Obsessed with all things Good Omens | I strongly identify with Crowley
I have been over 18 for a very long time. I grew up with she/her pronouns, although any are fine. (I am frequently addressed as "Sir" by store clerks, and then when they look again, they are all apologies to correct themselves. I find this amusing. I am tall, prefer masculine clothing, have a low-pitched voice, and apparently stand/walk in a way that can be perceived as masculine. But have feminine body curves. I look both like my Dad and my Mom.)
I am attracted to other people mostly by their personalities, rather than body type, although I have more commonly been attracted to people with male bodies. I am married, and have one child. (Just in case anyone was curious.)
...wait a minute, where did the last 10 (20, 30...) years go? How did I get here?
As if you fell asleep and when you wake up it's not the next day, but years and years have somehow gone by, but you feel almost the same, inside your head. But everything outside is different. It sometimes feels very surreal, like everything around you isn't really there, just some kind of mask or overlay on top of whatever reality is, like you are inside the Matrix, but have become aware of it, for just a moment.
And then, all of the "normal" things that you have to do just to survive and get through every day kind of drag you back down, into the "pretend" that is the normal everyday reality that everyone else is living in, and that weird sense of hyperawareness goes away, and you're back in "reality" again. Lately it feels more and more like this reality is a "pretend", even though I know that it is supposed to be the REAL reality, and that my imagination is supposed to be the "pretend" reality.
For whatever reason I am having these flashes of "hyperawareness" (not sure what else to call it, really) more and more often. I'm not sure what that means. I have never been "normal" (just ask any relative, teacher, or acquaintance), always read too much, asked too many questions, had too many opinions that weren't agreeable with everyone else's. Not sure if I have some sort of mental illness, physical illness, have become over-aware of and possibly obsessed with my own mortality, or what...
I only just made a post about how I wouldn’t be posting more about good omens but one more thing won’t quit nagging at me and I saw some other people pointing out similar issues very well, so I wanted to have a go.
In my opinion, the whole point of good omens is that people (in the real world, and the book), are not black and white, a notion that is compounded by the characters of Crowley and Aziraphale and their own moral complexity. While the show demonstrates this complexity in some respects, it’s undermined by the imbalance in their relationship and, more specifically, the “softening,” of Aziraphale’s angelic character traits.
Aziraphale in the book is not an entirely different character. He’s still scatty, neurotic, generally kind and generally disapproving of evil. And he is soft, which isn’t necessarily a “good,” trait for an angel but isn’t necessarily “bad.”
In terms of how being “soft” aligns with typically angelic sensibilities it means he’s polite to a fault, willing to patch up Anathema and her bike, enjoys hot cocoa, and dislikes watching ducks sink and die - although that last point might not be as rock-solid a representation of his morals as some people think. On the other hand, it means he’s slothful, a little gluttonous when it comes to food, and too endeared to the human race to really want to go along with the apocalypse in the end (as much as sloth and gluttony are also deciding factors there).
Where he differs, in the book, is in the way his more legitimate (born of Heaven) “angelic,” traits are characterised.
Crowley, as a demon, enjoys causing mischief and low-level strife, while still being kind at heart. On the surface level you would imagine the inverse of this characterisation to be a character who is superficially kind but more callous at heart, but in a way the book subverts your expectation of the subversion too.
On the topic of the more typical representation of this dynamic, according to Crowley, Aziraphale is, at heart, “just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing.”
On the point of the duck - while he admonishes Crowley for sinking it, Aziraphale himself does not seem overly concerned with the pigeon he kills at Warlock’s party. It’s not that he’s totally ambivalent - he’s just too distracted at the time to give it much thought. Similarly - although he tries to convince Crowley to do it for him, as it isn’t the “Heavenly thing to do,” Aziraphale is the one to suggest killing the antichrist.
I don’t think these are representative of him being, “just enough of a bastard,” however - I think that his attitude towards Adam and his attitude towards life in general at certain stages of the book are moreso representative of him being an *angel.*
Despite what he says about it not being appropriate for an angel to murder a child, he’s very enthusiastic about getting it done, and about doing it through a demon. That’s Heaven all over in the book-verse, death and pain is justified if it is carried out in the name of righteous fury… by other people who can shoulder the responsibility of that righteous fury, that is.
Hell might be more “evil,” in terms of torture - but it also has young demons who skate down lovely lanes of frozen dead bodies. Nothing is black and white. The angels are not meant to be, “nice,” they are simply “right,” (to their own minds). You can’t quite claim to understand life if you are not living it.
Azirphale’s genuine kindness and the softness that comes from it is what sets him apart from the rest of the angels as much as it sets Crowley apart from other demons. His choice to stay and fight against Satan for humanity is one born of an idea to also fight against Heaven! Not simply out of angelic duty, but out of duty to the Earth. In fact, his very first act in the book (and show) is also one of defiance against Heaven when he gives Adam and Eve his sword to keep them warm.
In the book, he seems at least somewhat aware of Heaven’s “good” not being so totally unquestionable - although is still lead by his faith to a degree that gets him unwittingly discorporated.
He specifically points out the destruction of Gomorrah as an example of Heaven’s “mercy,” not always prevailing (and as of his fear of being “found out,” while influencing Warlock). He also holds open disdain for the apocalypse - which he expresses to Metatron, twice, openly.
But… he is still a bit of a bastard. Again, a direct quote (that several other people have also pointed out), is that an exposure to humanity is affecting Aziraphale as much as Crowley, just “in the opposite direction.” He’s rude to customers, very eager to politely tear apart a bigoted evangelical on live TV (although he doesn’t quite realise he’s on TV at first), and he is more than willing to check Crowley in an argument. This is where that classic subversion of a typical “angel-demon” pairing comes from, and it balances their relationship, but more than anything it’s (pared with the subversion-ception) what makes them a great representation of the theme of the book writ large: people are what make the world interesting.
Book Aziraphale and Crowley are both complex creatures - and in Aziraphale we see this both in the more “superficial,” or at the very least emotionally detached “good,” of Heaven he represents, as well as his genuine kindness AND his character of the of long-suffering book keeper. This is all possible, both his true kindness AND his bastard-ness, because he has a bit of free will that exposure to humanity has bled into him over the years - he has agency. Aziraphale’s kindness is his own, as is the more curmudgeonly side of his nature. It’s not from Heaven, and it’s not from Crowley.
That’s what the show misses. While there is definitely still a subtle shaping of the classic subversion of “demon actually good! Angel actually bad!” In Azirapahale’s more overt softness that Heaven also remains overtly against, it almost hammers it home too hard. He’s not only soft and slightly nervous, torn between his greed for humanity’s accomplishment, his love for humanity itself (and Crowley), and his supposed faith in God - he, as a result of his “goodness” is almost completely naive, both as an angel and a general character. It’s more glaringly obvious in the show that Crowley is no longer as fond of little “demonic,” acts of mischief - but what is equally detrimental to the plot is a lack of show-Aziraphale’s portrayal of “heavenly,” contempt.
Sure, Aziraphale stands out from the other angels because of this kindness, but it’s a kindness and a softness that is generally portrayed as either misplaced or entirely dependent on Crowley’s actions. Somebody else on here pointed out that Crowley ignited Aziraphale’s love for food in the show, that he made him question his morals with Morag and Elspeth, that in each case Aziraphale was never acting on his own. Even in season 1 - Aziraphale’s attempt to save the airbase is heavily reliant on Crowley taking action (“or I’ll never speak to you again!”) and not Azriaphale being rather wily himself.
The show portrays his angelic nature less as a function of divine wrath, and more as a lack of understanding of the true impact of his role as an angel on Earth, and points out (through Crowley) how hypocritical this understanding is several times. But because he doesn’t always seem to understand this, his responsibility to act against it is diminished. He is at once guilty for his compliance in Heaven’s design over Earth and innocent for his own naïveté. In the books - the hypocrisy is more obvious, and also something he is *aware* of.
This means that the difference is, in the book he learns (a least a little bit), and is able to grow. In the show, Aziraphale’s lack of bite and lack of agency as a result make him feel less so an equal representation of humanity alongside Crowley, and moreso a way for Crowley’s humanity to develop and express itself.
This is why it also feels less like character progression, even in s1, for him to come around “fully” to humanity’s side. Book Aziraphale could be ruthless in thought, if not entirely in nature. It might be padded with lovely witticisms and flowery language, but for a lot of the book he still holds those angelic ideals while knowing that they aren’t necessarily, “good” (if it’s not the angelic thing to do, why is the loophole you’re using to justify it that you’re doing it in Heaven’s name? Thwarting evil, “and all that.”). He might love humanity, but certainly at first he’s not willing to put it before Heaven, despite what might be actually right or wrong. Not until sushi enters the picture.
Show Aziraphale on the other hand, never technically proposes anything outright violent - he is simply passively a part of a violent agenda, which is less interesting as it he seems unable to identify the hypocrisy of this of his own accord. Passively supporting an abusive system COULD have made him an interesting character in a different way to book Az, if only he acknowledged the wrong of what he was doing, not just other characters.
His eventual return to Heaven - after we are shown decades of Crowley giving him, “lessons,” speaks less to the very nature of two celestial/occult beings being shaped by the love and hate and all around humanness of humanity, and more to the fact that after everything they’d been through, Aziraphale is not only still too terrified of Heaven to refuse (valid) but is also somewhat enamoured by its nature (the offer to make Crowley an angel), despite Millenia of observing how flawed its dogma is.
The audience needed to see more of a conflict over this decision not simply related to “Crowley might he angry with me,” but moreso related to “will I ever return to Earth and the humanity I love?”
That’s the whole reason they disobey Heaven in the first place.
And on the topic of these lessons - book Crowley himself was, similarly to Aziraphale, only partially motivated by good intentions when he originally set out to save the world. One is not more morally correct than the other, that’s the POINT.
Would book Aziraphale have gone to Heaven if he’d thought he could change it? Perhaps. But part of me thinks he’d be too lazy, and too weary, to fully believe what was happening. Most likely he’d say yes assuming that if he didn’t he would be righteously smote alongside Crowley and, upon arriving and not being very smote, would devote all his time trying to get back to somewhere he could hide away and not have to do a lot of work.
