Are you *aware* that as soon as they (the neighbors, the archangels, the canada) were erased from the Book Of Life, they COULD NOT be brought back, ever?
They allowed everyone to return. They allowed humanity to return. They wouldn't have been able to find their original universe back, and they chose to free humanity from a celestial or occult threat, taking the risk of never meeting in that other universe (and they still did).
Because this is what Good Omens is about. Humanity. And their love for it, for us.
Yes, god could have brought everything back as it was. We would have got Aziraphale and Crowley again, but for which prize?! Continuing to hide for the next 6000 years?! Living in fear for eternity?!
Just realized we have the proof Good Omens 3 still follows our real timeline (just like s1 and s2)
The meteor shower Anthony mentions and observes in the final scene is the Eta Aquariids, a meteor shower associated with Halley's Comet and visible in the Aquarius constellation. FYI, they were active from April 19 to May 28 with their peak around May 10 this year
The finale released on May 13, right during the peak
It's these kinds of lovely thoughtful details that makes me love Good Omens and rewatch it over and over again without getting tired of it. It's just perfect
Messing About, Stacking the Deck, and Free Will - Why the themes of Good Omens Season 3 Worked for me
Hey all, it's been a bit of a rough time for us, hasn't it? I really enjoyed the finale, compromises, heartbreak, and all. I don't want this to come off as scolding or telling anyone they are wrong to feel the way they do, or that they don't 'get it,' because the finale allows for a multitude of valid and contradictory readings. But I haven't seen too many people talking about the things I've been mulling over for several days now?
I think part of the divide here is cultural, philosophical, religious, etc. Like, we're over here as a fandom trying to settle the longstanding question of Predetermination vs Free Will (among other things) in the space of four ten days!!! These are NOT trivial questions being brought to the fore!
It's been so interesting too, to see people so split on whether this ending is a Pratchett ending or not. There is also a divide on whether it is true to the themes of the book and the show* and I have to say........ yes???
It is, at the very least, explicitly engaging with the text of the book and the show--a lot of the dialogue at the end is in the book itself!!--and I can see how you could tease out these ideas in a hypothetical sequel and come to where we ended up. Did we get the only or the best execution of these themes? Assuredly not. We certainly got a truncated, compromised execution of these ideas, and I can almost see the shape of where some of them could've branched out in a full season.
*The problem is that the text *is* so dense, and wide-reaching, and philosophical, and weird, and zany, is that S3 also *ABSOLUTELY* dropped other themes too. And Good Omens isn't just a few ideas!!
We have known for a long time that we were going to get a compromised product, but I'll tell you why S3 still worked for me.
This is quite long, so I will break this up into a few separate pieces.
I was really excited by season 2, I loved it, I think it is probably still my favorite? S2 E2 is perhaps the best television I've ever seen. And yes, season 2 focuses on the romance and relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley, but it also focuses on their relationship to *humans*.
The thing I was so excited about when season 2 first aired was in direct relation with something Adam says towards the end of the first book:
And after watching season 2 I was stoked!! "OH!! They're going to address that point in the final season!! I see now!!"
[Side note: I don't think it was wrong of them to drop this whole line of thought from the first season. The ending sequence works well enough without it, and it's not critically load bearing if S1 is a standalone product, and there's enough supernatural meddling to justify underlining it later, as they ended up doing.]
In Season 2 especially (though in S1 as well) we explicitly see *Crowley and Aziraphale* "messing people about, not just Heaven and Hell, but our beloved protagonists.
Crowley and Aziraphale "mess about" with Job and his family. Now they are being told to do it by their head offices, but they are "messing around" with Job. Explicitly for capricious, fickle whims between Satan and God, but messing about nonetheless! It's CRUEL, it's a cruel story in the Bible that has bedeviled scholars for thousands of years in the examining and interpreting thereof. What is the nature of God, does God contain Sin and Evil as part of being all things?? How can cruel things happen in a universe with a caring, loving God? Why does God allow bad things to happen to us? Can we do anything to appease God to end our suffering? It asks a lot of hard, hard questions of us, unfair ones in an unfair universe whether you believe God exists or not.
