The destruction of the entire universe and every soul in it is a truly depressing ending. Just because God replaced it with another universe that looked similar doesn't change anything - this is Job and his children all over again. Job doesn't want new children, and neither do I.
Note: I do not wish to convince anyone of my opinion or be convinced of theirs, I just want to write down how I feel about the finale. Also, I've heard that the creators are getting some hate messages, omg? Please if you have a slightest inclination to do that or to be mean to someone because you disagree with them then log off the internet and go for a walk... try to find a rainbow, feed peas to a duck ❤.
Simply put... I hated the finale. During while some things felt quite rushed I was thinking that it's because of the 6 episodes to 90 minutes shortening and even if it won't be perfect it will still be worth it because of the ending. And then came the scene in the bookshop with God and Satan and our ineffables after which they... died. And then we saw some two human clones who looked like them ending up together.
...
Crying, I couldn't have believed my eyes. The finale killed Aziraphale and Crowley and all the characters we came to know and love and replaced them with some random people who looked like them and we are supposed to care about?
Have I really just watch Soho struggle, learn that Mutt have died, Nina and Maggie had to leave, and people there were barely hanging on to be given a bit of hope by Jesus so they would be erased and this wouldn't matter at all?
I can't even start to begin to describe how much this is not Good Omens that I love. My words fail me and I am left stuttering and waving my hands erratically.
Not starting again but fix what we have has been an important point of Good Omens. Same as Job and his wife don't want some new children but the old ones. But somehow replacing the Earth is the ideal ending now?
The finale is trying to convince us that it's better because now there won't be any Hell and Heaven with their influences, but the big part of Good Omens was always that the humans do have their free will unlike most angels and demons - and all the big events on Earth like World Wars or Spanish Inquisition are created by humans, no matter how many coins Crowley glues on the pavement. If this was truly a problem then even a God's edict that from now no direct influencing people would do (not that we have that much reason to believe that there was that much influencing going on in the first place - most demons and angels kept to their dominions and Aziraphale and Crowley had The Arrangement), Aziraphale and Crowley could have been left on the Earth to make sure no such things was happening. But no, let's throw this all out, kill everyone and start over with real dinosaurs this time because it will surely be better... or will it? The humanity without Hell and Heaven seems the same to me in the ending. Hmm.
The whole scene with the God and Satan (what happens to him? who knows) where God calls Aziraphale lazy felt very very weird.
My brain is completely baffled why I should care about some random two men that look like Aziraphale and Crowley when I just saw my ineffables die. It's not them. It's like someone killed me and cloned me. I would not be very happy about it. And I know that some people like to say it is at least an imprint of them because they created the universe and they find each other in every universe over and over but nothing like is stated there, it is just wishful thinking of a broken heart imho. Aziraphale and Crowley are dead after Aziraphale spend years trying to make Heaven better and Crowley spent years in depression...
...which is another thing of itself:
Crowley is an optimist. (so seeing him in the finale makes me want to put the gif of from The Godfather: "look how they massacred my boy" here :D)
I hate this trend where you have an uplifting funny movie/season/book/something and you see that it is successful and people love it because it gives them comfort and hope and you go "oh but what if we make it drama where suddenly our characters full of hope and energy are depressed and see dying as the only option because surely that is what the fans of the original material appreciate". Fuck that.
I can't help it but the finale doesn't feel like Pratchett. At all. Perhaps there is a reason for that:
I have decided that I will consider only the book and S1 the canon in my head (perhaps with occasional visits from Bildad, Muriel or Furfur ;)). But I simply can't take this ending into my heart.
I have been waiting for the Finale to find out if it rekindles my passion for Good Omens, which sort of died away after the info about NG came out. I'm afraid it hasn't and I don't plan to update this blog much more anymore, perhaps sometimes if I see something that I want to share but I am not sure how much. Thank you for following me all these years, it's been a blast ❤.
(I still love Good Omens. I am going to The Ineffable Con 7 and I will look forward to meeting you there or at another opportunity. ❤❤❤)
I just think that the versions with all the trauma, suffering and history deserved a happy ending. I don’t think the take away should be that the only way to get a happy ending is for those things to have never happened to you.
Hungry for Good Omens 3 crumbs of information? Let’s see what I’ve found and speculate a bit about cast members, filming locations, and… trees! As always, please tag accordingly, share only with the fans consenting to know potential spoilers, and get yourself something to drink since it’s going to be a longer read.