I have a soft spot for show Aziraphale and his brilliant optimism, even if it is steeped in his own internal prejudice - these traits could have made a spectacularly interesting character, despite his differences from the book, if only he’d been allowed as much agency, and as much room to breath as TV-Crowley.
Instead, the show ultimately favours a somewhat self-reverential “good-man-stupid-man,” dynamic that a) only really emphasises the evil of Heaven (both systems are oppressive) and b) makes only one of the two leads in competent enough to defy the cosmic order, because he’s the edgy bad boy that’s a super special angel and has always been. Where’s the fun in that?
(that said Sheen does a great job with what he’s given + s1 is still a fun show despite its flaws, a lot of the much bigger issues come out in 2 and 3. one more final final thing, I saw someone say some of the events of s1 didn’t really make sense for the modern-era and I think it could have been interesting if they kept the updated theme of capitalist hegemonies over Cold War super powers but also set the show back in the 90s. Could have added a fun period-piece element.).
I know the theme has been talked about at length but well, what's one more? I have thoughts that I have expressed here and there but have not put them all together, so here we are.
(and yes, although I have tried to look for more of Terry's words, there will be references to NG's interviews or blogs because whether we like it or not, he made the TV show, that's just facts)
The book ending ruined the TV show
One of the first things I said after watching GO3 was "this is a Terry Pratchett" ending, the getting rid of the supernatural that is, taking down the oppressive institutions so humans could be humans. I still believe that. However, TV Good Omens was no longer a Terry Pratchett story. The ending was set in stone, we knew that, but the road to get there diverged so much from the original road that it no longer fit.
The book is satire, it is comedy, it is social commentary. The book was never a romance. The show however, was purposedly written as a romance all the way back to Season 1.
GO TV companion book
It was going to take skill to bring it back to its roots, to solve the romance satisfactorily and then bring the social, supernatural and human themes of the book to the forefront again so the ending would feel natural, earned. Skill that evidently the writers didn't have.
In addition to the writing, we have the the added issue of the creator and the promotion fanning the flames of the fandom, encouraging and teasing that the romance would be solved the way the fandom has been expecting for years; the way a romantic comedy is expected to end, with Crowley and Aziraphale finally being together and living happily in the South Downs. Crowley and Aziraphale, the characters that went through the hurdles, the ones with the shared history, the ones that fought Heaven and Hell for humanity and their own freedom. Those characters are the ones that needed the resolution and the reward. The show did none of that.
Ultimately GO3 broke the author-reader pact and delivered an ending that did not fit the story it was telling anymore. It forced a humanistic fantasy satire ending onto a fantasy romance. The noble sacrifice of a heroic epic instead of the happily ever after of a romance.
The change from satire to romance
Back in 1988 two guys wrote a book about the end of the world (published in 1990). In that book an angel and a demon formed one team in favor of averting said apocalypse. One team among three others; the witch/junior witchfinder, the jezebel/senior witchfinder and the children, all of them, human.
And that's the thing, Crowley and Aziraphale were never the main characters, this wasn't their story. Their only inadvertent real contribution was keeping the eyes of Heaven and Hell (including themselves) distracted for 11 years, because not even the mix-up at the birthing hospital was Crowley's doing.
Locus Magazine 1991
The cold open of Episode 3 of Season 1 exists because Crowley and Aziraphale are not in a good chunk of the book and that space had to be filled somehow. The body swap does not exist in the book, neither does the bandstand or the conversation outside the bookshop ("I forgive you"), and there aren't mentions of Alpha Centauri. All of that was added to their love story.
As far back as Eden, the metaphorical butterfly started fluttering its wings (more like a metaphorical dragon). That first scene was changed from a random conversation between two onlookers to a meet-cute. From Aziraphale shading only himself to shading Crowley.
The sequel and the South Downs
Ok. Back to the novel. In Halloween of 1989, while promoting the book, they came up with the idea, the title, and the plot of a sequel. The Second Coming, Jesus on a plane, a road trip across the US, "668, the Neighbour of the Beast," all of that was imagined back then. But it never got written.
And then in June of 2005 they met at the Audie awards and talked a little more about it. That's when the South Downs bit came about.
That September at two different events -one Terry's, one Neil's- they talked about that meeting and the sequel and we learned about the cottage.
The authors, however, did not see them as a couple at the time. Good Omens still wasn't a love story, neither was the hypothetical "Good Omens 2".
Entries in NG's journal June 5th, 2005 and May 8th, 2006. The URL in the second one is a link to the first. And a summary of two events a fan (Irisbleufic) attended in 2005
Fandom's gotta fandom and fandom had been shipping these two for 15 years already. And whether you saw the book boys as a couple or not, this was still the end point the fandom looked forward to for 21 years. TWENTY ONE YEARS!
Retiring together in a cottage in the South Downs was a glimpse into a happy ending nobody had expected, but now it was there, within reach. This didn't outright spell "romance" but it did spell "peaceful rest after everything is said and done"
Back to the ending
Yes, both book and show warn of "the big one" but in the book even the discussion about the big one was about humanity itself. The show mentioned it but it really didn't go into a discussion about it, instead it left us with a sense of peace and of triumph for our ineffables.
This is why I can see the seeds of a Terry Pratchett ending; still pursuing the meaning of humanity, of good and evil, and of Heaven and Hell as the oppressing institutions that represent it. And ultimately the abolishment of said institutions even if that means removing all the supernatural presence.
This is why I can see Aziraphale and Crowley walking away if that means humans get to be free of ineffable plans and tests, if that means they really get to walk their own path. I can see this making sense with a plot that, as the first book, focuses on humans and is not, you know, a love story.
On Terry's ideas about fiction and stories
In June of 1989, at Iconoclasm, a convention held in Leeds, Terry gave an interview to Octarine, Science Fiction & Fantasy Humour Appreciation Society where he talked a bit about his writing. This was barely four months before plotting the sequel in Seattle.
Have you always written humour?
Not intentionally. It’s just a style that I tend to gravitate to. I tend to write in a fairly lightweight style, partly because I cannot handle the quantum’s and orbital mechanics and partly because fiction as a whole relies on the suspension of disbelief, that million-to-one chances can work. In an awful lot of writing you have to believe that there is a moral force on the side of your main protagonist which will see to it that he can win. There is a lot you have to take seriously but when you do you realise that it is actually quite funny, so you tend to subvert the thing. I find that whatever I start out by doing, it tends to wind back to humour in the end.
So maybe Terry did have Crowley and Aziraphale give up their ethereal/occult natures somehow, but if he did, he also would have given them and us something that made it worth it and fair. Even if that something was turning human and living their last years like that in their cottage in the South Downs, it would have felt fitting and fair.
Ok. I think that's it. If you got all the way to the end, I hope it made some sort of sense even if you don't agree with me :)
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The 'Forgiving Michael' scene is such a Bad and Weird moment in, well, the mess of Bad and Weird moments that is the finale, but this one is especially messy. Like, was that supposed to be a moment arguing in favor of forgiveness? Trying to show the 'Aziraphale' way of doing things is sometimes the right choice to make this narrative seem less Crowley is Always Right Aziraphale is Always Wrong? Because if that was it then it failed spectacularly.
Their 'forgiveness' of Michael felt more condescending and pitying than actual kindness and sympathy. And, like, Michael was still ripping out pages from the Book of Life as they were talking, and 'forgiving' them just led them to throw away the ENTIRE Book of Life and still ending the entire universe. So what was even the point? Aziraphale's "love and hope" just made things worse...
It's like that whole scene is an argument against forgiveness. Stories that actually try and show the value of sympathizing with your antagonists still do understand you've got to stop that person from doing harm first and foremost then talk them out of it, or create situations where talking it out with the person is honestly the only way (or the best way) to stop the harm they're causing. Here, I think the main thing it conveyed to a lot of viewers is "oh please, stop talking to Michael like that and just SNATCH that Book of Life away! Run over them with the Bentley or something!!! The whole world is literally dying! If only you haven't done that 'forgiveness' shtick on them maybe there would still be some Universe left!"
It's like a scene trying to showcase the value of forgiveness written by people who honestly do not understand forgiveness nor actually value it. Which I think describes a lot of the Finale. Even when it's trying to send positive messages (Forgiveness! Humanism! Appreciate the mundane! Free Will! Change the world!), it falls so flat because it feels like it does not actually believe them, so it all comes out like, well, like This Scene.
I’ve been more than two decades (20+years) reading Terry Pratchett. I’ve read the whole Discworld series several times. But not only that, I’ve read other series and solo books (Good Omens among them). If there is something that Terry Pratchett's books leave behind when you finish them is a feeling of fairness and hope. There’s always a satisfying ending. Even when tragedy happens sometimes (Spoiler: when Granny Weatherwax died I cried my eyes out for two days) there’s always a motive for it and it leaves hope behind (after Granny’s death, Tiffany Aching will lead the witches to a new future). There is always fairness in the end. The weak ones always get justice, even if they don't always get everything they want. The powerful don’t get away with their evil plans, but get thwarted. Don’t get me wrong, his books are not all happiness and flowers. He writes about hard topics (misogyny, trans rights, discrimination, racism, death, corruption…), his characters are in many cases troubled (Sam Vimes, Death). But there is always hope in the end. Things get better and, at the very least, there is fairness. And that fairness is a big part of the satisfying sensation you get after reading his books. Another thing to be said about his books is that they are always charged with big doses of morality hidden frequently behind a thin veil of misanthropy (humans will be humans).
I’ve also been reading Neil Gaiman’s books for more than 20 years (btw, fuck Neil Gaiman to alpha centauri and back). The sensation they leave behind in most cases is not a pleasant one, but of unease. There’s injustice, frustration or heartbreak in many of his books. They are much darker and unfair. And the morality in them is more nuanced.
That unfairness is the reason why I know the ending we got in go3 had nothing to do with Terry Pratchett. Nothing short of Terry Pratchett himself coming back from the dead, walking back the black sands of the Dark Desert to tell me personally that this was his desired ending, would convince me of the contrary. Suposedly gos2 and go3 were made to finish the story as Terry Pratchett had wanted, they were doing it for him and for the fans, but they couldn't have made anything less in common with Terry Pratchett.
