Give me coffee or give me death
Why I believe the coffee is important…but not because it’s been tampered with. The coffee represents exactly how Metatron manipulated Aziraphale to return to heaven.
Let’s take a look back at that painful final episode.
In Nina’s coffee shop, the Metatron makes an interesting remark: “Do people ever ask for death? The name of your establishment is Give me Coffee or Give me Death. I assume they always ask for coffee.” And when Nina replies that they never ask for death, he says “No I don’t suppose they do. So predictable.”
This is an interesting line! And in my experience, interesting lines don’t show up for no reason. My takeaway from this is that it means when given the choice between a mildly pleasant thing (coffee) and an extremely unpleasant one (death), the predictable choice most people will make is to pick coffee. Here’s where things get interesting. The Metatron proceeds to apply this exact logic on Aziraphale.
Let’s fast forward just a little bit, to Aziraphale’s retelling of his talk with the Metatron. After being offered the position of supreme archangel, Aziraphale initially refuses! He says “but I don’t want to go back to heaven. Where would I get my coffee?” In other words, Aziraphle likes earth and is happy here amongst his people and things. To this, the Metatron responds: “As supreme archangel, you would be able to decide who to work with…” and says that he was looking back at his precious exploits and saw his “de facto partnership with the demon Crowley.” And continues “Now if you wanted to work with him again, that might be considered irregular. But it would certainly be within your jurisdiction to restore your friend Crowley to full angelic status.” On my first watching, I didn’t catch the threat — but it absolutely was one! Because here, the Metatron has asked Aziraphale to choose between coffee and death. He’ll have to return to heaven, BUT he’ll be able to be with Crowley! The alternative is the threat of never being able to work with Crowley again. And just as the Metatron has predicted, Aziraphle chooses coffee. Because to Aziraphale, the alternative would be inconceivable.
Could Aziraphle and Crowley have communicated better? Yes. Should Aziraphale probably have explained the bit about the Metatron threatening to keep them from working together. YEP. But as Maggie and Nina said, communication is something for them to work on (next season, ideally).
Also, like, it’s obviously still an issue that Aziraphle considers returning heaven with Crowley to be the mildly pleasant coffee option in this scenario (as he’s still not quite figured out that heaven aren’t actually the good guys), but I feel like this is also a season 3 problem for Aziraphale to figure out :|

















