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I started watching Good Omens because it's a series that allows you to think and question religion without following the rules of Docma, and without denying its existence either. With its many contradictions and imperfections, but with the idea that everything has a meaning we can't quite grasp, but which is ultimately good. And this ending took that away from me.

It concluded that the rules of religion and the existence of superior beings interfere with free will. That since the system is flawed, it must be destroyed. But wasn't the world worth saving even if it's imperfect? Wasn't the fact that the world is flawed a reason to fix it, not destroy it?

For me, the problem that the series had to solve was the black-and-white mentality. That the world could be better by accepting imperfections and creating a gray area. That the fight between heaven and hell was what made no sense, and that they didn't even know why they were fighting any more.

I would have liked that, in the end, Aziraphale and Crowley gave the angels and demons the possibility to choose. Because it's them who couldn't choose and only did what they were told by god or the Metatron or satan. Humans had always been able to do whatever they wanted. And that way, the black-and-white mentality would end. Some entities would choose to be human, some would want to help humans after death in Purgatory. And Crowley and Aziraphale could stay on Earth, not to influence humans but to give them options. Because sometimes when humans don't know what to do, what we need are options so we can decide better. Not to be told what to do.

And i also wanted for aziracrow to watch over us, to protect us. And they could stay with humanity because the love that they have for each other and the love they have for the earth is one and the same. They learn to love earth because of each other and love each other because of the time that they had on earth. You can't make them choose.

They had 90 minutes. NINETY. MINUTES.

Wasted 2/3rds of it playing the most obvious whodunnit of all time, watching Jesus meander around uselessly, and bringing in some mafia group. And Aziraphale and Crowley, who should be at the center, hardly get to actually communicate, and pretty much never actually talk about their relationship. It was an agregious waste of time.

If they wanted to pull some meta shit, they should have given us a season to do it well. They had the option of doing a full season and chose not to, and the consequence of that is that you don’t get to write all of the convoluted crap you want. 10 minutes before the end of an hour and a half movie that had essentially zero constructive narrative is not the time to be pulling out world upending, genre changing, fandom rending controversial choices out of your ass.

(Especially when a quick google search could have informed anyone that 98% of the fandom agreed beforehand that getting some Human AU when you signed up for immortal shenanigans SUCKS. And on top of that they actually destroyed the entire universe and the main couple.)

The point being- if you are going to just have 90 minutes then you don’t waste that time and then pull twists out of nowhere so you can pretend to be ‘profound’ when neither the fans nor narrative demanded it up until they wrote some impulsive disaster at the very end.

You don’t start yanking on threads for fun, you wrap up the loose ends to make the fans happy and call it a day. 90 wasted minutes of answering none of the questions anyone had, not communicating, being overall rather out of character, and splitting screen time like they had time to give. You lost the chance to write story warping crap when you exchanged 6 hours for and a half.

All they had to do was sit them down at the ritz for dinner and everyone would’ve walked away fine- especially since they didn’t even bother to answer the questions we had beforehand like why the hell Crowley is so goddamned overpowered and what happened in the fall.

It was just generally poorly written. They set the Metatron up as someone who seemed malicious and then killed him ten seconds in. They started the concept of the second coming and then ditched it halfway through to start tearing chunks out of the universe. We sat and watched Jesus dawdle around the entire time to culminate in handing out pizza, and the mafia come out of nowhere to swallow up the first half and then leave. They had Aziraphale show up and get reprimanded for leaving by Mrs.Sandwhich and Crowley, only for them to pretty much passively avoid talking about anything by demanding forgiveness and then brushing off all the emotional baggage they had up until there was no time left to deal with it. All those talks of ‘Us’ and ‘to the World’ in previous seasons, and there’s essentially Zero closure from the characters who have been slow burning since the dawn of creation.