This was no tribute to Terry Pratchett. This didn’t honour his legacy. To have his story, 75% of it written by Terry Pratchett, butchered and emptied of meaning, fairness and sense in this way is outrageous. Because not only it doesn’t make any sense, it negates everything the book and s1 teach us. The fate the characters, that Terry Pratchett created and loved, suffered was worse than anything we could have imagined (consensual murder-suicide is still murder-suicide). Not to talk about the fact that the universe created by Pratchett has not only been destroyed, no, it has been erased and it has never existed. They tried to erase Terry’s work.
I recon I’ve been played for a sucker. I wholeheartedly believed it was going to be okay. It never crossed my mind, even for a second, that Aziraphale and Crowley were not having their happy ending. Back in 2005 the authors said that Aziraphale and Crowley were in the South Downs. They had been talking about their whereabouts and had come to that realisation. When asked what were they doing in the South Downs NG answered simply that they were sharing a cottage. And some of you may argue that is exactly what happened in go3, but no. Two very nice, I'm sure, and physically similar men got to spend their retirement married sharing a cottage in the South Downs. And I’m very happy for that sweet couple, and that scene is so beautiful and warm and nice I want to cry remembering it. But those weren't Aziraphale and Crowley. Period. Aziraphale and Crowley were evaporated along with their whole universe and they have never existed. Their 6000+ years of love and pining and hiding and fighting for humanity just disappeared into nothing. And that, my friends, is not fair. As it’s not fair the fact that the abusers, Gabriel and Beelzebub*, got to live their happy ending and their love for a few years at least, while Aziraphale and Crowley never could (they had been 6000 years dancing around each other while Gabriel and Beelzebub just what? About 4 years). And it isn’t fair that god herself, the ultimate responsible for the abuse they had to endure, is the one cornering them to decide to agree to a murder-suicide and execute it too. While it’s not fair that the meaning of s1 was completely turned around and humanity, the world and the universe were suddenly not worth saving, too broken to fix.
And you know what else is not fair? To spend years (20 years more or less) saying that this story has a happy ending, a very specific happy ending, and then not only not delivering it but killing the main characters in the most OOC decission ever seen and destroying the whole universe. To have a comedy, turn it into a rom-com, and then a drama without any warning.
Terry must be turning in his grave. What a horrible “tribute” to his work.
*As cute as we want to make that couple be, we can't forget that both Gabriel and Beelzebub abused Aziraphale and Crowley their whole existence and were the ones judging them and sentencing them to death in s1. Have we forgotten the "Shut your stupid mouth and die already”?
After 11 hours of work and gallons of tears, I finally finished my Renaissance like painting of Crowley's fall!!
Probably my best artwork for now (pls reblog it~). It was supposed to be a sketch. AH. AH. Anyway, I'm really happy about the result! It feels good to challenge myself with some impossible projects 😈
Btw it's Patreons monthly A5 print! You have until end july to join and get it in your mailbox 😊
If you want a bigger version, it will also be available soon on my shop.
There has been something wrong with Aziraphale since s2, but I was only able to put my finger on it now after the show's ending. Aziraphale was Terry Pratchett's character while Crowley was Gaiman's. I relate to Aziraphale in s1. I feel like I can understand him on a deep, personal level. But since s2, the mannerism is the same, but something is off.
Aziraphale as I understand him would not abandon his bookshop for years without finding a way to (sneakily, if needed) check on it and make sure all is well with it. Doubly so for Crowley. If he went to Heaven to help organize the Second coming (if he even trusted Heaven - they tried to burn him with hellfire!), he would find a way to involve Crowley without Crowley having to become an angel. They're on their own side, after all. Even if he was threatened (the popular "coffee theory"), he would find a way to comply with Heaven outwardly while staying on their own side - he has millenia of practice.
But that's not the Aziraphale we see in s2 and s3. Why? Because he's no longer Terry Pratchett's Aziraphale. Gaiman sees himself as Crowley, so he felt the need to make Crowley the one who's right, who loves the world more, who is better, and who was wronged. Retrospectively, it's visible from the very 1st scene of s2. It's the reversal of their roles. Before, it was Cowley who was besotted with Aziraphale since the first meeting when he got a glimpse of his true self. Now the roles are reversed. It's Aziraphale who admired Crowley since first meeting him as an angel. And all through s2 and s3, up until the very end, he still admires the angel without fully accepting the demon. This is not the Aziraphale I know.
And Crowley is different, too. Suddenly he is the one who would sacrifice everything for the world, while in s1, he didn't care for the world without Aziraphale in it. It was Aziraphale who was willing to do anything to save it. But Gaiman wanted Crowley to be more, as if loving Aziraphale so fully was not enough.
Maybe he does not understand loving someone as fully. Maybe he only understands how good it feels to be important. In s2, it wasn't as evident, and it could still be interpreted differently, but it is evident in s3. Gaiman did not want to honor his friend's memory, he wanted to be important, and in turn, he wanted Crowley to be important and outshine Aziraphale.
s3 did a good job of closing the story with the characters and setting it inherited from s2. But now it's evident that the characters are not the ones from s1, it's Gaiman's twisted version of them. And that's ok, people can have a different interpretation of the same character, and for some people it will fit their interpretation. I do not claim that my interpretation is better, but I don't have to accept the one in s2 and 3, either. Sir Terry's Aziraphale is the one I identify with, not Gaiman's.
I've seen a number of takes about how Crowley is NG's self insert, but I hadn't thought of other side of the coin, which is the complete character assassination on Aziraphale as being an attack on Terry Pratchett and yep. Wow. That is dark.
The whole "our car" bit, which imo was cute in s2, somehow became mean-spirited in s3
Like Crowley is adamant that it's NOT their car, it's HIS car, and Aziraphale just keeps willfully ignoring him
Which is a symptom of a bigger problem, when you take a look at the whole picture. Of Aziraphale not listening to Crowley. Specifically, not listening when he says NO
It's not our car
I don't want to help you
I'm not nice
The angel you knew is not me
I was a terrible angel
There are others. The point is... I hate it. I hate what they did to Aziraphale here. There are flashes of it in the other seasons but the point should be character growth, character arc, Aziraphale realizing he's not listening and doing a better job. Not... Doubling down until the bitter end
Aziraphale, it's okay. It's a dream. You're having a nightmare. This isn't real, as the last shots help emphasize. You're going to wake up soon, and use the lessons you learned in this dream of S2 & S3 to make a world where you and Crowley win.
You'll make it happen, make it real, with the parts of this dream that were great (Gabriel & the pre-Shax Ball) and then some, because the purpose of this very bad dream is that it is your subconscious giving you the path to make the world where all of this horribleness? It never happens.
It's three card monte with the Dickens novels, too, and the lady there when it comes to the ending/the structure is not Bleak House or Hard Times-- it's A Christmas Carol. Your dream of becoming Mr. Fezziwig, whom you were quoting to Nina in S2, first required you to experience a Scrooge-like dream-- only about a trillion times more scary.
Reality ended with 1.06's "The Very Last Day of the Rest of Their Lives"-- when we saw the very last day we'd ever see of the rest (the remainder) of yours, before the story switched to show us some, heh, rest... sleep... for the rest (the remainder) of the series. Rest is sleep; but rest is also euphemistic for death. Those two meanings of the word together form the plot of S2 & S3, minus the flashbacks (which I think we could say now were separated out into minisodes or occurred before the opening of the season to emphasize that they are real versus the non-reality of the dream.)
Your nightmare was of the last week of your life: your horribly tragic death, your terrifying bardo, and the Hell to which you damned yourself that feels more than a little inspired by the fate once granted by Furfur to a certain trio of Nazi foils: eternal life on Earth as zombies...
...but none of it was real. It told us a lot about what was on your mind in reality but none of it actually happened. We last left you right here, thank goodness...
Your nightmare gets terrifying but there's maybe nothing in it more frightening than that sweet astrophysics professor in the end is there now, Dr. Frankenstein? There's nothing more horrifying in this dream than that passionless version of Crowley and the others like him that would follow. The ones that you know, over and over, for all of infinite time, are not the person you love. That's why it's such a good thing that none of this-- even the parts we loved-- was actually real. Not yet, anyway.
Because the point is that you're going to wake up here and realize that you dreamt a truth that could happen but only if, as Dickens once had The Ghost of Christmas Present tell Scrooge, these shadows remain unaltered. Only if you do nothing. Only if you learn nothing from the dream... and I already know that you will not learn nothing because that same title of 1.06? The one for the episode showing us the last day we'd ever see you in reality, before the story showed us the dream that is your path to making happen the world you want?
That title also words out to saying that the remainder of your and Crowley's lives are a very last day: a very (true) last (enduring/eternal) day (also just means a period of time). It means that the reality we saw of S1 is your true eternity, which means you wake from this dream and you make that eternity happen. You and Crowley get your happy ending together-- you win.
The bad omen of this dream tells us how you, back in the reality we'll never see, make a world of good ones. It takes us into your mind and shows us you forming the plan that will get you there.
You're going to wake up soon from all of this and, after you sob at the sight and sounds of your Crowley-- oh, thank Somebody, his beautiful yellow eyes!-- sleepily saying "angel, shh, s'alright, it was a dream"? After you have a panic attack and a good cry in Crowley's arms for awhile? You're going to know what to do. You know where to start now.
You know that everything would just be better if you could just be that one, particular person of Crowley but that the key to making a world where that is possible? The one, singular thing you could do to start to make that happen, which the dream shows us your mind has worked out? Is to be nearer to one other, particular person: the archangel Gabriel.
It's the end and the beginning of the dream: cocoa delivery and Jim's hot chocolate. You can stop a personal Armageddon with a cheese sandwich but if you could just talk to Gabriel on his own, in the privacy of the bookshop? You can save the world. Because the answer, as your dream seems to have taught you, is that it's not about power. It's not about being Supreme Archangel. You aren't going to change a thing in Heaven that way.
Your dream, in which all of the archangels were seen by you as very human people? It was your mind telling you that the way you make a world where you and Crowley can be together is to treat the angels like the people they are. The dream showed you the path, and it begins with you letting Gabriel in. If you do that, you're also letting Beelzebub in, and then there's a group, a group of the four of you, and that's the start.
