Aziraphale’s Choice, the Job Connection, and Michael Sheen’s Morality
Update: Michael Sheen liked this post on Twitter, so I'm fairly certain there is a lot of validity to it.
I’ve had time to process Aziraphale’s choice at the end of Season 2. And I think only blaming the religious trauma misses something important in Aziraphale’s character. I think what happened was also Aziraphale’s own conscious choice––as a growth from his trauma, in fact. Hear me out.
Since November 2022 I’ve been haunted by something Michael Sheen said at the MCM London Comic Con. At the Q&A, someone asked him about which fantasy creature he enjoyed playing most and Michael (bless him, truly) veered on a tangent about angels and goodness and how, specifically,
We as a society tend to sort of undervalue goodness. It’s sort of seen as sort of somehow weak and a bit nimby and “oh it’s nice.” And I think to be good takes enormous reserves of courage and stamina. I mean, you have to look the dark in the face to be truly good and to be truly of the light…. The idea that goodness is somehow lesser and less interesting and not as kind of muscular and as passionate and as fierce as evil somehow and darkness, I think is nonsense. The idea of being able to portray an angel, a being of love. I love seeing the things people have put online about angels being ferocious creatures, and I love that. I think that’s a really good representation of what goodness can be, what it should be, I suppose.
I was looking forward to BAMF!Aziraphale all season long, and I think that’s what we got in the end. Remember Neil said that the Job minisode was important for Aziraphale’s story. Remember how Aziraphale sat on that rock and reconciled to himself that he MUST go to Hell, because he lied and thwarted the will of God. He believed that––truly, honestly, with the faith of a child, but the bravery of a soldier.
Aziraphale, a being of love with more goodness than all of Heaven combined, believed he needed to walk through the Gates of Hell because it was the Right Thing to do. (Like Job, he didn’t understand his sin but believed he needed to sacrifice his happiness to do the Right Thing.)
That’s why we saw Aziraphale as a soldier this season: the bookshop battle, the halo. But yes, the ending as well.
Because Aziraphale never wanted to go to Heaven, and he never wanted to go there without Crowley.
But it was Crowley who taught him that he could, even SHOULD, act when his moral heart told him something was wrong. While Crowley was willing to run away and let the world burn, it was Aziraphale (in that bandstand at the end of the world) who stood his ground and said No. We can make a difference. We can save everyone.
And Aziraphale knew he could not give up the ace up his sleeve (his position as an angel) to talk to God and make them see the truth in his heart.
I was messed up by Ineffable Bureaucracy (Boxfly) getting their happy ending when our Ineffable Husbands didn’t, but I see now that them running away served to prove something to Aziraphale. (And I am fully convinced that Gabriel and Beelzebub saw the example of the Ineffables at the Not-pocalypse and took inspiration from them for choosing to ditch their respective sides)
But my point is that Aziraphale saw them, and in some ways, they looked like him and Crowley. And he saw how Gabriel, the biggest bully in Heaven, was also like him in a way (a being capable of love) and also just a child when he wasn’t influenced by the poison of Heaven. Muriel, too, wasn’t a bad person. The Metatron also seemed to have grown more flexible with his morality (from Aziraphale's perspective). Like Earth, Heaven was shades of (light?) gray.
Aziraphale is too good an angel not to believe in hope. Or forgiveness (something he’s very good at it).
Aziraphale has been scarred by Heaven all his life. But with the cracks in Heaven’s armor (cracks he and Crowley helped create), Aziraphale is seeing something else. A chance to change them. They did terrible things to him, but he is better than them, and because of Crowley, he feels ready to face them.
(Will it work? Can Heaven change, institutionally? Probably not, but I can't blame Aziraphale for trying.)
At the cafe, the Metatron said something big was coming in the Great Plan. Aziraphale knows how trapped he had felt when he didn’t have God’s ear the first time something huge happened in the Big Plan. He can’t take a chance again to risk the world by not having a foot in the door of Heaven. That’s why we saw individual human deaths (or the threat of death) so much more this season: Elspeth, Wee Morag, Job’s children, the 1940s magician. Aziraphale almost killed a child when he couldn’t get through to God, and he’s not going through that again.
“We could make a difference.” We could save everyone.
