we're officially on 24/7 OFMD lockdown

20s she/her🏳️‍🌈i'm not a pirate i'm an idiot😰

[fellshish]

(rachel talalay)

ok a few things

- a kiss is NOT necessary to convey a romantic plot but only IF you make room for a real romantic love declaration which they didn’t

- the s2 kiss was under very different circumstances and sort of unresolved and imperfect so a s3 actual heartfelt romantic kiss would have definitely ADDED to the narrative

- what WAS actually less than the s2 kiss was the hand-lip boop

[samwwise]

“you’re just mad that they didn’t kiss again” yeah you know what i fucking i am. what do you mean they shared the worst first kiss in history fuelled by grief and despair and then vanished from existence without ever knowing what it’s like to kiss someone out of love and joy

[the-ink-archives]

[plantlordv]

"it's so cute because Aziraphale and Crowley would find each other and be together in every universe🥺" well it would've been nice if they could've been together in their original universe though!!!!!!!!!!!!

[girlbossblackbeard]

in my 4:39 am rant into my phone due to the journal factory having been unmade in the book of life, i had a vision for how i, personally, would've wanted the finale to end (and honestly how i thought it was going to before the last 20 minutes happened, what the fuck):

we would've kept the first hour or so intact which would lead us to Aziraphale and Crowley alone, together, in the bookshop at the end of it all with the vast nothingness surrounding it. we would NOT have the evil nazi doctor from Captain America: The Winter Soldier there because in my (good) version of the ending, he would've been Thanos-snapped like everything else.

instead, Crowley and Aziraphale would have a proper conversation about their relationship, they would've said a proper "i love you" to one another, followed by a proper kiss involving lip-to-lip action, then the two of them are staring down the barrel of eternity in this bookshop and Aziraphale would've made some comment about missing his first edition Oscar Wilde or whatever the fuck and Crowley would've suggested he just write it down in one of the blank books since Aziraphale is a literal angel who has perfect memory and has read the novel enough times to be able to recall every word of it perfectly. this leads to Aziraphale doing just that, only to discover that when he starts to write it all down, the other Oscar Wilde copies in the shop begin to show their titles/covers/words in the book again. they realize that *they* can bend reality to whatever they want now since reality only exists within this bookshop at this point.

they can restore humanity by rewriting the book of life from their combined memories because they've literally been on earth, together, since the moment it was first created

THEN WE GET A MONTAGE WITH ALL THE HISTORICAL SCENES FROM SEASONS 1 AND 2 WHILE "SOMEBODY TO LOVE" OR WHATEVER PLAYS I LITERALLY DONT CARE BUT THE POINT IS THAT THEY RESTORE EVERYTHING AND THEY TWEAK HEAVEN AND HELL IN THE BOOK OF LIFE TO NOT BE QUITE SO SHITTY AND TOXIC ANYMORE AND WHETHER OR NOT GOD COMES DOWN TO THANK THEM FOR SAVING ALL OF HER CREATION DOESNT EVEN MATTER TO ME, WHAT MATTERS IS THAT AT THE END OF IT ALL THEIR LOVE FOR HUMANITY SAVES EVERYONE *INCLUDING THEMSELVES* AND THEY GET TO CONTINUE DINING AT THE RITZ AND TOASTING "To the world" FOREVER

[girlbossblackbeard]

at the very least we should've gotten a final line of "what are you looking at?" "Everything" while they (in their angel/demon forms, fuck the doppelgängers ending for real) stare into each other's eyes 🫶

[talk-nerdy-to-me-thyla]

maybe we'll get an i love you in the Spanish dub

[hekate1308]

Why give me Crowley

Why make me complete and then take it away

[girlbossblackbeard]

we got The Woker™️ in good omens before we got a Crowley/Aziraphale hug. think about that

[lichanicksstuff]

On one hand, it wasn't that horrible ending.

On the other, even Castiel said "I love you".