And the episode beautifully points all this out, and subverts the ending with quick thinking from our heroes. So it does, ultimately, have a happy end, but the misery Job and his family experienced was still real. They were still used for cheap entertainment for higher beings with far more power than they could ever hope to have.
There's also Elspeth and Wee Morag. By waffling on the complexity of human morals, Crowley and Aziraphale inadvertently end up getting Wee Morag killed. Elspeth's suicide attempt is averted by their actions (and presumably she goes and runs a farm and is good, given that Crowley gets dragged down to Hell for punishment) but that's still a high cost to pay, all around. All for 'messing about.' It's true, Crowley and Aziraphale are not perfect beings, they do make mistakes, they are like us, but far more powerful than us.
And of course, in the present day, they are using Maggie and Nina to try and fix a problem of their own making. They disregard the fact that Nina has a partner, and are doing their best matchmaker routine.
Now I say this as someone who enjoys Maggie/Nina and I hope that they went off into the sunset together after an appropriate amount of time for Nina to get herself sorted. Also, it's part of the premise! It's FUN to watch our angel and demon swan about and do ridiculous things and give people things they deserve or want. But...
Nina and Maggie take Crowley to task at the end of the season, right before the final fifteen. I don't see enough people talking about it.
Nina: "Where's the other one? We need to talk to you."
Crowley: "He's out. Not a good time."
Nina: "I wasn't asking. There are things you need to hear. You and your... partner *have been messing about in our lives*."
Maggie: "We're not a game. We're real people. You can't just pair us up for your amusement."
Nina even uses the same phrase! "Messing about!" It's SO important it's in the book 6 or 8 times in that final confrontation scene in some form or another.
And you can see in the book that Crowley takes it to heart quite quickly!!
And he's trying to impress that importance to his angel!
Crowley, the purported architect of Free Will (possibly, let's call it Schrodinger's Free Will for the moment), realizes he's been party to meddling in people's lives, and I don't think he cares for it.
And I think Adam's words to Anathema are critically important here for the final bit of groundwork for this theme. In the book she approaches him and tells him he could do all sorts of good things like saving the whales etc and Adam shuts her down:
I think this is crucial for understanding the ending of season 3. I think it is there in the text and subtext throughout the show to get there as well, though not stated quite so explicitly.
Aziraphale and Crowley are supernatural beings! Even without explicitly using miracles, they are often shown to influence reality around them, just from their expectations alone! A lot of what happens during *The Ball* was as eerie as it was fun, and I don't believe that Aziraphale is playing anyone like a puppeteer, but his hopes and expectations are so strong, they are clearing having a huge influence on the proceedings. We also see it in Season 3. Without its protector, Whickbur Street fell into a terrible state while our angel was gone.
Aside from the power of their expectations, they have been living their way with their powers for thousands of years, are they really going to let the mundanity of waiting for a reservation to open up at a fancy restaurant happen to them? Are they going to meekly submit to the parking meter enforcer? Again! We LOVE seeing them banish those mundanities, and it's part of the fun and the premise, but I can absolutely see the path to a hypothetical sequel novel where the narrative hooks them by the collar and says "No, actually, it's not okay for you two--or any supernatural entity--to have this much power over humanity! It's not fair!" And I can see the seeds for Crowley coming around to this thought with what Adam said/what Nina told him in season 2.
I have seen quite a few folks bemoaning the gambling subplot and complaining that it takes up too much time but, in my opinion, it is *thematically* load bearing, and you really can't remove it because it is the bridge between "messing about" and the question of Free Will.
Good Omens starts with the analogy of games of chance (the show borrows this essentially word-for-word):
God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players,* to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
This also comes up near the end of the Armageddon that Almost Was, where Gabriel (or the Metatron in the book) tries to claim that God does not play dice with the Universe/His Loyal Servants. ("Where have you been!?")
And returning to Job (briefly), that was framed as a wager, a bet, between God and Satan.