You need to make a world where, instead of being afraid, you and Crowley unlock the door to the fellow ducks. And letting in Gabriel? That opens more doors. Because if there's a four of you? Then you've made a space where you can start letting in others. You'll be building a place they can go. You need to make it a real embassy. Gabriel can help you with that. And there's one person, in particular, that you know if you all could let in? You'd be able to stop Armageddon: Michael.
But that's not even the reason to. It's because you've all overlooked Michael and your dream is reminding you that you know that she needs someone to talk to. You will group the books together by the first letter of their first sentences, like what Jim was doing in S2. That's how you win-- you get them all to talk about their frozen peas. And you will.
It's alright, Aziraphale. Just hang on, the dream is very nearly over. Can you hear that? The sleepy person calling you "angel" and gently trying to get you to wake up? They are definitely, definitely your nightingale, don't worry...
🎶Flashbacks, warm nights/*almost* left behind🎶, Aziraphale... a whooshing of you into consciousness as the final shot when whooshing is a sound of rushing through the air and then it fast cuts to the better song over the ending credits-- to the song we already know is you and Crowley...
To "You're My Best Friend", right on the 🎶oooh, you're makin' me live🎶lyric-- a song we haven't heard since S1, when Crowley was whooshing to you after dealing with Hastur and Ligur. When he had nearly died and was rushing to you in The Bentley, desperate to get back to you, just as you are right now desperate to escape this dream of death and eternity without a real him.
The song switched in S1 when Crowley found the bookshop on fire. It switched over to "Somebody to Love." The fire was a separate song-- one not present here in the end of S3. The song for you two rushing back to one another is the one that's much more the two of you-- "You're My Best Friend." That's the one playing. It's the one we heard in reality before, and your world of reality and your Crowley will be what, and who, you see when you wake up.
Cyndi Lauper is fun and all, Aziraphale, but your Bentley eventually turns every song you put it into Queen, now doesn't it? 😉 It's the reality of S1 forever. And there's no need to play the other song about finding somebody-- or an ending lol-- to love. We-- and you-- found the lady.
Every single lingering question I had about this story has been solved by this now, Aziraphale, so I'm rolling with it 😂 and very excited to unpack S2 & S3 from this POV and psychoanalyze the fuck out of you for dreaming your own insane bardo lol...
--
The funny part is that I actually had it three years ago and dismissed it. My notes on the 1.06 episode title read: "if very last day = true eternity & rest = death & sleep? rest of show a dream?" and then I said nah. Whole other season, probably at least two... It can't be a dream for two seasons, can it? They set up reality plot with Crowley's "all of us vs. all of them" in the end of S1, didn't they? There needs to be another way that these words work together... I couldn't see it there a la blue dot effect... just as I wrote about. 😂 I had the lady in my sight but I couldn't see her.
I enjoyed being able to see what the story does with discernment and the story being crafted so that none of us would be able to fully know entirely what we were looking at until it was complete. We'd find plenty of ladies along the way, as I and all of you did, but never all of them.
They did set up the reality of Armageddon coming back around in S1, but in a way where, now, the idea is that the dream shows you the book Aziraphale and Crowley will write together without the story writing it for them. It's like giving the characters the free will to self-determine the rest... with a little determinism thrown in by the dream giving us Clues as to how it all goes.
I would have hated the ending without that final shot showing that it's a dream but the final shot makes it all work.
Plus, they got me to ignore the words, which I really enjoyed. 😂 I understood the words correctly but I couldn't hear them. They 'no Nightingales'''d me and I speak wink-wink "French and German" so I found that fun. Because, when it comes to story, Harry the Fish was a bit right-- the cards do want to be a bit manipulated. I wanted to be a combination of validated and very surprised and I was happily both.
It's about discernment and it's a narrative magic trick so the idea would always be that the lady would be right there all along and we'd get some of it along the way but not all of it and then, when the dealer stops and the cards get turned over in the end? We'd have enough to see the big picture, and it'd all slide into place-- and this does.
It's designed so that we're all people standing in Times Square and we can't see America to make its point about how that's true of all of us. It's the human condition. Even the most discerning of us ducks are going to get a lot but never everything because we're people, and it's all just shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle... and, honestly? It probably wouldn't be any fun any other way.
At first pass, I think that all of S3 is Mr. Arnold's only lines in it. All of S3, but for The Great War flashback, is the bardo and eternal life "rebirth" of The Angel of the Eastern Gate. Big Damn Post with initial thoughts about just wtf was happening in S3.
Your phone is your computer and your way to communicate. Your phone is symbolically your mind and your body. Your phone is you. And your phone is dead, This Version of Mr. Arnold, because you're a member of The Whickber Street Traders & Shopkeepers Association, which means that you run a business on a street that is owned by Aziraphale and, by extension, Crowley. So, symbolically?
Even though you are a character in your own right? You are standing in here for Aziraphale. You reflect what is happening with him, as all of Whickber Street and its characters, both present and gone, do... and all of the characters in S3-- including, I suspect, Crowley.
Aziraphale's phone is dead. And Mrs. Sandwich? Tell us, please, how does Aziraphale feel about this death that S3 is helping him to slowly come to accept?
"But I were going to go back to Bridlington."
Bridlington: etymologically means belonging to and settlement-- the place where you belong. Brid, root of bride. Crowley, and his Bride of Frankenstein hair in Heaven...
Aziraphale? He was going back to Bridlington when he got into that lift. He never meant for it to be permanent. Oh, Crowley, nothing lasts forever. This won't be for eternity. I'll fix it. I'll make it better. I'll make a world we can live in. I'll come back because I never want to be without you. So, what happened, exactly? Jesus, tell them...
Tell them by telling them why Mutt isn't here.
Everyone else's shop on Whickber Street was bought up and closed but that's not what happened to Mutt, is it? Tell them what happened to that lovely, vulnerable, Aziraphale-paralleling magician, because that is actually happened to Aziraphale...
"It was an accident. He mixed up the pill bottles."
Like Mutt, Aziraphale never really meant to die. He was overwhelmed and not thinking clearly. He was trying to metaphorically take his medicine. He had to take multiple kinds to get through the day and he did, always, to keep going for his beloved spouse. But one day, for Aziraphale, in the end of S2? When his beloved spouse was distracted by his own dying phone and didn't see what was going on? That one day, when Crowley was, not entirely of his own fault, not in a place that day to ever be able to find the lady and see the truth of what was happening?
Aziraphale mixed up the pill bottles. He didn't know what pill from which of the pills in his life he was taking. He thought he was going to Heaven. He actually basically went to Hell. Ultimately, though? He's just dead. He took the wrong amount of one of his pills and he accidentally overdosed. Do people ever ask for Death? No, they always ask for coffee. So predictable. Yet... people die.
Aziraphale accidentally left behind a beloved spouse who will now, Aziraphale fears, be like this version of Mutt's Spouse representing Crowley here, and always wonder if it truly was an accident or if Aziraphale had just been not able to take anymore.
Aziraphale got in the lift in the end of S2, and he never made it out again. Other than the flashback to The Great War? I think that the rest of S3 is Aziraphale's bardo-- a liminal state in Buddhism between death and rebirth, where he's hallucinating situations that help him to work through the life he's leaving behind and set up where he goes next.
A bardo is similar in some ways to the concept of Purgatory but, while Purgatory sorts you into Heaven or Hell? Those are not concepts in Buddhism. Bardo is meant to be a sort of karmic trip that prepares you to be reincarnated into your next life. Good Omens is basically splitting the difference, with S3 being functionally a bardo but Aziraphale being an angel meaning that what it's really setting up is what kind of eternity he'll have-- one that gets very Pratchett's Discworld, in terms of how it works when people die, as we'll look at.
It gets dark and scary and it's not all happy but Aziraphale did step into this circle a bit prepared/pre-paired and he winds up with a sad but also sort-of happy eternity. S1 & S2 is about his life and death, while S3 is about his afterlife-- his book of the dead, really, even as the plot gets delightfully bananas over many, many different books of life.
Every character in S3 is there to represent part of Aziraphale's life for the bardo-- or to represent a part with their lack of presence. They aren't real, and they aren't really them. Think of it like Aziraphale is tripping all of this because, essentially, he basically is. The concept of a bardo is that it's like your consciousness hallucinating. The people in Aziraphale's bardo aren't really them-- they're all just his characters, like ushers helping to take him from one place to the next.
This is also why S3 is (in a good way, imho) so tonally everywhere. If you felt a bit high watching it at times lol? You were supposed to. If the characters seemed to get a bit too cartoony in moments and the story suddenly became the world's weirdest murder mystery for a bit and you felt like you would have given your right arm for the Jim and the shop lesbians of S2? You were supposed to. 😂 It was cruel, but it did work.
Right, so, and when these characters each are no longer needed for their purpose in the narrative? They just disappear, thanks to Michael-- the character who threatened Aziraphale with the mythical Book of Life in the moments before he got into the lift in S2 and is, therefore, the one responsible for helping to birth the plot of the bardo narrative for Aziraphale. What is the purpose of her story here?
Michael represents Aziraphale's pain and rage at Heaven and at God and at The Metatron and at all these fucking horrible archangels who want to destroy everything. At all the abuse he and others have suffered because of Heaven. Via his proxy of Michael, Aziraphale serial kills his way through a smiting of the archangels, using the thing that represents having a damn life-- The Book of Life.
He obliterates The Metatron, he eye-for-an-eyes Sandalphon into a pillar of wall, he has Uriel choke to death on the panicked air she suddenly, like a human, cannot breathe in enough of. What's going to happen to you, Uriel? Nothing. All the nothing in the world. Uriel is Aziraphale's fear, his shock, his terror, over what has happened. It's part of the process of the realization for him that he is dead.
Oh, God, what happens to me now? Nothing. Nothing. I'm dead. Nothing. I didn't dance on the head of this pin and now I'm fucking dead. I will disappear, am disappearing, a world ending, an universe destroyed. I will be gone. I will never see Crowley again. I fucked it all up. I shouldn't be down here, in this Space Between...