Say all you want about their long life together being fun, and ‘what ifs’, and ‘they find each other in every lifetime’ and blah blah- but sometimes people deserve to have the script actually address things and say them directly to each other and for the audience. It also sure as hell doesn’t help the transition that they had no clue they were gonna be reincarnated so they didn’t even get to toss out an ‘I’ll find you’ or something to soften the blow- they just DIED with zero resolution and we are expected to hinge our hopes and dreams on two strangers with bad haircuts that the audience has zero attachment to in a completely different universe. They didn’t consider how to even make this an effectively impactful ending, emotionally or logistically.

The first half reads like they were trying to obligatorily continue season 2, but the second half is disjointed and feels aimed at picking a new direction 180, and shutting everything down. HARD.

What I personally think the actual truth is, is that they intentionally wrote a way to end the universe (despite the fact that doing so contradicts pretty much every afore established ethical discussion driven by the series regarding the loss of life, replacing people, humans defying destiny, and free will, and is generally all around pretty out of character ), because they didn’t want to be bothered again. If you leave no open end, and a divisive fanbase, they don’t ask you for more. And that’s what I think this disaster really was: the response for having the audacity to ask for an answer to the cliff hanger they left us on in season 2, when all Amazon wants is to stop associating with Neil Gaimon.

I think it’s a hack job, and it’s a slap in the face to fans.

Most will actively hate it for upending all the world building and forcing them to suddenly grieve characters they’ve followed for decades at the last minute with absolutely Zero tact- but those that do enjoy the ending should be upset that it wasn’t written better. The set up could have been better, they didn’t make a choice to find each other, and They didn’t even do a montage of them finding each other in various lifetimes through history, people are just hinging their hopes and dreams on the song ‘time after time.’ And the reasoning behind the whole thing was beyond contrived.

Also, why does starting a new universe without heaven and hell mean they can’t exist as themselves as the sole immortals or just have their memories up until that point- she’s GOD, she can do whatever the fuck she wants and the story uses that to make a ridiculous contingency instead. They also literally had the ability to rewrite life in their hands and didn’t make any use of it. Why not have God just show up if you aren’t gonna do anything with the books? She’s God, she’s been watching, you didn’t need to manifest her, and I don’t know why you would want to.

So yeah, the ending was crap, objectively, simply because it was handled with all the grace and care of a bull in a china shop.

The fact they blatantly disregarded what the obvious emotional outcome of its massive die hard queer fanbase would be is just the cherry on top. The fans are loud and post constant content, it’s not hard to figure out most people just wanted them to wear silly outfits through time, TALK about their feelings, and play ‘a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square’ the end. There were six dozen ways they could’ve handled Heaven and Hell and leave the two alone on Earth, and they went with ‘let’s not handle it at all, the only way to solve things is extinction.’ Nobody in their right mind would have wanted them to forget a millennia and over six thousand years of love for each other, that was on no one’s bucket list or radar going into this.

I think it’s fucking intentional, and I think they were sneaky enough about it that instead of being collectively pissed they gave us half written slop we are arguing over whether or not the ending is satisfying- and the answer should be “NO!” either way, because there was about 10% consideration put into it from the second they said they were giving us a pathetic 90 minutes instead of a whole season, and then they wasted the majority of that time doing nothing constructive.

We can’t know for sure how those of us who are having a lot of grief, anger, betrayal, and so on would have felt if “a cottage in the South Downs” had never been uttered publicly by TP or NG. But I’m guessing I would have the same feelings, although probably not as intense. The Good Omens finale still betrayed the Agreement (see what I did there) that it had made with the audience. I am in no way an expert or professional critic, but I do have quite a bit of media literacy and these are some of my Thoughts*.

Genres have specific conventions, expectations, tropes, etc. that audiences know they will see at least some of. If a tv series was giving all the signs of following a particular path, without foreshadowing (even subtly and only viewed in retrospect) that it would actually be making a sharp right turn up ahead, the audience is going to be rightfully shocked. Indeed this is wanted and expected by the writers, otherwise they would have stayed on the road most traveled.

