Aziraphale's Nightmare Clue:
S2 & S3 are obsessed with sleep... and what little sleep there was in the reality of S1? Foreshadowed the dream of S2/S3.
For an explanation of how the last shot of S3 confirms that S2 & S3 (minus flashbacks) were Aziraphale having a nightmare and why that would be the story, you can check out either this post or this post.
I'm doing different posts showing all the Clues we overlooked as I find them. This one's about sleep across all three seasons-- about how S1 foreshadowed the dream, while S2 & S3's use of sleep in the story was designed to emphasize that it was a dream. Plus, how all of the details of Adam's cameo show us this is Aziraphale's nightmare and that he'll soon wake up...
One of the ways a fictional story can convey to its reader/audience that what is happening is a dream is to mention sleep or anything related to it more than might be considered normal for the story. In S2 & S3 of Good Omens? Everyone's constantly talking about it. S2 & S3 cannot stop talking about sleep... and S1's few sleep-related scenes, in the season set in reality? They foreshadowed the dream to come.
In S2, Nina jokes with Maggie about how they're getting older and now "all in bed by ten" and then, later, tells the villain that she hasn't slept in 30 hours. Maggie has a whole scene about how she can't have afternoon coffee or she'll be "awake all night" and gets offered decaf tea by Nina. Later in the season, she tells Nina she's going to sleep behind the counter in her shop... which is then exactly what she's doing in the very last shot of her.
Maggie is a major supporting character in S2 whose actions kicked off the entire plot and the last time we ever see her? She's asleep. Meanwhile...
Crowley is seen semi-napping in his car in S2, as well as telling Aziraphale that he was awake all night when Aziraphale was in Edinburgh. After the halo, Shax was out cold on Crowley's couch and, yeah, that was unconsciousness or she was dead or... tbh I'm not sure what she was beyond "dormant" lol... but mah point is that she was not awake. Even Beelzebub seems to have been dozing in their chair before being interrupted in one of their scenes.
In S3? Despite its fast pace, mentions of sleep are surprisingly common. Crowley sleeping in the alley is a big part of the plot... One that gets even more interesting, too, once you know he can get into the bookshop and just isn't sleeping there, presumably because he can't sleep in their bed without Aziraphale, which was also the implication in the scene where he was up all night while Aziraphale was away in S2. The story spends time getting us to consider more sleep here by making a big part of the plot be where Crowley is sleeping.
Crowley even gets his plant a place to sleep for the evening in S3 😂 bartering a chip of prior winnings from the casino run by One Of The Many Faces of Lucifer, Brian Cameron, to Mrs. Sandwich... who has a room to rent, if anyone's interested, according to this sign she posts that is yet another reminder of sleep...
Later, Joshing Jesus and Harry the Fish talk about-- try not to be surprised here lol-- the topic of finding the lady... but where, this time? In a bedroom, of course!... the details of which suggest it is actually Crowley and Aziraphale's bedroom in the bookshop. (Which also has a very noticeable Goblin teasmade alarm clock, adding to the sleep element.) Because if Aziraphale is dreaming and there's all this stuff about sleep, it wouldn't be too surprising if he dreamt of his own bedroom in the middle there somewhere, right? But, really...
...can we just mention that I just listed all that sleep and I haven't even yet brought up the character for whom Nap Time was a plot in S2? 😂
Jim, love, may we talk about your sleep schedule, which was an entire storyline in S2? I'll get you a hot chocolate, would you like that?
Ok, thank you, favorite 💕*stirs in marshmallows* Here you go, try these in it, you'll love them. No, they're basically little balls of sugar. I know, it's sugar *in* the sugar. I agree, it's very neato. Ok, sit over here for a tick, I'm trying to talk to the people about how you're a dream, there's a good archangel... *turns back to all of you* 😂 Right, so...
Gabriel is the major supporting character in S2 (and overall) and he spends a solid half of S2 asleep. Do we think much of it in the moment? Not really tbh, because it sure seems like that dude must be totally zonked, right? Six thousand years of meetings with The Metatron and Sandalphon and jogging without water breaks? Not only was it impressive that he only had about four different mental health disorders, it seemed likely that, having finally been able to escape for awhile? He'd just be exhausted.