Michael is the embodiment of Aziraphale's madness-- the maniacal panic in Aziraphale's eyes in the lift in the end of S2 when the dawning realization of the mistake that had just cost him his life was sinking in. She loses her mind from thousands of years of being overlooked, finally left despairingly tossing entire continents into The Eternal Flame, like an adult Adam on crack. (Sorry, Canada and Australia, I still love you lol.) She's yelling about the rats that are invading everywhere (and are all over the bardo) in a way that is far too Aziraphale, as is how she keeps telling Crowley and Aziraphale how she remembers. She remembers. It's all in there. She remembers everything she did-- everyone she killed and everything, from all of time. Every person. And it's too much, like how it sometimes is for Aziraphale, which led to his demise.
The whole of the entire universe's Book of Life is now in her head and it goes round and round and she can't take anymore until she hurls herself and what's left of the book into the fire and kills herself. It's representing Aziraphale's thousands of years of watching humans be born and live and die, and the memories he has of all the horrors of The Great War. It's super-cheery lol...
And this is all without even mentioning the massively sexual abuse survivor-coded moment with Michael when she started losing it about The Metatron "fiddling with" the book that, at that point, had become Michael herself, and that he was always there, haunting her memories, showing up to taunt her creepily while she just screamed, unable to make him go away.
(Slight aside: There is a very subtle moment in S2 that suggested that this is part of Michael's real story. It was in the group scene in the end, as it was Michael's reaction to Dagon talking about the elephant in the room of Lucifer's obsession with Crowley. Aziraphale saw Michael's response and, based on this bit in the bardo? Likely read it correctly. How you interpret its inclusion in Michael's madness when Michael is so representing Aziraphale here is interpretable. Is it there because Aziraphale is aware of it as part of Michael's story? Is it there because of Crowley? Is it there because it's something Aziraphale and Michael have in common? It's left up to us.)
On a similar topic, Aziraphale died without ever knowing what Saraqael did to Crowley in S2 and tried to do to Gabriel, which is how she's bad here but mostly escapes his wrath. That, and that she needs to be there to help Muriel steer the plot of the bardo. Saraqael is the exposition character while Muriel?
Muriel is the useful idiot, as even they noticed, who kept the plot of the bardo humming and shifted Aziraphale through his consciousness' stages towards accepting his death and creating what comes next for him because it's the Discworld. We go where it is that we believe in our hearts we deserve to be. But Aziraphale died unsure that he deserved the only thing he had ever truly wanted. This bardo was a way to work through that, and all that had led to him getting into that lift, and set up what for him would come next.
Sandalphon reinforces this idea of bardo, as he exists here basically just to show us a place called The Space Between-- a corridor where Heaven crosses into Hell and it's all just one world of Death. Sandalphon is also one of the many characters who all work together to reinforce the idea that Aziraphale's consciousness is writing this narrative, as he talks to Jesus about how the speech-- the things Jesus was to say-- was all written by Aziraphale, and that only Aziraphale had control over it. So, what's Jesus' role here?
Jesus represents Aziraphale's isolation, his hunger, his loneliness, his need to be good, his love of magic and Crowley and food and human life. His sadness over no longer being incarnate and all "the joy unbounded" that it brought him, that he has Jesus teach. Aziraphale's attempts to reconcile his life are worked out further in the story of his proxy Jesus learning three card monte-- learning a life of card tricks, food, and all that good fish. Jesus learning how to live like Aziraphale knew how to live. Jesus' entire goal was learning how to find the lady-- a whole post on its own-- but, for Aziraphale, there's only ever truly been one. It's always been the Lilith on the wall, Aziraphale's Queen of Hearts.
Jesus, from the start, echoes Aziraphale back to himself, and to us. He's now awoken, disoriented, in a new place, his last memory having been of being murdered, and not entirely sure how he got to this weird spot or what these strange people want with him. He is on his own and he doesn't really truly know these people around him. They're all telling him he's there to bring about the end of the world, which he doesn't want to do. He wants and needs to talk to someone he knows. He needs to tell his fellow ducks about his frozen peas but, the thing is? It's a bit late for that.
Jesus is all... I had some friends, can I talk to them? A whole bunch, like, 12 of them, all great people. Jesus wants to talk to the apostles. Aziraphale? Misses his Whickber Street people. And what do Aziraphale and the angels tell Jesus? They tell him that they can't give him his friends. It's fucking Heaven, so, this seems a little odd lol... but it's also not odd, if you accept that this place where Muriel volleys between silly Inspector Constable and terrific Undercover Demon and where crazy crossword trips and Crowley's having a drunken meta-conversation with himself about his role in all the seasons' of story lol ("before, I bring the baby") isn't exactly playing by the rules of reality, right? 😂
The apostles should all be accessible, in theory, right? Even with not wanting to do that because of it being 90 minutes lol, you would think there'd be a different reason why not from Heaven other than 'sorry, mate, you left them awhile back now'... but there isn't, because that's mah point... They tell Jesus that everyone he knows is dead and there's no way that they can go get any of them for him to talk to-- really, though, it's that Jesus is representing Aziraphale, who is dead.
Aziraphale can't talk to anyone because his phone is dead, and he was going to go back to Bridlington, but he mixed up his pill bottles, and now he's on The Other Side, and that's when Jesus is like...
Gabriel? Could I talk to Gabriel? This place is super-spooky without Jim and I don't like it. Is he around? He talked about himself a lot but he wasn't so bad and he came to comfort me before I died. [He did Aziraphale, too, even if they didn't know that was happening.] Can I talk to him? I don't really know any of you all that well, sorry. I'd feel a lot better if you had someone that I knew that I could talk to. I know who Gabriel is. I know he cared enough about me to try to talk to me. I'd like to see him again. Is he here, in this place?
It's really Aziraphale, wanting to talk to Gabriel. He didn't go to him for help in the end of S2 because he was trying to protect Gabriel and Beelzebub but now that he's on the other side of this, all alone? He wishes he had. He at least wishes that Gabriel was here. He doesn't know the rest of the archangels like he knows Gabriel and Aziraphale died before they could all to the pub and become even better friends. And now? He's in this bardo realizing he's never going to talk to Gabriel ever again. But, besides that Jon Hamm was "out of the picture" (loved that pun lol) for this one? Why isn't Gabriel, or anyone else missing, in this place?
Because Aziraphale is fucking torturing himself, that's why lol, and Gabriel and Beelzebub, like Maggie and Nina, are characters whose role in that are actually sharper in their absence than their presence. Even Furfur, at this point, falls into that category, as he was supportive of Aziraphale in the end of S2. None of them have present roles in helping Aziraphale process his death because they all represent his fight to keep living. They're all there in absentia-- no flies, no Jim, no Give Me Coffee because there's nothing left to wish for. It's already been taken. There's no Nina, just the horrible Coffee Cafe. No Maggie-- no family. No music. It's all closing to him now. It's all been bought up.
Aziraphale's consciousness isn't going to get through the bardo to accepting his death with Maggie being all oh, you're an angel, Mr. Fell, it's going to get through the bardo with her closing record shop. (Which was the first time I cried in S3. There were many lol.) Jim isn't in the bardo because Gabriel is the exact opposite of this place-- and that's a good thing because I don't like this place. This place is spooky. But that's how it is supposed to be because this world of Hell and Death is one where Aziraphale is never really going to see his Whickber Street again. But, right, so, back to Jesus 😂...
But then Jesus makes the big request: there was another one like all of you. Red hair, yellow eyes, really funny. He was so nice. Is he here, in this place? Can Jesus-Aziraphale talk directly to him? He's getting there, but not until he fully allows himself to.
Not until Beloved Spouse gives Jesus-Aziraphale a cheese sarnie (exactly the type of thing Crowley would do for Aziraphale and, as we know from S1 and living life ourselves? the cure for personal Armageddon is any form of a cheese sandwich) and says go over there, he's over there. This moment is really sad, actually, when you look at Jesus as a proxy for Aziraphale because Jesus represents Aziraphale's regret. The story gives Jesus back a body-- it makes him incarnate again. It allows him to live, which is part of Aziraphale processing that he no longer can.
Aziraphale literally died hungry-- he barely ate in the last few days of his life in S2, when The Four Horsepeople were riding for him. He needed a cheese sandwich and he needs to see Crowley again. Paralleling Crowley-- Beloved Spouse-- gives him food in the bardo, in a reverse of the life Aziraphale was building with The Ball, and he tells Jesus-Aziraphale where to find Crowley. It smells so good, and I haven't eaten in so long. Beloved Spouse, a Crowley, leads Jesus-Aziraphale to Crowley.
Jesus-Aziraphale talks to Crowley first in the bardo, Aziraphale easing himself in to it. He gazes at Crowley adoringly the way that Aziraphale does, even. This Crowley is of Aziraphale's own consciousness and while Aziraphale lets himself process the horror this Crowley represents when he talks as himself to Crowley? He is first there as his Jesus proxy to interact with him, just to see him, basically. Just to picture him again, and that's Jesus' unbounded joy at seeing what would, in other situations, be Five Alarm Fire Crowley lol. He's sauced and grumpy and sleeping in an alley and Jesus-Aziraphale is just like hiiiiii you, drunkenly ramble to me some more. I'm so lost. What is it that I'm meant to do here?
But Aziraphale himself talking to Crowley? He cannot do it at first, not until his consciousness actually creates a plot in his bardo where he would need to-- and it's losing the Jesus that is, well, him. It's the whole plot-- we've lost Jesus, but Jesus is basically Aziraphale, so, really, we've lost Aziraphale. It's a story that allows Muriel to then say to him why don't you ask your friend-friend for help?
This is also why Jesus takes the lift down and just pops instantly onto Weird Whickber Street, finding Crowley in twelve seconds flat-- something that isn't just the 90 minute runtime lol but is a feature of how this place works. Stuff just happens. Plot just becomes what it needs to become to process Aziraphale through his bardo.
Characters do or say things that don't make a ton of sense for reality-- like Dagon tossing Crowley back when he refuses to find help her find Jesus, or Beloved Spouse knowing that Crowley has yellow eyes, or the way the entire "it's murder!" plot with the archangels keeps shifting as it needs to for the purpose of the overall narrative. Every place here intentionally feels like a set, rather than a whole world, because that's exactly what it is-- it's a construct designed with a singular purpose, taking Aziraphale's consciousness through this journey.