Writers are making choices at every step of the story. And these writers decided, in this condensed final episode, to abruptly take what has been building for 12 previous episodes of a fairly lighthearted, considering the apocalyptic content, fantasy romcom** and make it neither a romcom (there’s nothing comedic about the unexpected death of everyone- especially your romantic leads) nor a fantasy (they opted to create an ostensibly supernatural-free universe). The audience was definitely flabbergasted, at a minimum. We were supposed to believe that an omnipotent, omniscient being has only two options moving forward. And that Crowley, the notably creative demon, who has been literally and figuratively burned by Heaven before, is going to both abandon all attempts to think outside of the box and trust God at her word?

Thus far we also entirely jumped over the uneven Swiss cheese that constituted the preceding hour plus of plot. Much of the stress and anguish it contained seemed unnecessary and was ultimately futile. Many of the characters seemed to be behaving inconsistently within the episode and also not as they had before. Nothing in this story prepared the audience in any way for what was coming. No previously dangling strings were tied up, even while entirely new ones were unraveled from the previous season’s story.*** And no satisfying conclusion resulted from any of this.

The writers did, however, tack onto the end a fluffy little sketch of a romcom, which almost seemed mocking in its milquetoastery. It gave us the very beginning and the very end and NONE of the substance that makes us care about the characters or their relationship. This was right after they had nuked the Characters of all time, who we were there to see! It’s as if Crowley had all of the swagger and sarcasm drained out of him along with his cherry red hair dye. Then apply that to everyone.

The camera in the pub gliding past groups of two humans that look a bit like demons and angels from a previous universe, long ago and far away, also seemed like an attempt to manufacture a feeling of closure. The extremely improbable circumstances which led to all of these lookalikes not only knowing each other but also being in the same place at the same time does seem to stretch the belief that god has not put more of a spin on things than she told Crowley.

Seeing (but not hearing or knowing) these couples felt a bit like the Great British Bake-off catching you up on what all the contestants have been doing with their lives but instead it’s just the same phrase for each person “Look- they still exist!” Actually they don’t because they were all turned into Thanos sparkle dust. These are simulacrums. Asa and Anthony are fine! But we expected our vintage of awkward nerds living a happily ever after to be a particular flavor of angel and demon, not unfamiliar human.

As much as I love Cyndi Lauper, it feels like one more Queen song might have been more appropriate for this ending- “Who Wants To Live Forever”.

*Many of these Thoughts are the same ones that a lot of us have had and shared in quite a few convos.

**If anyone thinks it’s not a romcom or that it only became one in season two, I have a whole other essay I can give about that! 😂

*** The song just kept going through my head as I was writing this, so I’m passing on the earworm 𓆙

If you got this far 😅 how would you describe the One Job the writers had? Doesn’t have to be the same job I think they had

* Bildad Crowley focused main zine (Shoemaking version)

* With special guest Lord Slorch the Vile—with Bildad encouraged—mini zine included

* And NSFW of the same sold separately like last time (Obstetrics version)

What say you?

One week poll.

I keep thinking about how Aziraphale, when Crowley did not immediately leap to his feet to help him, just turned around and walked away.

He didn’t try to help him up. He didn’t crouch down to his level. He didn’t even look remotely pressed, and he left Crowley lying there, depressed and dirty and drunk and barely conscious, like he was a piece of trash. Like he meant nothing. (I also haaaaate what they did with Crowley here, but that’s another post entirely)

To think they made Aziraphale into the villain so many people thought he was post s2, and for what? To what end? For what reason? It feels so unnecessarily cruel. So callous. So very much not Aziraphale.

“But Crowley told him to go away! Aziraphale was just respecting his boundaries!”

Nah. No. I mean maybe if Crowley was just chilling having a drink somewhere all upright and not covered in shit and mired in despair, then fine. But he’s lying on the fucking street in the alley muttering that nothing matters anymore. I would argue that when someone you care about is THAT depressed and THAT deep in a dark, dark place, that is precisely the time to ignore their attempt to shove you away. At the very least you reach out to them, anyway.

Was that angel the same as this one? This soft but fiercely tenderhearted sweetheart?

Are we supposed to believe this was that same angel we watched walk away from the same demon he guided through that Edinburgh cemetery with firm but careful hands before he was snatched down to Hell?

