unamused libra

I think it's important to consider that a good character based narrative is about the characters feelings, rather than the reader or the audiences.

Crowley and Aziraphale, while we as the audience have known them almost exclusively as a demon and an angel, have never been particularly good at their roles, nor was it their core identify. Their identities were based on how they rejected their roles, and embraced something else.

And what did they embrace? Earth and humanity. The things they found and chose to define them are the Bentley, the bookshop, food and drink, music, film, television, theatre, all very human creations. And the list goes on.

They always wanted to be human, and be together.

And that's the ending they got to have.

That's the only one there could have been, to close the circle of who they are as characters.

Neither Heaven incarnate, nor Hell incarnate.

1) I am very sad that we didn’t get to see Aziraphale and Crowley have a happy ending in their own universe;

and

2) I think it’s a love letter to humanity that it ended the way it did. I also think it’s insanely beautiful and poignant that the ending is basically “their souls will always find their way back to each other in every universe, forever.” I genuinely can’t think about that too much or it makes me forget how to breathe and swallow.

This was always going to be complicated. There was never going to be a clean and easy way out, as much as we all wished there would be.

I will never stop thinking about these two, in all of their incarnations and across all universes (including the one we watched over the course of the series), finding each other and falling in love and proving that there is so much value in daring to question and to break the cycle and to make sacrifices and to LOVE.

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.