God stanning Aziracrow, the South Downs... it felt like someone kept putting tokens into the Good Review Machine in order to buy a positive response from the public without actually earning it with a solid writing. It felt insincere and transactional, and that left me with a bitter taste even for things that I would have genuinely, genuinely loved.

The anthropocentrism

This is probably my biggest issue. When Crowley got to ask is only question and Satan mocks him by saying "I bet it's going to be the problem of evil", I was like oh no Satan you are underestimating my boy, this is a demon who wants to know "what's the point", his fundamental question since before the beginning has always been what's the meaning of the existence of everything... and then Crowley proceeds to ask the most boring, meaningless question about "why make people and get mad at them for acting like people". What did that even come from? When did Crowley ever concerned himself with the problem of human morals? If Armageddon was a consequence of people misbehaving, a moral punishment for their "evil" deeds, it could have made sense, but it wasn't: Armageddon was planned since the start and had nothing to do with how people behaved. And Crowley was the very angel who was pissed at the idea of the humans being prioritised compared to the other parts of creation: learning that his beautiful nebula was just a sparkly backdrop for humans was the very thing that pushed him to question God's plan in the first place. And now that he can finally confront God, suddenly his main focus is humans and free will? Humans, the ones that live only a few decades so better "not get too attached", and free will, that was never an issue at all. Sure they loved humanity, but they loved it as a part of the creation, like whales and dolphins, not at the cost of any other part of the creation. To me, that felt like a story with such a large and beautiful scope had just suddenly shrunk into the most banal human-centric plot, with nothing to support this solution from a narrative or thematic point of view, and if anything, a major contradiction to that major plot point that is humans are not the center of everything. That "reductio ad humanum" felt uncalled for and lazy, and for me it was the most disappointing choice of the entire finale, the thing that devoided their final choice of any sense.

These are my two cents, again, from an entirely personal point of view, base on how the finale made me feel. I must confess that the fact that one of the authors went on the record saying that he basically has no idea why they made certain decisions (even on major points) and he would have to invent an explanation, didn't help me digest any of the issues above.

That said, I still love Good Omens, I love the characters, the actors, the visuals, the vastness of what we didn't get to see but we can imagine of their millennia of shenanigans, and most of all I love this fandom dearly and its exceptional creativity - it literally helped me survive one of the worst moments of my life, and it made me met so many amazing people!

Not spoiling you anything guys but I love them so much it hurts

This is from an animatic I illustrated for the lovely Kotias and Nosferatini

They wrote their own story.

✨️some thoughts under the cut, feel free to ignore it and just enjoy the picture✨️

Louis Ralph just uploaded this Good Omens 3 concept artwork to his online portfolio.

This could have been so beautiful. It was supposed to be so beautiful.

They’re them. Under Crowley’s stars, surrounded by the attributes of their past, safely cocooned by centuries of shared memories and held by their future. Crowley haphazardly draped in his chair, Aziraphale pointing out the shooting star. A walking cane lovingly propped up against the arm of a favorite chair. The bitten apple between them. Holding hands. They’re exactly as they should be.

We could have had the most moving, most tenderly heartfelt end that didn’t fucking break so many of us while insisting that broken things cannot be fixed.

There is more warmth and intimacy in this concept art than the entire finale.

other people have very eloquently expressed many of my thoughts over the finale, may it be about the themes, characters, or general grief that came with it. I have not read other books from Pratchett yet, and the ones I started from Gaiman I never managed to finish because he makes everything feel like a videogame (collect three artefacts to unlock the plot!). And that was before we all learned what a monster he is.

so, i'm not the best person to talk about theme and author intent. maybe i'm better placed to talk about the characters, having spent many years drawing and writing for that fandom. but i'm too sad to think about Aziraphale and Crowley now.

but I'm also a writer, and this finale taught me something important about endings.

I don't know if there is a name for the trope we saw. "Let's erase everything magical in our universe and make it that is was actually real life all along!"

It feels clever, to make it that it was our universe all along. To bring it to our reality, the viewers and readers. It's not clever. It's just sad.

Emptying a whole universe from its magic and whimsy to make it "real life" is just sad.

When you start planning a story, one of the first things to decide is the emotion you want to leave your public with. That decides your ending. The ending will influence how the public perceives your whole story.

(Look at How I Met Your Mother. Look at Game of Thrones.)

Emptying your whimsical universe of its magic is sad. Removing the memories of your characters and make them whole new beings while erasing the ones we grew to love, is sad.

I have many stories in mind, and with some of them I've been playing with the ideas of amnesia, of erasing everything and starting over, just to see if it works. I'm not gonna use those endings anymore. I don't like how they feel.

It’s been 8 days now and since then a lot of good points have been made regarding an oodle of plotholes and inconsistencies, so I won’t be focusing much on every one of them. It’s also been 8 days of real grief for me, and I found myself thinking, why am I so devastated? Why can’t I move on? Because it seems like an easy thing to do – the mess is so big it can as well just be ignored. 

Here’s what bothers me: the characters who chose that ending were not Aziraphale and Crowley. 