Out of all the possible things that could’ve happened in the finale— of all the possible endings and scenarios I thought about for months and months— one thing I never even considered to be remotely possible about this angel who always looked at Crowley like he was everything?

I never thought that Aziraphale wouldn’t help Crowley up off the ground.

And apparently, neither did Peter Anderson Studio.

... 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.

Note: I do not wish to convince anyone of my opinion or be convinced of theirs, I just want to write down how I feel about the finale. Also, I've heard that the creators are getting some hate messages, omg? Please if you have a slightest inclination to do that or to be mean to someone because you disagree with them then log off the internet and go for a walk... try to find a rainbow, feed peas to a duck ❤.

Simply put... I hated the finale. During while some things felt quite rushed I was thinking that it's because of the 6 episodes to 90 minutes shortening and even if it won't be perfect it will still be worth it because of the ending. And then came the scene in the bookshop with God and Satan and our ineffables after which they... died. And then we saw some two human clones who looked like them ending up together.

...

Crying, I couldn't have believed my eyes. The finale killed Aziraphale and Crowley and all the characters we came to know and love and replaced them with some random people who looked like them and we are supposed to care about?

Have I really just watch Soho struggle, learn that Mutt have died, Nina and Maggie had to leave, and people there were barely hanging on to be given a bit of hope by Jesus so they would be erased and this wouldn't matter at all?

I can't even start to begin to describe how much this is not Good Omens that I love. My words fail me and I am left stuttering and waving my hands erratically.

Not starting again but fix what we have has been an important point of Good Omens. Same as Job and his wife don't want some new children but the old ones. But somehow replacing the Earth is the ideal ending now?

The finale is trying to convince us that it's better because now there won't be any Hell and Heaven with their influences, but the big part of Good Omens was always that the humans do have their free will unlike most angels and demons - and all the big events on Earth like World Wars or Spanish Inquisition are created by humans, no matter how many coins Crowley glues on the pavement. If this was truly a problem then even a God's edict that from now no direct influencing people would do (not that we have that much reason to believe that there was that much influencing going on in the first place - most demons and angels kept to their dominions and Aziraphale and Crowley had The Arrangement), Aziraphale and Crowley could have been left on the Earth to make sure no such things was happening. But no, let's throw this all out, kill everyone and start over with real dinosaurs this time because it will surely be better... or will it? The humanity without Hell and Heaven seems the same to me in the ending. Hmm.

The whole scene with the God and Satan (what happens to him? who knows) where God calls Aziraphale lazy felt very very weird.

My brain is completely baffled why I should care about some random two men that look like Aziraphale and Crowley when I just saw my ineffables die. It's not them. It's like someone killed me and cloned me. I would not be very happy about it. And I know that some people like to say it is at least an imprint of them because they created the universe and they find each other in every universe over and over but nothing like is stated there, it is just wishful thinking of a broken heart imho. Aziraphale and Crowley are dead after Aziraphale spend years trying to make Heaven better and Crowley spent years in depression...

...which is another thing of itself:

Crowley is an optimist. (so seeing him in the finale makes me want to put the gif of from The Godfather: "look how they massacred my boy" here :D)

I hate this trend where you have an uplifting funny movie/season/book/something and you see that it is successful and people love it because it gives them comfort and hope and you go "oh but what if we make it drama where suddenly our characters full of hope and energy are depressed and see dying as the only option because surely that is what the fans of the original material appreciate". Fuck that.

I can't help it but the finale doesn't feel like Pratchett. At all. Perhaps there is a reason for that:

I have decided that I will consider only the book and S1 the canon in my head (perhaps with occasional visits from Bildad, Muriel or Furfur ;)). But I simply can't take this ending into my heart.

I have been waiting for the Finale to find out if it rekindles my passion for Good Omens, which sort of died away after the info about NG came out. I'm afraid it hasn't and I don't plan to update this blog much more anymore, perhaps sometimes if I see something that I want to share but I am not sure how much. Thank you for following me all these years, it's been a blast ❤.