[girlbossblackbeard]

and furthermore i refuse to accept that their tragic ending of being unmade and sacrificing themselves for humanity was *the whole point* - they suffered SO MUCH for 6,000 god damn years that the only sensible ending would be their eternal happiness as a reward for what they've already had to sacrifice over and over again. not to be anti-heteros on main but if this was a love story between two straight people i would be fine with the tragic ending because straight people get the miraculous ending in virtually 99% of all other media. queer people don't exist just for grief porn

[girlbossblackbeard]

"they already said I love you in a million different ways, you clearly weren't paying attention" "they don't NEED to kiss that's not the only way to show love" "hand holding is just as intimate as a hug or a kiss"

that's all well and good and if you feel satisfied with the ending im genuinely unironically happy for you but me personally? i think it's actually pretty neat and important when a visual medium such as tv and film uses its visual capabilities to visually show the audience a visual kiss and a visual hug and the visual of their lips shaping around the words "I love you" because it would be very visually appealing to see and would also visually cement the narrative of their multi-millennia love story that the audience has been waiting 3 years for ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[girlbossblackbeard]

fellas you ever watch a good omens 3 series finale so bad it makes you need to review your vitals

[girlbossblackbeard]

in my 4:39 am rant into my phone due to the journal factory having been unmade in the book of life, i had a vision for how i, personally, would've wanted the finale to end (and honestly how i thought it was going to before the last 20 minutes happened, what the fuck):

we would've kept the first hour or so intact which would lead us to Aziraphale and Crowley alone, together, in the bookshop at the end of it all with the vast nothingness surrounding it. we would NOT have the evil nazi doctor from Captain America: The Winter Soldier there because in my (good) version of the ending, he would've been Thanos-snapped like everything else.

instead, Crowley and Aziraphale would have a proper conversation about their relationship, they would've said a proper "i love you" to one another, followed by a proper kiss involving lip-to-lip action, then the two of them are staring down the barrel of eternity in this bookshop and Aziraphale would've made some comment about missing his first edition Oscar Wilde or whatever the fuck and Crowley would've suggested he just write it down in one of the blank books since Aziraphale is a literal angel who has perfect memory and has read the novel enough times to be able to recall every word of it perfectly. this leads to Aziraphale doing just that, only to discover that when he starts to write it all down, the other Oscar Wilde copies in the shop begin to show their titles/covers/words in the book again. they realize that *they* can bend reality to whatever they want now since reality only exists within this bookshop at this point.

they can restore humanity by rewriting the book of life from their combined memories because they've literally been on earth, together, since the moment it was first created

THEN WE GET A MONTAGE WITH ALL THE HISTORICAL SCENES FROM SEASONS 1 AND 2 WHILE "SOMEBODY TO LOVE" OR WHATEVER PLAYS I LITERALLY DONT CARE BUT THE POINT IS THAT THEY RESTORE EVERYTHING AND THEY TWEAK HEAVEN AND HELL IN THE BOOK OF LIFE TO NOT BE QUITE SO SHITTY AND TOXIC ANYMORE AND WHETHER OR NOT GOD COMES DOWN TO THANK THEM FOR SAVING ALL OF HER CREATION DOESNT EVEN MATTER TO ME, WHAT MATTERS IS THAT AT THE END OF IT ALL THEIR LOVE FOR HUMANITY SAVES EVERYONE *INCLUDING THEMSELVES* AND THEY GET TO CONTINUE DINING AT THE RITZ AND TOASTING "To the world" FOREVER

[girlbossblackbeard]

posting for the first time in over a year just to say that the good omens 3 series finale was genuinely such a bad direction to go in that it made me bald evil lex luthor

[girlbossblackbeard]

to further elaborate: i was so upset by the finale (which aired at 3 am my time) that i spent an hour pacing in front of my window in my pitch black room making 33 (yes 33) videos on my phone crying, laughing, and ranting about what the hell just happened and due to the low lighting and malicious intent i literally look like bald evil lex luthor

[girlbossblackbeard]

posting for the first time in over a year just to say that the good omens 3 series finale was genuinely such a bad direction to go in that it made me bald evil lex luthor

[girlbossblackbeard]

resurrecting this blog just to point out that Ned Low literally plays a minor key version of "pop goes the weasel" when we first meet him. I've rewatched this series a minimum of 20 times and this has only JUST now occurred to me

[nellie-elizabeth]

What We Do in the Shadows: The Finale (6x11)

It's so wild to finish watching this finale and then hop over to Tumblr to see people lamenting and grieving for this epic queer-bait on one hand, and then other people throwing a party because Nandermo is canon now, and I'm just like... what show did you all think you were watching? lol. This was a fun finale.

Cons:

This finale cemented once and for all that the Guide was pretty useless as a character, and I hate saying that because I love the actress and I wanted her to have more to do. But her final character beat is that Cravensworth's Monster is really horny for her? The alternate ending where she's a detective on the case of the vampires was really funny, and it was the first solid bit they've given Kristen Schaal all season, and that bums me out. They even get in a last mention of Nandor's feelings for the Guide, which again goes nowhere and isn't funny or clever or interesting. So that's a bummer.