All over the series you have wagers, chess, games of skill and chance, cards, and gambling as a running motif:
Hell wasn’t a major reservoir of evil, any more than Heaven, in Crowley’s opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.
Crowley reminds us of the Three Card Monte analogy used in S1 when he is drunkenly talking to Jesus. And when he tries to win the Bentley back. The thing to remember about the Three Card Monte is that it's a confidence game at its heart. The dealer will always win in a well-executed game. They don't even have to deal in order to win in the best-laid of plans. And we know that God plays some kind of ineffable card game of her own devising, so why not Three Card Monte? "Nobody ever finds the lady unless she wants them to." Does God play sleight of hand tricks with the Universe as well?
The other thing that the Three Card Monte usually employs is a shill to sell the validity of the game. We'll come back to that idea.
Crowley's early triumphant run at blackjack, followed by the inability to "find the lady" is put there specifically to put us in mind of unfairness, stacked decks, and playing in a rigged game. Just as BC's high-pressure ambush on Crowley when he lost the Bentley is.
Crowley even says it, out loud when he and Aziraphale are in the Bentley looking for Jesus:
"It's all rigged! The entire universe! [...] But you're not [the boss] and you never will be! There's always someone above you stacking the deck."
Aziraphale also mentions that the Metatron is missing during this exchange, but of course we can infer that Crowley really means God here when talking about who the real Boss is.
And if we understand God to be omnipotent, omnipresent but also playing Her own personal game with the Universe… where does Free Will factor in?
Free Will in Good Omens is a bit of a sticky wicket. It is said that angels and demons do not have Free Will, but that humans do, that they get to choose, but... do they?
I am not remotely qualified to talk about the myriad of ways people try to reconcile this question (or don't, looking at you, Calvanists), but Good Omens as a whole seems to be mostly operating on a binary of an either/or. Maybe you can make an argument that God lets humans choose the little things or, conversely, maybe she lets us choose the big things, but I don't know that it is fully settled that Free Will is as real as we think it is.
Throughout the show and the novel, at critical junctures Aziraphale and Crowley turn to each other and ask: "Did the Almighty Plan it this way all along?" Now we could make the argument that as beings without Free Will, this may just be their default position. After all, they are much closer to Her than we are, even if humans are made in God’s own image.
But it happens multiple times in the book at the show, and most of these exchanges are nearly identical to the book.
Their meeting in Eden starts with them contemplating God’s plans. Practically page 1 of the book!!
“You’ve got to admit it’s a bit of a pantomime, though,” said Crawly. “I mean, pointing out the Tree and saying ‘Don’t Touch’ in big letters. Not very subtle, is it? I mean, why not put it on top of a high mountain or a long way off? Makes you wonder what He’s really planning.” “Best not to speculate, really,” said Aziraphale.
Or again, later, 11 years before Armageddon:
“I can’t interfere with divine plans,” he croaked. Crowley looked speculatively into his glass, and then filled it again. “What about diabolical ones?” he said.
“Pardon?”
“Well, it’s got to be a diabolical plan, hasn’t it? We’re doing it. My side.”
“Ah, but it’s all part of the overall divine plan,” said Aziraphale. “Your side can’t do anything without it being part of the ineffable divine plan,” he added, with a trace of smugness.
The biggest difference in the book when deciding to become Godfathers, is that Aziraphale throws in a dig that everything that Hell does is part of the overall Ineffable Divine Plan. A sort of smug ‘neener-neener’ that always lets him have the upper hand.
But it cuts both ways, doesn’t it? We see Aziraphale struggle in the book and the show with the idea of ineffability and trying to intuit what God actually wants (see The Flood and Job) and reconcile those wants that with his morals.
And as Aziraphale contemplates in the book: Sometimes you really had to hope that the ineffable plan had been properly thought out.
And then of course, after Adam et al avert the Apocalypse, in the book as in the show, Aziraphale and Crowley ask themselves—again—if God had really planned everything out this way (on the page and onscreen).