News flash: both Ned Dennehy (well-known to Good Omens fans as Hastur) and Sean Pertwee (recently revealed to star in the Finale as Brian Cameron) admitted to have been working on location in Tenerife during the film’s production time slot (January and early February, respectively). In Dennehy’s case, even providing a rather intimately close look at his character.
The location alone isn’t particularly surprising, as the Canary Islands and Tenerife in particular are currently experiencing an influx of international productions, including several TV shows by global streamers, making use of the favourable weather and prices. But Dennehy’s post, additionally liked by a Good Omens crew member, seems somewhat suggestive.
In the Instagram story above, Sean Pertwee called 14 January 2025 his last day on the shoot in Tenerife and subsequently traveled to London and Edinburgh, from where he shared another video three weeks later.
Now, technically the Tenerife film set could be a part of Pertwee’s NCIS: Tony & Ziva job he started last autumn. However, that would imply that he plays a greater role in the upcoming production than the currently available promotional materials imply, and the location stamp in the bottom right corner, Drago Milenario, is too deliciously Good Omens coded to overlook it.
It isn’t even a place, really, but a living organism. A plant. A tree.
Meet Drago Milenario, also know as El Drago, a natural monument and symbol of Tenerife. The oldest and largest living specimen of the endemic Dracaena draco (dragon tree), it is said to be a thousand years old and stand at 18 metres high with a 20-metre perimeter. “Great big bugger,” as Aziraphale would say.
There has been much debate over the age of the tree, and some even say that it may be over 5000 years old; more recent estimates seem more conservative and suggest that El Drago is no more than 800 to 1000 years old. It is difficult to say unambiguously, because the traditional method of counting rings is not applicable in this case — dracaena has no rings.
Its home, the Millennial Dragon Tree Park, or Parque del Drago, in Icod de los Vinos, is a sacred place and a burial zone of Tenerife’s original inhabitants, the Guanches. Members of the Guanche people venerated El Drago as a divine tree; a symbol of wisdom and fertility, believed to have magical powers, granting longevity and warding off evil spirits. Its blood-red oil or sap is called dragon's blood and historically used to treat wounds and embalm corpses. According to local legends, that’s because slain dragons don’t actually die, but rather turn into dragon trees like this one.
The dragon part of the story sounds objectively cool, but if we overlook it for a second, we might notice why the connection to Good Omens is so strong here. When asked about trees in the show’s context, one’s first point of reference is quite naturally the Garden of Eden scene and the shot above featuring the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The thing is, it wasn’t the only one.
According to the Bible, the very reason why Aziraphale was even stationed in Eden (possibly with a few other armed angels) was to protect the Garden from the newly exiled humans. More specifically, his “apple duty” meant that he was supposed to guard a very particular and yet unseen tree:
“The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of lifeand eat, and live forever.’ So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the Tree of Life.” (Genesis 3:21-24)
In the apocryphal Apocalypse of Moses, the tree of life is also called the Tree of Mercy. Adam, the first human, famously sent his son Seth and wife Eve back to the gates of the Garden to beg God and His angels for some oil of the Tree of Life to save him from his deathbed by granting either full immortality or longer lifespan. They were obviously denied, but in another part of the Bible — the Book of Revelation, on which most of the official Good Omens plot is based, Jesus announces the details of His Second Coming, including who and when will get the right to enjoy this forbidden fruit:
“Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to reward each one as his work deserves. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life, and may enter the city by the gates. (Revelation 22:12-14)
The Catholic Church in particular believes that the Tree of Life mentioned above is the Eucharist and often combines the image of the Tree with the Cross of Christ, both literally and figuratively (see above: The Tree of Life printed by John Hagerty, 1791) granting the immortal life to His Chosen Ones:
And he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him; they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illuminate them; and they will reign forever and ever. (Revelation 1-5)
In his Roll Play BAFTA interview published on 10 February 2025, while talking about his work for the Good Omens Finale, David Tennant himself has specifically referred to the possibility of Aziraphale and Crowley spending eternity together. But where? Well.
