all i want for 2026 is that gigantic rancid AI bubble to finally burst in such a catastrophic way that the consequences will be so good and i'll never have to see another AI generated image ever again
I think what bothers me most about the human version of Crowley at the end is that he truly is nothing like the Crowley we know, because he’s like Angel Crowley. This whole finale pushed a rhetoric that Crowley never deserved to fall, that he was the purest of them all, and that’s just…wrong. Even as an Angel, Crowley had faults. Prideful, dismissive, certainly not aligning with the good Angel archetype they’ve posthumously assigned to him. This gets especially infuriating if we consider demon Crowley as, on many levels, a metaphor for the effects of trauma. Crowley has said many times that the Angel he was is not who he is now, and we see that so clearly over the course of the show. He’s hurt and angry and tired, he’s clearly been impacted by the events that happened to him and that all plays in to his character. So for them to decide that all of that is irrelevant and discard it in favor of a watered down human version that reflects a self Crowley left behind long ago, it really feels like a slap in the face. It’s like they took all of what Crowley thought Aziraphale was saying in the final fifteen and made it reality. You only get to be loved if you are an angel. You only get to be loved if we erase the past that has shaped who you are. You only get to be loved as a memory of someone who no longer exists. And I just think that sends a really sad message.
the difference between liking the finale and not isn't just down to the debate of media literacy and taste. because the problem really boils down to the experience of loss.
i keep trying to shout how much i reject the finale. i am filling up every space i can with all of the reasons it doesn't make sense to me, doesn't work for me, doesn't feel canon to me. not because i'm trying to convince myself of my position, but because i'm trying to convince myself that i will be able to move past this feeling by just rejecting it.
but in truth i don't know how to unsee it. and i do not know if i can enjoy good omens anymore. because while those issues of taste and media literacy surrounding the convoluted philosophies about free will and reincarnation, and the whole not kissing or not saying "i love you" issues can all be debated as intellectual, matters of logic and judgement and comprehension...
there's a big chunk of this schism that comes from perception and emotion, and not all emotional responses/reactions can be logic'ed or be correct or incorrect.
and one of the most impactful for me is what feels like multiple instances of extremely out of character dialogue and choices. and because of aziraphale and crowley's characterization and choices in the finale, i was very quickly drained of the feeling of comfort in them and their love. i can't love that aziraphale with how he speaks to that crowley. i ache too much for that crowley. i don't feel that their love as presented is that powerful or beautiful anymore because now it just radiates what from my experience feels completely toxic. and so i'm left with wondering why would toxic love save the universe. why is it good to get reincarnated back into a toxic relationship.
and even if you try to make the logical argument that that toxicity is only there because of the angel/demon opposite sides thing, it doesn't feel like enough to excuse the fact that it happened. it destroys for me the beauty of it.
so even if "that is them," i don't know how to care about asa and anthony getting to be happy and in love if I wouldn't have been peacefully, comfortably happy with crowley and aziraphale getting together after what i saw in that episode.
and trying to look back at season 2 and season 1 and the book and the good old fics is a stab in the heart because i saw in that finale the devastation on their faces when they decided that all of the longing and want and pain of every disagreement and fight and miscommunication and every "almost" over 6000 years would never be rectified. that there was no payoff for all of that trying and wanting. that they were in pain for millennia only to sacrifice themselves for a new universe that i can't feel like was even a guarantee... because god's agreement doesn't feel like something that can or should be trusted.
there's no comfort or joy there anymore. it doesn't feel safe. i don't feel held. reading and writing fic just hurts now. drawing, making gifs, editing video, all just hurt now. i can't talk to half of my friends because they're happy about something that broke me.
i've lost my source of joy and i don't know if that feeling is ever going to come back. i don't know if i'll ever be able to unsee the finale and shed the visceral emotional reaction i had to it.
and that kind of loss carries a whole different kind of weight and consequence and disruption to it than a straightforward or even bittersweet "i liked it."
I keep seeing people claim that this ending was the only one possible, that the whole narration up from s1 (or even the book) was building up to this finale, that a hard reset of the universe was the endgame all along.
I don't see how. Good Omens's original charm was being a parody of all religions (and a bunch of deterministic movies like The Omen). The problem of free will was discussed often with a light-hearted, parodic approach. I'm reminded of when Ligur said "I made a priest look at pretty girls in the sun today: he could have become a saint, now he's going to hell." Isn't this literally a parody of how simplistic religious moral beliefs are? The whole point of GO was not just to mock them, but to reflect on how humans are more complex than that, in a universe where, even if Hell and Heaven are literal and operative, humans still managed to successfully exercise their free will AND avoid Armageddon, even if it was advertised as inevitable by Heaven/Hell. The point was to prove both wrong. Az and Crow were there just to say that “who's to say it wasn't God's plan all along, maybe there were some small-font clauses hidden somewhere in the Plan?”
