I mean, I already said that I think referencing so many Book Quotes in Crowley’s ‘confrontation’ with God was a really counterproductive move because a lot of these quotes do not actually support the point Crowley is trying to make and, because, like, it’s hard to create an impression you’re making a poignant statement both deconstructing and building on the themes of the previous seasons… if you also apparently can’t think of anything cleverer to say than what was written at the start of the 1990 book.
But I do want to give more focus on this line he stole from Adam…
Which, like, first thing first, this feels very ironic. A reminder of how much TV Omens has previously downplayed the Humanist themes of the Novel for the sake of focusing on the Ineffable Husbands (by, for example, cutting down Adam’s debate with Heaven and Hell significantly just to give Crowley and Aziraphale more focus) and is now turning around and trying to pretend it has totally being about Humanity all along.... While still only having Supernatural Non-Humans do all the talking.
It’s also a line that works much better for a child like Adam than for Crowley. Like the whole point of the gag about ‘the Problem of Evil’ is supposed to be “Oooh, Crowley isn’t asking the Most Trite Theological Question Ever, he’s got something actually insightful to say!” But then his question is just, like, the second most trite theological question ever!
It works with Adam cause he’s a child using his child’s wisdom and simple common sense to disrupt the Cosmic Grown Ups around him. He is asking Obvious Questions, but just because they might be Obvious, that doesn’t mean the adult authority figures around him have remotely good answers for them. Bringing in a fresh and direct perspective, without the bullshit and hypocrisy... That’s the power of a child asking questions.
Meanwhile, Crowley is over 6000 Years old and has ‘Theological Bullshitting’ as one of his main hobbies, so this does not work nearly as well for him.
And, because the line has taken out of context of both what came before and after it, it’s also way weaker. Within Adam’s dialogue, it is very clear he’s critiquing the concepts of Good and Evil specifically a bad way of judging Human morality. Crowley takes that line and only that one line and like you can argue that with the other misapplied quotes he is still applying Binary Good and Evil to Human behavior even as he’s saying Humans are capable of both, so it kinda feels like he’s just saying that Consequences in general are antithetical to Real Free Will??
Which is very ironic considering Adam’s line the original context immediately segways to him wishing people would be more aware of the consequences of their actions on Earth. And… like, as with many things about this ending, I can see what they were trying to do here. Adam says the Human way to judge people is based on the effects of their actions on the world, but he lives in a Biblically Literalist world where people are judged based on abstract scales of Good and Evil that have little to do with the Human viewpoint. Now Crowley is actually arguing for removing that system, Heaven and Hell, so that the only thing that does matter are Human actions on Earth if you discount the fact that Humans still invented these abstract scales of Good and Evil without celestial and divine interface and kept judging other Humans by that, I guess that’s still an improvement over it being an Objective Fact of the Universe.
I get what they were trying to do, even if I feel like Crowley’s dialogue, and the Finale as a whole, really fails to deliver on its intentions. Mostly it’s because Adam’s argument is reduced to a single catchy quote in a sea of out-of-context catchy book quotes that do not inherently support it. But also… it feels so ironic to have this specific argument from Adam here, in this story, when Adam literally words as such…
Trying to sort it out while you're still alive used to be the Human way of doing things too...
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