Hypothesis: Aziraphale HATES that Crowley is living in his car.
Supporting evidence:
The very first thing we see him do in the present is stop Maggie from moving out and making sure she feels welcome to stay as long as she likes.
He clearly knows Crowley’s unhappy before anything happens in the plot: “Does it calm you down?”. And also clearly feels helpless about it. Enter the conspicuous Eccles cakes: Aziraphale’s offer, which is rejected.
Crowley’s obviously, for all his hedging, spending a lot of time at the bookshop— so much that he has his own glasses perch and feels immediately comfortable removing them. See also: “Technically my bookshop but we both get plenty of use out of it”, “Why don’t you wait inside? You like waiting inside”.
It’s Crowley who immediately shoves the box of plants into Aziraphale’s arms after Aziraphale returns from Scotland.
Speaking of Scotland, why wouldn’t Aziraphale take the train? Why insist on driving the Bentley? Is it perhaps because he wants to get Crowley and his plants into the shop, and thinks if he creates a situation where Crowley has to stay there, maybe he won’t immediately leave again?
He’s got an empty bedroom and an apparently pathological need to make the person staying there very comfortable, creating cute little customized souvenirs like he’s an Air B&B host (displacement!).
He immediately jumps to having Gabriel stay with him— he didn’t have to. Arguably, both Gabriel and Aziraphale would be safer if Gabe stayed elsewhere.
That’s what I’ve got for now but I’m sure there’s more. Throughout the show, watch what Aziraphale gives to others and does for others, and it’ll tell you what he wants to do for Crowley. He’s living so deeply in displacement in makes him come across as manic and brittle.
(What probably happened is Aziraphale offered the spare bedroom and Crowley, who unconsciously didn’t want to be his roommate or sleep in a single bed with Aziraphale right downstairs because how could the poor lovesick boy cope with that, told him he wasn’t a “good deed” for Aziraphale to do and stormed off.)
Conclusion: Aziraphale asked Crowley to stay at his place, immediately and probably repeatedly. They had a row about it, and Crowley refused, and to this day Aziraphale doesn’t understand why.
I know it's easy to fall into the idea that Aziraphale is foolish for wanting to fix Heaven. A lot of people are comparing it to a shitty job or the government, which, I get. It's not an unfair comparison with the parallels it has BUT it's not the whole story.
There is literally no where, NO WHERE, that Aziraphale and Crowley can go that Heaven and Hell can't find them. Aziraphale knows that. They can't hide in the bookshop or run to Alpha Centauri and never look back because they can be yanked back any time Heaven or Hell wants to.
We saw this in season 2. Crowley couldn't help the girl in Edinburgh without Hell taking him back. Beelzebub can come to Crowley in his car and whisk him to Hell whenever they want. Beelzebub leaving is irrelevant, because the next in line will be able to summon Crowley just the same.
The angels keep tabs on Aziraphale and know how and where to find him too. I imagine they'd be able to find Gabriel again if they needed to, but since he was going to be fired anyway, letting him go is an easier solution.
Aziraphale isn't foolish for wanting to try to fix Heaven. He may be misguided in his views of Heaven and Hell, and he's foolish for not talking to Crowley properly (a trait they both share) but it's not the same as wanting to change a shitty job. Heaven and Hell literally control the universe and if they don't do something about them directly, they will never be free
Plus Aziraphale was threatened with being wiped from the book of life literally minutes before getting the coffee and job offer from the Metatron.
Which, after reading some very interesting articles this morning, I'm convinced that the reason why they focus so much on the order could be the message: "We see how you've been wildly irresponsibly behaving with Crowley these last few years." (Oats? Sowing your wild oats?) "Oh, you didn't think we were watching? We are always watching." (Lots of articles about almond branches here.)
Aziraphale was threatened with being erased, then the Metatron offered him coffee and reminded him that Heaven knows everything he's ever done. Every time he's collaborated with Crowley. Every conversation they've ever had, especially the ones where Aziraphale's biggest fear is that Hell (or Heaven, or anyone really) will hurt Crowley.
Then the Metatron offers Aziraphale a choice between coffee or death. But not Aziraphale's death, no, of course not! They need Aziraphale, for their own reasons. But they don't need Crowley. Heaven doesn't want demons, that's the whole point. Whose erasure from the Book of Life would be the biggest motivator for Aziraphale?
The demons attacking the coffee shop are doing exactly the same thing, when they say they're going to kill the humans. Aziraphale is a protector, a guardian. He'll do almost anything to prevent demons from killing humans he's responsible for, and he'll do anything to prevent harm to Crowley. And that allows Metatron to maneuver Aziraphale into a position where he's the one hurting Crowley directly. What else is he going to do? Say no, and watch as Crowley gets erased, and then be dragged back to Heaven anyway?
