shaking crying throwing up

CROWLEY AND AZIRAPHALE AREN'T IN THE BOOK OF LIFE

Michael burns the entire book. Crowley saves a *single* page. Yet Aziraphale and Crowley persist. Even when God "makes a universe" without them in it.... They still are. They persist. Aziraphale and Crowley are as foundational to creation as God and Satan themzelves (you'll notice Satan also didn't have a page)

-and here be many spoilers shead-

we got so many cool bits!

Long haired general aziraphale?! Oh baby that's juicyyyy no wonder he's so against destruction and war

Crowley not recognising him and aziraphale pretending not to?! Idk?! We always thought that that shock came for aziraphale in the garden of eden, but no. Thar makes that scene hit even harder now.

Ichor blood confirmedddddd

Aziraphale and the whole "getting the Bentley back" sequence like... Who is she?! Confident, cheeky, pulling a trickster-god- rigged-deal with a human? Centuries of doing the "wrong thing" but disguising it as the "heavenly thing" culminated here. Crowley must be so proud

Multiple silver fox crowleys 🤌🤌🤌🤌

The never ending pizza jesus gave the people

Lilac-eyed archangel aziraphale 🙏

The ending: Crowley seemingly got what he wanted, just the two of them, the bookstore, finally peace and quiet. And the realisation that it's utterly meaningless without humanity. Crowley getting god to listen to his question. Getting his wish, to get rid of the rigged, toxic system. To let his beautiful stars and nebulas unfold, governed only by the laws of the universe.

Aziraphale and Crowley finally succeeding in what they've always strived towards: protecting humanity. Their beloved earth

The "I'll find you in any lifetime" tropeeeeeeeee oh my goddddd. 💯💯💯💯 I know the fandom feared a human ending and while I get the grief, I'm like ... They got to be together, unburdened by the Sides. And it was an echo of how they met at the Beginning: someone deeply in love with the stars and someone very much charmed by that. Pulled into orbit. Oh, my heart

I shall jump straight to the point: people online did NOT seem pleased with Aziraphale and Crowley's last kiss. However, unlike them, i believe this was a deeply meaningful, touching and romantic moment for us to see and i thought I'd give my two cents about it too.

For starters: this was an APOLOGY kiss. That's right people, not a simple "I love you" or "I like you back" kiss but a PROPER apology kiss. Aziraphale reaches for it first, it's the first thing that comes to his mind when he realizes this might actually just be the last time they ever get to see each other. He wants to start over, do it better, and in order to do that he needs Crowley's forgiveness for everything that has happened in the past few years for things to finally be RIGHT.

He also touches his lips the same way he did when he first got kissed by Crowley at the end of season 2, except this time he does it to "give it back". It simbolizes Crowley's feelings being reciprocated, a tender act of apology for not kissing him back the first time but finally doing it right this time. He no longer thinks of that touch to his lips with sorrow or hatred or confusion, but rather as an answer, as something beautiful, as the love he's always felt but could never find the courage to openly reciprocate until now.

As for a possible additional meaning, here in Europe a kiss given by the fingertips can symbolize many things. One of them is "farewell" (and given the context of this scene i might add this kiss was the perfect choice), it's a sign of respect and profound admiration, it's a tender act to say goodbye in a polite and innocent way: it's pure, just like them.

Additionally, in my country, a kiss by the fingertips is most commonly known as a religious act, a sign of devotion and adoration done to the feet of sacred statues and holy sculptures; it symbolizes complete submission to our deepest love for the holy and to surrender to the greatness of the saint we behold, to give them our complete and undoubted faith.

it's loyal, It's devoted and faithful, It's endlessly filled with love and respect, it's playful and innocent but also clever and bold: it represents Aziraphale PERFECTLY. ❤️

i believe we were very lucky to be able to see the different ways these two characters express their love for one another, we get to see how Crowley expresses his love through a kiss and we get to see how Aziraphale does it in his own way. They both come straight from the heart, both dripping with need and affection and love, but each in their own, unique ways.

