I find it bleeding hilarious how with the chaos and disappointment of the Gomens finale, I haven't seen a single post blame Micheal.
Just a straight bypass into blaming the logic of the story. Even people who liked the ending aren't blaming Michael. Some even agree with their motives a bit and relate.
This is absolutely beautiful when you remember that 2, almost 3 years ago we were all threatening to beat the shit out of the metatron🤣
I feel like S3 ended with that final shot of consciousness rushing up behind an eye and Aziraphale waking up from the horrible nightmare of the stories in the present of S2 & S3. While there are a boatload of Clues to support this in both seasons? Nina alone is enough to prove it. How so?
In S1, as we know, Nina Sosanya played Sister Mary Loquacious, the Satanic nun to whom Crowley gave Baby Adam. We then jumped forward eleven years and saw Crowley return to Tadfield Manor, now with Aziraphale. Here? An entire scene on the show about discernment with the "do I know you?" kink was built around Crowley's recognition of Sister Mary.
We can see that the night of the baby swap was so traumatic for Crowley that Mary's face is permanently etched in his mind. Even though there is the context for him of them both standing in the same place they last met? Mary looks, and even acts, wildly different than she did eleven years earlier. Her hair and style of clothes have changed and she's now in charge. She carries herself with an air of authority that she didn't at all have in the scene when Crowley first met her. And yet?
Crowley knows exactly who she is. He even looks a bit haunted when he sees her, whispering "you", like just seeing Mary for a moment is taking him back to that horrible night.
What this scene tells us is that Mary could change her hair, her clothes, and even her mannerisms, and Crowley could still recognize her instantly because he can't forget her face, right?
Going forward from the night he first met Sister Mary in the Eleven Years Ago part of the story? Crowley should look at anyone with Nina Sosanya's face and recognize them as Mary-- at minimum, he should be spooked by the similarities. But, in S2? He's not. No recognition. Just charmed to meet Nina, the owner of a new coffee shop with a name straight out of Aziraphale's inner conflicts... a woman whom Aziraphale doesn't find familiar, either, despite having also met Sister Mary in S1.
And this is where it's a bit of that trick with the three cards again because there were multiple people in the company playing multiple roles. Finding the lady here means keeping your eye on Nina Sosanya, though, because the roles the others play are not built to generate story conflict-- but her roles are.
Both characters and the audience alike aren't going to think much of people like Miranda Richardson and Reece Shearsmith each playing both an original demon and a human of Earth, for example. The original demons were some of the original people so it doesn't seem weird that there would be humans who look like them. We can definitely analyze why they are playing these characters specifically but there is no story conflict generated as a result of them doing so.
Other instances are people like Jack Whitehall also playing the ancestor of a character he was playing in the present in S1. No one thinks twice and no conflict is created by this. But Nina Sosanya? She's the lady.
She's a huge Clue to the story in the present in S2 & S3 being Aziraphale's nightmare because the audience was set up in the reality of S1 to know without a shred of doubt that Aziraphale and, especially, Crowley, should both take one look at this Nina lady and recognize her as Sister Mary Loquacious.
But it's not just that, even, as we can also see now that Aziraphale meeting Sister Mary was the foundation of Nina's entire character in his nightmare. We can see how his mind generated Nina from Mary...
When Aziraphale met Mary, he and Crowley were there to find the hospital records on Adam to try to find him, which Mary told them were burned in the fire. The word records repeats multiple times in the scene, between Aziraphale's questions and Mary's replies-- "we were very good at keeping records"; "there were lots and lots of records"... Aziraphale's mind associates Mary with the word from here on out, which is then partially how it came to be her face that his subconscious used for the woman with the romance with Maggie in the record shop next door.
And when Crowley and Aziraphale realized that Mary didn't have any more information that could help them? Crowley had put her in a trance-- a form of sleep-- to try to find out more information about Adam, from which Aziraphale pulled her out. This is why Nina is the character who is least affected by the miracle during The Ball.
Her jacket changes when she comes through the door but her speech is not impacted. Maggie is also only semi-under it but Nina is the one who expresses that she's not the most. She's freaked out by everyone else acting weird. She uses her own words, without the Nightingales that everyone else has been miracled the ability to speak. It's because there is a part of Aziraphale's mind that knows she is of Mary.