Remember what Michael Sheen said about courage and doing good––and having to “look the dark in the face to be truly good.” That’s what happened when Aziraphale was willing to go to Hell for his actions. That’s what happened when he decided he had to go to Heaven, where he had been abused and belittled and made to feel small. He decided to willingly go into the Lion’s Den, to face his abusers and his anxiety, to make them better so that they would not try to destroy the world again.
Him, just one angel. He needed Crowley to be there with him, to help him be brave, to ask the questions that Heaven needed to hear, to tell them God was wrong. Crowley is the inspiration that drives Aziraphale’s change, Crowley is the engine that fuels Aziraphale’s courage.
But then Crowley tells him that going to Heaven is stupid. That they don’t need Heaven. And he’s right. Aziraphale knows he’s right.
Aziraphale doesn’t need Heaven; Heaven needs him. They just don’t know how much they need him, or how much humanity needs him there, too. (If everyone who ran for office was corrupt, how can the system change?)
Terry Pratchett (in the Discworld book, Small Gods) is scathing of God, organized religion, and the corrupt people religion empowers, but he is sympathetic to the individual who has real, pure faith and a good heart. In fact, the everyman protagonist of Small Gods is a better person than the god he serves, and in the end, he ends up changing the church to be better, more open-minded, and more humanist than god could ever do alone.
Aziraphale is willing to go to the darkest places to do the Right Thing, and Heaven is no exception. When Crowley says that Heaven is toxic, that’s exactly why Aziraphale knows he needs to go there. “You’re exactly is different from my exactly.”
____
In the aftermath of Trump's election in the US, Brexit happened in 2018. Michael Sheen felt compelled to figure out what was going on in his country after this shock. But he was living in Los Angeles with Sarah Silverman at the time, and she also wanted to become more politically active in the US.
Sheen: “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it [meant] coming back [to Britain] – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.” In the end, they split up and Michael moved back to the UK.
Sometimes doing the Right Thing means sacrificing your own happiness. Sometimes it means going to Hell. Sometimes it means going to Heaven. Sometimes it means losing a relationship.
And that’s why what happened in the end was so difficult for Aziraphale. Because he loves Crowley desperately. He wants to be together. He wanted that kiss for thousands of years. He knows that taking command of Heaven means they would never again have to bow to the demands of a God they couldn’t understand, or run from a Hell who still came after them. They could change the rules of the game.
And he’s still going to do that. But it hurts him that he has to do that alone.
there’s something about the way that they both reach for each other after eddie has been shot to try and close the distance between them physically and metaphorically. like they’re so close but not quite where they want to be which really just defines their relationship to a t. and i could honestly go on about this forever because hand symbolism just makes me wanna scream.
i'm really intrigued by the fact that you chose kylo as an infp. i'm interested in learning more about unhealthy xnfp types because that's my own type and i have been typed as unhealthy as well. Do you know where I can learn more about unhealthy xnfp types? Or possibly other unhealthy types as well?
I’ll try to explain why I picked Kylo Ren as an INFP as best I can to give you some insight into why exactly made that decision, then I’ll discuss an unhealthy INFP afterwards, and link you to some sources of information on unhealthy types. I know you haven’t directly asked my why I chose Kylo Ren as an INFP, but I feel the need to explain myself since I’ve already witnessed people questioning my decision, so I may as well get it out of the way. Hopefully you don’t mind my word vomit.