And I don’t mean any hidden clues here, any searching for meaning in parallel universes. The characters we saw in the finale were just so incredibly mischaracterized it feels personal. Yes, of course, I am a mere ficwriter and don’t claim to know them as if they were my own characters. But still, I spent years meticulously trying to understand their personalities and motivations, unlike, it seems, whoever it was that wrote that script.

On May 13, I got seated, jittery and prepared for the end of an era. But the very first scene, the Great War over a plot device called the Eternal Flame, instantly got me saying ‘I don’t like this’. The Aziraphale I saw there, let alone Crowley, acted in a way that filled me with unease. I had an uncanny feeling that I was watching some other show, so little it had to do with Good Omens, aside from the actors. I have to say, that feeling of unrealness stayed with me throughout the episode’s entirety. But in those opening moments, what I felt especially acutely was that this retcon of their early relationship was absolutely wrong. 

Of course, it was somewhat retconned in season 2 with the Before the Beginning sequence, where Aziraphale introduces himself to the starmaker, in contradiction to their original first meeting in the Garden of Eden. The way they both act on the wall in Eden is undoubtedly written like a very first meeting. So that scene in season 2 was already questionable, but everything that was questionable in season 2, at least to me, left the benefit of the doubt because of the possibility of a future explanation in the finale. 

Said finale does the opposite, making the magical dynamic between Crowley and Aziraphale even more eyebrow-raising. And it becomes really frustrating when near the end it turns out that the Great War scene is there for one reason – backwards writing. 

To arrive at a certain point in a story, one needs to establish cause and effect. And this is why Good Omens 3 fails as a story – all plotlines leading to the (very trendy) universe reset are frantically installed during the film (one would think that this butchered script might’ve even been fed to AI). Somehow, Palpatine returned. Somehow, the Book of Life (Plot Device Number 1), ermmm… needs to be… stolen? But hmmmm… we need someone to do the reset, and everyone loves these two characters – Aziraphale and Crowley, soooooo… let’s have Plot Device Number 2 (Eternal Flame) be the instrument of destruction of the Plot Device Number 1 so that the Beloved Characters can arrive at the reset situation with Plot Device Number 0 (God). 

The problem is, in order to make Aziraphale and Crowley arrive at that situation, one has to get them there through making several decisions. And these decisions are not the decisions that the priorly established Aziraphale and Crowley would make. I don’t just mean deciding to reset the universe, I mean basically every move they make. 

I think it’s safe to say everyone was eager to see Aziraphale’s motivation for leaving at the end of season 2 explored in depth in the finale. Not only we didn’t get it, but we can also see him having regressed from all his previous character development, which he’d had plenty in both seasons, but mostly in season 1 – going from dogmatism to accepting his free will (yes, they both had free will all along. As did other angels, like Gabriel, and demons, like Beelzebub, and humans. Which was the whole point of the story). The faces he makes at the mention of Crowley, the way he behaves when he asks for Crowley’s help, the fact that he never shows that he realizes what exactly he did wrong, demanding Crowley’s forgiveness in order to brush their conflict off and move on to what the plot requires them to do, and ultimately speaking of Crowley as an angel, who he’s long ceased to be and never wanted to become again. This is not Aziraphale. Aziraphale is stubborn but kind, and no matter how badly he parted with Crowley in the final 15, he wouldn’t stop caring, wouldn’t neglect to check on Crowley in years, knowing the state he was in. This is not the angel who made a point out of discovering Crowley’s holy water heist and brought it to him just because he was worried for Crowley’s life. And at the core of it all, in spite of all his pro forma ‘you’re a demon’ remarks, Aziraphale loved Crowley for Crowley, not for his angelic past. 

Crowley’s portrayal is not much better. Sure, many of us wanted to see his heartbreak, I did too, but the way it’s executed would be laughable if laughing at funerals was a thing people wanted to do. Backwards writing being, we need drama, so let’s make him homeless through ummm… losing his Bentley! And, somehow (Palpatine wink) his miracles! All that in order for him to be too drunk to realize it’s Jesus talking to him. And this is his excuse for missing Jesus – oops, I was too drunk. An ancient demon of his cunning, the original tempter, missed the key figure because he was drunk. Like just some guy. How very plausible. 

Naturally, I have to remind everyone that Crowley is an optimist with an unlimited imagination and always, always slithered his way out of any pear-shaped situation. Let’s not forget that he was the one to propose averting Armageddon and insist on doing that despite Aziraphale’s initial objections. And it worked! Worked because humanity has free will. And you’re telling me I have to buy him saying, yeah nah, let’s restart it all cause there is no other way? For Crowley, there is always another way. There’s no way he would give up and doom the entire universe and the love of his extremely long life to destruction (“You’ve got to keep testing people. But not to destruction.” – Crowley’s quote from the chapter ‘Eleven Years Ago’). 

I saved the part that hurts me the most for the last. And I think this is the reason why it hit me so hard and isn’t letting me be. 

