Forgive me for bringing JKR here (well, we have NG, we're already past salvation) but it's as if Dumbledore said that in order to defeat Voldemort you have to destroy the magic, kill every wizard on Earth and blow up the Earth itself, but don't worry, everybody will come back as ordinary humans. Yes, there's no wizarding world and no Hogwarts anymore, but hey, it's actually better like this because the system was unfair from the start.
it’s simple: when I like an adaptation, everyone complaining about changes to the text is a whiny baby who needs to get over themselves and accept that sometimes you have to change the story to enrich the experience/work within the medium. when I don’t like an adaptation, it’s because nobody else understands the core themes of the original work and would be better off just creating a story independent of what they’re trying to adapt.
How I sometimes regret not screenshotting the hell out of NG’s tumblr before he started pretending he doesn’t exist because I remember some absolute BANGERS being there
like e.g.
someuser asked:
What is Aziraphale’s favourite animal?Â
neil-gaiman answered:
Humans, I think.
Oh, to sacrifice myself so that an alternate version of my cat could have True Free Will 13,8 billion years later
Let’s just agree that both Aziraphale & Crowley were so unnecessary cruel to each other & blatantly out of character in GO3 that fighting over who was the biggest jerk makes no sense atp. Ever since I watched the finale, my mind has been constantly going in circles with "oh poor Crowley he needed comfort and help so much how could Aziraphale leave him in that alley how could he tell him all those awful things oh but all Crowley did was sniping back at Aziraphale and mocking him for his attempts to save the world it was so unfair to our angel everyone was constantly belittling him and Crowley said nothing in his defence oh but how can we expect that from him when Aziraphale treated him like shit oh but oh but oh but…" Both of them were turned into caricatures of themselves! There was no "right one"! Stop giving the writers more credit than they deserve by taking sides in this pointless debate
The silliest thing I find about this whole "they only got 30 years together in the end with no memories of their shared history so what was the point" is that EVERYONE THINKS THEY ONLY MET EACH OTHER IN THIS ONE SINGULAR LIFETIME REALITY instead of my immediate thought that as its architects, Aziraphale and Crowley were wound so deep into the fabric of the new universe that there is a version of them finding each other and falling in love every single generation for billions and billions of years??????
A Roman version and a French Revolution version and a WWII version and ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND---
For goodness sake the song that plays over this version of them finding and falling in love is "Time After Time"! THE IMPLICATION IS THAT THEY WILL ALWAYS FIND EACH OTHER!!!!!! ***ALWAYS*** IN EVERY LIFETIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
First of all, end credits (that were never considered part of canon for the previous seasons) and a soundtrack is so very not enough to treat this theory as anything more than a headcanon. But even if we assume that’s how we were supposed to understand the ending…
The implication that every time they’re reborn as two people who’re able to be together romantically (without situations like "one of them is 80 and the other is 8" or "one of them is the other’s parent") and put in circumstances that make it possible for them to meet means that there’s some entity meddling with their lives. Almost like… a god. You know, the thing that A&C explicitly didn’t want to exist in the new universe.
"It's a messy complicated ending on purpose. It's not meant to be a cookie cutter happy ending. It's not meant to give you all the answers. It's not meant to fit in a neat genre box. It's meant to make you, the audience, sit back and go "huh...what about that?"
@ me at 17 when I took part in a literary contest and wrote a story where I randomly killed the mcs in the end by making them commit suicide then got offended when readers said it’s obvious that I hate my own characters. No I do not and no they didn’t "just die" it was very meaningful and contained deep revolutionary ideas y'all just don’t understand!!!
This post is going to be long and is going to dive into my (non-scientific) thoughts about the Good Omens Series Finale and the subsequent fandom fracture, including thoughts on behaviors of fans and specifically a call to action for fandom community leaders (server owners, event organizers, Tumblr Community creators, etc.). It will touch on some of the more triggering head canons that have come out of the Good Omens fandom regarding the series, but we will not be diving into those.