The last time they really talk about God’s plans in the book was left out of season 1, but transplanted into season 3. It is adapted, of course, for the screen and to account for different characters being present, but just about everything said on screen for much of that scene is directly from the book:
With the understanding that we can’t really fathom the Ineffable—is God playing Solitaire or Three Card Monte?
Indeed, Crowley asks a fantastic question in his little tirade. Why would God let the rebellion and good and evil happen? What if Satan’s role in the cosmic game is to act as a shill? Whether Satan knows it or not*, he and Hell are there to sell humans on the idea that we have Free Will.
*(I’m not sure he does, but Crowley implies that he might be in on the grift with his assertion “You knew we couldn’t win!”)
Because that’s the problem, with having an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-present deity that is playing some kind of cosmic game with the Universe. It’s that, fundamentally, They could be manipulating everything. They do have the power to exert control or lay out plans within plans. It’s nearly a paradox, isn’t it? If God knows all, and sees all, and has all power, do our choices even matter if we do have Free Will? If God can anticipate our every choice and action and build a game around it, is that still Free Will? Or is that stacking the deck? If we have the Free Will to exert our own choices and thwart Her plans, then wouldn’t that make us more powerful than the all-powerful God? Doesn’t She always have the upper hand on us?
With Satan and the illusion of Free Will the Universe becomes a blind test (it could never be double-blind, with one party all-seeing). With Heaven and Hell being the same sides of one coin (or two floors in the same building) that gives humans an illusion of choice in where we are going, when it is all the same destination. Maybe we all get shuffled back into the deck after everything is said and done.
As I have said, this is a question that has bedeviled humanity for thousands of years. I don’t have the answer, but I feel like the text really encourages us to think about the ultimate authority and power of God, and the structure of the Universe according to Their ineffable whims.
So, at last, we come to the final sequence. In the show Aziraphale and Crowley are alone with Satan and God, and almost the whole of Creation destroyed.
I will risk a bit of speculation in this part, on how the sequel-that-never-was or what-a-six-season-arc would have looked like, but I will try to minimize this, but I feel like that is equally important to explaining why this worked so well for me, because I feel like you can see the shape of greater things in what we got.
I think, if you take the ideas from the book that did not make it into season 1, and the ideas that were seeded in season 2, you could absolutely find your way to a sequel that asks the question: Is it right or just or fair for humans to live under the yoke of beings so much more powerful than us? For them to use us so cheaply like cards in a deck? And the answer is, of course: no.
And I do believe it when the team says that this was the intended ending all these years, so I do think it’s right and natural that A&C would get elevated roles in a sequel anyways, given that they’d probably be the most major (if not only) repeat characters in the sequel that never was. The Pratchett estate could have let this go. They fought tooth and nail to claw this out of cancellation. Rob is an executive producer on the project. He and Terry’s daughter (and, yes, even certain disgraced other parties) have all insisted that this is where we were going to end up. The ending was the thing that everyone involved in was the most protective of.
But we got an imperfect ending. It would have been nice, and an obvious bookend, for example, to get Jesus facing down his Mother as we got Adam facing down Satan. I think we definitely would have gotten something more there in a full season. But the writing is already so tight, there wasn’t enough time to fully develop both story lines in full, and they absolutely focused on the themes I’ve already talked about up to this point. And because Aziraphale and Crowley are our protagonists now, from Season 2 on, they are the ones to make this choice in the end. And I think that is right and proper in this instance. Because they are ultimately deciding what happens to the supernatural world.
Aziraphale and Crowley get some time to themselves in a garden, and Aziraphale asks Crowley what he wants. (Because he knows he is too selfish in this moment, he just wants Crowley). And Crowley—the demon who thought this whole time (and yet also doubted) that he gave humanity Free Will, wants to do it all over again. Only this time, he wants to do it right. He wants it to be real.
And he and Aziraphale do it. For us.
Because they know, even if they banished the rest of Heaven and Hell, they themselves would always be prone to influence the world around them with their powers. Once you start messing around, you can’t really stop. Even if God put the Universe back how it was, you could never get away from that kind of interference. It’s embedded in the very bones.
Now was this a test from God just to see what they choose? Or does She actually cede control for a change? Or is it another one of Her Plans?