To understand unhealthy MBTI you have to understand what makes any given type ‘unhealthy’. What that is, exactly, is when your four cognitive functions aren’t balanced. So in terms of an INFP’s prominent functions, we’re looking at (Fi-Ne) -Si-Te. Si and Te are Tertiary and Inferior functions, which means that most of the time they’re not exactly at the forefront of an INFP’s thinking process, usually they are last priority or merely affect the dominant and auxiliary functions in some way. It can be considered unhealthy if one of these functions begins to take priority over the dominant and auxiliary functions. An easy way to conceptualize this is to imagine a car with four people. You have the driver (dominant function) and the co-pilot (auxiliary function) at the front, kind of helping each other out but the driver still does most of the work. Then in the backseat you have the guy who engages in discussion with the two up the front sometimes but he’s still in the backseat (tertiary function) and that guy who keeps mostly to himself and only says something when he suddenly wants to be a backseat driver or the actual driver specifically asks for his help (inferior function). You have to have these four people in the car at all times to make sure the trip goes smoothly, but the moment you start moving those people around, giving people roles they shouldn’t be in, is when you start making it a dangerous journey for all involved = unhealthy MBTI. I’ll talk about that later, first:
WHY I THINK KYLO REN IS AN INFP
DOMINANT-AUXILIARY FUNCTIONS
Fi - introverted Feeling
Fi dominance makes INFPs highly in-tune with the subjective aspects of reality (personal values, emotions, ethics, the human psyche) which makes them somewhat disinterested in pure objectivity. This means that INFPs have trouble looking at situations objectively/in a manner that removes all emotion, values, and nuance from the decision-making process. (x)
Now what does this have to do with Kylo Ren? Well, first to point out why he is a Fi-dom - Kylo Ren has his own set of values, and doesn’t seem to care about other people’s values if they don’t agree with his own. He doesn’t let them affect his decision-making. Fi-doms often believe their values are inherently right, and a lot of their decision-making stems from exactly that, rather than what someone else has told them what is right/what they should do. This could be confused in Kylo Ren’s case with people thinking he is doing what Snoke tells him to do, but he is only doing those things BECAUSE he personally believes in them. He has been conditioned to change his values to align with Snoke’s, therefore he sees no problem in doing whatever Snoke tells him to do - and why doing things against that belief system (darkness > light) is so hard for him to grasp - because you can tell (along with being told by Adam Driver) that he intrinsically believes he is right.
There would have to be some significant event that shakes Kylo Ren’s inner beliefs (such as perhaps realizing what he had been conditioned to believe about killing his father as the ‘right thing’ to do, suddenly becoming the ‘wrong thing’ as he canonically falls to his knees in regret) to cause him to start a misalignment between them and Snoke’s and to begin the questioning, doubting, self-reflecting process that had otherwise been a 100% commitment from a Fi-dom’s point of view. If this occurs, an INFP will take it very seriously and it will be hard to process, as to them it can feel like figuratively speaking, their whole world (belief system) has been ripped out from under them. As an unhealthy INFP, this “I’m doing it because it’s the right thing to do (according to my own beliefs, not your wrong ones)” way of thinking can make them seem obnoxiously self-righteous. But more on that later.
Ne - extroverted iNtuition
Ne users are naturally attuned to concepts and possibilities as their main way of taking in information; they’re not interested in knowing the facts and instead prefer to look at how they are connected, what their underlying principles and ideas are. They themselves are “great at generating ideas, but not so much at following through on their execution.” (x)
This usually leads to Ne users being less inclined to plan things - or if they do plan something, they’re more inclined to ditch it later on or get distracted. They’re interested in the ‘bigger picture’ or the ‘end goal’ not the minute details or the routine steps it takes to get there. This basically means they like to improvise - but this can also lead to confusion or being distracted. Isabel and Peter Briggs Myers describes this as Ne users being “wholly directed upon objects, searching for emerging possibilities” and that they will “sacrifice all else for such possibilities when found” (Gifts Differing Understanding Personality Type, 88). This can be seen when Kylo Ren gets distracted from the plan to capture the droid, changing the plan to instead merely capture Rey or when he offers to teach Rey despite it going against Snoke’s plans; both times Kylo Ren was distracted by the new possibilties that Rey offered, despite going against the given plan. He also struggles to stay on course in terms of what he needs to do and his belief that he needs to quench his light side. Overall, his short-sightedness (I don’t mean that negatively, but more in a sense of being preoccupied with the HERE AND NOW rather than the LATER), abundance of confusion and inability to stick to a predetermined course is a telling sign of an xNP. Ni-dom’s, on the other hand, are incredibly future-sighted and always think of the consequences and possibilities in future while simultaneously finding it important and necessary to formulate a plan and stick to it (Obi-Wan is a classic example of a Ni-dom in Star Wars, as is Palpatine).