It's *healthy* for him to be sleeping this much in S2, considering what's going on with him, so we ignore that, plot-wise, it's a weird thing to do quite this much with a character as key to everything as he is. It goes along with a lot of the themes of the story and we're just liking this for him so we ignore "Jim is in his room" being said 350 times because yay, good for you, Jim!
Naps and hot chocolate and safety are what we want for the character so we fail to see the lady. We ignore how often we're told or shown something related to Jim and his sleep as being indicative of non-reality-- like Aziraphale telling him to go have a rest after his panic attack; Crowley reporting he heard snoring coming from Jim's bedroom, etc. which, when taken as a whole with how much talk of Jim sleeping there is, in general? starts to feel off-- in favor of just being excited that Gabriel is getting a break...
...and we also ignore how often he sits in Aziraphale's chair in S1, which is something you let a character do to echo how that character is really showing aspects of the character whose chair it is. Gabriel is the only character besides Crowley to sit in that chair in the dream. He's in it a lot (more than Crowley is) and he spends most of the season asleep... a season where he also wore Aziraphale's clothes, including his pajamas...
...and had religious experiences sipping scrumptious hot cocoa... something referenced in the end of S3's "cocoa delivery" just before Aziraphale woke up. Referenced with Jim's blanket on the chair that a pajamas-clad Aziraphale then sat in himself... drawing a direct, visual connection between Aziraphale and all the sleepy, hot-chocolate-drinking Jim in S2.
The blanket we think of as Jim's blanket now was originally Aziraphale's in the dream (and likely is in reality, too.) The dream saw Aziraphale wrap in his own blanket a guy who then spent the season napping and representing that this was Aziraphale's dream.
The pattern of the blanket resurfaced in the scene of Jim having just woken up, where it's also the lining of the bathrobe he had on-- so, more sleep... It then disappears until it turns up on Asa/Aziraphale's chair in the cocoa delivery scene, moments before he wakes up, where Asa/Aziraphale sits on the blanket, bringing it full circle from 2.01.
It's back to being his blanket in the end, as the dream it helped to represent and emphasize begins to come to an end. The blanket and the cocoa in the "cocoa delivery" scene are there intentionally to remind us of Jim... which is to say, of sleep.
That is not really Gabriel having a hot chocolate in S2. I mean, in the plot of the dream it is, but... it's really more like that is Aziraphale's own love of hot chocolate showing up in this dream as representing what he wants to make happen with Gabriel. (And Aziraphale is probably fasting again in reality like he does when gets depressed and just wants one.)
This entire above scene in S2 showing Jim in his jim-jams, having just woken up from a good night's rest? That's actually just where the dream Clues *start* in that scene, as there's a *lot* more, which is a whole, other post on its own. It ties into the "people standing in Times Square can't see America" from S1 about how you can't see the big picture when you're in the middle so hold that thought but, yeah...
...as the most major supporting character? What's going on with Gabriel is the key to it all and that guy? Spent the whole season taking a nap lol. It underscores the idea that Aziraphale is dreaming. Also of note here, of course? Is that Professor Anthony is also in his pajamas in the Jim-connected cocoa delivery scene...
Crowley being the other person who gave Jim a hot chocolate, in a scene that took place in Jim's bedroom-- an entirely new set in S2 that, once again, emphasized sleep, with Jim on the bed in it for most of the scene. And speaking of that bed? That was a Clue, too...
Gabriel spent the whole week in S2 sleeping in a bed he didn't actually really *fit* in. Somehow, Jim was having great nights of sleep in a bed we saw Gabriel try to lie back on and completely dwarf lol. We handwave it away a bit-- he didn't even have a chair in Heaven! this bed is probably paradise by comparison!-- without considering that maybe the Goldilocks bed is the point. It's to show that while Jim is sleeping so much in S2? The real answer is that he's not the one doing the sleeping. He's not the one actually in bed in reality-- he's a stand-in for Aziraphale, who owns this bed because he owns this bookshop.
The final scene of S3 before Aziraphale wakes up is Asa/Aziraphale and Professor Anthony together in their pajamas because Aziraphale is seconds away from waking up in reality. He still doesn't know he's dreaming but, on some level, as he starts to wake up, as his mind is heading towards consciousness again? What could we reasonably assume might be going on, back in reality?