Then, there's Mrs. Sandwich, who represents Aziraphale's guilt and self-loathing, his fear that he is selfish and short-sighted. It's her standing in while he's away in the Heaven of the bardo, trying to help Crowley win himself-- their car, that is-- back from Brian Cameron, one of the guises of Lucifer in S3, and a whole meta and a half himself.
It's Mrs. Sandwich with whom Crowley is leaving the plant he sleeps with at night, "freshly watered" (I'm still laughing over that line lol), with a whispered "I'll be back" in their ear and a little pat on the bottom, the way that Crowley definitely sometimes used to leave Aziraphale. In the bardo, the resources that Crowley needs to reclaim himself-- to literally own himself, as that is what the car is-- are coming from Mrs. Sandwich, who now loathes Aziraphale for leaving. Without him there, everyone's rent was too much, and the street Aziraphale built began to fall like he has been.
Many of Aziraphale's other friends from the real world have no presence in the bardo but Mrs. Sandwich is different. Like Aziraphale, she loves Crowley, and has been a good friend to both of them. She knows them and their story in a way that most others do not and that allows her to be how Aziraphale can judge himself for the mistake here that has cost him his life and left Crowley and the people of Whickber Street without the protection he used to be able to offer that kept the gangsters from taking over the street.
Mrs. Sandwich is doing the It's A Wonderful Life's aspect of this-- the Pottersville. The horror of it, though, is that Aziraphale can't go back. This version of Whickber Street isn't real but it exists to help Aziraphale acknowledge that he did own this street, he did help these people, he did help everyone to make it a good hamlet for them all to live in. He kept the gangsters-- Lucifer, the demons-- at bay-- from the street that is him and Crowley. Kept them from gaining a foothold. But, now he's dead, and Maggie's business has gone under. Now, he's dead, and the street is being bought up and rebranded into a world of Beyond Soho, as owned by the local gangsters as The Bentley... his and Crowley's car.
Whickber Street is dying because Aziraphale is dead, and he is this street. It's died with him. All but the bookshop, that is, but that will die by the end, too. The bookshop still stands because the bookshop is needed for the narrative, because it is Aziraphale, and Crowley and Aziraphale. It's their world, and what will remain until the bardo is complete.
Time has already stopped for Aziraphale in reality but, in the bardo, the story is that Aziraphale has been gone years, trying to redeem himself for The Great War and make a world that he and Crowley could live in by changing Heaven but, well... find the lady. So much of this all feels surreal that it's very unlikely to have really happened. Some characters even seem to become nearly aware of the fact that they are characters in this narrative.
Muriel figured out that they were the useful idiot for Michael (which is to say, the useful idiot for Aziraphale, too). Muriel, in a way, basically bursts into the Chengs' restaurant to tell Aziraphale that they're close to knowing that they're something Aziraphale mentions near the end-- a character in the book. Not real-- part of this narrative. Their discovery is really an increasing sense of self-awareness that echoes the rising awareness of Aziraphale regarding what is happening.
Near the end, Lucifer asked why, if he was just a character in God's book, he hadn't yet disappeared, like everyone else? It was Aziraphale who could answer that because this Lucifer and this God and even, I suspect, this Crowley, in S3, are all just there to help Aziraphale process the fact that he's dead and figure out what his eternity will be.
Things happen that make sense for the purpose of the bardo but not a kind of sense that would work in reality. Where are Crowley and Aziraphale's pages in The Book of Life, for instance-- why didn't Michael rip those out, too? Why didn't she try to kill them before she killed herself? Because she can't. Because she's not real. Because she's part of Aziraphale's narrative and that wasn't needed for the story. The villain was right in 2.06-- Michael doesn't actually have that kind of authority. No one truly does over another.
Notice how this Crowley in S3 knows where The Book of Life was supposed to be and where it always was, despite having a memory in S2 recalling that he and Beelzebub made the whole thing up and initially not thinking it real? This bit of S3 doesn't make sense with what we saw in S2-- intentionally. It helps to reinforce that this isn't Crowley, this is Aziraphale's consciousness making up a Crowley to help him through this.
Even though Crowley had come to believe in S2 that maybe his memory was wrong and Beelzebub was correct about The Book of Life being real, as opposed to something the two of them made up back in the day? Crowley not believing it was real in S2 proved that Crowley didn't know any of the details about it that Crowley seems to have in S3. But that's because this Crowley is not S2's Crowley. Aziraphale doesn't know what Crowley knows about The Book of Life-- he wasn't there for that Beelzebub conversation. We were but he was not. It's so that we can tell the difference.
It's to help us see that, sadly, S3 Crowley isn't a real Crowley but one Aziraphale's consciousness created to help him with the bardo. Just as sad as this entire death narrative for Aziraphale is? Is that, just like how it is for the now-dead Aziraphale? 2.06 was actually the last time we ever saw the real Crowley. In S3, David Tennant plays Crowley in Aziraphale's bardo and, then, Professor Anthony Crowley, who is also not, truly, the Anthony Crowley we know.
We last see Crowley in the story when we last see the real world, in the end of S2. We saw him last driving south of Whickber in The Bentley with The Plants in the backseat-- and something that he doesn't yet know Aziraphale left in the trunk when he came back from Edinburgh but which is there in the lyrics of "Time After Time" in the end: a suitcase of their memories.
And the suit shop in the bardo? It's a travel agency-- Beyond Soho. But, yeah, for now, at least, back in reality? Crowley is still alive. Someone killed his best friend and he's driving the speed limit to somewhere. He might not last much longer himself without Aziraphale.
The best ending for him would be if he drove himself to Edinburgh and go met Gabriel and Beelzebub at pub, which is Crowley Nightingales-coded their version of Alpha Centauri to mean between the four of them in 2.06. In reality, in the end of S2, after Crowley told them they should go and he and Aziraphale would meet them on Alpha Centauri, Gabriel and Beelzebub went to The Resurrectionist, where they've been waiting for Crowley and Aziraphale. A couple of decent planets-- a couple of couples, with the know nightlife to speak of.
They were supposed to be a group, a group of the four of them, but there's now only three of them left. Now, Gabriel is with Crowley like how Jesus is with Beloved Spouse in the bardo, is how Aziraphale fears it, saying: It was an accident, Crowley. He never would have meant to leave you. He loved you.
In the bardo, an empty Bleak House is a book of life if Crowley says it is. What he says is real. What he writes in it is life. It's a conspiracy theory birthed into reality for this-- Adam's haunting "what I say is true." Make it happen, make it real, only nothing is real here because this is death. And, in the very end, Aziraphale authors them a version of a life together-- one where Crowley is an author and, for the first time, signs his real name when he writes an inscription in a book to Aziraphale.
Their end is the ability to make a book of life openly with one another, but it isn't truly with one another. It's an eternity for Aziraphale where he always has a version of Crowley with him, as he did in the bardo, but it's never the original. It's a Heaven, and it's a Hell. It's all they both every wanted, but it's also what they never got to truly openly have together.
The penultimate act of S3-- God and Lucifer in the dark, wordless bookshop-- is the bardo's end and Aziraphale birthing into being the creation of his afterlife eternity.
In the end of the bardo? Everyone else is gone, but for Aziraphale and the three, other, key beings in Aziraphale's darkened bookshop. He is ready for the last stages. He turns the sign on the door to 'open'. Somebody might want to buy a book... to let in the only one left: The Devil who took him in the end of S2 once again in through the front door. He haunted Aziraphale's entire life and he took it in S2, as it ends, his presence in Aziraphale's consciousness is needed to complete it. The bardo put Brian Cameron-- its first Lucifer-- into intensive care but The Devil wears many faces. Lucifer and the guise. Toby Jones! Lucifer will soon arrive.
Before that, though, the whole rest of the world has disappeared, more and more, as Aziraphale's awareness of what has been happening has begun to increase. The narrative of the bardo arcs towards death-- towards Aziraphale's imminent death in the plot, as the universe shuts down, and the death of him and Crowley together-- all of which exists in this space because it's the "tidy finish" to Aziraphale's bardo, as Aziraphale tells Lucifer. Everything narrows to the world of the bookshop, which was Aziraphale's whole world. To he and Crowley, who was Aziraphale's whole world. Nothing else in the world mattered more.
Aziraphale is nearly through the bardo so the world now becomes just him. There, in his bookshop, where the pages all go blank, because there is no more access to the world. There are no more people. There is all the nothing in the world, as Michael put it, because Aziraphale is now fully conscious of the fact that he is dead. That the world has ended. That time is over. It becomes just him and his vision of Crowley and their shop, their world together. Aziraphale is as Crowley declares him-- the entirety of creation-- because every person is a world themselves. Aziraphale's whole world was Crowley and their bookshop. His hallucinations of Crowley and the bookshop is what allows him to make the new world. The books are empty now, back to paper. Ashes to ashes. Space for new life... the pens still write, and there are many.
The rest of S3 sets up the eternity Aziraphale creates for himself-- the book of life he writes to be his book of the dead. In this space are just the three characters Aziraphale needs to finish this: Crowley, who is always his whole world, and the pair of beings who have long threatened that world to Aziraphale: Lucifer and God. Only...
...this place isn't really real, remember? It's basically a hallucination. All of the people in it exist to help Aziraphale through this and aren't really there in their own rights. Aziraphale essentially has a conversation with himself by having a conversation with these ideas of Crowley, God, and Lucifer, but the point of all of it is to reconcile his death and begin his eternal afterlife.
Aziraphale is now here for final judgement but it is, essentially, his own final judgment of himself, his own self reconciling his death, using his own visions of Crowley, God, and Lucifer, as proxies, because we judge ourselves. We go where it is in our hearts we believe we deserve to be and Aziraphale, by this point, knows he needs to decide where that is.
When he thinks about his life, he thinks about how he tried. He did want to do the right thing, most of the time. In a line that had me literally pause the movie for a minute after because I couldn't hear the dialogue that followed over my own teary sniffling 😂, Aziraphale says: I just wish it'd been easier. He had a very difficult life. He wonders why it had to be so hard, like all of us wonder about our own, because he's no different from us, as has been the whole point of the story.
It is Aziraphale's own judgments of himself that are voiced by God and Lucifer alike: You wanted to be left alone to read. You wanted to eat all that yummy human food. And human music. You were lazy. You were gluttonous. You were prideful...