TERTIARY-INFERIOR FUNCTIONS
(Keep in mind that these functions are not meant to be at the forefront of an INFPs processes and usually are used in last-moment measures or merely just affect or amplify a dominant function, so not all INFPs may display or develop these on the same level)
Si - introverted Sensing
Si is the FiNe’s third function, and it gives a sense of solidity to their Fi beliefs. Si also makes the Fi-led internal world structured and detailed. When it comes to values that they have had adequate time to develop, they tend to have a solid sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. A lot of their perception in these cases is based on their personal experiences. This is because Si places a high value on real world experiences and its impressions of them. FiNe’s store all the interesting experiences and information they gather in their mind in an organized way for future reference. (x)
So this basically just solidifies Kylo Ren’s beliefs about him being ‘right’ and makes it that much harder for him to consider anyone else’s point of view against his own. In an INFP’s perspective, their beliefs are constructed on past experiences, so if someone comes along and tries to tell them they’re wrong, they’ll think, “well, that’s not how it happened before” or “not according to my past experience”. Their past experience will usually take precedence as ‘evidence’ over anything anyone else tells them. The Si element in an INFP can lead to them holding intense grudges, clinging to these ‘past experiences’ too closely in order to judge the world around them, even if they don’t realize it. If someone hurts them or breaks their trust, an INFP might try to forgive them, but they will never forget what they experienced before, and will more than likely fear it will happen again. All of this comes in to play during the scene between Han Solo and Kylo Ren on the bridge, and could explain why Han Solo was unable to persuade Kylo Ren, merely on the basis of “we do miss you” or the idea that things might be different, because, in Kylo Ren’s experience, it doesn’t add up. What he experienced in the past takes too much precedence over anything Han Solo is saying. He might consider what his father is saying, reflect on it in his head, and realize that he would prefer to trust the reality of whatever Snoke has told him over the things his father is saying, that, in his mind, don’t align with what he previously experienced. Of course, that is just my personal interpretation of the scene anyway.
Equally, as Si might cause an INFP to hold a grudge, it can also, in the same line of thinking, make them incredibly sentimental about things or objects that have played a part in their past. This can be seen when Kylo Ren speaks to Vader’s mask, his reaction to Anakin’s lightsaber, or the deleted scene of him on the Millennium Falcon. Another interesting effect Si tends to have in an INFP is that it can lead to INFPs having values and beliefs that aren’t considered “traditional” by most people. This is again, because their beliefs are based on subjective matter and experience, not the objective, collective belief of what may be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Kylo Ren’s deep-set belief in the dark side is by no means “traditional” thinking, because he doesn’t care about the collective opinion or thought, but about what he personally has gone through or is going through.
Te - extroverted Thinking
Te is a process that allows FiNe’s to take in information from the real world, make quick decisions on what the most effective solution is, and put that solution into play right away. This is the weakest, achilles’ heel part of the FiNe. Although it would be exhausting and unhealthy for them to rely on this aspect of themselves all the time, they can pull out their troubleshooting skills when necessary to get a job done effectively.(x)
Te is usually described as making quick and efficient decisions based on objective fact. In a Fi-dom, this ‘objective fact’ becomes a ‘gut feeling’ from which they base their quick decisions from. However, they’ll only do this if they are forced to, as a last measure, since Fi-doms would much prefer to be able to take their time before making a decision, and being consistently forced to make quick decisions with no time allowed for thinking can result in unhealthy behaviour. Te in a Fi-dom can also be what they resort to when they are suffering an intense struggle about a decision, in the end just saying “fuck it” and going with their gut instinct, even if they can’t articulate a solid reason for making that decision at the time. The most common and comfortable use of Te in a Fi-dom, however, is to critique and offer improvements to existing systems, structures or plans based on what they believe to be more effective. In terms of Kylo Ren, I believe we’ve seen him making this ‘gut instinct’ decision whenever he is forced to make a decision regarding Rey without being given the time he needs to figure out what he should be doing (according to his belief system), explaining all these weird decisions he seems to make in regards to what the most effective way of dealing with an enemy would be versus what he feels like doing at that moment in time for which he can’t really offer a good explanation. I suppose you could also see this function when he criticizes Hux’s indoctrination methods and offers what he sees as the more effective option: clones.