Well, if he's having a nightmare, he's asleep in his bed, yes? In reality, he's likely currently in his pajamas, and there's a pajama-clad Crowley beside him, which the dream echoes with Asa and Professor Anthony-- only it's going to be the Crowley that Aziraphale actually wants to be there when he wakes up.
S3 then ends with these versions of Crowley and Aziraphale in their pajamas and a shot that is the eye of Aziraphale starting to wake up, connecting it all visually with the blanket and the hot chocolate to the guy who spent the first part of the dream asleep.
At this point, the only thing that could have emphasized that S2/S3 is a dream more would have been if S1's reality had one of its very, very, very few sleep-related scenes be about an Aziraphale-paralleling major supporting character asleep and having a dream that he then turned into reality...
...and maybe in a kind of spooky way that would contrast nicely with how Aziraphale is going to consciously birth good parts of the dream into reality once he wakes and his prophetic bad dream leads to a happy ending... oh, wait... it did have exactly that 😉... and who also cameoed near the end of Aziraphale's dream? Adam.
The kid whose plot about dreaming things and then making them reality in S1? He then shows up in Aziraphale's nightmare. Not only that but look at what he's wearing...
Actually, first, let me mention the only other two characters outside of those in the pub who are shown to be in this world of Asa & Anthony in the end because I think they were chosen, too, to emphasize that it's a dream. And then we'll look at what Adam is wearing because omg 😲 guess who didn't even notice that until just now, when she added the screencap to this post and is now even more excited?! 😂
When Asa/Aziraphale runs after Professor Anthony, we get that wide shot of the street. One business is called Heaven Sent Chocolatiers, which I think we could all agree would be the business that Jim runs in the world of Asa & Professor Anthony. So, there's Jim again being put into this place-- but, interestingly, no direct mention of Beelzebub, or any other supporting characters who we think might fit in here.
It's not like there's place called like, idk, Super Fly Dry Cleaning lol. They limit the characters outside of the S3 ones there in the pub in the end to certain ones who help emphasize sleep and prophetic dreams-- so, Jim, Adam, and the one, other character mentioned here in the end, too: Agnes Nutter.
There's a coffee shop called Get Your Tank Refilled, Girl [lol] and the sign on there says that there's a book signing upcoming with Agnes Nutter... the character who wrote the prophetic book central to the story. She wrote a book of life, basically, about how to live life, full of a future that she saw coming-- and she's mentioned here in Aziraphale's dream, too. Because the book of life he's going to write when he wakes up is going to be inspired by what he does, or does not, want to have happened as a result of this prophetic dream he just had.
Now, go scroll back up to Adam and have a look at what he's wearing in Aziraphale's dream because slkjlfkewjkwjelj lol. First off, under the jacket and over the t-shirt? Adam is wearing a button down flannel shirt in the pattern of Jim's blanket. It's the same pattern. It's the exact. same. fucking. pattern lol as Jim's blanket. Adam is on screen for about 5 seconds in S3 and they've got him there to emphasize sleep. But there's even more 😍...
We have not seen Adam in the dream at all until this moment. There have been some newspaper references to Tadfield and parallels to story involving him but Adam himself has been non-existent. He was a character who dreamt and made into being altered reality in S1-- but he stayed in the reality of S1, until this very last bit of the dream... which has the effect of tethering him to reality in the story a bit. He's the foremost element of the story that "gives S1", for lack of a better way to put it.
When Adam just pops up here in the end, he's a reminder of the real world we left behind awhile back now-- one that is circling closer again, as Aziraphale's dream gets closer to its end. So, even as Adam is here to emphasize sleep with the parallels to his story from S1 and wearing the Jim's blanket pattern? He also represents the reality to which Aziraphale will soon be returning and he's wearing something else that very, very much does, as what else does he have on?
A vavoom yellow t-shirt.
This character representing that this is all a dream and that Aziraphale will wake up back in reality? Is wearing a shirt the color of the real Crowley's eyes.
It's a color that literally just died for Aziraphale in this part of the dream world-- there's not a dot of it in there anywhere in the Professor Anthony part of the dream, other than Adam's shirt-- because it represents the real Crowley, who has been lost to Aziraphale in this place.
By design, the real Crowley does not exist in this world of Professor Anthony, and the color of his eyes-- the thing that most visually separates him from the Professor-- vanishes with him... but then it shows back up again when a character representing the real world and that this is all a dream? Is wearing the color of the real Crowley's eyes, which is now basically interwoven with the idea of reality itself, just like Adam. But also... oh *sniffle* I love this... sorry, another thing I just realized, too lol...