Essentially, we're hearing the same things Aziraphale would beat himself up over sometimes when he was alive, the things over which he struggled sometimes not to feel guilty, which are just the things of having a life. He's imperfect. He's a person. And, in the end, he owns all of it, even if he's not exactly made peace with it, because these voices were never the loudest to Aziraphale. Crowley could always drown them out for him. Crowley could always say eat the dim sum, angel. Take me to bed, angel. Isn't this song gorgeous, angel, have a listen. That's the word of God there, isn't it? and it would cut through the noise. Always.
Except in the very end, when Aziraphale was too far gone, and it was too late, and he couldn't hear the birds.
And it's because of Crowley that Aziraphale can fight back against these inner voices here now, in this final judgment, and he owns his life, with: Yes, but I was the second-best angel you ever had. He turns the conversation away from God and Lucifer to the best angel there ever was, in Aziraphale's mind, who is the person he loves. He talks to this version of Crowley to reconcile in his own mind how they parted before Aziraphale died.
They've been secretly together forever, as the finale makes pretty clear enough-- they've had this "bookshop" for centuries going back long before 1800. And how it ended in reality in S2 was terribly tragic. On the other side now? Knowing he'll never see Crowley again, Aziraphale says the things wishes he could have said instead.
They are all things that he had undoubtedly told Crowley a million times in life already but that he wishes could have been more how things ended for them instead of how they did. He's been doing this with Crowley all along since they crossed paths in the bardo, trying to reconcile what happened. I need you to forgive me. You taught me to be brave.
Having a conversation that asks the question of how they could have ever really been happy, if they had run off together? They'd have been leaving all these people to goodness knows what awfulness. They'd have never forgiven themselves. It would have broken them.
You don't have a door. Aziraphale confronting the fact that his death leaves Crowley unprotected, because he is Crowley's door. The wild ride that is liberating our Bentley by besting Brian!Lucifer with Nightingaling crosswords really being Aziraphale processing that he no longer can.
You were the best of us, he tells Crowley in the end, when he says the things he wished he could have said in the end before they parted, instead of what he did. You cared so much about everything. You were an artist, and you wanted to understand, to make better art. You were the one who always thought it all had a sensible purpose. There's humor in that last bit, too, as sensible is related to sensual.
You made me complete.
Aziraphale's bardo has a version of God for them to talk to, even though Good Omens did just end as I had hoped it would, without any true proof that such a God actually truly exists. Frances McDormand, after all, read bits from the book that Aziraphale wrote-- the one we know of as Good Omens-- that Jim found as an unpublished book in S2. It's a book implied to be written by Aziraphale-- one of his books of life.
He wrote this one, too. At one point, literally, taking the blank copy of Bleak House after Crowley began it and writing down the first words of this bardo story... the first sentences of The World to Come for Aziraphale, as all of this is just a path to writing this new book of life-- one that is really a book of the dead. All of this is to make Aziraphale's eternal life. You could see the creation starting in Aziraphale's mind after he locked the door. There would be cocoa, books to read, and one another. Somewhere, a place for us-- a West Side Story reference, a playbill for which caught fire in the bookshop in S1. The West End, The West End...
And this story of Aziraphale's new world starts, as his old one ended. It is a summary of the truth of what he just lived, really, which he will use as the basis of creating a world beyond it: There were four of them in that bookshop, which was the whole world.
An angel, a former demon, The Devil himself, and one other who was there because They were omnipresent. They had always been there. They would always be there... And as Aziraphale wrote it? It began to happen around him. This God turned up as he wrote her into being because she is of him, like how Frances McDormand's Voice of God was. He is the creator of this world. He is the Almighty. Together, he and his vision of Crowley birth this new universe that is really entirely Aziraphale's eternal life. His heaven, his hell. His self-written damnation, and his plan for some peace, all at once.
Moments later, Lucifer wanted to know why he was still there, as Aziraphale had said that all but Crowley were like nothing more than characters in "God's book" but Crowley? He was always real to Aziraphale. He was life. If that were true, Lucifer wanted to know, why hadn't he disappeared yet, like all the other characters in this bardo? What was his purpose in this book of "God's", to be here this far along in the end? And Aziraphale knew the answer.
He knew what the word of God would be on that-- because he is God. Because we're all God. Because he made up this God and this is his narrative, his bardo. You're still here because it's a tidy finish, is what he told Lucifer. The deity and the adversary. The dark counterbalance to him and Crowley. The two who should be there when Aziraphale's end came because they had been who he had always fought. They were the reasons why Aziraphale was now dead.
Aziraphale's bardo gives his version of Crowley the chance to ask questions of God-- but it's really Aziraphale asking as Crowley, and it's Aziraphale answering. It's an echo of a thousand conversations like this that he and Crowley have had together, including what was a recurring theme of one, from how Crowley references it-- one that influenced what Aziraphale wrote in the book we know of as Good Omens and the bit referenced in 1.01-- about how the ideas of God and free will are like three card monte. You'll never find the lady unless she wants you to.
Free will vs. determinism and The Problem of Evil are for sure their own discussion here but this is long enough right now lol so, for the purposes of this discussion here? It's basically Crowley voicing Aziraphale's fears-- that no one ever finds the lady without the dealer, God, letting them... that there is no true free will-- but there's also that this God is Aziraphale, and you're talking to the angel who fooled Nefertiti with a lone caraway seed and three cowrie shells.
Aziraphale is no stranger to the art of prestidigitation, in any way you take that lol. He knows how to find the lady, and he's about to make an eternal world where he finds her, over and over and over and over and over again... but, first, he does have a question of this God his consciousness has made him to talk to here, before all of this is over.
It's the only one he'd ever have for God: Why did you give me Crowley?
Why did you make me complete and then take it away?
Which is really...
Why did you let me die? Why did you let me know such love and then take it away from us? Why did you let this ending happen? What did I do that kept you from giving us-- from giving *him*-- a happy ending? Why did you let us know what it was to love one another, and for so long, but then never let us know what it was to live openly together? Why couldn't we have just lived happily ever after together?
And that is when Aziraphale's Crowley steps in and tells him what he already knows: You know you'll never get an answer to that.
You know she's not God. You know you're talking to yourself. She's a different version of the Frances McDormand you used to hear in your head-- one like what I told you I thought God was like. You know that you're dead, and none of this is real, and even if it were? She'd never tell you.
You'll never know why and, back in reality? Neither will I.
Just like every damn human who has ever tragically, accidentally lost someone, angel. We're just like them.
And Aziraphale, as God, answers with what he suspects might be the case. Why he thinks that this God that he believes exists gave him Crowley and let him know love and then put into motion events that took it away from him.
Because your love for him was the messiest, silliest, most predictable thing in the universe. And it always put a smile on my face. Like The Voice of God-- Aziraphale-- said and wrote in his book of life? It's like playing poker for infinite stakes in a pitch-dark room with a dealer who doesn't tell you the rules and who smiles all the time. Her response here is simply what Aziraphale, who believes in God, long ago decided was why God made them for one another, and let them find and love each other.
Aziraphale's version of God here is not surprised by Aziraphale loving Crowley. She calls it the most predictable thing there was-- because that is how Aziraphale feels. How could anyone not fall in love with Crowley? Aziraphale's God-- so, Aziraphale-- says you two were messy and silly... you were human.
Silly... a word that means funny and light and foolish and adorable and also was used between Crowley and Aziraphale to talk about trauma. A gentle shorthand for this is your anxiety, your PTSD talking, Crowley. A word that summed up how they loved and took care of one another, making a space where they were allowed to be people. A place where there was no punishment for that, no judgment for it. A world where they each had free will and autonomy and choices and could make a precious and peaceful, if fragile, existence together, even if they could never find their way fully to a more open life.
Humans are gonna human, as The Voice of Crowley told Aziraphale's Concept of God. No two people were ever more human together than the angel and the demon, and that's God's-- Aziraphale's-- point to himself.
It's Aziraphale admitting to himself the truth he has always, deep down, believed, but sometimes struggled with allowing himself to believe was true: God gave me Crowley because God wanted me to know what it is to be human, in all its beautiful messy, silly, predictableness, and we were human together. The thing I was always afraid to accept that I was, that I longed secretly to fully be? I already was. I performed on the West End Stage all my life. That really did make me a professional conjurer, didn't it?
By the time we're here, the world is very over for Aziraphale. He's here, trapped in his bookshop, which is the only thing left in the world of this bardo because it represents Aziraphale, and Crowley and Aziraphale's life together. It will die, too, moments from now, because it's already too late. That's what the bardo exists to help Aziraphale realize. It's already over. He's dead. And ahead of him lies eternity. It's time for him to choose a path out of the bardo and be reborn into a kind of second coming, even it's basically his eternal afterlife and not quite real.
At this stage, his concepts of Lucifer and, even, God? They no longer matter. There is only one voice who does matter to Aziraphale-- only one he needs to hear to finish bringing him through the bardo to where he goes next and that is, of course, Crowley.
In the end, Aziraphale's final judgement on himself comes not from God but from this vision of the person he loves, and who loves him. The one with whom he made a space, from The Garden of Eden through the bookshop, to have privacy from God and Lucifer, to talk and be together and love one another. God and Lucifer disappear to the background, as it was when he and Crowley were together, and the center of the bookshop becomes The Tree of Life, under which this vision of Crowley will help Aziraphale decide how he wants to spend his eternity.
Aziraphale's bardo narrative sets it up so that he can ask this version of God that he has invented for what comes next-- but she is Aziraphale himself. It's the Discworld-- Aziraphale will decide where he goes. Aziraphale will create the world for himself that is to come, as we see plenty of evidence of in the world of Asa & Professor Anthony at the end, like their names, and the other characters there. Things like what just took me out entirely (goddamn this show lol) like Asa's dead mother always having said things like "scrumptious" and "tickety-boo."
Aziraphale is very harsh on himself, as this bardo showed, but he listens to what he knows Crowley would say here. As we've always seen, it's only Crowley whose voice can drown out his own and God's and everyone else's because Crowley matters more to him than anything else. Crowley is his god, and how Aziraphale voices his plan to himself for the eternity he has decided that he deserves.
