The Symmetry of Season 3 and Why That Makes It Beautiful
Ok, more big thoughts here. I just watched for a second time, and what I see on this run through is a beautiful symmetry.
Taken together, all three seasons are a dance, a back and forth between their need for each other and their love for humanity. One of them is always leading, one is retreating, hands locked together in a solid frame that can look like love or like fighting, one that gives them each the room to move, their perspectives whirling, deepening and changing as the view around them morphs.
It’s in the little things. The constant back and forth of them not thanking each other for important things. The wing lifted to shield the other from rain in Eden. The rescue at the Bastille. The thermos of holy water. The rescue at the end of the great war. The paint gun residue on the jacket. The forgiveness in the last bookshop on earth.
And it’s there in the biggest things, too, in the entire frame of the show.
In season 2, Crowley is ready to choose their relationship over the fate of humanity, and Aziraphale painfully puts that aside to try to save humanity, because he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t. They’re both devastated by this choice, but it’s essential. wasn’t tricked by some spiked latte. He had to do what he did, and he's correct in doing it.
In season 3, by the end, Aziraphale is ready to choose their relationship over everything else. “I only want one thing, Crowley,” he says, and it’s clear he means it. Aziraphale has struggled through all of the love and responsibility for humans, discharged his duty as best he could, and ended up here—loving Crowley and wanting only him, at peace knowing he’s done everything he needed to do, ready to live for his love.
“What do you want?” he asks Crowley, in their moment of privacy by the Tree of Life.
And the thing is – the thing is, Crowley still WANTS that. He still wants it, so badly that it’s etched in every line of his body. But the fact is that now he’s grown too—he’s grown past the place he was in at the end of s2, where he valued his own happiness above everyone else’s. He sees the cost that Aziraphale saw all along. And now Crowley is the one who can’t live with the aftereffects of getting what he wants.
It’s *not* just that Aziraphale had to let go of his toxic attachment to Heaven to be able to deserve and appreciate Crowley. It’s that, as with most of their arguments all along, they were *both* RIGHT. Which is why their conflicts existed to begin with. They both had to grow, to discharge their duty, to get around an obstacle preventing them from joining the other.
And so they stand at the end, before God and Satan, holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes. Say what you will, but Aziraphale’s impassioned speech about how Crowley was the best angel is one of the greatest love declarations I’ve ever seen. Crowley sees it as such, I’m convinced. Aziraphale, who he’s always believed holds himself as just a bit better than a demon, reveals that he sees Crowley’s core, his inherent goodness, not in a way that implies he was better before, but in a way that shows that Aziraphale understands that this is still EXACTLY WHO CROWLEY IS RIGHT NOW. He finally sees him exactly as he is, loves him, and shows him that. This brings Crowley the peace and closure he’s been looking for all along, too.
They’ve both arrived, in that moment, at peace. They know and have love. They are in perfect accord. It is the biggest and most nontraditional love the world has ever seen, and I think they know in that moment that not one second of it could have been changed.
I firmly believe, given the snowglobe in the garden at the end, that their love and their characters go on and on in multiple worlds and lifetimes, but honestly. Whether you needed a kiss or not, the symmetry of this ending is *breathtaking*.
I have to say, I’m loving it more each time I watch.