This is going to be long, and anyone who comments without reading the whole thing with takes about how I'm wrong/condescending/stupid for liking the finale/whatever is going to be blocked on sight. This is mostly me just getting my thoughts out and frankly I'm not interested in debating with the kinds of people who have been crawling into my ask box with hatred. I have better ways to spend my time.
So, I've been thinking thoughts since May 13th, but recently these thoughts have really crystalized for me. I largely have to thank whatever anon(s) keep sending some really fascinating takes plus the sock puppet account screaming on one of my posts, as well as watching folks interact and behave in large Good Omens Discord server spaces.
I think there's currently this thought process that there are really two main GO camps in the fandom: those who loved the finale, and those who did not. And somewhere there is a middle of group of those who are "unsure." I would like to challenge this idea.
And in challenging it, I am specifically going to talk about the death of nuance in how people relate to stories and media.
What I've realized is that a lot of folks seem to think that those of us who like the ending, or have positive feelings towards it, all think it's a happy ending. This is not true. I know this is not true because, frustrated by the state of fandom, I started @gomens-timeaftertime, a Discord Server (TAT) for folks who liked the Series Finale. This is a "small" server of 100 people only because I have put a membership limit on it. Otherwise based on how we've had to kick people who were not active, the number of requests I have to join, and folks who were interested in participating in our Warm Close event but hesitant to join a Discord Server, TAT would be a lot larger if I had the bandwidth to moderate more people. Which I don't. So.
But the point is, in TAT the takes on the Series Finale are wildly varied. There are several people who found the ending to be a happy one (lots of reincarnation, snow globe, multi-verse, sort of head canons there). There are as many people who found the ending to be a sad one (Aziraphale and Crowley as we know them are gone, the world as we knew it is over, and similar head canons).
And these are all people who still enjoyed the ending and are having a great time Slorching about. We are picking apart details, putting together fan events, screaming, analyzing and when we complain, because we do complain, our complaints are largely focused on the loss of 6 full episodes. Because I think no matter what you thought of the ending, we can all agree that that deserved 6 episodes and fuck NG and fuck Amazon for all the shit that took that away from us.
The conclusion that one can draw from such a varied group is that the ending of Good Omens S3 is complicated. It can be interpreted in a myriad of different ways, and it is, in the most Good Omens sense, an ending steeped in shades of grey.
Which I find, personally, to be beautiful.
Anyway, "sad" has not been equated to "bad" within this community. We leave space for those who are mourning, but they still jump on the "Ice Cream Truck Bentley's eyes FOLLOW HER PAPA" excitement train.
Therefore it's my belief that the issue amongst the larger fandom is that there are some people who are of the opinion that sad/uncomfortable = bad. Bad writing, bad production, bad directing, bad. These are the folks who hurl accusations such as S3 being a "bury your gays" ending when the finale explicitly ends with a married queer presenting couple sitting in a house they presumably own and being sweet together. They also are writing break downs of how the ending is an abusers final gotcha, ignoring years of interviews and comments from NG, STP, Rob Wilkins, Rhianna Pratchett, and more all confirming that the ending has existed for a long time, and that it is a collaborative ending between the two writers, and that the goal had always been between NG and the Pratchett Estate, to deliver. Also it ignores that said abuser wrote the ending before his abuse was made public, so he had no reason to write a final "gotcha" when at the time he was still working under the assumption he would not be found out and he would still continue to create more and more series (Sandman comes to mind, but also fuck NG).