Adam is bringing the color back in this world. He represents that it will be returning for Aziraphale-- showing us that a return to reality is coming and that is the real end and of course he does because... this is also what Adam does in the story, right? 🥹 Doing something that results in returning Aziraphale to Crowley...
"Excuse me, but why are you two people?" He separated Aziraphale from Tracy in S1, which resulted in Aziraphale getting his own body back, which gave him back to Crowley for another chance together...
Here, in the end in S3, Adam represents that Aziraphale will separate himself from the two people of Asa-Aziraphale and go from the world of this nightmare back to the world of reality, where he'll reunite with his real, vavoomy-eyed Crowley, and where Adam himself has otherwise remained for the whole of this dream up until this point. But, wait, there's somehow even still more here... (damn, Adam, you really got in a lot here for appearing onscreen for five seconds lol)...
So, Adam is there wearing clothing that emphasizes both a dream and a shift back to reality but... what is he doing there in the plot of the dream? He's sharing a loving gaze with his partner, who is Joshing Jesus in this world... it's not just the amusing humor of the antichrist and the christ... as who is Joshing Jesus but a character who just spent all of S3 trying to do what?
Find the lady.
The last shot of Joshing Jesus in the story is of him in the Asa & Professor Anthony world having found the lady in Adam. The answer to all of it is in Adam. It's the reason why he was there. They could have skipped him entirely. They could have just put his name on a shop on the street or something. But they didn't because his appearance here is way more important to the story than it might have initially first looked.
Joshing Jesus, the character who embodied the question of how to always find the lady and find the gravy in S3, ends the story literally looking at the right card in Adam-- ends it with showing us that the answer to the ending is it being a dream, and Aziraphale will soon wake up to his own, vavoom yellow-eyed lady. And speaking of her...
By comparison to S2/S3? The reality of S1 had almost no sleep or mentions of it in it at all, with the most significant bit of it definitely being the above Adam scene. If memory serves me correctly, aside from one of the ministers being in bed when he got the call to open the nuclear reactor (and he wasn't sleeping lol), there are really only two, other scenes involving an element of sleep in S1... and one of them foreshadows all of this.
One is just that Maud woke up when Lesley was getting ready to go deliver The Horsepeople's packages. She was in bed during the scene but the scene was really more about Lesley leaving and the two of them paralleling Crowley and Aziraphale and them not together in the mornings. The scene largely exists to emphasize the conflict for Crowley and Aziraphale that eventually leads to the dream in S2, which is what Jim summed up early on: how to be near that one, particular person. How to make a world where they can openly be together the way they have been in secret all this time.
The Maud and Lesley scene isn't really otherwise related to the dream because, as we've said here? There are tons of references to sleep in the later seasons but, back in S1? It's barely there. There's one other scene, though-- and this one does have a big foreshadowing Clue in it. That's Crowley's lullaby...
There is a lot of other stuff happening in this scene that really doesn't have much to do with sleep but the plot of it obviously does, as Warlock asks for a lullaby. Crowley sings him an amusingly demented one that, as we know, is a nod to the reverse-psychology lullaby "Stay Awake" from Mary Poppins. It's not sung to that tune, though. Crowley sings it to the tune of the melody from Warlock's music box within the scene... but that melody is part of the Good Omens' score... a very uniquely major part...
The music box melody over which Crowley sings "Go to Sleep" is a separate, lovely track on the S1 soundtrack known as "Lullaby" but "Lullaby"? Is actually just an extended, music box version of part of the Good Omens theme song. It's so instantly familiar to the audience when Crowley starts to sing it because it's part of the overall theme for everything-- the theme that encompasses the entire story.
There are, I believe, at least 70 different pieces of music total on the scores of all three seasons combined but the one that is part of the theme song to all of it is the one that is related to sleep?!
The one that has basically its own scene built around it in S1 where Crowley sings a lullaby with the lyrics: go to sleep/and dream of pain/doom and darkness/blood and brains/sleep so sweet, my darling boy/you will rule, when Earth's destroyed?... to a kid named warlock?
