✨️driven by chub✨️

It’s just… all Crowley and Aziraphale ever wanted or needed was to retire. Like, being an Angel and a Demon was always portrayed as a job. The Show leans heavily into the Corporate Aesthetic, while the original Book used a Cold War Spies metaphor, but, like, the mundane boring version of being a spy instead of Crowley’s James Bond fantasies. Either way, it’s a crappy job in a crappy work environment that they feel like they could never escape from (as a Horrors of Capitalism metaphor and/or as a Spy Thing), that’s what that the whole ‘Demons/Angels aren’t supposed to have Free Will’ thing was originally all about, a metaphor to feeling like you could never leave your job.

That was what was so Important about the concept of the South Downs Cottage and about the GO1 Ending, that promise that soon Crowley and Aziraphale would be able to retire. They could just retire and enjoy each other’s company and all the delights of the world they love so much without being tied down (or... tied up?) by their jobs.

So it’s hard to see a Happy Ending for them in something that just… feels like it gave them another job, and one that is even more fundamentally inescapable than their first one.

And Crowley and Aziraphale fell in love with Earth for all of its mundane pleasures. That’s part of the Point that Crowley and Aziraphale convey in the novel, that all of the wonderful things about being alive on Earth are so much more better than anything that could lie beyond. Aziraphale gave up on an Eternal Heaven for Sushi restaurants and Sondheim musicals. That’s another reason why their backstories start in Eden, they are the patron Angel/Demon of Earthly Pleasures. So any conclusion to their story that leaves them farther away from experiencing good food and music and fine wine and the joy of having Collections the way we humans do, will always feel… at the very least extremely bittersweet for them.

And, y’know, this whole story is about Humanity, it’s supposed to be about how fundamentally Human Crowley and Aziraphale are. It’ll just be weird for their conclusion to become something further away from the ordinary Human experience than they’ve ever been before.

As much as I was never a fan of the Human Ending (before GO3 showed me how much Worse things could get), you can definitely make a very strong thematic argument for it. If being an Angel and a Demon is like a Job, then maybe the things that make their lives Objectively Better than Humans (immortality and Miracles) are like the pay and perks of the job, and Crowley and Aziraphale shouldn’t expect to escape and/or dismantle the systems that victimized them while still getting a fat pension check out of it. And obviously if you had a pair of supernatural entities who feel more at home among Humans and love experiencing the world like Humans do, it makes sense to end the story with them becoming Humans.

Well, I would argue that this part is not an inherent, inevitable part of the thematic through-line. You could just as well end the story with the idea that they don’t need to physically become Human because they’re as Human as they need to be in their hearts. And their powers don't have to be played as an allegory for getting a good paycheck for being complicit in Cosmic Imperialism/Capitalism, I'd say that TV Omens had generally just framed it as a Cool Magic Power that's part of their basic magical biology… basically up until GO3 suddenly introduced the concept of a Miracle Account, which a lot of people just saw as a piece of contrived bad writing specifically because it seemed to contradict how Miracles were portrayed up until now.

(Also when I'm talking about them 'turning humans' I mean them still being Themselves and retaining all their memories and sense of identity, this Maybe-Reincarnation Soulmates BULLSHIT is just a terrible way to conclude their relationship arc. The one thing they should HAVE to solve the 'Human Way', and not with Magical Do-Overs, is their relationship!)

So in terms of turning Human versus remaining Divine Entities I'd say it's about 50/50, definitely depends on how the rest of the story before it builds up to it, but regardless of how you'd prefer to answer that question…. For a story about Humanity, Crowley and Aziraphale's ending should've been about either making them closer to Humanity or concluding that they are basically perfectly Human as they are. But not moving them further away from it...

Hi folks, just refreshed the invite link for my little server! Let Me Tempt You is an 18+ Good Omens server focused on belly/food kink! We are body- and sex-positive, and extremely queer. Please come join us if you'd like to discuss enormous amounts of dim sum 🥟

I think for a lot of us it utterly failed and we are left with exactly that - a cruel writing choice that people tried to pad to make it a bit less hurtful. The analogy that’s coming to mind is cushioning broken glass with cotton candy so you can eat it. Like, that’s not how that works. If someone tries to feed you broken glass you refuse and then try to make sure they don’t do that again. And also cotton candy dissolves with the slightest moisture so it’s ineffective anyway.

Man, remember the Holy Water subplot in the S01E03 Cold Open? How it was such a compelling interpersonal conflict because you could totally see where both Crowley and Aziraphale were coming from? How Crowley was just so afraid of Hell and so frustrated Aziraphale didn’t trust him while Aziraphale was also very understandably worried about giving his associate (best friend, love of his life) with known trauma and depression issues the Instant Kill You Juice but he was channeling this concern into something that just wounded Crowley more and then Crowley lashed out and it was such a good emotionally complex moment.

Yeah, no, turns out the REAL lesson of this moment is that it’s not complex, and Aziraphale was just 100% in the wrong! The true moral of Good Omens is that if someone you love is showing red flags of suicidal tendencies, you have to show them that you love them by going along with whatever they ask you to, even if it means their death, even if means your own death, because they’re just so much wiser and more reasonable than you and you have to sacrifice sometimes in relationships and sometimes that means your own life! (: (: (:

No one can convince me that the Crowley and Aziraphale we all know— the real ones, not the strangers of the finale— would ever choose our destruction (or their own, for the matter). They would understand on a personal, molecular level how vital it is to keep going and how important it is to be yourself in spite of the oppressive systems that do their damndest to shape us. They wouldn’t give up— not ever.

So fuck this finale, fuck the idea that it’s too late and fuck anyone who says otherwise, frankly.

The discussion of free will at the end of S3 is misleading. As many others already stated here it is evident in S1 and S2 that free will does exist and humans always can decide for themselves. Even angels and demons have free will, if they just dare.

The real problem is that heaven and hell are constantly interfering in human live on earth. There is always an existential threat for humans to be eradicated at a whim. E. g. the Flood, Job, Armageddon, 2nd Coming...

Crowley and Aziraphale are strictly opposed to this, that's more than obvious in their criticism and their attempts to save humans and earth as good as they can every time.

Right?

So why, WHY do they choose exactly what they always despised? That's the Flood all over but a million times worse, without even sparing anyone!

To put it more clearly: they ask God to kill all humans - so that humans won't be killed by God? Find the fault...