AN UNHEALTHY INFP
Being unhealthy in MBTI means that you use your functions in a way that’s detrimental to yourself or others.They could be in a loop (reliance on their dominant or tertiary functions and ignoring their auxiliary), a grip (reliance on their inferior function), or just generally using their functions in unhealthy ways. (x)
Now, I’m going to admit I haven’t done a lot of reading on unhealthy MBTI yet, so I’m going to derive a lot of information from this post by highonmbti for now, and only the manifestations that I see in Kylo Ren. I definitely suggest checking out the post and highonmbti in general if you’re interested in reading more about unhealthy MBTI.
Unhealthy use of Fi
The unhealthy use of Fi means they’ve reached some extreme point of the function over all their other functions, resulting in unbalanced behaviour.
One of these behaviours can be seen as excessive stubbornness and self-righteousness towards their own sense of right and wrong, making it very hard for them to consider how their actions might affect others, or acknowledge other people’s values and perspectives. They may also treat those who don’t align with their belief system in a condescending manner, as though they are blind to the real ‘truth’ that is the belief system that the INFP has constructed. This, of course, is self-explanatory when it comes to Kylo Ren. He clearly has no sense of how his actions might affect anyone but himself, nor does he seem to care about any moral code that doesn’t align with his own.
An unhealthy dominance of Fi can also manifest in INFPs being obsessed with seeming ‘different’ or ‘misunderstood’ as they become hyper aware of the difference in their personal values and perspectives versus the rest of the world. Unhealthy INFPs might also take their preference for subjective, values based decision-making to the extreme, refusing to rationalize or explain their decisions at all, and as highonmbti puts it, defaulting to “it’s just what I believe ok?!” without presenting any evidence. I don’t believe there’s any definitive evidence of either of these for Kylo Ren, but one could infer either of these possibilities.
Unhealthy use of Ne
Healthy aux Ne is what allows INFPs to think outside the box, consider the “what ifs” of things - but an extreme over dominance of Ne can instead result in too much ‘thinking outside the box’ or a detachment from practical reality. This is where the stereotypical ‘dreamer’ INFP comes in, but in an unhealthy INFP this can result in too much dreaming to the point where they get lost in it and lose their grip on reality. This could very much relate to Kylo Ren’s delusional outlook and the fact he is so caught up in trying to act out this fantasy of being Darth Vader.
Fi-Si loop
A Fi-Si loop occurs when the INFP begins to ignore the external world in favor of their subjective perception of it. When this happens they skip over Ne entirely to judge based on subjective values and perceive primarily based on their subjective perceptions of cues from the tangible world. An INFP loop would likely experience extreme withdrawal from the external world, fear of trying new things, hyperawareness of bodily sensations (pain, hunger, thirst, etc.), being stuck in a rut/routine, and hypersensitivity and emotional reasoning. (x)
Basically, a loop is when you overuse your tertiary function (in this case an INFP’s Si) over the auxiliary function (Ne), resulting in a Fi-Si function instead of Fi-Ne. Outwardly this manifests as an extrovert who is unhealthily extroverted or an introvert who is unhealthily introverted. You can read more on loops here.
I believe Kylo Ren is most likely an INFP with a Fi-Si loop, or alternatively with a Te grip. To me, he seems an unhealthily introverted introvert, and displays much of the behaviour listed as common with an INFP with a Fi-Si loop. He has withdrawn from the external world to such an extent he doesn’t even reveal himself to it. We can’t know for sure if he suffers hyperawareness to bodily sensations, but the importance of feeling pain and having that pain tied to one’s power in the dark side might relate to that. His hypersensitivity can be seen in his adverse overreactions to things, in particularly his tantrums (which I believe are hypersensitive reactions to the feeling of failure) and his struggle with emotional reasoning.
Te grip
An INFP in a Te grip disregards their dominant Fi in favor of the cold, hard logic of Te. This is likely to happen if they’ve suffered some kind of significant emotional turmoil, and particularly if that turmoil involved a prolonged disregard of the INFPs personal space, values, emotions, or identity. An INFP grip would likely experience: rejection of the complexities of personal values and emotions in favor of cold, hard logic; harsh, aggressive outbursts of negative emotion; excessive criticism of themselves and others; adherence to rigid standards and schedules; black and white thinking; refusal to confront and deal with negative emotions.(x)
Compared to a loop, a grip is in fact just the outright replacement of the dominant function (Fi) with the inferior function (Te). In an INFP’s case, this would mean the extreme refusal of the INFP’s central manner of being surrounding subjective emotions and feelings in favour of hard logic. It’s an INFP going against everything that would otherwise make them tick, rejecting themselves in the most extreme way possible.