Folks are picking and choosing what interviews to include in their defense of "this is clearly a Bad Thing" instead of coming to terms with the fact that the ending was not what they expected, and that is disappointing. They point at the genre labels (a deeply flawed labeling system of stories across media types meant to promote marketing and sales and not actually indicative of the story content itself). They point at specific quotes and ignore full interviews (specifically interviews where the contradictions are addressed as information previously NDA'd or unpromised was intentionally kept under wraps). They invent thoughts on how the entertainment industry works (there is no secret cabal trying to personally victimize you in the writers room, and frankly if this was a cash grab, they would've gone with a less divisive ending). They applaud someone for taking an illegal recording of an unaware actor who is making a glib remark (and let it be known, having worked in the industry: actors know what you're looking for pretty quickly when you ask them questions and will not hesitate to say whatever they think will keep themselves safe, "on your side" and make you go away faster, especially if they are under the impression that they are not be recorded).
In sum, these "fans" are using their personal interpretation (aka: head canon) of an intentionally complicated ending, and justifying the vitriol and disrespect they are spilling on other fans, the cast, the crew, the creators, the Estate, and more, by saying that the ending was, unequivocally "bad" and anyone who doesn't agree with them is wrong, stupid, an abuse apologist, and more.
Because why? Because it wasn't a clear cut happy ending? We know that the finale was already adjusted to fit the times (Jesus showing up as a celebrity on a giant plane has very different vibes in 2026 than in 1996.) So we know that this ending was conjured during a different time. And while the time we are currently living in is harder, increasing the desire for more uncomplicated happy endings, that doesn't mean we are entitled to such endings.
So okay, there's all of that.
Let's talk more about the fandom fracture.
Because the thing is, when the finale came out, I was a community leader in some large fandom spaces. And as someone who truly loved the ending (I love how complicated it is, I love that it is both gut wrenching [Michael destroyed their universe, and they decided to accept it to free themselves, and that means they are gone] and uplifting [fuck me am I a slut for soul mates and reincarnation tropes. They found each other again in a different life, a real life, without the movie framing, the found each other and got to make their own choices, and fuck that's what it is to escape a fucked up system and live, truly live, wow, does this mean they keep going and keep finding each other again and again? It must]) it was incredibly difficult for me to sit and watch people not just be sad, but be angry.
And this is where I think as a fandom we fucked up.
In trying to give space to those who were grieving a complicated ending, and the end of an era, and a show that should've gotten 6 hours, not 90 minutes, we legitimized those who decided "sad" and "not what I wanted to see" equals "bad writing/production/directing." In doing so, we gave them the space to come up with conspiracy theories ("not STP's ending", you know, a dead man who can't speak for himself, and I guess we can say fuck you to his living loved ones who fought for this ending?, "NG wants to abuse us all", I cannot even with this one it is so deeply insulting to his actual assault victims. Stop., "NG actually had a different ending in mind, and the six episode script will prove it", ... what.)
In doing this, we harmed the rest of the fandom, both those who enjoyed the ending and fell more towards the bittersweet to happy interpretation of the ending, as well as those who actually needed the space to process and just thought it was a sad ending, without ascribing bad to it.
So when I say things like "you're allowed to just...not like the ending" this is not me saying that the ending was happy, actually, get over it. Nor is it me saying you gotta buck up and smile. Its me saying you should take a step back and look at this ending more objectively. Do you actually hate the ending? Or did it just make you sad? It can be both! You can hate the ending because it made you sad and you wanted to be happy--but then that's on you to grapple with. No one went out to "do" this to you. No one went "You know what, let's make this a sad ending specifically to ruin this person's life." It's just a story, and sometimes stories have sad endings. And frankly, this is why I often tell people I don't "do" in progress media. My anxiety struggles with cliff hangers and I absolutely read the wiki summary before committing to a thing to make sure the ending is going to be what I want it to be. Good story telling can hurt and sometimes I'm into it. And sometimes, I'm not.
And maybe if it just made you sad, you should think about distancing yourself from communities where people are mad. Because it's okay to be sad about an ending meant to be complicated and at least a little sad (if not more). But that doesn't mean you've gotta throw the whole thing, including your fandom community, in the trash too. It does mean that maybe you need to take a more active stance against those who are insisting that their head canon is the only "correct" interpretation of the ending, are throwing around incredibly triggering topics around without care because that's part of their head canon, and are, at the end of the day, disrespecting and hating on the people who made a story.
