Okay okay, so I really want to talk about S2 Crowley.
I’ve been thinking about who Crowley is in the book and who he is in the show, and the gap is significant. (@tbutchaziraphale has fantastic meta over here which I think is spot on.)
Book!Crowley is an optimist, yes? I mean, we’re outright told this:
“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.”
Honestly, what a thing for a fallen angel to believe! And to me, it’s powerful, yes, but it never quite answers the question: where is he getting that certainty?
Tv!Crowley, in the meantime, is emphatically not this. He’s never been an optimist, not even in S1—although in S1, it might have been easier to look at A & C and consider them essentially similar to their book selves if a little out of sync.
In S1, Crowley gives the whole “don’t test them to destruction” speech. He cares about humanity deeply, even if he won’t admit it. He will try to stop the Apocalypse.
And there is still a moment when he feels helpless. When he has no innate optimism to carry him through, no deep belief in the universe looking after him or anyone. When his instincts tell him to run, and he tries to follow them. When he despairs. Aziraphale pulls him back out of that despair; they make a stand together. As we know, it works.
But the thing is, the thing is. I find tv!Crowley’s lack of optimism so very relatable.
I find despair so very relatable, too.
We live in an age of deep anxiety. (Climate change, anyone? Just for starters! The promise and wonder of the Moon landing and the end of the Cold War are far in the past; day to day, we deal with the effects of capitalism, of reactionism, of continued exclusionism. It’s far too easy to feel helpless.)
So in S2, Crowley is very much the same character as he was in S1, except we see it even clearer.
He is not an optimist. He wants to run; he wants to escape when faced with Gabriel’s arrival; he wants to protect Aziraphale and himself, and believes that the best—perhaps only—way to do that is by them retreating as far away from the problem as they can.
In Heaven, Crowley finds out about The Second Coming. His need to escape and to keep his angel safe become overwhelming. But he doesn’t tell Aziraphale about the Second Coming, does he? And his repeated offer to run away together doesn't even make sense to Aziraphale. (Not that Aziraphale would want to run if he knew. Quite the opposite, in fact, which Crowley must know.)
Anyway, Crowley already knows that the clock is ticking. Aziraphale is about to find it out. (Do you notice how often, in the last fifteen minutes of S2, we hear nothing in the background but the ticking of a clock?)
And just—the despair, the desire to retreat and escape when you are faced with overwhelming odds, with a fundamentally broken system, are so relatable.
And yet escape has never been the answer.
I hope, of course, that this is what we’ll see in S3 if there is a S3. Crowley deciding, emphatically, that running away is not the answer.
We didn't get there yet. We were dropped out of the story at the darkest point.
But I think being at this point is precisely what makes Crowley’s confession at the end of S2 transcendent.
Because it’s the same conflict, isn’t it, except on a personal scale. Despair in the face of overwhelming odds, followed by the decision to not give up.
Crowley, who’d been ready to confess, sees what is likely to happen. He sees the way the deck is stacked against him, sees that he is unlikely to get through. He feels the coming loss.
And then he does it anyway.
He confesses anyway. He says what he has set out to say, gasping and clawing for every word. He does it at the point when everything appears lost.
And no, we don’t see the effects of it, not yet. We don’t see what he has launched, the hook that sank into Aziraphale, the change it has wrought in Crowley himself.
But his bravery won’t be lost.
We live in a dark timeline. I maintain that this is precisely what makes this story so compelling.
Be brave. Do the difficult thing anyway. Do it anyway. Do it anyway.
Even in the face of overwhelming odds. Especially in the face of overwhelming odds. While not being an optimist in the slightest.
This is what we have to do.
(And to all of us who’d lost a comfort story: I’m so sorry. I, too, am still grieving for it. I know, I know.
Emphatically: all is not lost.)
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