also, I really don't know how to phrase this but to me the finale misses the joke, you know?
it forgets that the christian cosmology was the setting, told through corporate satire, not the villain. even God wasn’t an active tyrant; she was an absent CEO, leaving individual contributors like Aziraphale and Crowley to realize their job descriptions were irrelevant to the company's bottom line anyway, so they coasted by on minimum effort
that corporate satire was what allowed this to be a comedy, a space to tell a beautiful story about choices, humanity, and love.
the finale for some reason treats that background seriously, it turns that setting into an omnipotent, dystopian threat, which completely suffocates both the romance and the humor by replacing a petty system you can outwit, outsmart, outmanouver with a bleak, unearned nightmare where "the company controls your every breath, and you can never clock out"
I can't tell anyone what to like or not like, but as far as the season 3 "finale" being something Sir Terry would have written or endorsed -- a position I've actually seen expressed more than once -- I offer the last paragraphs of Good Omens, The Book.
If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and his dog and his friends. And a summer that never ends.
And if you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot... no, imagine a sneaker, laces trailing, kicking a pebble; imagine a stick, to poke at interesting things, and throw for a dog that may or may not decide to retrieve it; imagine a tuneless whistle, pounding some luckless popular song into insensibility; imagine a figure, half angel, half devil, all human...
Slouching hopefully towards Tadfield.
...for ever.
I submit humbly that that ending is not the voice of a writer (the interview in the illustrated tie-in edition specifies that "the kids mostly originated with Terry") who would ultimately be down with annihilation as the Only Solution To The Problems Of The World.
Bonus reminder: I'm betting this passage is Terry's ("vanload of hippies on a blotterful of Owsley's Old Original" has that ring to it). I ask you, does it describe a character who would only a few years later in story time -- after sixty centuries of ups and downs -- (1) wallow indefinitely in a drunken sulk, and then (2) tell God to finish erasing the world, including himself and his best friend, and start over?
Because, underneath it all, Crowley was an optimist. If there was one rock-hard certainty that had sustained him through the bad times -- he thought briefly of the fourteenth century -- then it was utter surety that he would come out on top; that the universe would look after him.
Okay, so Hell was down on him. So the world was ending. So the Cold War was over and the Great War was starting for real. So the odds against him were higher than a vanload of hippies on a blotterful of Owsley's Old Original. There was still a chance.
Playing god
Trying out a bit more realistic proportions and shading! I love the snowglobe concept and wanted to do a bit more character study for Crowley
Little reminder to be kind to each other and to NOT HARASS the cast or crew , even if you absolutely hated the finale, there is no reason to be rude, disrespectful or even threatening to ANYBODY >>>> To quote Crowley “Be good, proper good” anything else “IT’S NOT ON”
Of Snowglobes & Dual-Realities (Did we get TWO canon endings* to choose from?)
*The "Elsewhere" that could heal a divided fandom
Once again, the Good Omens fandom was given a divisive season ending, this one final. But this time, I think we've been shown an actual canon option out of this chaos, slipped in quietly for us. NOT by the authors in the script. It's in the snow globe and the end credit scenes.
I've been wondering about the final moments of this garden scene. It doesn't actually look very "real life" to me... (Yep. I'm back to analyzing again!)
Asa and Anthony were meant to be in "the real world" -- this actual world. But when the camara pulls back from their stargazing, we see an absurd and crowded display of (symbolic?) objects, including a snowglobe (right foreground). It's not a realistic garden scene. I love what the collection seems to represent, but it looks like a shadow box, or a book nook scene, or a room in a dollhouse, crafted with miniatures.
The objects are a little out of proportion with each other, just enough to look strange. (I brightened both light and color for visibility.) They make Asa and Anthony's matching chairs look unnaturally tiny. The effect is surreal. Why make it surreal, when it was emphasized that THIS is the "real world"? Because someone is telling us - maybe it's NOT.
The snow globe represents an "Elsewhere", originating from the 1988 finale for the television show St. Elsewhere. All 6 seasons turned out to be a child's imagination, looking at a snow globe. (Sir Terry Pratchett used the term as a location in Discworld, but I leave that analysis to the experts!) I've seen speculations about the GO snow globe, some good, some worried, some creating a fix-it alternative ending with Aziraphale and Crowley inside the snow globe bookshop completing their own Book of Life.
But I have another idea... And it was given in the ending itself.
What if the snow globe was placed there to indicate that THIS particular world version -- the oh-so-different SoHo and world erasure, etc., of GO3 -- might actually be the "Elsewhere"? That this entire GO3 World and new universe is in its own snow globe. Meanwhile, the universe we see in the end credits, events and places and realities from S1 & S2, is still out there alive and well and REAL.
Remember, everything erased from the Book of Life is gone forever, as if it NEVER EXISTED AT ALL. So then, why does Gabriel's statue still exist in the Edinburgh churchyard, with crosses as religious symbols when there was never a Crucified Jesus-as-Savior? Plus, that "planet" in the upper right is the S2 credits scene with elevators going up and down from Heaven to Earth! (Hell and it's spiders exist, too, on the 1st "planet"!)
We race through the universe that's beyond Asa & Anthony's garden, with more impossible moments recalling the adventures of our own Aziraphale and Crowley, until finally It ends, as it began, in a Garden.
The Garden of Eden, in fact. The one from a universe that supposedly NEVER EXISTED, yet somehow still exists, with OUR Ineffables dining and toasting To the World!