Frankly, those aren't the kind of people you should want to be in a community with anyway. Misery loves company, and if you're sad, maybe don't hang out with the folks who are mad, they aren't going to help you feel better. And I say that as someone who is mourning the end of some incredible friendships because people who I thought would never have been absolutely engaging in some frankly disturbing behaviors.
In sum: there are so many ways to interpret the Good Omens ending, whether you're looking at the Television Series ending or the Book ending (I mean come on the book ends with them discussing the "big one" and it is not clear which side Crowley thinks they are on, humans or not humans). This kind of shades of grey, wait 20 years and come back again and see how it's changed, ending is precisely the kind of story telling I'd expect out of either STP (GNU) or NG (rot).
And if we're going to preserve the community that has become so important to us, then yes. We need to stop letting the loudest (not the majority, just the loudest) people trample the joy of our community. We need to hold them up to better fandom etiquette: no yucking other people's yum, kink-tomato, all that doesn't just apply to NSFW works, it also applies to "My head canon is different than yours, and you gotta stop shoving your deeply triggering take down my throat without a content warning." We've got to be more firm in that the very existence of Asa and Anthony is not, actually, something that should be spoilered because they are the result of suicide because that is a head canon, not a fact.
And frankly, if you want your communities, your big servers, your whatever, to live on, you've got to take this seriously. Your mod teams have to agree that, personal feelings about the ending aside, the ending is open to a multitude of interpretations, there is no space for conspiracy theories that are harmful or disrespectful to cast, crew, actual NG victims, etc, in these spaces, and that these spaces are meant to come together in celebration of the story, not to complain about how much something sucked. If you want your spaces to survive, to not become cesspools of the worse kind of feedback loops, you've got to make sure there's more joy than hate.
And if you're "in the middle" maybe take a step back from the loud voices and ask yourself: Are you in the middle? Or did something make you sad and the loud voices are trying to convince you that means that thing must not be any good at all?
Talks about better fandom etiquette @ "I’m not gonna tag something that a lot of people find triggering because all of you are fucking pussies and need to stop whining"
A rare example of Aziraphale being absolutely badass and saving the day. Thing is, it uses two unrelated scenes from the book — Aziraphale turning a real gun into a toy gun when someone is aiming at Crowley and dealing with the gangsters who want his bookshop — but revamps them into one. Both episodes are extremely precious to me because they show that Aziraphale is very much capable of taking care of himself and Crowley — something that was kinda downplayed in the show in favour of their weird "but Crowley loves saving me" game. What pisses me off is how they were handled in the finale. For starters, the Helping Crowley Out happens when Crowley is miracleless and Aziraphale is the Supreme Archangel, making it look like Aziraphale is capable/willing to do it only when he’s in the position of power and Crowley is absolutely unable to deal with everything as usual. But the worst of all is that THEY WASTED PRECIOUS SCREEN TIME on this unnecessary subplot instead of developing any of the important plot lines or characters. It’s actually amazing how the writers managed to fuck up every single thing that could have made this abomination of the finale a little bit more enjoyable.
One of my favourite GO moments is when Nina calls Crowley weird bc she really breaks the glittery 4th wall of the story and makes you realise how deeply strange they must look.
To everyone on the street there is just this extremely gay, pushy bookseller bookhoarder who probably sells something illicit or runs a backroom operation in his shop to stay in business in the middle of Soho. Then there’s his off putting emo rottweiler husband/body guard/possibly a sugar baby because his only job seems to be mogging during their thinly veiled public dom/sub play while he drives the other one around at a gazillion miles an hour in Draculas favourite hot wheel.
