On Crowley, memory, and identity.
So full disclosure first, I am not someone who is particularly interested in having Crowley's angel name on screen - personally I rather like the idea of never having an answer to this question - but I also do think it's interesting and fun to speculate and we got quite a few hints at this throughout this season soooo
Obviously part of this is that we meet him. The angel that would become Crowley is the first person on screen this season. We confirm a lot about him here. He confirm that he is powerful enough to start the engine of the universe. We confirm that he can control gravity and time and space and light. We confirm that he is the being that says let there be light before the beginning. We also confirm that he consulted with the concept designer of the universe and that he's very comfortable with the idea of questioning authority. We are also given Aziraphale's anxiety as a contrast to this and as proof that that is not a universal trait for early angels.
Now, we have always had evidence that Crowley is powerful. He's done some things that seem impossibly big. He stops time very casually and seemingly without effort - even at the end of season 1 it doesn't even seem to give us the same strain on him that holding the Bentley together does. This is a thing that we only ever see Crowley do and notably a thing that you would think other beings would mess with to their advantage if it was possible. Which means they either literally can't or that it never occurred to them that they could. Or as is becoming increasingly clear: perhaps it's a bit of both.
But that's not the only implication of power we get in season 1 either. We get Crowley seemingly in tune with the universe in a way many angels and demons aren't. Which, makes some sense if he helped make it. This manifests in all sorts of ways. He's constantly aware of Aziraphale's presence. He can smell when the world state changes like when Adam names Dog. He holds the Bentley together through utter destruction. He notices that there are different books in the bookshop - something I always assumed was meant to convey he was familiar with the shop's contents but after learning he didn't even know Jane Austen was a writer I wonder if it's actually more to do with him being in tune with reality. He also can apparently quite literally feel when there are eyes on them.
We're given even more of all these things this season in some really interesting ways. Crowley literally tests the air to check if a miracle has happened - another thing that we don't see anyone else do despite Heaven literally assigning someone to Aziraphale to check for a specific miracle. This particular beat is also something we are shown twice this season. Both here and in 1941, when Furfur uses the miracle blocker on Aziraphale. Here Crowley tests his miracles and despite getting nothing of the sort when Aziraphale tries a miracle literally the beat before this, we are given both a visual and an auditory effect. It ripples out with a watery sound effect from Crowley's finger. It's like he's prodding at reality.
There's also several instances involving the recognition or lack thereof of angels and demons. Crowley feels that the demon army is arriving before it does. Neither side seems to be able to track Gabriel - one of the most powerful beings in existence - at all once he leaves Heaven. We also see countless angels fail to notice Crowley himself both as Bildad the Shuhite performing literal miracles right in front of them. And this happens again as he prances about Heaven after Muriel. Aziraphale can't tell Shax is a demon despite Crowley recognizing she's manifested behind him nearly as soon as he answers the phone. Aziraphale can't even recognize that he himself is still an angel at the end of the Job story.
He also. Quite literally. Brings someone back from the dead???? Like waves a hand casually on the street and reconstitutes Mr. Brown like he'd never been dead at all. Mr. Brown returns with no memory of what happened to him holding a newspaper that seems to have literal bite chunks coming out of it. It's not framed as a huge miracle or anything strenuous either - just a casual snap.
And that's not even getting into the parallels with Gabriel. First of all. We get the color purple. It's purple when Aziraphale and angel that would become Crowley start the engine of the universe and it's purple when they miracle to hide Gabriel. This color is associated with power and, historically in the language of this show, with Gabriel himself.
But that's not the only symbolism historically tied to Gabriel that has found its way to Crowley this season either. Most flashy of all is the lightning. This is how we see Gabriel arrive on earth at the end of season one and it is something Crowley apparently just Does when he gets too mad to contain himself.
This alone wouldn't catch my attention except. Except the way Crowley reacts to Gabriel's memory problems is... interesting to say the least. He's angry and understandably so. Part of this is him being mad and protective of Aziraphale - he says as much himself to Jim directly. And yet, weirdly, it's the kind of mad that reminded me of something else.
This is the mad he tends to gets at his plants. Do it properly. Think hard. You can do better than that. Grow better. It's the kind of angry that's steeped in projection. It's he kind of angry that is undercut with the occasional weird undercurrent of understanding. And so much of his dialogue with Jim around this is framed like he does actually understand. Jim says it hurts and he says he knows. Jim starts talking about it feeling like being an empty house that still remembers where the furniture is and Crowley immediately latches onto this and understands ah it's looking at where the furniture isn't.
