It’s been four weeks to the day since the Finale aired. I’m still struggling to gather my thoughts about it. In fact, I'm beginning to suspect I may never resolve them and will instead need to accept that my complicated reaction is just that. Complicated. I can be both drawn to and heartbroken by the ending, let myself grieve, and that’s alright.
I’ve been reluctant to add my voice to the mix, when my thoughts have been so unformed and changeable. At the end of the day, I just want those who stumble past my tiny corner of the fandom to feel accepted and welcome, and to that end, please know what follows here is simply my way of trying to exorcise my, ahem, demons about the Finale. This is no judgement on any other takes, nor an attempt to change anyone's mind. Good Omens and the Final 15 may have originally drawn me in, but it’s the fandom that has given me so much (though that's a whole other post. Maybe one day).
I’ve been searching for an anchor, one grounding element that'll allow me to make peace with a Finale that’s made me question so many of my expectations and desires. Namely, that we’d be given an affirming, satisfying ending after nearly three years of hanging on the cliff of that Final 15. Maybe I read too much Pratchett and not enough Gaiman while I waited. Well, that at least I don’t regret.
I did have a minor epiphany today, though. I realised that despite certain characters telling us that a person, once erased from the Book of Life, will never have existed, when Michael destroys Sandalphon and Uriel's pages a trace of them is left behind. An afterimage, emblazoned where they meet their ends.
Now, Crowley posits at one point that it takes time for reality to close around the erasure. And this is a possible explanation, that with the passage of sufficient time, those shadows, the memories, will fade. But does he know this for a fact, or is it a theory? Because when at the end of Season Two Michael is threatening Aziraphale with erasure from the Book of Life, telling him that he’ll never have existed, the Metatron claims her threats are all ‘utter balderdash, complete piffle’. Yes, he goes on to elaborate that she doesn't have the authority to do 'anything like that'. But it also, to me, leaves open the question of whether anyone can actually erase someone to the point they never existed.
Is the bookshop at the end of the universe just an afterimage? Was it always destined to fade? Or will the trace of it linger? And if that trace does survive erasure from the Book of Life, then might it also follow that Aziraphale and Crowley could have survived God’s final act of erasure? Or at the very least, a trace of them persist in the cosmos, so even if they live no more, they, and their universe, still lived. Because I think that's what I struggle with most. The idea that they never existed, even though they of course live in the memories of the viewer.
This is by no means the full answer, if indeed there is one to be had. There are SO MANY questions left unresolved. Like, why did Aziraphale and Crowley not disappear when the Book of Life burned? Sure, Crowley rescued the bookshop page - but are we really to believe they're both so intrinsically tied to it as to cheat erasure? Or if they’re not in the Book at all, why the hell NOT?
Why, in the reborn universe, are so many versions of past characters (angel, demon and human alike) all together in the same pub at the same time? What are the odds of that? Is that world just a dream world after all? Another afterimage?
It’s confounding. It’s frustrating. It’s harrowing. Of course that's partly because it was so hastily cut down from six episodes, but I don't believe that's the only reason. And yet. I want to like it. I do quite like a lot of it. Nearly a month has passed, and this is where I remain. God fucking dammit.
