The Tackiest Quill U Know

For the purposes of answering the question of “do you want brand new children to replace your old children,” it doesn’t matter to Job and Sitis whether their children are dead or not, because it’s an awful question. Of course they want their own original children back. For that matter, Sitis would like very much to not have to birth any new ones. But for the purposes of the narrative, the good outcome to that question depends on the children not being dead and therefore able to be reunited with their parents (in the best hoodwinking Gabriel fashion, naturally). The children weren’t dead. The course of their lives wasn’t significantly altered except for living as lizards for an afternoon.

Michael burned the universe down. Everyone in it was Thanos Snapped into oblivion. The event already occurred. The universe is dead. You can stop here and go “this sucks actually, I reject this turn of events” and that’s perfectly fine and valid. But if you follow the question of “what if this did happen though,” even getting the universe back exactly as it was is a form of Job’s Children; it already died and Good Omens doesn’t raise the dead (editing reality to erase deaths, sure, but not raising them after they’ve died; there is no reality to edit anymore in this case). And more importantly, as Crowley knows and Aziraphale finally understands, Heaven and Hell are always going to be gunning for ending it all again, because that’s the Great Plan as they understand it, and they are incapable of letting it go. Perhaps, given enough time and patience and willingness, they could learn, but they would have to stop trying to end it all in the meantime and give Earth and humanity a chance. Which means unlearning thousands of years of seeing humanity as chips in the eternal game of poker at best, healing from trauma thousands of years old, learning to live with their hereditary enemies. I want to stop here and say that this option isn’t impossible or unviable and in our real world, this is actually the solution: careful, meaningful growth through discussion and helping each other and sometimes just putting up with each other in the name of greater community cooperation (disclaimer about not taking shit from raging bigots and people hellbent on doing harm, the conversation is obviously bigger and more nuanced than this, but stay with me here).

In fiction, with ten minutes to go in the run time, the universe is already dead. Crowley and Aziraphale lived through thousands of years of watching humanity be itself, be wonderful and horrible and innovative and backwards, and lived through not just the Antichrist debacle but Heaven and Hell’s attempts to get the apocalypse back on track. Humanity’s free will means nothing when there are entities bigger than them who are able to wisp away their world with a flick of a finger. Even Crowley and Aziraphale are a danger to humanity on some level; look at how often they can change a human’s circumstances with a snap of the fingers, how they can possess a human body, how they can bring down cataclysmic lightning and stop time and turn children into lizards and back. Humanity has enough hazards and dangers in their environment without that. They pose enough of an apocalyptic threat to each other without that.

Crowley’s choice to give them a chance by removing the supernatural from their world is the most in character thing he could do. He loves and despairs at humanity but he recognizes that it should be THEIR choice whether they burn the universe down, not a higher being’s. And with no apocalypse, no deadline other than the Heat Death of the Universe, they have more than a measly 6000 years to try and try and try and get it right and get it wrong. The universe is already dead. The children are already dead. Why not, with the last of their greater power, bring it back better?

Bringing all the angels and demons back as humans is frankly a stroke of kindness I didn’t think we were going to get, in the face of this new world that Crowley and Aziraphale chose to sacrifice themselves for. This doesn’t have to read like a happy ending to everyone. But it does to me, because it’s getting everyone back and getting them back in a situation that is ultimately better—messy and human and temporary and precious. These aren’t two random dudes played by the same actors, they’re Crowley and Aziraphale as humans after making the choice to bring about a new godless universe where humanity has no artificial time limit. The details are different, but it’s still them. Their hearts find each other even when everything is fundamentally different, and THAT is what is fundamentally the same, at least to me. They find each other in every universe. They love each other in every universe.

Caveat and Knives Out: the bad guy is vanquished, justice is served, and the leftover cast have a moment of understanding as they gaze at each other, one party in a house, the other outside of it.

Oddity and Glass Onion: after a colorful caper, the bad guy is undone by his own hubris as a jaunty tune plays and the audience smirks in satisfaction.