Aziraphale pulled Mary out of the trance by suggesting to her that she had just been asleep having had a dream of whatever she liked best... basically the mirrored opposite of what then happened in his own future: an actual-- not suggested-- nightmare of everything he fears the most. We can also see from where the Lindsay plot came, too.
Aziraphale's mind associates Mary with what she is in reality-- a Satanic nun who worships Crowley's abuser. A person involved in The Baby Swap Fiasco that occurred on this horrible night of Armageddon starting and when Crowley was attacked. He associates Mary with the topic of Lucifer's abuse of Crowley so his mind generated this story where a woman with Mary's face was living a paralleling storyline to that. Nina and Lindsay don't just parallel Crowley and Lucifer-- they're a story that exists in Aziraphale's nightmare because of it. Then, there's...
...that it's to Nina that Aziraphale quotes Dickens' A Christmas Carol-- the story that is similar to what his nightmare is.
This scene is very important because it turns references to Dickens' novels into three card monte/find the lady in the series. While 1.03 is named Hard Times and is the novel associated with the reality while S3 references Bleak House and is the novel associated with the nightmare he dreams? The lady to the Clue to the ending there is S2's Dickens novel-- the one that gives the ending in the middle of the story, as Good Omens would do with its story told out of chronological order. S2 is the one that tells us that the nightmare and the happy ending it generates? Is all A Christmas Carol.
Aziraphale quotes to Nina the character I think he would most like to be-- Mr. Fezziwig, the generous and upbeat businessman for whom Scrooge worked when he was younger. He tells Nina "no long faces tonight" and "I just want to see you young people enjoying yourselves" and encourages her to dance, which is what Fezziwig does with Scrooge in the novel. Nina is also the character who most frequently mentions the topic of the Christmas lights in S2.
Nina's role in the story also gets interesting as it's like Aziraphale's mind feels guilty about Mary and the trance and, so, not only does Nina retain control over her speech during The Ball but she's very frank and direct throughout.
She acts as Aziraphale's inner voice at times, such as how it is her who has the "last week, when the power went out" conversation with him-- a Clue as to how, in reality, The Four Horsepeople have been riding hard for Aziraphale since this breakdown began to hit him hard the prior week, the result of which is this nightmare.
Because Nina is of Mary-- a character who saw Crowley and Aziraphale in The Wall Slam moment? Nina is then running commentary on their relationship in Aziraphale's dream. It's the character born of Sister Mary who is always standing on the side observing them or saying things like "you two really seem like a couple" because the real person on whom she is based saw evidence of that, too.
Aspects of Nina are then also pulled from other sources in Aziraphale's mind as well, such as that, since she owns an American-themed coffee shop? In one part of the dream, we see Nina riding a bike to work and pull up near The Bentley. It's the part of Aziraphale's mind remembering and grafting onto Nina in the dream our "mad American woman with the bicycle", Anathema Device. She also wears a 'Greetings from California' t-shirt during the season as well.
Nina's role in the paralleling baby swap in the end of S2-- making the coffee that Lucifer-as-The-Metatron brings to Aziraphale in that part of the dream, before S3 becomes Aziraphale dreaming what he imagines his bardo would be like after being killed by him? That is Aziraphale's mind associating Mary with The Devil, even as how his need to give her free and uninhibited speech in his dream, as a result of his guilt over Mary in a trance, means that she's also a character who is rather opinionated, in an often negative way, over his actions.
It's Nina who chastises him with the demons at the door-- acting as the voice of his own inner ones. Why don't you stand up for yourself? Make your own plans. Essentially, the central core conflict of the nightmare-- what Aziraphale is trying to do and to what this dream helps him find a path. It's to Nina that Aziraphale explains the gateway in the floor, the fire that took the bookshop once before, blowing up his halo-- all the elements of what it is that Aziraphale is dealing with in real life that are echoed in the demons storming the bookshop that is Aziraphale.