Now, while some of these manifestations scream Kylo Ren, others are more questionable, which is why I consider a Fi-Si loop to be more likely than a Te grip. The extreme rejection of emotional thinking may seem fitting to Kylo Ren under some conditions, such as his attempts to emulate this ‘cold-hearted, logical killer’ that is the image of Darth Vader - and the way he is trying to enforce and ignore his true functions thus resulting in his aggressive outbursts of negative emotions. An INFP with a Te grip is the epitome of someone with a lot of emotions trying to bottle up all of those emotions and rejecting them, only to explode at any given point in time.
CONCLUSION
While I have spent many hours trying to figure out what Kylo Ren’s typing could be, I could still be wrong. The truth is, we haven’t seen enough of him yet to be fully sure of anything, so many of these assessments are based upon assumptions, because we just haven’t been given enough information otherwise. But, in my opinion and through my process of thorough elimination, this is the most logical fit I could find at the moment.
I will admit that I am also under the assumption that Kylo Ren will be getting redeemed, and that we will see crucial developments in the way his personality might not necessarily ‘change’ exactly, but in this case, become more healthy by the end of the trilogy. So, even as hard as I might try to remain unbiased, I do feel the need to put that out there out of fairness of letting anyone who reads this know where I stand amongst all this discourse.
Also, I know that MBTI isn’t a scientifically-proven method of analysis, but I do find it to be an incredibly useful tool when trying to understand and unpack fictional characters, or even people, and figuring out how exactly a character might think, feel, or react to any given situation and why. But hey, that’s probably just my INTP self trying find patterns in everything.
And finally, to the poor asker who didn’t actually ask for any of this at all, and who I’ve basically just word vomited all over, I’m so sorry I just can’t help myself sometimes. In answer to the question you DID actually ask, here are some interesting sources that I’ve found so far on unhealthy MBTI, keeping in mind that I, too, am still trying to find more sources on the subject:
highonmbti’s discussions on unhealthy mbti
funkymbtifiction’s discussions on unhealthy mbti
mbti-notes’ discussions on unhealthy mbti
Healthy and unhealthy cognitive functions by Erik Thor
When going through these, as an INFP, you want to specifically be paying attention to unhealthy Fi, unhealthy Ne, Fi-Si loops and Te grips as they directly relate to your type.
I haven’t found any good books that talk about unhealthy MBTI yet (the ones I have read haven’t really touched on unhealthy MBTI either), but two books I’m looking to get that may interest you (if you have the money) are:
In the Grip: Understanding Type, Stress, and the Inferior Function by Naomi L. Quenk
Was That Really Me?: How Everyday Stress Brings Out Our Hidden Personality by Naomi L. Quenk
But I will stress that I have not read these books yet, so I can’t vouch for them having useful information pertaining to unhealthy MBTI.
Defining Ineffable Love (or, Aziracrow Learn the Rules of Romance)
(In response to this ask about ineffables and asexuality)
One of the major threads this season was Aziraphale and Crowley asking themselves what exactly is their relationship. Not what it is in terms of how much they love each other. (That's a given.) But what it is in terms of the human implications of their love.
Crowley and Aziraphale definitely come at the relationship with different perspectives, in terms of what they’re willing to admit to the relationship being. I don’t think we can entirely interpret it in human terms.
–David Tennant (source)
For 6000 years, they’ve never put a name on their relationship. They didn’t, because they’re inhuman, genderless, sexless beings and they didn’t grow up (as it were) with labels. And even when they did learn them, they couldn’t say it was love, because admitting that was a death sentence.
All of Aziraphale’s heart eyes and pining could live comfortably in his mind if he never admitted what that said about him as an angel (trauma compartmentalization). Crowley tries desperately to be cruel and nasty to add white noise around the blatant reality of his constant loyalty to Aziraphale. If you don’t put a word to it, it’s not real and they can’t punish you.
After the Not-pocalypse, for all rights and purposes, Aziraphale and Crowley chose humanity as their identity. We see Aziraphale “playing house” in various human roles (as a landlord, a private eye, a magician).