No wonder the offer of turning Crowley back into an angel seems like such a good deal.
Up until the almost-end-of-the-world, the way Aziraphale and Crowley maintained their relationship was through a collection of well-established and repeated patterns (dances, you might say). These little rituals were what they used to communicate affection, intimacy and trust when they couldn’t say the things they wanted to say out loud. I like spending time with you. You make me happy, and I like making you happy. We’re in this together. I’ll always be there for you, even when your own side is not.
In season 1, as the stress of the impending apocalypse puts more and more pressure on their relationship, we see their patterns start to break down, and it’s very distressing for them. They’ve been communicating like this for so long that they don’t know what to do when one of them doesn’t follow the dance steps.
When we first see them in season 2, they seem in some ways to be closer than ever. They touch each other more easily, Aziraphale in particular. Crowley is comfortable enough in the bookshop that he has a Spot for putting his sunglasses when he takes them off by the door. They’re more open about acknowledging how much time they spend together and how many things in their lives are shared.
And I think, also, we expect them to be happy. They won, didn’t they? So it takes a while for the cracks to start to show.
It wasn’t until this post pointed out that the whole season, we never see them sit down and share a meal together in the present day (no, Crowley doesn’t eat; yes, it still counts) that it started coming together for me. The closer you look, the more you realize the old patterns they’re used to relying on are broken.
Three times, we see them sit down to their usual table for two (at the coffee shop, the bar, and the French restaurant) and then almost immediately get up again. This post also points out that we don’t see present-day Aziraphale eat anything on screen, other than one of the little candies in the Bentley. This in the same season we learn that Crowley is the one who introduced him to food! It’s one of their oldest rituals!
Even one of their most visually recognizable patterns starts to go wonky this season. In season 1, when the blocking allows it, Crowley’s always on Aziraphale’s left. When they’re standing or walking side by side, and most of the time when they’re sitting side by side together (there are some exceptions due to camera angles)…Crowley’s always on Aziraphale’s left (screen right if they’re facing us, screen left if we’re behind them). It’s one of the clues about the body swap that is easy to see when you know what to look for—in Berkeley Square they are each initially sitting on the “wrong” side of the bench. It’s so reliable that Aziraphale hears a little miracle bling in the sushi restaurant in s1 ep1 and turns to his left—because that’s where Crowley would appear—only to be startled by Gabriel on his right.
Go look at the scene where we find out Gabriel and Beez are a couple. You know the one.
And of course, many people have noted that in the end credits, we’d expect their positions on screen to be switched. They’re on the wrong sides. And it’s such a long shot that I think it has to be intentional.
Some people have speculated that this means they swapped bodies again. I don’t really buy that. Rather I think it is supposed to indicate what becomes extremely clear on a second viewing, that things are Off and Wrong. They are not okay.
And the more you watch them you see that Aziraphale’s excitement during his little adventures is manic and brittle, and that he misses having a place and a purpose and a mission to do good. And Crowley is depressed, unhealthily codependent, even more hypervigilant and cagey and angry than he was before. They both have layers and layers of trauma, and no way to talk about it. They have the time and freedom now to talk about what they want to be to each other, now that they don’t have to hide and encode and maintain plausible deniability. But they have no way to talk about that either, because that’s never been an option before. They don’t know how, and they are both so, so afraid.
And in the fights they have in episode 1 and episode 6, you realize they haven’t resolved anything from season 1. They’re having the same fight they had at the bandstand. Crowley wants to run, keep the two of them safe and damn the rest, and Aziraphale wants to stay and help, believing he can make a difference even in an imperfect system, and neither of them really understands the other’s position. It’s the same damn fight. They haven’t been able to move past this impasse, and it’s the exact thing that breaks them in the end.
And it’s just. Fuck. It’s such a human thing to have happened to them. To make it through the fire (metaphorical and literal) and then have everything go to shit afterward because of unaddressed traumas and insecurities and things left unsaid until they fester.
I know this is not at all how I expected the season to go, and I think it took a little while for me to parse what was going with their relationship, because we are predisposed to want them to be happy and to want things to be easy for them now. But it makes so much sense that this is where they ended up at this point in the story.
I know they’ll make it back to each other. They both love each other too much to give up. They’ll fight their way back together, and I know they’ll figure it out in the end.
love how she doesn't even bother to ask if crowley has a wife or girlfriend. one look at him and it's clear there is no heterosexual explanation for anything about crowley