Before, we'd analyze the new roles for the Satanic nuns from S1 as just mirroring storytelling with common themes-- "lots and lots of records" to The Small Back Room; "you can make sure there's a tin of biscuits" to "eccles cakes", etc... the same two playing another, paralleling duo. But now that it's apparent that this was Aziraphale's nightmare? There are even more interesting layers. It does just all parallel the way we thought it did but it now also does, within the story, by the design of Aziraphale's subconscious. It's a whole new way to look at the story.
This then makes a line Nina said in 2.01 one of the more intriguing ones in Aziraphale's nightmare: A lot of people in this head, and a lot of coffees, but I only remember the regulars.
If we take this line as being a bit of a meta-Clue as to how Aziraphale's subconscious generates these characters in his nightmares? The idea would then have to be that, even as we start to look at S2 & S3's stories in the present again from the perspective that they Aziraphale's dream, and begin to question the existence of entire characters? This is telling us that those characters weren't invented out of nowhere. They all have roots in people Aziraphale has met-- as Nina has shown us.
The story gives us enough information to see the etymology, so to speak, on Nina-- see her origins and roots in Sister Mary. We won't have this with every character but it's fun to think about who some of them could be, back in reality, and if, even if they are different people than Aziraphale dreamed? They might find their way to a similar fate as a result of the prophetic dream he had that gets him through his "really big one", as foreshadowed by Crowley in S1, and helps him to make a world of good omens.
Opening soon in the closed coffee shop spot in reality on Whickber Street? Hmm, how about something like... Paint It Black, a Rolling Stones-inspired combination coffee shop/sip-and-paint, brought to you by the owner of Tadfield's Paintball Adventures? 😊
Crowley suggests Aziraphale kill the anti-Christ. Aziraphale looks sick.
“I’ve never actually killed anything before”
Good Omens finale prologue:
Aziraphale bandaging Crowley’s leg
“I’ve spent the war smiting rogue angels…”
Good Omens S2:
Beelzebub recalls Crowley to Hell and brings up extreme sanctions and the Book of Life. Crowley looks concerned but skeptical.
“That was just a fairy tale we told to frighten the cherubs…”
Good Omens finale:
Saraqael talks about the books of life and there’s a suggestion it could have been destroyed. Crowley walks around discussing the book like he’s some complete authority about it.
“No it’s impossible to destroy, it’s too well made”
DID THE FUCKING WRITERS EVEN WATCH SEASONS 1 AND 2 BEFORE WRITING THIS SCRIPT, JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!
Also if taking away Crowley's miracles were an option... why did they not do it when he was actively working against them in season 2? Or in season 1 when they were literally about to execute him??
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.
People of internet: do we think that the ending of Crowley and Aziraphale in season 3 (in terms of the multiverse theory) is the big bang that started all the other universes? Or is it just one of the universes that we just happen to see? Someone please discuss with me, I am dying lol
What if each season is set in a different universe and that's why there's some stuff that doesn't match up between them? (Crowley's hair color, I am looking at you)
A post I saw, but couldn’t repost. But I am so thankful I have found it…🩷
Please read it…for me, it is the biggest Easter egg there ever was in GO…they are sitting in the Garden of Eden, surrounded by the new universes, with Champagne in their glasses (to the world - to our world/worlds), with the apple still intact and without wings…they did it. They gave them their ending as an „us“…hidden, but there. And I love it…🥹
Sooo what the fuck happened to the Bentley you guys? Is anyone else thinking of that? Like... the car can move on its own. I get why it can't defend itself against supernatural forces (like how Beelzebub appeared in it) but like... you're telling me it's just gonna let some random human come in while Crowley is sleeping and then lock it in a garage? On what planet is that happening? Because it's not the Bentley who tried following Aziraphale like a lost puppy and broke its Queen only rule to play "A Nightingale Sang."
We discover that Crowley is without his demonic powers at some point, which would mean the Bentley is as well. I believe the car only has powers because she belongs to a demon. It’s part of that whole thing about how angels/demons affect the world around them without their knowing it.
I think the Bentley is to Crowley what Whickber street is to Aziraphale. Without them they both just sort of decay.
Possibly but I mean Crowley being without his powers is a whole other rant I have 🤣 For one thing, if the powers can just be taken away whenever then why did they not take them when they were actively trying to kill him in season 2?