(I still love Good Omens. I am going to The Ineffable Con 7 and I will look forward to meeting you there or at another opportunity. ❤❤❤)

the paperwork:

The results are here, whether you voted or not, it’s too late now (it's always too late).

Let’s analyze these numbers (I’ll try to be as objective as possible). There’s almost 1600 votes for the poll about the film as a whole and more than 1000 for the ending of the film, so there’s a wide sample of people in both polls. As a whole, we can say that these numbers are not good news for amazon & co. 

A staggering 50% of the voters didn’t like or even hated the finale as a whole, with quite a lot more hate (28,1%) than dislike (21,9%) (we are a passionate fandom). 

Almost a quarter (23%) of the fans are not sure yet what to think about it.

And, obviously (this is maths after all), the other quarter (25,9%) has positive reviews. Almost 1 out of 5 people liked it (19,6%) while only a few really loved it as a whole (6,3%).

Now, if we see the results for the ending of the finale, the numbers change a bit (thanks to @fellshish for the addition of this poll, which is quite interesting). 

Almost the same number of people who loved the film as a whole also loved its ending (6.9%). However there’s a big dip in people liking the ending (11,7%), which brings us to 18,6% of people having positive feelings about the ending of the finale. That’s 7,4% less people having positive feelings towards the ending than the film as a whole, and most of that descent comes out of the ones liking it, rather than the ones loving the film (who are almost the same number in both polls). 

About the voters with negative feelings towards the ending, we can see there’s an overwhelming 57,5%, with most of them hating that ending (43,4%) (what’s not to hate? Sorry, objectivity!) and just 14,1% who disliked it. Again, we are passionate people in this fandom. 

Finally there’s almost the same number of people in both polls who haven’t reached a decision over the ending yet (23,9%).

It’s very interesting that more than 7% of voters are positive towards the film as a whole but hate the ending (there is much more hate than dislike in the ending poll). There’s many people too who dislike the film but hate the ending.

Finally, the addition of @thebright1 had a little over 400 votes. Most of the voters (53,2%) found sense in s2e6 final 15 before season 3 aired. About 2 out of 5 voters (43%) haven’t understand the meaning yet, and an astonishing 3,9% have found its meaning after watching go3 (I’m astonished because s3 didn’t deal with any of the issues the F15 brought up, imho)

In conclusion we can say that only a quarter of voters are happy with the finale, and that is even less for the ending, with just 7,4% of voters who liked or loved it. That said, we could argue that the film is disliked in general and its ending in particular is hated by most of the people who voted on this poll. 

All in all, we could say the fandom is divided, yes, but we are not so far away and the edges of the division are a bit blurry.

Thanks for voting, reblogging, and commenting on this poll.

If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and his dog and his friends. And a summer that never ends. And if you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot... no, imagine a sneaker, laces trailing, kicking a pebble; imagine a stick, to poke at interesting things, and throw for a dog that may or may not decide to retrieve it; imagine a tuneless whistle, pounding some luckless popular song into insensibility; imagine a figure, half angel, half devil, all human... Slouching hopefully towards Tadfield. ...for ever.

I submit humbly that that ending is not the voice of a writer (the interview in the illustrated tie-in edition specifies that "the kids mostly originated with Terry") who would ultimately be down with annihilation as the Only Solution To The Problems Of The World.

Bonus reminder: I'm betting this passage is Terry's ("vanload of hippies on a blotterful of Owsley's Old Original" has that ring to it). I ask you, does it describe a character who would only a few years later in story time -- after sixty centuries of ups and downs -- (1) wallow indefinitely in a drunken sulk, and then (2) tell God to finish erasing the world, including himself and his best friend, and start over?

Because, underneath it all, Crowley was an optimist. If there was one rock-hard certainty that had sustained him through the bad times -- he thought briefly of the fourteenth century -- then it was utter surety that he would come out on top; that the universe would look after him. Okay, so Hell was down on him. So the world was ending. So the Cold War was over and the Great War was starting for real. So the odds against him were higher than a vanload of hippies on a blotterful of Owsley's Old Original. There was still a chance.