We even see Crowley intentionally taking on human behavior to handle emotional issues: “Just breathe, that’s what humans do.” They’re slowly and intentionally enculturating themselves into the world they want to belong––earth.
Yet it’s setting up Maggie and Nina that makes Aziraphale and Crowley start thinking about their relationship as a human construct.
Because fundamentally, Aziraphale and Crowley are not human. Like Neil Gaiman tells us constantly, they can’t be defined in human terms when it comes to gender and sexuality. They can shift and move through each and any of those markers at will, purely for the pleasure of the thing: “angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort.”
IMO that makes them originally asexual, in the sense they were created without the need for sex. And it makes them fundamentally transgender and genderfluid, because while on earth, their sexless, eldritch spiritual bodies take on human, gendered forms and clothing. What gender (and sexuality) they identify with while on earth varies through the eras. Crowley definitely has a fluid gender identity, while Aziraphale appears to have settled on gay man (aka THE southern pansy) for his internal typology (although all of these identities are subject to change).
In the midst of all this fluidity, it’s no wonder Aziraphale and Crowley haven’t thought of their relationship in human terms before. There’s just so much different in them and their bodies than what they see in humanity. And there are no books and songs that show the kind of love they have, in the malleable, sexless bodies they have, with the background they have; it’s all ineffable.
Aziraphale and Crowley didn’t start out thinking they were in a romantic relationship. Whatever feelings they had were long repressed, redefined, and shuttled away. But they did love each other, without question. And it was that love which scared them, because it was bigger than anything they saw among humans, a love that was beautiful and blasphemous and unfathomable.
Kinda like what David Duchovny said about Mulder and Scully in The X-Files, “I don’t know if they’re in love. In a way, their relationship is deeper than that, because they cannot live without each other.”
Now take this profound, ineffable love and drop it into the little boxes and labels human culture has created for itself.
Full disclosure: I’m an asexual demiromantic person in a queerplatonic relationship, so I’ve done a fair bit of research on what romance is and how the rituals of romance are, in many ways, social inventions that vary from culture to culture. There’s love and then there’s romance, and they don’t always overlap. So my interpretation of Aziraphale and Crowley comes through this lens and the fact that Neil Gaiman has affirmed the validity of an ace-spec reading on our ineffables.
Which brings me back to my thesis: That only now are Aziraphale and Crowley thinking of themselves as a romantic couple, precisely because they are interfacing with humans and taking on their social rules.
I like this one asexual person’s description of their experience, which feels very much like our ineffables (from a very good article, I def recommend):
If there is a border between friendship and romance, then in my internal landscape, it goes right through a misty forest where no one has ever bothered to place signs....
Neither of us had intended to start anything even vaguely romantic, but the activities we did and the intense kind of immediate connection we had was coded as romantic in our culture.
That’s what Crowley realizes when Nina confronts him about his relationship to Aziraphale.
“It looks like that from here.” What Crowley and Aziraphale share is beyond definition, but Nina cannot imagine the anything beyond the human labels she was taught. The tragedy of an everlasting love is that it can only be conveyed properly to other humans if it is cast in such small human words––partner, boyfriend, husband.
Because when Crowley denied those human roles for Aziraphale, Nina slid down the path of thinking Aziraphale was just his “bit on the side,” because there were no labels left she could imagine for them. If you don’t put a word to it, it’s not real.
That’s the purpose of labels, to culturally validate a person's identity. Labels, of course, DO NOT create reality; people's experiences are always real, in all their varied ineffability. But labels allow a space for culture (ie other humans and political and legal society) to recognize formally your lived reality.
So Crowley started really thinking about him and Aziraphale, about the ineffable love between them and realized that in human terms, those would be the things he’d call Aziraphale, because those were the words that gave Aziraphale that place of importance in his life.
But with that realization comes all the human trappings and behavioral patterns around those words (the candlelit dinners, dramatic rescues, drinks at the Ritz, etc.) which Crowley had never thought of before, and yet… maybe romance is what he and Aziraphale have been doing all along.
That’s why this season centered so much around Aziraphale and Crowley using cultural artifacts (film and literature) to understand romance, because romance is so deeply socially-defined.