Randomly remembered how some years ago I had a very heated discussion with someone claiming that Crowley’s "much more emotionally mature than Aziraphale" because in which universe is his lets-fuck-off-to-Alpha-Centauri way of dealing with problems mature… just for the finale to tell me that yes, apparently, Crowley has Always Been The Right One and Aziraphale was stupid for trying to save the world because the emotionally mature way to deal with the Second Coming was to ughhhh gamble, drink and sleep in the alley then decide to kill yourself and your loved one.
Some people really do get the author’s intention better, huh?
Does this sound like someone who would want the ending of a story to do the opposite? Take the fantastical world and turn it into mundane reality? Terry Pratchett loved and advocated for how important the fantasy genre is.
I'd like to add my favourite quote from Hogfather to this (yes, this is my favourite quote, although "THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON" is from that book as well 😄):
WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T SAVED HIM?
"Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?"
NO
"Oh, come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact."
THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN.
...
"Really? Then what would have happened, pray?"
A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.
(Of course there is also that wonderful section from R.A. Salvatore where Drizzt Do'Urden muses about the importance of dragons because they are symbols of magic and without dragons the world would lose its magic and a lot of its life and hope and all that – but that's a different author and a different kind of fantasy. It is another favourite sections of mine, though, about the same subject and I'd type it down here, but unfortunately that book is in a box somewhere safely packed away awaiting more shelf space...)
Honestly I never really liked the idea of Aziraphale and Crowley's first meeting being before the beginning when it was introduced in S2, and the scene in S3 just cemented it.
Like yeah. It's cute. "Look at you, you're gorgeous" is funny. Angel!Crowley being a silly cutie compared to Aziraphale's innocent sweetness is very nice.
But at the same time, I think it's so much more poignant that Aziraphale shielded a complete stranger on the Wall of Eden. He didn't do it because he knew who the angel Crowley was, but because... Aziraphale is fundamentally a good, trusting person. He didn't smite Crowley since he doesn't *want* to smite anyone -- he doesn't actually hate demons even though he should. And Crowley, simultaneously, reassured Aziraphale not because he was remembering the sweet worrier of an angel he met before the Beginning, but because *Crowley* is also a good person.
I like the idea that these two strangers who have no reason to trust each other, who have nothing in common on the face of it, just decide to trust each other anyway, because they can, because they see a kindred goodness and love for humanity in each other right from the start. And I somehow feel like this notion that Aziraphale loved Crowley before he was a demon, or that Crowley knew how notorious Aziraphale was as a hunter during the war, really cheapens that.
• new Crowley in Heaven outfit
• Aziraphale being badass
• Jesus
• Angel War flashback if we ignore awful wigs and the whole "General Aziraphale" stuff
Things I didn’t like about the Good Omens finale:
When making a story about one of these Urban-Fantasy-Style "this World looks exactly like ours on the surface but there is a Secret Hidden Fantasy World", sometimes the goal of the concept is to help the audience imagine the whimsy of the setting in their real world… Giving them not just the fantasy that fairies or dragons can exist, but letting them indulge in the fantasy that fairies and dragons can exist right under their noses, in their apartment complex, in the grocery store, in the communal garden they pass by on the way to work...
Sometimes the goal is to use these Fantasy Elements as metaphors that reflect and critique the real-life problems in our real-life world. Yeah, Dragons secretly exist, but these Dragons are also clearly a metaphor to predatory capitalist business practices or something, and that's Bad. It also allows you to think of this world as your own, as a way of making you think of the parallels between that world's supernatural troubles and your mundane ones. But I think a lot of stories end up as a mixture of the two, a balance between the dream that allows you to roleplay that maybe Magic is real, even as an adult, and being a thoughtful fantastical metaphorical frame for real-life problems at the same time. Maybe the Dragons are Capitalism, but at least them being Dragons is still Objectively Cool and maybe it's kinda funny to imagine you are secretly working for one of them too, or imagine how the fairies secretly protect you from their machinations.