Let us ask ourselves, why is Satan really here? Is Satan there to sell the image of Free Will to Aziraphale and Crowley as he was to humans? His place in the ending seemed strange to me until I thought of his role as the shill in Three Card Monte. (And how quick he is to tell us that The Satan was just a role, a job title!)
Because if Satan is in on the grift, not just an unwitting tool, he seems genuinely shocked by Her acquiescence. He didn’t think they’d get their way, that She would enact whatever Her real plans were.
And I think they did it. I think Aziraphale and Crowley, impossibly, Found the Lady with the decision they made. (Whether or not God wanted them to). They did the impossible and asked for the impossible in return.
It is a difficult ending open to a MULTITUDE of interpretations, but I think they were also able to vouchsafe the universe from any undue interference from Her in that moment.
They asked for a Godless universe. They birthed a Universe with their love (didn’t we see how powerful they are when they work miracles together!?). They asked for our choices to matter. Wouldn’t their choice—having a true, real decision—make them more powerful than God in that moment!?
And if we make choices in this Universe for good or evil, at least it will be us making them. If the Universe is unfair, then it is unfair to everyone in the same way. There is no favoritism or predetermined fate. No special providence in the fall of a sparrow.
This is a bit more of my own interpretation (or at least one of them, I hold multiple readings of the ending at the moment, and I'm still developing some of these ideas), but I think the similarities we see in our history are implied to be the echoes of what happened. The echoes of Aziraphale and Crowley’s memories ripple through our Universe and our Earth.
As Adam says in the book:
Spirited Away has a lovely companion to this idea: Nothing that happens is ever forgotten, even if you can't remember it. || Once you've met someone you never really forget them. It just takes a while for your memories to return.
I like to think that Aziraphale and Crowley quantum entangled themselves in that moment. That they know, underneath, in their souls who they are and everything that happened, even if they don't always remember. But now they get to be just like us, through a multitude of lifetimes, finding each other over and over. Soulmates by choice.
Random point about Good Omens in general and the finale, food for thought.
God loves games. We are told this. We are then shown in S1 the Three Card Monty, with the shuffling around of the babies on the birth of the Antichrist. The game comes up again related to magic with Aziraphale in S2, because he taught the game to Nefertiti using three cowrey shells. So, it's not just a game, it's a magic trick. So when Harry the Fish teaches Yehoshua the Three Card Monty, it is here in S3 where it all is hammered home.
Because the Three Card Monty isn't a game. And it's not a trick.
It's a con.
And when played for high stakes, the point of the Three Card Monty (ready, steady)...
... is to make your mark think they are making a free choice, when they aren't.
It involves a mark, a dealer, and a third-party who is presented as an outsider against the dealer, but has been secretly on the dealer's side all along.
One day, maybe in the final days of their human life, Asa and Anthony feel complied to pick up that snowglobe thing that has been on their mantelpiece for the last twenty years, gathering dust.
He doesn't know why, but today, Asa feels like turning it upside down, and watch the snow fall on that red bookshop front.
And then, just like that, just with a blink of his eyes, eons of memories come back. He turns to his husband.
I was thinking about how so many creation myths are born from war or chaos... The idea that an entire world could come into existence through an act of love might genuinely be one of the softest, kindest, most heartbreakingly beautiful origin stories ever conceived.
I think a lot of people who are disappointed with the good omens finale because it ostensibly only gave them 30 years together and only in one universe are missing a very important point:
the universe that Crowley asked for is literally our actual universe where the laws of physics are as science knows them — hence including quantum mechanics and the wave function
And one of the most common interpretations of the wave function among scientists is the many worlds interpretation (i.e. the multiverse), where each branching of the wave function creates another universe
So by the very laws of physics that Crowley asked for they didn't get just one universe but an endless string of universes in which they can be together without god, heaven, or hell
That is way more potent than spending eternity in a single cartoonish universe
Rachel Talalay explained creating the "new universe" by god with the Big Bang for our universe. So yes, this! In the end it was bigger than their relationship
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