I just finished the finale, and came on here to read everyone's thoughts, and tbh I'm really dissapointed.
Not at the ending. At the fandom.
For so horribly misunderstanding and flandarizing both the ending and the show as a whole. I see that people seem to have a couple reasons why they are upset at the ending, and I do too, but I think pretty much everyone that is upset at Aziraphale and Crowley not kissing, or not getting a happy ending as "them" or feeling like the end of the show made everything leading up to it pointless really fundamentally just, didn't get the point.
Good Omens was never a love story between Aziraphale and Crowley, it was a love story between them and humanity. Yes, their connection is central to the story, but it's all because humanity brought them together, their mutual love of it is the main through line of the show. In fact, embracing humanity over divinity was literally the main theme of the first season's ending with Adam rejecting being the antichrist to live a human life. Crowley in the first scene is listening to Queen and driving his Bentley, human pleasures. Aziraphale lives in a bookshop and is thoroughly delighted by his neighbors. THEIR WHOLE THING IS DINING AT THE RITZ. So for people to not understand that of course the main ending would be them choosing to save humanity, to make the lives of humans worth something, is baffling to me. That was always gonna be the ending. I feel like the ending of destroying the system of heaven and hell was always, inevitably where the show was gonna be going narratively, especially after they had showed that the only deities really happy, Gabriel and B, literally had to leave to achieve that, then they had Crowley and Aziraphale actively reject that idea. So yeah, them sacrificing the system, as well as themselves, for their true love: humanity, was the perfect logical ending for the show. Same with showing them as humans falling in love, not only does it fulfill the other thing wanted all along: to be human enjoying the wonders of humanity, but it gives the audience emotional closure of them as a couple. You just know that if they really did just die, people would be so upset, but I'll talk about that next
That being said, I'm also pretty sick of people being like "I hate the everyone dies trope" and acting like it ruined the show/season. Guys, this season was about literal armageddon and you cannot be upset when armageddon basically happened with everyone killed and everything destroyed. Furthermore, I've seen some people upset that Aziraphale and Crowley meeting as humans at the end seemed hollow and meaningless because they didn't have all the experiences and background that made them, them, and that also saddens me because: yes, it wasn't them, that was once again the fucking point. They literally gave themselves up, that's literally what God made them promise they understood, "do you understand you will be destroyed?" or smth along those lines. Them (as well as everyone else) being reincarnated is literally just a bit of sweetness to cushion the blow, as well as to help them avoid the whole "killing the gays" thing- which if they really did just die, everyone would be giving them so much more shit than they already are, because people are unreasonable and need everything to have a happy ending. God made it so their souls would find each other in the new universe they sacrificed themselves to create: that's cute, not fucking hollow.
ALSO, I am actually really pissed about people calling this an example of the "killing the gays" trope, because it just simply wasn't, and I hate to say it, but it's kinda homophobic, or at least really tone deaf. That's because their deaths had weight and importance, and was more about them as the main characters- the angel and the demon who understood humanity and would give up everything to save it, who had a complex love and understanding of what was happening and why they were doing it. Furthermore, they were not token queer characters, they were main characters who happened to have a romantic connection that was queer. The show was filled with queer and non-queer relationships, all ended happy (well, until everyone died). So reducing Aziraphale and Crowley's deaths to just being a common trope is so fucking ignorant, like you only saw them as they related to each other, as a couple. You literally could not see the narrative, thematic, or individual aspects to the decision.
It all seems to go back to the idea that while them being a couple was important, yes, it was not the crux of the show or of the decision, and I've been seeing a lot of people misunderstand this. It reminds me a lot of Stranger Things Season 5, when the Byler crowd was upset that Will's coming out arc did not end with him in a relationship with Mike, and they didn't realize how that was actually really kinda fucked up to think that a queer arc needed to end in a happy shipped couple, especially when not only was Mike not liking him back a huge narrative thread (LIKE A+C'S LOVE FOR HUMANITY) but also, that Mike was HIS SISTER'S BF, AND THAT WOULD'VE BEEN REALLY FUCKED UP. Not to get too deep into it, but it's this problematic trend I see in fandom spaces where it seems like a queer person is really only tied to their main ship/relationship, and people's obsession with that can lead to them missing other reasons for why things happened narratively and thematically. The concept the queer arcs and stories can only end with them in a happy relationship or else it's wasted or tokenism is super fucked up and super prevalent. I'm just really upset because it's kinda exactly what I see happening in the Good Omens fandom rn.
Look, was the ending perfect? No. Personally I had some issues with the pacing, as well as some of the final story beats when they were in the bookshop and some other little details that mostly result in: they really needed a full season for this story. And maybe I'll make a post about all of that, but I mostly wanted to say that I think a lot of the criticism it's getting right now isn't really fair, and misses the point of the show from a writers perspective. Good Omens was never about Aziraphale and Crowley getting together, and to say the ending sucked because it didn't happen in the way you wanted or you literally just couldn't understand that it wouldn't have made a good story that way (it would've been glorified fanfic, I just know it), is so fucking shallow.
Also, it made sense that they didn't kiss again and that their ending was just showing wedding rings: S2's kiss was on the lips because it was full of passion and meant to represent the big emotions/feelings of the moment in a grand gesture, the kiss from A's fingers to C's lips with a smile was to show that they are settled and comfortable in their love and relationship- it's meant to be a simple gesture to represent said love, and the wedding rings at the end aren't a cop out of heteronormativity -they're meant to be a symbol of their love in human form, I mean, they're literally human trinkets/inventions that mean a lifelong commitment, they represent their love in a new, non-diety form.