I can see no love between Aziraphale and Crowley in the finale. It is spoken of by a third party, in a mocking way no less, it is implied through some guys played by David Tennant and Michael Sheen who were married for 20 years off screen, but it’s just not in the story anymore. It was there in season 1. It was there in season 2. The chemistry between them was insane, with their infinite push and pull, their being so similar despite belonging to different factions. They were so compelling because they were an impossible pair of an angel and a demon. These characters shaped each other, in the world that they loved so much and that wasn’t easy to live in, but it was theirs. To the world, they say proudly, with deepest affection, in such a fitting ending in season 1. Their so-called decision in the finale is not what they are. To arrive at this decision, the writers turned them into Plot Device Number 3, now without any chemistry whatsoever, the shells of their former glorious selves that I, and I’m sure most of us, loved so much in the previous installments. For their love for each other and their love for the imperfect but wonderful world that was their home. 

Hope, though. That's always been mine. Finding the silver linings.

Hell of a flaw for a demon to have.

In time, Aziraphale will write a full recounting. He'll have beautiful prose and a full summary. I'll be sure he doesn't start in Eden so we can finish it inside a human life span. In the mean time, here is a short message from a demon to tide you over.

The world was gone. The universe I so loved. And yet we stood in a bookshop that was nowhere and everywhere. Aziraphale took my hand and somehow I had everything. The books were blank, yes.

But we both remembered them and they weren't fading. We were the repository for the world that we loved. At one point, we started bickering over wine and Aziraphale was holding a copy of the Canterbury Tales morosely.

Geoffrey was a character.

We both spent many a night at a tavern with him as he wrote and even I knew those stories, I think by heart. I wanted Aziraphale to be happy. So, I started writing. The Clerk, the Miller, the Squire.

It spilled from me and I realised Aziraphale's hand was on my shoulder. A miracle pouring into a book. That's how it started. There's more story here and a discussion with God that I think I'll leave to his story telling.

You all have an idea how I feel about our Creatorand her decisions.

And in the end, we are here. Still an angel (now retired) and demon (former). The bookshop is in Soho, where it belongs with Muriel behind the till. And maybe you'll hear more of our cottage now that we're not afraid to spoil an ending for you.

There's no apple tree at its heart, but there is one in the garden that's a bit unique. And in our home universe there are some angels and demons on earth now, too. Not all of them made that choice but some decided retirement was the best option.

There isn't only us of course. You've seen Asa and Anthony (well, one version of them). Each stroke of your pen or click of a keyboard is another. The universes weave in unique and wonderful ways.

As a former star maker, I am proud of you all for making more stars.

Each contained in a story. That's always been what amazes me about humans, you don't understand that within each of you there are universes untold. You only need see them. And once you do, maybe share it with each other.

Aziraphale and I are here. And we'll always be here. He has another challenge planned soon for you lot and I'm considering adding one as well, if you would like.

when we learn that Michael has killed two archangels, Crowley correctly intuits that Hell might've gotten advance notice--of a plan in-progress, or one that's already happened. reality needs time to adjust, after all.

that wibbly wobbly sense of time is one of the many things to frustrate in the finale, especially because the notion of time "catching up" allows for possibilities that are much more interesting (I think) than Ye Olde Book Barbecue / no more air fryer.

initially, I hoped the second archangel would be Aziraphale. this would help direct attention to Aziraphale and Crowley, making their sudden and reluctant collaboration more focused. how might that level of urgency organize their priorities? how would it allow for actual reconciliation? Crowley has lost Aziraphale before; when the bookshop caught fire, he was too late to intervene. now Aziraphale could evaporate right beside him--it's only a matter of time gaining on them, after all. what happens when the very memory of the angel is threatened?

S3 finds Crowley functionally powerless. he stopped time for Aziraphale before through nothing more than force of will, because the angel told him to do something. how would Hell's fetters hold up against his determination to stop time dead, rather than letting it absorb his only friend? stakes of this kind might have allowed for Crowley--whose cussedness is matched only by his imagination--to access his miracling powers once more. (it could even allow for another Lazarii-type "half" miracle, the kind of joined power that Aziraphale attributes to love.)

this is a bit topsy-turvy, but the Book of Life didn't need to be bound parchment: following the cues of the New Testament, it could have been an allusion to Jesus himself. in other words, while everyone is scurrying around in search of a codex, the teenaged Jesus--the Word Made Flesh--is the real book. we've seen that this incarnation of Jesus isn't a carbon copy: his memories of his earthly life are incomplete. here we could have seen a callback to Gabriel's mind-wipe: what if the book the Metatron edited was Christ's own memory?

Jesus as the Book of Life would satisfy a parallel, I think. remember that S1 / the novel involves influencing the Antichrist. Crowley and Aziraphale (as or through Nanny and Francis) give Warlock a fair shake, reinforcing his human-ness. Adam, heedless of both infernal and heavenly meddling, chooses his humanity. how might Jesus come to understand his? and what damage might the Metatron's "fiddling" have done to that sense of being human? would it be enough to make the Messiah come bearing a sword?

erasing Aziraphale (or threatening to) would fulfill some of his backstory--in canon, and in the novel's development. Aziraphale was a typo at some stage in the writing process, and we see the name's origins play into some of his quirks. (collecting misprinted Bibles, for example, including the only version which includes him in the Genesis narrative.) (iirc, book!Aziraphale actually commissioned that particular version!)