Also, I want to be careful here because there's all this extra weight put on finales to be some big thing that both shatters and preserves the status quo and that's an impossible standard to live up to, but, the one thing I do wish for was a bit of a resolution or at least an escalation on the whole "the vampires have fallen down on the job of conquering the new world" plot. It's just that the season started with that, and I didn't need some gigantic world-altering payoff, but some sort of circling back in a way that felt like things ended with a bit of momentum into the nebulous future might have been nice? Not the end of the world, but whatever.

To give space to the people who are sad about Nandermo, I will say I wish this show had had a bit more of a substantial relationship to the queerness of all the characters. For all that every single one of them is casually mentioned to be sexually attracted to multiple genders in a way that's really freeing, the only core romantic relationship on the show that has story-lines and gets narrative weight, is between Nadja and Laszlo. I honestly would never have expected or even wanted this finale to be some big grand "Ross and Rachel are finally together" moment for Nandor and Guillermo, but if I reflect back over the show as a whole... yeah. I do wish the queerness of the entire cast had been slightly less incidental in some way? It's more a reflection on some adjustments they might have made over the years, rather than a complaint about this finale in and of itself.

Pros:

Honestly, as I said above, finales have such a weird heavy lift in the TV world, especially when it comes to a comedy like this show. You have two options: either the show ends with a big change, the status quo splintering off and leaving you with a bittersweet sense of time passing (i.e. Friends), or else you basically say: and things go on thusly forevermore, and even if you're not here to see it, they're still out there being themselves. And frankly for this show, any ending that wasn't a preservation of the status quo would have felt disingenuous to me. Because the core tenant for these characters is that they're vampires and they'll continue on indefinitely being who they've always been. It's the core tension of Guillermo as a character, that he's a human with the impulse to grow and change, and his chosen family is frozen in time in a way he can never fully understand or be a part of. It's the thing about the show that makes it a good sitcom, but also doesn't lend itself naturally to some big climactic moment where everything snaps together.

So what do they do with it? They go meta! The episode starts with a setup as if it's going to be about Cravensworth's Monster turning horny and offering his dick as a gift to the Guide, and what they're going to do about this situation. But then, just as everyone's discussing it and giving their cut-away interviews to camera, the documentary crew suddenly declares that they have enough footage and they're done. Everybody else takes this completely in stride, but Guillermo is devastated and confused. So many years, basically his whole adult life, he's been followed around by these cameras, he's had his life structured into narrative arcs, and now... what? What was it all for?

One of the core strengths of the "found family" thing in this show is that the jokes can keep rolling while there is actually a subtle underpinning of sweetness to certain moments. So here, nobody takes Guillermo's reaction all that seriously, they all play off the end of the documentary filming like it makes no difference at all. But, at the same time, they all do something to acknowledge Guillermo's pain in their own way, and try with the typical clumsiness of this gang of vampires to offer him something in the way of comfort. Early season Colin and Nadja and Laszlo and Nandor wouldn't even have bothered to pretend to give a shit that Guillermo is upset, but here we have Laszlo offering to play a tune on the piano, Colin giving empty platitudes and talking about the nature of found family (even though he says he lost his found family in the early twentieth century and has been forced to hang out with these people instead). You have Nadja, using her new keen insight into human psychology to explain to Nandor why Guillermo must be upset, hitting the nail on the head by remarking that Guillermo probably feels like his opportunities for growth and development have passed him by. She uses her hypnotic powers to give the audience the perfect ending they would want, and we'll get into those alternate endings a little later on. And Nandor - Nandor gives Guillermo the stage to speak to the cameras and offer his own resolution, and makes earnest entreaties for them to stay together and be partners in fighting crime.

It's silly, and they all fumble it, and it's not actually reassuring or comforting except that the very effort in and of itself proves that they care. And that proves that these vampires are capable of change, doesn't it?

Guillermo really got the Main Character treatment here at the end, which is honestly his due: he's the one who has to grapple with the documentary ending, with the knowledge that this isn't even the first time his friends have been followed by cameras, that life is cyclical and that everything he's been through isn't new or original. He has to come to terms, in a meta sense, that he's a character in a sitcom. And so he goes for the sentimental ending: he helps put Nandor down to rest in his coffin one last time, acting as a familiar in all ways, and then he tells Nandor goodbye: that it's time for him to move on. He calls Nandor "Master" and when Nandor says he doesn't have to do that, Guillermo says: "I know. But you'll always be Master to me." And then he closes the coffin, slowly and with finality. Both actors give genuinely solemn and touching performances in this moment.

The end.