'Good Omens' has always been in that third category, right from the original book. Heaven and Hell are metaphors for real-life harmful power-structures, in the book it's the Cold War Era Global Superpowers, the show alternates between that original concept and them being a metaphor to gigantic mega-corporations. It is Bad that they exist and meddle (or try to meddle) in Human affairs in the name of their mutual beef with each other. They are clearly, explicitly harmful to humanity as a whole because they are a stand-in for real-life things that are harmful to humanity as a whole.
But… it's also fun to imagine that Angels and Demons could be walking among us in our world, and 'Good Omens' clearly knew it. Like, the whole premise of Crowley's initial characterization is both a satire on the concept of blaming Humanity's evil on Demonic Influence (THIS shit is not his fault! Or any other Demon for that matter! Only Humans can think up these things themselves!) and a sort of invitation for the readers, to imagine whatever silly minor annoyance kinda ruined their day is the work of this lovable Demon.
It was a running joke in the Fandom for years for a reason, it's fun to imagine that whatever stupid little annoyance happened to you was because of a cool-but-silly little Demon who's just doing his job, even if his 'job' is also Metaphorical Cosmic Imperialism. It's clearly fun, and it was written in the book to be a Fun Concept.
Same thing with Aziraphale and his Bookshop. The whole joke there is that used bookshops which are actually clearly just the owner's excuse to have extra-storage space for their book collection and they have little intention to allow you to actually buy anything and makes you wonder how they stay in business actually are actually absolutely a thing that exists in Real Life!
Why are they Like That? Where do they get their money if they clearly want to sell as few books as possible? Maybe this is all a front for a supernatural immortal bibliophile? That's also fun to imagine.
There's a lot of other little touches like that in the book. Hey, have you ever noticed that every car always seem to have a 'Best of Queen' Cassette in it even if you don't remember buying one? Yeah, the cassettes just transform into them, that's just a commonplace supernatural phenomena, everybody knows that. Yeah, obviously there's no 'Prophecy' in the world that's entirely accurate… because the one 100% accurate prophetess in the world made sure her Book of Prophecy ended up only with her family. Even the fact that the world ended up completely restored and a lot of characters ended up with only hazy memories of what happened and most of humanity decided to ignore it and go about its business as normal… Maybe Armageddon did come in August 1990 but we were saved and everyone just moved on?
Every one of these kind of stories has to deal with the balancing act between the fantasy of Magic and taking the metaphorical real-life injustices the Magic is tied to seriously and literally. Or maybe it's less of a balancing act and more of a Yin-and-Yang thing, encouraging the audience to think of the little charming bits of Magic in their everyday life, also makes them acknowledge the parts that remind them of real-world harm.
As far as balancing all of this in Good Omens goes, the book makes Crowley and Aziraphale lovable but also makes it clear that they're not necessarily our heroes, the show chooses to make them our heroes but draws a firmer line between them and the system they were both complicit in and victimized by. Both Book Omens and GO1 are about how ultimately, these horrible systems' attempts to control those weaker than them and destroy the world will inevitably fail, and maybe if we put aside our differences, we could team up and get rid of them entirely.
And in the meantime, you can just imagine Aziraphale and Crowley are chatting up on their favorite bench in St. James Park or maybe they're going to your favorite local restaurant because they had to visit your hometown for a 'business trip'.
…But it does make sense that if you're going to do a story that continues from that point, that explores how Heaven and Hell, and the oppressive systems they represent, aren't going to be so easily defeated and they are still going to keep victimizing people and endangering the world - that you're to build up to a Happy Ending where Heaven and Hell are gone, completely. And while the whole 'Humanist Revolution' that has been set up seems like the most thematically-appropriate solution, it's a solution that pretty much has to always be in the future-tense. Again, part of the fantasy is imagining that the Good Omens setting could be our world, and if Humanity is going to wake up to the machinations of Heaven and Hell, put aside our differences and unite together to rise up against them and kill God ourselves… well, that would be pretty hard to imagine this is secretly the world we live in now...