And there's a few other conversations that center around this issue that I find really interesting from a projection perspective. There's the conversation that happens when Crowley goes to have an alcohol fueled chat with Jim. He says "You're Jim now. Got everything just the way you wanted?" This doesn't make a whole lot of sense for him to be addressing Gabriel with. As far as he knows all Gabriel would want was the end of the world.
And then there's the particular way he asks Jim to eliminate himself in this scene. Climb out the window. In other words, have a fall. Something he pretty immediately retracts and clearly feels guilty about no matter how much he hates Gabriel.
And then there's the first conversation he gets to have after learning about Gabriel. Crowley opens this conversation, thinking out loud. He's staring out, not talking to Az yet and the very first thing out of his mouth is, of all things: "He's going to be okay." A weird start for a statement about Gabriel in itself but then Crowley goes and adds what at it's core is his own trauma narrative to the end with, "We can just take him somewhere and leave him there."
Now the real fun bit: Crowley also has memory issues that are out very prominently on display even as far back as season 1.
He has inconsistent memories of his Fall. The answers he gives us to why he Fell change slightly - even when he's alone with himself. He doesn't seem to understand why exactly he Fell even though he clearly has some vague idea of the pieces in play. I always thought to some degree that this was just a trauma response, but season 2 drew even more attention to this and now that we know that memory alteration is how Heaven handles powerful angels I can't help but to wonder if there's more in play here.
Crowley can't remember Furfur - who he apparently literally fought next to during the war in Heaven. Crowley can't remember building a nebula with Saraqael. Crowley doesn't remember why they decided gravity was a good idea.
But he does remember bits and pieces here and there. He remembers doing some of the starmaking. He remembers how to access clearance locked files. He's missing pieces and also seems to have an understanding that Gabriel's memories ARE in there. Almost like he's done this work on himself before.
This narrative itself is also far more concerned with the angel Crowley was this time around. It teases his rank a few different times. Most notably is him having access the files only available to Dominions and above.
Now angel hierarchy is a bit of a messy area depending on what sources you're using but given Good Omens tendencies in the past we can assume that this leaves us five ranks. Dominion, Throne, Cherub, Seraph, and Archangel.
I might break down why I think Dominion, Throne, and Cherub feel kind of odd to me later if there's interest - now available here - in that but given the current length of this meta I just want to focus on that last one for now.
Crowley was an Archangel is far from a new theory and I've honestly historically had some fairly mixed feelings about it. But the parallels between Jim and Crowley lend some interesting connective tissue to a lot of those theories. And. There's also some interesting camera work and script writing tied to Crowley and that term outside of the scenes about Gabriel's memories specifically.
Firstly, during Crowley's chat with Beelzebub he says it's a big universe with plenty of places for an archangel to hide. Like Alpha Centauri perhaps?
Then we get Aziraphale and Crowley both presenting Hell and Heaven respectively the idea that it could have been them that did the archangel class miracle. Aziraphale gets scoffed at and yet. Shax is the one who says the miracle was archangel level and Crowley's response is "how do you know I didn't do it?"
Then later as she's prowling about the shop we get this interesting shot of Crowley in the doorframe and Jim in the background. Crowley grins and offers to let Shax look in and see if she can see any archangels in there while he's framed dead center and Jim himself is blurry in the back of the frame.
And most fascinating in my opinion is this shot that happens when Crowley and Muriel are accessing the classified files. Nearly every shot in this sequence is group shots or shots of Gabriel. The camera is focused in the plot and the way the archangels function as a group and on Gabriel himself. But we get one single shot in this entire sequence of Crowley by himself and it is immediately following Gabriel saying "I am the only first order archangel in the room - or, well, the universe."
And then in the end. We get the Metatron who goes out of his way to avoid using Crowley's name. He calls him demon (and insists correctly that Crowley would recognize him even when Michael doesn't) or refers to him as Aziraphale's friend. He only ever uses that name when trying to use him as a bribe for Aziraphale. That combined with the dark look he gives Crowley implies a familiarity that only the Metatron has with him.
So who is he then? There's plenty of old meta out there about why certain archangels fit or don't and I won't reiterate them here. They're interesting and definitely worth poking around at and very fun to read! Personally I'm not as interested in naming the someone he used to be as I am in examining the places that ghost of this angel has started to poke through the narrative so I'll end this here. It's spiralled into something far longer than I ever meant it to be anyway.
