The more I think about that ending, the more reasons it bugs me.
The newest one popped into my head as I was waking up, this morning.
The running theme of GO has always been to embrace who you are (Aziraphale's embracing of his love of creature comforts, and of a certain demon... Crowley's constant assertions that he's a demon who has no use for Hell, but still embraces minor acts of mischief... Adam's determination to stay in Tadfield, even when offered the entire world to rule... Maggie's love of a record shop that's essentially failing... And I could go on, but you get the point). But in the end, in that pub scene, what GO ended up saying, was "you can only get a happy ending if you become someone you're not." NONE of those people were actually the selves they'd been the whole series. Not one of them. Instead of finding happiness and peace as themselves, they had to become completely new people, to be happy??
I think that's why so many of us were so instantly bothered by it. The GO fandom has always been largely made up of queer and/or misfit people. Those society has deemed mostly "outside" the norm, at various points. GO told us we were accepted and lovable just as we are. It gave us the safety to explore who we actually were, through the lense of characters who were, themselves, unusual or outsiders. And then, in the end, it ripped away everything that provided safety and community for us, and said "you can only be happy if you conform to the status quo."
Excuse the fuck out of me?? Not just no, but HELL, no.
This is yet one more reason for me to ignore the existence of S3.