It was beautiful, hilarious, humanist, comforting, open-ended. God was never this evil final boss, overarching puppeteer: the point was that she almost didn’t seem to exist at all and it was just a bunch of humans doing things while claiming a bigger entity wanted them to do that.
My takeaway from the book and first season has always been: Azira and Crowley thought they could impact humanity with their work, then quickly realized they didn't need to do much work AND that both their bosses would never understand that, so they just relaxed and enjoyed the ride lol.
What I liked the most about the GO's message was: humans are both bad and good, beautifully human anyway, even in a world with Heaven/Hell, which doesn't impact their lives that much. Dumb Corporate thinks they're pulling the strings of the world, when in fact the strings have always been so loose they could as well be nonexistent: still, humanity is doing just fine.
The point of avoiding Armageddon was to protect that world, created with free will and humanity being its beautiful, "human incarnate" self. That Specific Humanity was worth saving, just like Job wanted His Specific Kids back.
The best thing was that humanity saved itself! No need for celestial beings basically Jesusing themselves for the world, except what they're saving is the abstract concept of a “free humanity”. Where did s1’s love for That Humanity go? They only save the ideal of it with their sacrifice: was that really the only option? It’s a fictional world, so every writing choice reveals a specific intention and message.
That's why the ending of s3 feels really disconnected to me: suddenly we're in a world where God is extremely involved, humans can never have actual free will, they're all "puppets in her own book", all the messages of caring for others and trying to improve the existing world instead of throwing the whole thing in the trash (The Them at Adam during his power trip), trying to find your footing in life despite your past and your nature (Crowley being a failed demon, Aziraphale struggling with his wavering faith, etc.), all blown out the window! I don't want to say it feels like a retcon, but it definitely feels like they flattened a lot of the previous messages and themes just to achieve the tearjerker ending. It doesn't feel earned, it doesn't feel organic, it doesn't feel particularly satisfactory as a way of tying up all the loose ends. It's nothing short of an "it was all a dream" ending.
TLTR: on where the 3 seasons differed to me:
S1 was hope and humanity in all its beautiful, messy glory, making Az and Crow basically useless, giving them a relative freedom from their jobs. Humanity is the main protagonist, it saves itself, who's to say that wasn't the Plan all along? Sure, there’s the "this wasn't the big one, the next one will be Us against all of Them" line, but it doesn't have to be literal: a well-written sequel could have kept the original themes while exploring other interesting moral conundrums in a clever way, instead of going the cheap route of "it's all bleak, let's press reset."
S2 was a wrestling match between different, opposite outlooks on life: do we stay and try making the world better, or do we run away and choose each other? Is there any reason left to hope, or is the world bleak? Can we reform an unjust system, or is it rigged from the start? A more intimiste approach, a slice-of-life approach, if you will.
S3 doesn't even try to do anything except say from the start: everything is ending, there's no point in this life, all is lost, humanity is doomed, free will never existed, I'm tired boss let's just restart the universe because as long as God exists we'll never be free (in a show from a book that was basically saying the opposite and also, a friggin' PARODY of religion, it was never supposed to get that serious*).
*Small footnote under the cut:
s3 feels, all in all, like a fix-it fic from someone who took the first book way too seriously, injected a sense of extra existential dread into a world order that was just meant to be a parody, and basically run with this idea so much that they took the liberty to kill the whole franchise and restart it to their own liking.
It reminds me of Toy Story 4 and why many people hated it: first 3 movies were fun but also bitter sweet because toys were often abandoned by their children, so it was all about finding happiness where you could, seizing the moment, and making bonds with your friends, while surviving in a world where the laws were tried and true. It didn’t try to shy away from difficult themes and difficult choices. It had guts and took risks. It didn’t try to mollycoddle their audience.
Then the 4th movie came out and suddenly all the previous messages were thrown out of the window: toys should just run away from their kids and find their own happiness, let’s dismantle the system! Except it didn’t feel like an empowering message, it felt like breaking all the previously established, bittersweet but beautiful messages, trampling over them, just to get this cheap, individualistic message out.
What is with sequels and their need to completely negate all the previous messages? This constant need for a hard reset, which never feels satisfactory anyway, because it rarely feels earned?