season 1 and 2 kept hammering the idea that individual lives matter. not replaceable copies. not "close enough." actual people, with continuity and memory and history. Crowley and Aziraphale repeatedly chose imperfect, messy existence over grand cosmic plans. so ending with "the universe gets reset and everyone is replaced by alternate versions" isn't just horribly depressing. it's philosophically backwards. like the story literally abandoned its own argument in the final act.

the Job parallel especially points that out pretty cleanly. The whole emotional weight there was: replacement children are not the same children. new children (even if they had, by some chance, looked and acted Exactly The Same) doesn't fix the tragedy of losing the original children. that mattered to them. so yea, this ending feels less like "hopeful transcendence to tear down The System" and more like “congrats on your happy ending! everyone is dead, but the cottage is cute!" bold creative choice ig. like serving tea with eccles cakes after detonating reality.

my frustration is basically: the story spent years arguing that personhood matters — memory matters, continuity matters, these exact souls matter. and then solved the finale with a cosmic reset that wipes out the very identities the narrative taught us to care about. very much like the nuclear apocalypse they were trying so hard to prevent. it goes against the very thing Crowley was staunchly opposed to during The Flood. against everything they did in the Job minisode. against literally the entire Jim/Gabriel narrative, about Jim not really being Gabriel without his memories. and also, to quote Crowley, "the angel you knew is NOT me."

"but they found each other again! we got them back at the end!" no we didn't. that is NOT them. and to say that they are is kind of insulting tbh. they LOOK similar and maybe have some of the same interests, but just bc a blonde and a red head are into books and astrophysics doesn't make them THEM. their memories, their history, everything they went through together and fought for, the experiences that shaped their characters, those 6000+ years — that's all GONE.

Also. people keep saying stuff like "it was the only right choice" as if there were only two horrible choices? if the story introduces negotiation and moral choice, we'll naturally start imagining alternatives. once “God offers options” enters the chat, people will obviously ask, “wait. why was this the chosen solution?” when they could've gone for idk, literally anything else. God literally offered to put things back as they were. they could've chosen to have THAT universe, THAT world —THEIR world— put back into place and then added their own conditions to tear down Heaven and Hell. they could've chosen to keep their memories. they could've chosen to make everyone human from then on if that's what the writers were so hellbent on. they could've chosen to make God erase her own memory for all i care idfk. but this ending feels like a bad consolation prize.

after EVERYTHING they did, and everything they went through, they deserved SO much better than this. THE WHOLE WORLD did.

Like we as the audience are lead to believe from the start that Crowley is this jaded, cynical little fucker who’s fond of one person and one person only. The typical “nothing in this world matters except you” grumpy who doesn’t give a shit about a universe that rejected him. Aziraphale, likewise, is pretty easily seen as the bigger picture guy, it’s obvious he loves Crowley deeply but it’s the mission of the larger world, the good of the people, that draws his time and energy- he chooses that responsibility more than Crowley. These are the roles we’ve seen them play and the archetypes we’ve kinda locked them in to. It matches with their grumpy vs sunshine attitudes, their aesthetics etc

Then in s2 we started noticing some cracks in it. We’ve met Angel Crowley who is a beautiful sunshiny dreamer who cares so deeply about the gorgeous world around him. Aziraphale starts to get a bit wrapped up in his own self interest from time to time, caring more about his bookshop or Crowley or even Jim than his larger mission. These little moments added depth to their characters, but ultimately didn’t shake our ideas of them. But THEN-

When they were asked by God what they would save, everything in the world has been stripped from them. The universe is lost- all that remains is each other and the final question of “what in the whole of existence matters to you most?” And we think we know what they’ll say, we think the way we’ve been taught all this time- Crowley is the selfish lover and Aziraphale is the heartbroken rejector.

But instead we meet their cores. We meet the truest stripped down versions of themselves and we learn the truth. Aziraphale picks Crowley. His lover, his life, the being that completes him. He makes the selfish, or loving, choice, no matter what it means to the world. And Crowley- Crowley is crying for the world. He is so utterly helplessly desperate for humanity to have their chance that he’s willing to throw away everything out of his sheer love for them. We’ve met the old part of him again, the artist and the lover, the selfless one he’s had within him all along. And for Aziraphale we’ve finally met the lover in him too, the one who’s finally willing to put his love for Crowley above all else.

the actual article is neat!

they know lol