There’s still a lot of different options with different pros and cons, different ways to execute them… Could you dismantle Heaven and Hell while keeping the Angels and Demons as individual life forms that were also victimized by the system? Could you turn all the Angels and Demons Humans and still keep up the illusion that this is our world even thought 20 million new humans suddenly materialized out of nowhere? Could you just trick Heaven and Hell into trying to control a random uninhibited planet for the lols?
But either way, I feel like Good Omens 3 just kinda chose the absolutely worse option? I want to say they ditched the whole delicate balancing act in favor of just treating every Magical element of the show as 100% part of the Metaphorical Oppressive System that therefor must be dismantled… but they didn’t even do a good job of handling that concept! Because, yes, Good Omens Viewers, at the same time they enjoyed the fantasy of living in a world where a Miracle from a mostly-benevolent Angel or a barley-wicked Demon could be just around the corner, did also engage with the aspect of the world that clearly metaphorically mirrored the hardships and oppressions of our world (as well as the clear indications that the literal hardships and oppressions of our world also exist in the Good Omens world).
The Good Omens world didn’t just feel like our world when it made for a pleasant daydream, but also when Crowley and Aziraphale were fighting to escape harmful systems that seem fundamentally inescapable, when the inability to heal from the trauma it left on them was hurting their relationship, when Adam fell into environmental-anxiety-fueled despair for the first time in his young life and his friends had to pull him out of it, when Maggie struggled to keep her family business afloat after the pandemic…
This world felt like ours both in the sense we were supposed to think all of this biblically literal stuff could be secretly happening in the background of our real life and in the sense that the supernatural troubles felt relatable and applicable to the problems we faced in our world. And instead of at least offering us a coherent empowering narrative about defeating these oppressive systems (even at the price of even the Fun Silly Fantasy Element) it just seemed to tell us that our world is doomed to die.
Eventually some powerful idiot is gonna snap and get their hands on the red button while everyone else is too incompetent or selfish or invested in their personal bullshit to stop them and the little people, the Humans, will have no agency to stop it at all and everything and everyone you know and love will die. And not only that, no one never had any hopes of saving the world or truly being free, because the Most Powerful Authority Figure around is just so powerful, there is no way to actually outplay Them. AND NOT ONLY THAT, these systems of oppression have been built so inherently into the foundations of the world, that there’s nothing and no one that could or should be restored from it. The only way to build something remotely better is to start over from scratch.
And the power to build back anything at all doesn't even come from Humanity! Or our protagonists! Or our protagonists' inherent humanity! They basically have to beg the Biggest Authority Figure around to dismantle/not bring back the system and then kill themselves and just trust said Authority Figure won't just break Their promise! There isn't really any good actionable narrative about how to dismantle a system or build things better to hang on to!
And after all of that, the ‘oh, no, THAT wasn’t actually our world! This new better world is ours! Doesn’t it just make you love our world so much knowing it’s so much better than the Good Omens world?’ shtick falls flat for many because the Good Omens world already felt like our world, because it seemed identical to it on the surface and it's fantasy elements were an obvious Metaphor for the troubles plaguing our real world. The same kind of troubles that the Finale spent like ~80 minutes telling us there's no real escape from and will ultimately doom us. And now we have to keep going through all of this without even the comfort of feeling like Humanity's Eternal Gay Uncles are boozing it up somewhere in the world.
Louis Ralph just uploaded this Good Omens 3 concept artwork to his online portfolio.
This could have been so beautiful. It was supposed to be so beautiful.
They’re them. Under Crowley’s stars, surrounded by the attributes of their past, safely cocooned by centuries of shared memories and held by their future. Crowley haphazardly draped in his chair, Aziraphale pointing out the shooting star. A walking cane lovingly propped up against the arm of a favorite chair. The bitten apple between them. Holding hands. They’re exactly as they should be.
We could have had the most moving, most tenderly heartfelt end that didn’t fucking break so many of us while insisting that broken things cannot be fixed.
There is more warmth and intimacy in this concept art than the entire finale.