Two endings. One in Asa & Anthony's garden, one with Our Ineffables at their Ritz table in Eden. Which means we actually have a choose-your-own-ending situation here...
Maybe this was part of the plan, a direct intention of the total storytelling. (Can you hear the doubt in my voice?) Or maybe someone added it there to give us another option. A choice, rather than a conflict. We don't need to be a split fandom, as if we're on opposite sides.
I believe we can heal. We're on the same side...
I think the dual-realities we're being shown can both be valid. If you loved the ending told in the story itself, with Asa and Anthony, please bear with me a moment as I (gently and calmly) explain why I think the second ending also exists.
The GO3 scriptwriting team, NG & company, went for a dark ending of a universe erased, with Crowley and Aziraphale themselves gone. But many experts on Sir Terry insist that it's not the ending he would have written. After all, in the Good Omens novel, Sir Terry made certain that no one stayed dead. The air base soldier, the delivery man, all are shown to return, alive and well. And everyone else (even Warlock and the forgotten 3rd baby, Greasy Johnson) gets some sort of happy ending that gives them more control of their life.
We learned a few things in this post (shared by @depraveddame, with a reblogged essay about Sir Terry's philosophies by @turquoisedata). Sir Terry Pratchett is listed in the GO3 credits as co-creating the original characters, but not for contributing to the GO3 story itself -- even though we were repeatedly told it was his idea. Someone posted that was odd, and Rob Wilkins gave that post a like. (If you check out that post, TW for language and anti-go3)
I think we were given Two Endings. A choice. (I don't credit the screenwriters with this!). I think the fix-it got squeezed in there for us, straight from Good Omens HQ, courtesy of Rob Wilkins and Peter Anderson Studios.
We get to choose our own destiny, without guilt or angst.
The script tells us that the Good Omens Universe was erased, and the world of Asa & Anthony remains. The snow globe and end credits imagery tell us that Our World -- the world of Aziraphale & Crowley, of hope and choice and magic and love-overcoming-trauma and of not-giving-up and of an Ineffable Bond -- still exists.
Maybe you'll think I'm trying too hard to resolve this. Maybe you've already decided. But i hope you'll consider the possibility.
Does the story end with love and happiness for Asa and Anthony? Are the end credits racing through space and time to show us forms of Asa and Anthony reborn throughout the multiverse, always finding each other again and again? Or is it showing us that Crowley and Aziraphale and everything they loved and endured was not dissolved into non-existance, that GO3 was an Elsewhere and that Our Ineffables and their peopled world, Our World, is still there, with its history and miracles and meaning and hope?
Two choices. One fandom. Everyone united in love for Our Ineffables.
To Our World! 🥂✨
*****
I wrote another alternative -- both ideas formed at the same time. This one helps justify the other. It's written in story form instead of my usual analysis format. It's called Crowley's Nightmare, on my AO3 and also here as a Tumblr post.
To everyone saying "they don't need to kiss to prove they're in love"
Do you understand the implications, especially in today's political climate, of a show that revolves heavily around a queer/queer-coded couple where the only onscreen kiss between said couple is their breakup? Especially one that explores themes of sin, forbidden love, religion, dogma, and high control groups? One where the character associated with hell is the one forcing the kiss and the character associated with Christian heaven (even if heaven in this case is bad) is the one who is not receptive to that affection? A show where the heaven associated character tells the one who kissed him "I forgive you"? One where the main characters have had to hide their relationship for fear of their lives in a storyline that is heavily analogous to the persecution of queer people? Where even in a scene that showed explicitly they were married, the show still would not deign to display physical intimacy between two men? Y'know, some of the most highly stigmatized kind of affection there is?
If they had never kissed at all, I wouldn't mind. But by kissing in season 2 when they broke up, they showed that they were willing to cross that line. They stopped being ambiguous in that moment. They're whole "we're not humans and don't show love like humans" went out the window when the show decided they would in fact engage in an overtly queer act. But the only time there is unambiguous queer affection is when it's used to separate the characters.
If they had never had a full on sex scene between two hetero characters who had just met in season 1, I wouldn't mind. But the show was more comfortable with displaying physical intimacy between a man and a woman that we never saw after season 1 than they were between the two main characters of the show.
If they hadn't had an ending that literally showed their wedding rings, showing that they clearly can and will display a queer couple and also conform to heteronormative standards by having them married at all, then I wouldn't mind. But they went as far as having the characters who famously had a relationship that was open to interpretation and put them in the husband/romantic partner box, but wouldn't dare go as far as physical intimacy?
I know that many people who are not amanormative or allonormative are frustrated that a relationship that was previously ambiguous/up for interpretation was boxed into a romantic label. But now that they have, it says something that they chose to display queer relationships, and they chose to display physical affection, but not both at the same time. It says something even if they didn't intend to. It's just too awfully convenient that the couples who are always subjected to "well you don't need to be physical to be in love" are the queer couples. In a political climate that promotes homophobia and violence against our community, increasingly sex negative and pro-censorship legislation regarding online spaces, and legislation that aims to categorize participating in anything remotely queer in public as a sex crime, I think anyone who looks at a story of romantic love between two masculine presenting people and says it's not necessary to have overt physical acts of affection has lost the plot.
It's a cop out, plain and simple. And queer fans deserved better.
Miller and Hardy are so comforting to me that even though the Broadchurch series is very harrowing and has very heavy topics, I keep coming back to it because I get two see two imperfect humans fight as hard as they can for the innocent and for justice and aiurghehwbshhh I love that show so much miller and Hardy my guardian angelsss
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