If one more person comments on my posts with “DiD wE wAtCh tHe sAmE FinALe???” I’m going to lose my shit lol YES. YES WE DID. IT WAS BADLY WRITTEN LOUSY STORYTELLING AND IT ERASED THE ENTIRE FUCKING POINT OF EVERYONE ALREADY HAVING FREE WILL WHILE ERASING EVERYTHING ELSE BEFORE GIVING US HUMANS WHO KIND OF LOOK LIKE OUR BELOVED ANGEL AND DEMON BUT. ARE. NOT. THEM. Crowley did a 180 for no reason and chose mass annihilation right after Aziraphale was blabbering on and on about how amazing Crowley WAS as an angel while never saying he loved him for who he IS. Did YOU watch the same finale??? Why should I be thrilled to have YET ANOTHER QUEER TRAGEDY in a world that’s overflowing with het happy endings? They killed this story’s soul along with everyone else’s soul who ever lived in that universe while preaching to us that we should be thankful for that because how could anyone as traumatized as Crowley and Aziraphale ever be happy? Like healing is impossible. Like choosing yourself is wrong. Like you’re fucking doomed unless you sacrifice yourself for ‘something greater’. FUCK THAT LMAO if I wanted a Christian nihilist sermon I would go to church not watch GOOD OMENS
My issue with the Good Omens Finale doesn’t lie with the ending.
*spoilers below cut*
At least, not solely. Believe me, the ending upset me, and I wish it had been something different, but it really was, for me, the cherry on top of a wholly disappointing experience. Because the thing is, as much as I hate the “becoming human” conclusion, I could have accepted that. I could have made peace with that choice, if it had felt earned.
But, and many people won’t agree with this…
…the writing felt lazy.
The finale, for me, suffered from a problem that I’ve seen having more and more prevalence within ongoing shows that have amassed large fan bases. It’s something I refer to as Callback Spamming.
“Our car” “Did I say the wrong thing?” “Should I say thank you?” “Better not” “What’s the point?” “Bebop” “ilostitinagameofskillandchance” “sorry, didn’t quite catch that” “I lost it in a game of skill and chance” “I forgive you” The apology dance. Ice cream. Nightingales. They like holding hands. It starts as it will end in a garden. The flaming sword. Crowley watching Aziraphale eat.
The goal of this is, clearly, to have the viewer make connections and parallels to the writing that they’ve already enjoyed before. Parallels have their time and place, and using them properly and sparingly can be highly effective. But when so much of the finale is recycled content, it just ends up feeling cheap and unsatisfying. You could even see this pattern begin to take shape in season two, albeit not as overbearing.
What’s truly impactful are new lines to get excited about, writing that expands on the original themes without being repetitive. And while there were glimmers here and there, overall the finale lacked that. In fact, I would argue that due to the focus on surface level callbacks that serve no real purpose in the plot, valuable time that could have been devoted to the core messages of the show was lost. They had their 90 minutes, and they didn’t use them to their full extent, and it’s just sad to see one of my favorite shows go out like this.
That was officially the worst ending of a show I have ever witnessed. I hate it with a burning passion and wish Good Omens had never gotten renewed after S1.
If I do make anything for GO in the future, just know that it’s in an alternate universe where the two of them sat on their arses and rewrote reality into the blank bookshop books. I ain’t touching those two human lookalikes
DO NOT PIRATE ANYTHING. NOT SHOWS/MOVIES. NOT GAMES OR SAFER GAMES. AND CERTAINLY NOT BOOKS. AND DO NOT DOWNLOAD YOUTUBE VIDEOS. AND NEVER EVER EVER WATCH MUSICALS WITHOUT GOING TO THEM AND DONT USE ADBLOCKERS/OTHER ADBLOCKER TO AVOID ADS AND VIRUSES PIRATING IS VERY HARMFUL TO THE CORPORATIONS WHO WORKS VERY HARD TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF PEOPLE AND THEIR MONEY. ANYONE WHO PIRATES IS BAD. BAD PIRATING. EVIL. OH AND THIS
Asexuality and aromanticism being defined as "little to no sexual/romantic attraction" is crazy to me. Imagine if they redefined being a gay man as "little to no attraction to women" and you had to, like, figure out for yourself that liking men was a part of it.
Personally, I define my aroaceness not as a lack of romantic or sexual attraction, but as an orientation towards relationships that are neither romantic nor sexual. Redefining my orientation this way has helped me find a lot of peace I didn't have before.
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