selenityshiroi

The point the finale is trying to make, in my opinion, is that there is no freedom as long as there is an invisible puppet master pulling the strings. That, eventually, even if every thing was put back to rights, eventually the strings would be yanked again.

The only way for them to obtain true freedom, for humanity to gain true freedom to be human, is for there to be no one in control at all.

The two of them were never free. Humanity were never free. The omnipresent puppeteer didn't need to be seen for them to be in the room.

And that is what the request is. Let it all happen again, but let them be free. Let them make their own choices, let them make their own mistakes. Let them be both the best good and the worst evil and sometimes have that contained in one person. Which has always been the potential of humanity in the book and series.

It would have been a tragic and bittersweet ending except for one thing.

They weren't asking for themselves to be remade. They were ready to fade from existence having made that choice. But, apparently, the final gift they, and all of heaven and hell were given (aka all of Her creations) was to have the same chance to live free of influence.

They aren't replacements. They are the same entities but given the chance to live again but free. And, when free, they find each other again (and again and again). And now they get to chose what they do with that.

The past is lost, and that is sad. But I find it less sad than them going back to waiting for cosmic disaster to happen just because someone is bored. Than them knowing they aren't really free and contantly looking over their shoulder for heaven and hell.

I don't see Asa and Crowley as replacements. They aren't new. The soul and essence is the same. I've seen Lot's children brought up in the tags and I don't feel it's an apt comparison. Because the part with Lot's children was that heaven would give him completely new children because they didn't see people significant as individuals and therefore any old human would do as a replacement. Asa and Crowley aren't any old people. They are Aziraphale and Crowley. They don't have those same memories and they don't have those same experiences, at least not consciously. But, somewhere, buried in whatever essence makes up who they are, the part that finds each other again and again...that part, surely, never forgets.

That finale wasn't perfect. It had flaws. The reconciliation was too quick and left some things unsaid, the Jesus plot clearly had a lot of untouched potential. Those flaws are clearly a part and parcel of the series being truncated into a 90min movie.

But death is an inevitability , even for angels and demons. The fact that we got new life out of that death satisfies me.