The visual symbolism of an apple tree seems so important for the Good Omens 3 plot that it’s even represented on the exclusive mug design shared on 30 April by one of everyone’s favourite production crew spouses, Carla Scott Fullerton (fullercoaching on Instagram):
For those who missed the original discussion, the reverse side of the complimentary mug gifted to Good Omens 3 crew members and depicted above contains a photo of slate number 100, scene 59 of the production with a quote “We’ve come to a decision…”. A typical feature film of this length consists of around 60 scenes, so it’s definitely the ending or one of the scenes directly preceding it.
Which means that the story ends, as it began, in a garden. And with a very specific apple tree, adorned with initials AZ and CR in two little hearts as hinted by the drawing in the background.
There’s a specific crew member though — one of the firsts to be confirmed for the upcoming production, actually — that has shared a Good Omens themed work with an apple tree a whole year earlier.
Here you can see Michael Ralph’s (i.e., Good Omens production designer’s) concept art depicting Neil Gaiman’s version of heaven on earth – “Heaven is a Library” – at LA music venue, The Wiltern, for The Art of Elysium’s Heaven 2024 charity gala. It’s got Va Va Voom yellow walls, red carpet, spiral stairs, a centrally located oculus, and lots of plants with an apple tree with a swing in the middle. In case this image wasn’t suggestive enough, it’s worth to focus on the twin display tables with Cupid statues on top, direct copies of the one from A. Z. Fell and Co. bookshop in Soho.
It’s not even subtle — and wasn’t meant to be, considering how Event Eleven, the creative agency behind the gala, typically organises high budget premiere events and promotional campaigns for Amazon Prime TV shows, and to this day it’s the closest we’ve got to a Good Omens 3 public celebration.
While this one was for charity and officially not affiliated with the studio, it took place only three weeks after the official announcement of Good Omens 3 and involved not only this curious simulacrum of Aziraphale’s bookshop as a setting, but also Jon Hamm on stage as the guest of honour, referencing the co-leads of the TV series and reciting an excerpt from the 1990 novel in an approximation of their characters’ voices, and the Ukrainian artist Katya Zvereva was commissioned to make an installation for the gala called literally “Tree of Life” (above).
If you remember my bookshop meta, you will probably find the official explanation of the event’s theme particularly interesting:
“Heaven is two things that are, perhaps, the same thing. Heaven is both a library, the place where we go for knowledge, wisdom, advice and for stories, and heaven is also a refuge, somewhere that we can go, whoever we are, for safety and protection. Heaven contains librarians and refugees, shelters the helpless, and gives them — us — somewhere quiet to sit and read or listen.”
Not incidentally, the only iteration of the Tree of Life in the actual show so far has been built into the layout of Aziraphale’s bookshop (left). Its Kabbalah depiction (right) is a representation of the entirety of creation, composed of ten spheres — referred to as the Sephiroth/Sefirot as a whole — each denoting a universal quality, such as wisdom or beauty. To quote The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order by Israel Regardie:
This altar diagram shows the Ten Sephiroth with all the connecting Paths numbered and lettered, and the Serpent winding over each Path. Around each Sephirah are written the Names of the Deity, Archangel and Angelic Host attributed to it. The Twenty Two Paths are bound together by the Serpent of Wisdom. It unites the Paths but does not touch any of the Sephiroth, which are linked by the Flaming Sword. The Flaming Sword is formed by the natural order of the Tree of Life. It resembles a flash of Lightning. Together the Sephiroth and the Twenty Two Paths form the 32 Paths of the Sepher Yetzirah or Book of Formation. The Two pillars on either side of the Altar represent:
1. Active: The White Pillar on the South Side. Male. Adam. Pillar of Light and Fire. Right Kerub. Metatron.
2. Passive: The Black Pillar on the North Side. Female. Eve. Pillar of Cloud. Left Kerub. Sandalphon.
Just like last year, i'm doing a holiday colouring contest!
The coloring page is available as a free download on my Patreon. Take some time over the holidays to color it however you like. You can print it or use the transparent version to color it digitally! The contest closes on January 14th.
How it works:
Download the coloring page for free on Patreon
Color it before January 14th
Post it with #vavoomcoloringpage2025 and tag me, or send it to me via DM!
Prizes:
There will be 2 Winners, one chosen by me and one randomly drawn.
All winners receive my colouring book and the first place gets a small commission from me!
This is all about enjoying the process and having fun. All skill levels are welcome, and I can’t wait to see what you create! And of course, I'll reblog all the entries!