Of course, a camera still rolling in the corner of the room picks it up when Guillermo doubles back right away, interrupting the crew packing up their equipment. Nandor is pleased to see that Guillermo hasn't left after all, and Guillermo explains that he just wanted to give a satisfying conclusion to the documentary. He has no intention of leaving Nandor! And Nandor treats him as a friend and an equal, inviting him to share his coffin (although not, ostensibly, in a sexy way). Turns out, despite Guillermo's worries that the whole crime fighting thing was a whim and that he'd have to do all of the work, Nandor has actually been working hard on his secret underground lair, accessible only through a secret coffin-shaped tunnel through the earth. Our last glimpse of Nandor and Guillermo in the narrative proper is the two of them plunging through the earth in a coffin together, on their way to Super Hell. Or, I mean, their secret underground lair from which they'll fight crime.

I loved it, honestly. Guillermo's awareness of narrative convention, this whole season being about him stepping back and making his own choices, and then Nandor asking for Guillermo to come back, and Guillermo ending up where he wants to be without any false promises between him and Nandor. They are not a Master and his Familiar. They are friends, and equals, and it was honestly exactly the ending that makes sense for these two. A balancing point between the stagnation inherent in a character like Nandor, for whom change is almost impossible, and a character like Guillermo who had to go on a whole journey to figure out where he wanted to end up.

And then, we've got to talk about Nadja's three proposed "perfect" endings for the viewer. She hypnotized us into three parodies: the first is a Bob Newhart thing, where Nandor wakes up next to his husband Guillermo in bed, having had a crazy dream that encompasses the whole plot of What We Do in the Shadows. I saw some people saying that this was "making fun" of the viewers who shipped these characters, but like, guys, this show is nothing but making fun of everyone. It's all that, it's all jokes, it's all goofy. We got to hear some version of Nandor call Guillermo "honey," we got to see Guillermo kiss Nandor on the cheek. It made me giggle, it was so delightfully absurd. And it really revealed that the creators of the show understand what the Nandermo part of their audiences were picking up on - it's saying, yeah, some of you wanted this as an ending, but can't you see that the two of them having some grand romance at the last second would be genre-and-tone-breaking? I loved the line where Nandor was saying that in his dream, he and the other vampires all were having a lot of sex with each other, and "not you, Guillermo." Amazing.

The other alt "endings" provided by Nadja, available at least on Hulu as extra features, are great also... and I saw by reading some of the reviews of this episode that it seems people genuinely got different endings somehow when watching live - people reacted to the Nandermo Bob Newhart thing as one of the "alts," but I saw it as the actual content of the episode. The reviews that I saw all had the "Usual Suspects" ending as the one in the actual episode, with the others as the alts. That is fantastically troll-worthy behavior and SUCH a good note to go out on, the idea that some people might see one of the three endings and genuinely not know there's more out there. Through these endings we get to see Sean and Derek and some other frequent guest characters play bit parts, which is a fun way to give some of the extended cast a last hurrah.

I want to end by saying that if you're feeling hurt or betrayed by how this show ends, I want to honor that feeling as legitimate to you. But for my personal take? I don't think this show did anything wrong. Like, politically or structurally or tonally. My personal opinion is that this has always been an irreverent show where nothing really matters and nothing really changes, and this finale managed to actually feel like a sweet sendoff to the characters. Evidence of growth like I mentioned above, as this vampire family actually does make space for Guillermo's feelings, albeit in an unconventional and insufficient way. But this was never going to be a show where everybody got suddenly sentimental and sincere and confessed their deep personal truths to each other. It's a show that might wink at you, that might have Nandor say he's glad they won't be on film anymore, that might have Guillermo hopefully pushing to find out what he means by that... but that will always end with Nandor not picking up what Guillermo is putting down, that will always have another silly punchline waiting around the corner. This is a show that made me smile and felt really special in how bizarre it could get. And I did feel, on a genuine, emotional level, like this was the perfect way to end the show for Nandor and Guillermo's relationship.

As Nadja says, nothing is going to change - they'll keep on doing what they've always done, but now there will be nobody to film them doing it. And as Laszlo says, "We’ve had lots of laughs. Sucked lots of blood. And then fucked each other senseless."

This final episode gets high marks from me!

9/10

And the show as a whole, I don't feel like there's much more to say that hasn't been said above, which is probably another sign of a good finale: this was a real wrap-up of the chaotic and goof-ball energy of one of my favorite comedy outings of all time. It kept me good company these past few years, and Guillermo de la Cruz is always going to be a Character of All Time in my book. I'm sad to say goodbye, but what a send-off!

8/10