Aziraphale asks this version of Crowley what it is that Crowley wants-- because even Aziraphale's own, singular, eternal life would always be for Crowley. But also because he knows the truth. There was only one thing Aziraphale himself ever wanted, and it's too late for that now. He mixed up the pill bottles, and now he's never going back to Bridlington.
He and the Crowley he has known and loved for over six thousand years have had all the time together that they will have, and they will have died before having found a way to fully live openly together. And doing that? Having that open life together?
That was all Aziraphale ever wanted in life.
He asks this Crowley, essentially, to tell him what it is that he already knows himself that the real Crowley wants, because that is the world that this god-- Aziraphale-- will make next. He will make the world for his goddess, in her image. And this Crowley says what we all know Crowley would say...
A real universe. A world where people have a chance. A world of no God and no Lucifer, no angels and no demons. For all the people, all of the humans. It's a world of a catch-22, though, and this is the part where Aziraphale uses this vision of Crowley to damn himself a bit. Aziraphale can't make a world with his Crowley anymore because that time is over. He's dead, and he doesn't have the power to change that, and if he made a world with a version of his Crowley in it? Well, he would always know that the stain was there underneath, wouldn't he?
He has this vision of Crowley help him get to a place where he can move into his afterlife by trying to miracle away the life they made together. This Crowley voices Aziraphale's own intentions for the world that comes, a plan he made out of his love for Crowley and what he knows that the real Crowley would want for him. He's about to try his best to make a world that reflects not his own struggles to love himself but the true free will and peace that he knows the person who loves him would want him to have for all of eternity. Instead of judging himself, he listens to what he knows in his deepest heart is Crowley's judgement of him, and lets that Voice of Crowley be the only one he hears. And that voice says to him:
Make us a world, angel, where Heaven and Hell don't exist. Make us a place where you and I spend eternity meet-cute-ing different versions of one another and grow old together and lose one another and find one another again and there's free will so there are stakes and choices and the stuff of life but you and I always find one another and the endings are always the funny ones I prefer. Make a place where we metaphorically and euphemistically climb every mountain together, over and over and over and over again.
That's the eternity you should make. That's the one you know that I would say that you deserve-- to at least be with some version of me. You do deserve that, angel. It might be too late for us now, as we are, but you could make yourself a world where there are other versions of me and then you'd never be lonely, and you deserve peace, angel.
Because you're not good and you're not evil, and you're not an angel and you're not a demon-- you're perfectly imperfect human incarnate, like the rest of us. You're a professional conjurer. Our life together is over. But you should make a world where there's always some me that always finds you, and we live happily ever after. We go to Alpha Centauri-- our little cottage, like we've always wanted to. It's not us, but it's of us, because you'll have made it. It will carry bits of us with it. A record of us is in its DNA, and there will be lots and lots of records.
All those nights where we'd make up little scenarios of what our life would be like, if we were human? How we'd meet under different circumstances? How we always made all those scenarios cleverly things that we always actually really, on some level, truly were? That's your eternity. Versions of our story, over and over. I'm a lonely professor of astrophysics, angel, with "boxes of my unsold books in my garage"-- please, for the love of Somebody? Come along and amaze me.
You need to let the me you loved go, angel, to go forward now. Promise me you will. You know I would want for you nothing but peace and if you, as the Creator, hold onto me into this next world? If you remember us? If you allow yourself to know that you control the parameters of the universe, instead of miracling that knowledge and the memory of me away? Then, you're actually damning yourself, and that's not what I want, angel, please, listen to me on this.
Please make this a world where you don't recognize me, every time you see me for the first time. Please don't make this a world where you remember me and all of these other versions of me? You love them dearly but you know that they're not me. The real me wouldn't want that for you... but you would... so, please, don't do that. Make a world where you let me go to find me again, in other lives, for all of time, and we never know that the world that is so real to us is the eternal afterlife of The Angel of The Eastern Gate, made just so that he can always find somewhere a version of his goddess Ashtoreth.
I know you'll listen to me enough to make that world where we have free will and find one another but please, angel, say that you won't always know the shooting star is not a real shooting star in more ways than one. Tell me you'll memory-wipe yourself here, too, and forget me to find me again.
Don't tell me that you will damn yourself to falling in love with versions of me, always remembering the original. Tell me you will truly let yourself find peace, and not that you know the truth but you are allowing yourself to live in a world where, here, you can bring a version of me hot cocoa and hold my hand and watch the stars with me. Here, you can marry me, and we can sit under the apple tree together, literally and euphemistically, openly and in peace. Tell me you will make sure that you won't remember, and you'll allow us to find one another and fall in love all over again, every time, as if it's the first and only time.
Is it Heaven? Yes. Is it also Hell? Yes. But, more importantly, is it like a free, open life on Earth? Like the ones we always imagined? I think it might be. You know I want nothing but peace for you, angel. You know I love you. You know I think you deserve it. Tell the God that's you what "she'll" be making. She won't refuse and Lucifer can't object because this is all in your consciousness and ultimately up to you. Your book to write. More chapters of our story to make.
I'll go with you as you go. I won't leave you on your own. Hold my hand, and kiss me goodbye, knowing I'll see you in the next life because I'm coming back-- some form of me is. Wherever you are? I'll come to you.
Technically, it's meteorite debris from Hailey's comet. Technically, it's all space litter, angel, not a shooting star. I'm never again the me that fired The Bullet Catch, am I? I wouldn't know a nightingale if it perched on the end of my nose-- though all versions of you and I will always word. But I need you to tell me, Aziraphale, that you will let both of us go, knowing versions of us will always find a way to one another.
I need you to promise me, angel, that we find new lives and new happiness and write the book together. Because the real Crowley on Earth that you loved would want you to not remember him, if it allowed you to make lovely, peaceful, happy lives together with other versions of him somewhere. He'd want for you anything that brought you comfort and happiness.
Please promise me that when you make this new world for us? That it's not that, sometimes, when you're sitting out with a version of me, older and grayer and content with you under the stars? That when you see a shooting star and make a wish? That it's not to pray again that, though you love and adore the person sitting beside you, that you'll never forget the Crowley with the yellow eyes who used to call you 'angel.'
As all partings foreshadow the great final one-- so, empty rooms, bereft of a familiar presence, mournfully whisper what your room and what mine must one day be. -Charles Dickens, Bleak House.
thinking a lot about how over the years, that evil man (NG) has alluded to the fact that he identifies with Crowley. from the novel's description of the character's appearance (looks kind of like Lou Reed, proud of his cheekbones, etc), to his emotional state (Crowley's rush to the burning bookshop in S1 supposedly being representative of NG's desperation to save Terry Pratchett from death), even NG and Terry's wardrobe choices when Good Omens was first published (NG in black, Terry in Aziraphalean white).
to be clear, I don't think that NG (a bad man!) is Crowley, or even all that analagous to him. but his admissions, however coy, are interesting to me given what we now know: despite being revealed as a sexual predator, regardless of the fact that fans were told he'd not be involved in S3, NG fathered the "finale" with the help of his little horror pals. (notably, those very pals protest his innocence in the face of blindingly awful allegations of sexual abuse.)
the significance, for me, is that so much of the finale felt unbalanced. the push-and-pull between Aziraphale and Crowley, the playfulness and pettiness and overwhelming care, are absent. instead, we get an Aziraphale who is cold, removed, cowardly. Crowley, meanwhile, is something of a martyr: disgraced, publicly humiliated, stripped of his powers, yet somehow still the only really noble personality. it turns out, S3 tells us, Crowley wasn't just the Serpent of Eden who shepherded mankind toward knowledge. he was the best angel ever, and he's been right all along, and now he gets to decide what happens with the universe! spoiler alert: he wipes out everything, including himself and Aziraphale--his best friend.
so much here is inconsistent with the established story as to be ridiculous, and at first I attributed this purely to bad and lazy writing. but now I lean toward another reading: NG is using Crowley as proxy.
an author who's spent the last couple of years wallowing in self-pity and resentment, the back alleys of his mind, isn't interested in accountability. he chooses to broadcast how mean everyone has been to our poor hero, how patiently he's borne the scorn of lesser minds. and now, in his final act of creation, he chooses to nuke the known universe. he decides oblivion is preferable to his own abjection, and he won't go alone: he takes custody of his best friend's memory, his very name, with him.
Bits from Good Omens [the book] that when considered within the context of the finale, have me screaming
Basically I re-read The One True Copy and Honestly I Can’t Believe The Nerve Of This Man Would You Just Look At What He’s Done To Our Story
I’ve talked about this so many times at this point. The book and seasons 1 + 2 stated that humans always had free will to begin with. They literally come up with things beyond and original to anything from heaven and hell. The whole idea of there being Good and Evil is literally what creates the concept of free will in the first place. The reason some humans can’t do as well as others is because there is inequality of the humans’ own making, therefore some are born in castles while others are born in poverty. Please tell me how God has had any kind of a negative impact on any of this???
I’m willing to bet my life Terry Pratchett wrote this one
Certainly not giving Depressed-And-Suicidal “God will always stack the deck against me” Crowley here, is it???
***For context for the next one: Adam is talking about getting rid of both The Them and The Johnsonites gangs as a metaphor/allegory for Heaven and Hell going to war to try and get rid of each other
While they mainly suggest that either gang coming out as the sole winner is as undesirable as either heaven or hell winning for eternity, I think this serves to make a point about how getting rid of both sides entirely is also a bad idea. The neighbors, the bystanders, the rest of humanity, may see it as “a plaque on both your houses,” But “it’d be a jolly sight less interestin’ if we all weren’t here.”
And remember, Terry Pratchett was responsible for The Them scenes in the book.
“That’s because the people trying to sort it out were men [Gaiman]”
*cue vague sounds of frustration as I tear my hair out in the background*
NG deserves jail time for taking this quote from Adam and giving it to Crowley to serve as his Righteous Hero Speech. Also, they didn’t sort anything out while any of the humans were alive and only declared that they had ‘sorted it’ after the entire universe was dead 💀
I cannot believe this line. It is literally presented as sarcasm, as satire, and yet the finale unironically adopts this entire philosophy in the end.
*cue somewhat louder sounds of frustration as I tear out what little hair I have left in the background*
*Me crossing out every single line in the finale script I just printed* 
This is what I did to my good omens copy, btw
I Believe In Good Omens @gypsi-kat01 - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