As if it's saying the truth, which is that when it's a lock-- a given-- that inner war is happening, what is also a lock is the total nightmare that a person will dream as a result. Crowley singing the lullaby is then foreshadowing such a nightmare occurring in the future of the story in Good Omens as well and, well... *gestures towards S2 & S3* That would all appear to be true. Not to mention that...
...the whole thing with the kid to whom Crowley sang this foreshadowing lullaby is that he was not the kid they thought he was? 😂 He's the wrong boy, not the lady. Even more specifically...
The kid they were looking for was Adam!... and Warlock and Adam... they are the core of the baby swap plot-- the original 'find the lady' plot in the story. Crowley even mentions it in S3, with it being one of the things that Last time, I bring the baby means.
So, the lullaby scene in S1 that foreshadows the dream where the audience will have to find the lady to get the right ending in S3? is sung to a kid in Warlock whose identity the main characters have incorrect in the moment because of the story's original find the lady plot of the baby swap... but he's the wrong boy. He's not the answer. He's part of the story... but he's not how it ends.
Warlock is sung a lullaby foreshadowing a dream of pain and doom and darkness and a destroyed world... and that all happens but he's not the kid representing the end of it-- that's Adam, who dreamt of a world and brought it to life. Adam's the lady. Crowley told Joshing Jesus to find the lady and he'd be set-- and the lady Joshing Jesus eventually found was Adam.
In S1, Crowley and Aziraphale, when it came to that baby? They were kind of like us now, trying to figure out the ending. Many, at first, didn't even realize they had the wrong ending, just as Crowley and Aziraphale believed that Lucifer's kid was Warlock without Crowley ever stopping to think the night through enough to realize that he had misinterpreted who Arthur Young was and the babies had gotten mixed up as a result.
It's not until eleven years later when The Hell Hound doesn't show up at Warlock's birthday party that they even realize they've got the wrong kid, which is like what is happening to a lot of us with the ending... just, you know, sooner lol. We're starting to go wait, wait... this doesn't work. It's not this Asa & Professor Anthony world. This isn't the lady when it comes to the ending. Then what happened? Like us, Crowley and Aziraphale when on a journey looking for Clues.
They crossed paths with and got some information from a character in Sister Mary, who is actually really important to the idea of the dream, as I'll look at in a post about all the Clues to a dream related to Nina in S2 soon. They are still confused for awhile but then Aziraphale gets ahold of Agnes Nutter's book, which is what forms the structure of the whole damn thing in Good Omens so, honestly, Agnes really does have the answers in there somewhere, always... and which one is the Agnes prophecy related to Adam that ties into this here, too?
The prophecy of the number of the beast-- which was a phone number. Aziraphale put the Tadfield area code in there in front of the number in The Bible, wound up dialing the Youngs house, heard Adam, and realized he had the right kid. He'd found the lady, right?
"Sorry, right number!" he exclaimed and hung up.
While he meant that he had the correct phone number, the word number can also be used in other instances in its old slang meaning of a sexual partner. This is how it's used between Crowley and Aziraphale, in the novel and elsewhere-- the "opposite number" references. Which I was thinking about when Professor Anthony wouldn't give Asa his phone number. How could he? I mean, he probably has one within the dream world, of course, but it's symbolic of how he's not a real person. He's not reality... and he's not the answer to the ending.
In a meta-way, this is like saying this Crowley doesn't give Aziraphale his number here because, ultimately, he's not the answer. The real Crowley is the one waiting, back in reality, to find out where they're having dinner.
Who shows up in the dream in the end of S3, though, to be the non-partner kind of "right number"-- the answer-- whose presence shows that Aziraphale will find his way back to his right number of the real Crowley? The person Aziraphale heard when he dialed the right phone number in S1-- Adam.
This is all without even saying that Adam literally re-made the reality to which Aziraphale will be returning. Adam isn't just a symbol of reality-- he basically *is* that reality now. Holding back on him in S2 & S3 helped make his last appearance more potent, as now his return here has a purpose. He's there to help explain to us what's going on... just like he did with what, in S1, were personifications of concepts and not actually real characters: War, Famine, and Pollution.
The thing is, Adam explained then, they're not actually real. They're just like nightmares, really.
Yes. Exactly. And a literal nightmare is the story that followed...
*hums tune, sings new version* 🎶Go to sleep/and dream of Jim/Mags and Nina/lots of Satans/sleep so ugh, you poor angel/you will wake, no more in Hell...🎶 😊
