Your nightmare gets terrifying but there's maybe nothing in it more frightening than that sweet astrophysics professor in the end is there now, Dr. Frankenstein? There's nothing more horrifying in this dream than that passionless version of Crowley and the others like him that would follow. The ones that you know, over and over, for all of infinite time, are not the person you love. That's why it's such a good thing that none of this-- even the parts we loved-- was actually real. Not yet, anyway.

Because the point is that you're going to wake up here and realize that you dreamt a truth that could happen but only if, as Dickens once had The Ghost of Christmas Present tell Scrooge, these shadows remain unaltered. Only if you do nothing. Only if you learn nothing from the dream... and I already know that you will not learn nothing because that same title of 1.06? The one for the episode showing us the last day we'd ever see you in reality, before the story showed us the dream that is your path to making happen the world you want?

That title also words out to saying that the remainder of your and Crowley's lives are a very last day: a very (true) last (enduring/eternal) day (also just means a period of time). It means that the reality we saw of S1 is your true eternity, which means you wake from this dream and you make that eternity happen. You and Crowley get your happy ending together-- you win.

The bad omen of this dream tells us how you, back in the reality we'll never see, make a world of good ones. It takes us into your mind and shows us you forming the plan that will get you there.

You're going to wake up soon from all of this and, after you sob at the sight and sounds of your Crowley-- oh, thank Somebody, his beautiful yellow eyes!-- sleepily saying "angel, shh, s'alright, it was a dream"? After you have a panic attack and a good cry in Crowley's arms for awhile? You're going to know what to do. You know where to start now.

You know that everything would just be better if you could just be that one, particular person of Crowley but that the key to making a world where that is possible? The one, singular thing you could do to start to make that happen, which the dream shows us your mind has worked out? Is to be nearer to one other, particular person: the archangel Gabriel.

It's the end and the beginning of the dream: cocoa delivery and Jim's hot chocolate. You can stop a personal Armageddon with a cheese sandwich but if you could just talk to Gabriel on his own, in the privacy of the bookshop? You can save the world. Because the answer, as your dream seems to have taught you, is that it's not about power. It's not about being Supreme Archangel. You aren't going to change a thing in Heaven that way.

Your dream, in which all of the archangels were seen by you as very human people? It was your mind telling you that the way you make a world where you and Crowley can be together is to treat the angels like the people they are. The dream showed you the path, and it begins with you letting Gabriel in. If you do that, you're also letting Beelzebub in, and then there's a group, a group of the four of you, and that's the start.

You need to make a world where, instead of being afraid, you and Crowley unlock the door to the fellow ducks. And letting in Gabriel? That opens more doors. Because if there's a four of you? Then you've made a space where you can start letting in others. You'll be building a place they can go. You need to make it a real embassy. Gabriel can help you with that. And there's one person, in particular, that you know if you all could let in? You'd be able to stop Armageddon: Michael.

But that's not even the reason to. It's because you've all overlooked Michael and your dream is reminding you that you know that she needs someone to talk to. You will group the books together by the first letter of their first sentences, like what Jim was doing in S2. That's how you win-- you get them all to talk about their frozen peas. And you will.

It's alright, Aziraphale. Just hang on, the dream is very nearly over. Can you hear that? The sleepy person calling you "angel" and gently trying to get you to wake up? They are definitely, definitely your nightingale, don't worry...

🎶Flashbacks, warm nights/*almost* left behind🎶, Aziraphale... a whooshing of you into consciousness as the final shot when whooshing is a sound of rushing through the air and then it fast cuts to the better song over the ending credits-- to the song we already know is you and Crowley...

To "You're My Best Friend", right on the 🎶oooh, you're makin' me live🎶lyric-- a song we haven't heard since S1, when Crowley was whooshing to you after dealing with Hastur and Ligur. When he had nearly died and was rushing to you in The Bentley, desperate to get back to you, just as you are right now desperate to escape this dream of death and eternity without a real him.

The song switched in S1 when Crowley found the bookshop on fire. It switched over to "Somebody to Love." The fire was a separate song-- one not present here in the end of S3. The song for you two rushing back to one another is the one that's much more the two of you-- "You're My Best Friend." That's the one playing. It's the one we heard in reality before, and your world of reality and your Crowley will be what, and who, you see when you wake up.

Cyndi Lauper is fun and all, Aziraphale, but your Bentley eventually turns every song you put it into Queen, now doesn't it? 😉 It's the reality of S1 forever. And there's no need to play the other song about finding somebody-- or an ending lol-- to love. We-- and you-- found the lady.

Every single lingering question I had about this story has been solved by this now, Aziraphale, so I'm rolling with it 😂 and very excited to unpack S2 & S3 from this POV and psychoanalyze the fuck out of you for dreaming your own insane bardo lol...

--

The funny part is that I actually had it three years ago and dismissed it. My notes on the 1.06 episode title read: "if very last day = true eternity & rest = death & sleep? rest of show a dream?" and then I said nah. Whole other season, probably at least two... It can't be a dream for two seasons, can it? They set up reality plot with Crowley's "all of us vs. all of them" in the end of S1, didn't they? There needs to be another way that these words work together... I couldn't see it there a la blue dot effect... just as I wrote about. 😂 I had the lady in my sight but I couldn't see her.

I enjoyed being able to see what the story does with discernment and the story being crafted so that none of us would be able to fully know entirely what we were looking at until it was complete. We'd find plenty of ladies along the way, as I and all of you did, but never all of them.

They did set up the reality of Armageddon coming back around in S1, but in a way where, now, the idea is that the dream shows you the book Aziraphale and Crowley will write together without the story writing it for them. It's like giving the characters the free will to self-determine the rest... with a little determinism thrown in by the dream giving us Clues as to how it all goes.

I would have hated the ending without that final shot showing that it's a dream but the final shot makes it all work.

Plus, they got me to ignore the words, which I really enjoyed. 😂 I understood the words correctly but I couldn't hear them. They 'no Nightingales'''d me and I speak wink-wink "French and German" so I found that fun. Because, when it comes to story, Harry the Fish was a bit right-- the cards do want to be a bit manipulated. I wanted to be a combination of validated and very surprised and I was happily both.

It's about discernment and it's a narrative magic trick so the idea would always be that the lady would be right there all along and we'd get some of it along the way but not all of it and then, when the dealer stops and the cards get turned over in the end? We'd have enough to see the big picture, and it'd all slide into place-- and this does.

It's designed so that we're all people standing in Times Square and we can't see America to make its point about how that's true of all of us. It's the human condition. Even the most discerning of us ducks are going to get a lot but never everything because we're people, and it's all just shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle... and, honestly? It probably wouldn't be any fun any other way.