Aziraphale himself has been leaning hard into the romantic social cues (he’s more well-read in the cultural trappings of romance than Crowley is), especially post-Blitz. But when he watches Maggie and Nina dancing, he works up the courage to do something with Crowley that’s even more explicitly loaded as “traditionally romantic” than anything he’s done up to that point.
Because while risking their lives for each other and defying everything for each other is love in its purest form, dancing (specifically in Jane Austen’s world) is a public performance coded for potential marriage partners. It's an intimate ritual of the entire body. (And in British slang, dancing has been used as a euphemism for sex.)
Crowley's "We don't dance" is really telling, because it shows Crowley’s awareness of the unknowable devotion between them vs the human roles Aziraphale is asking him to fill, specifically its physical aspects. Aziraphale is asking to make their relationship more public, more physically explicit, more coded as romantic in a setting specifically intended to couple individuals.
While Maggie and Nina inspired Aziraphale to progress their relationship into a publicly physical direction, Maggie and Nina inspired Crowley to think of the emotional implications of their human roles: the commitment, security, and monogamy of a husband, a partner, an us.
That’s what he decides after Maggie and Nina confront him in the end. “You never say what you’re really thinking.” He wants to codify his relationship so they each become responsible to one another. Aziraphale has always been his soulmate, the one he could always rely on. But he wants to place a word and a role to their love that will bring with it Aziraphale’s commitment and dedication to him.
And that's another reason why Crowley kisses Aziraphale, because he knows Aziraphale was willing to make their relationship physical, and he wants that, too. To consummate this bond in the way humans do.
But Crowley doesn’t really know how to kiss; he’s not as worldly as he makes out to be. (It’s Aziraphale who owns the gun, and Crowley who’s never fired one.) He uses the kiss as a tool to get across to Aziraphale what he wants for them, in the physical language Aziraphale has been using, because "one fabulous kiss and we're good," right?
But it doesn’t work, because real life and real emotions don’t work like that; life and love don’t follow a script, despite the novels and plays and songs.
Aziraphale and Crowley spent this entire season trying to figure out what their relationship is and what they wanted out of it, trying to make sense of the unfathomable thing they share and the human implications of it, and not quite landing on the same page.
Part 2 of this Analysis, covering a correction in Crowley’s statement (“You don’t dance”) and the further implications of dancing/sex.
The fact that Crowley believes so purely in Aziraphale's goodness and forgiveness...
Knowing full well how seething this made him inside, he merely smiled kindly and said nothing, because Crowley knows how divinely unselfish and good Aziraphale is.
Because since the Beginning, Aziraphale accepted him, never thought he was evil or dangerous or Bad just because he was a demon now. Aziraphale put his wing over him, talked to him as an equal, and listened to him, despite what he was, because Aziraphale is that unselfish and that good and that much a well of kindness.
That's why he was so afraid for Aziraphale's life, so protective and desperate this season to save him, why he's always so happy to rescue his angel... because he knows Aziraphale won't do it for himself, because Aziraphale is not about self-preservation.
He's about doing the Right thing, no matter its costs. His angel would walk into Hell because he did a good thing. He would appeal to Heaven and God before running away at the end of the world, because it's the only course of action where everyone could be saved, the right thing to do.
That's why Crowley is terrified this season, because they aren't anymore hiding out from Head Office, they are actively on the run every day of their lives, waiting for the day the shoe dropped and Heaven and Hell decide to team up and wage war on the earth (and them).
That's why he's so destroyed by Aziraphale choosing to go back to Heaven, because he knows all too well how much his angel's kindness and willingness to see the good in something can warp the angel's perspective and his safety. And yet he knows that's exactly what Aziraphale would do, because that's the Aziraphale he fell in love with, the one who would look Gabriel in the face with a kind smile and say, "May we meet on a better occasion." The Aziraphale who, with the same generous unselfish act, break his heart in a million pieces.
A Wartime Footing: An Explanation for Aziraphale's Elevator Smile
(Based on an ask from @sabotage-on-mercury in response to my meta on why Aziraphale had to go to Heaven)
The creepy smile was one part of the ending I couldn't quite put my finger on either, until someone pointed out on a Twitter response to my meta:
The reason why its scary is bc azi is becoming properly angry at the system and is 101% determined to set things right (Source)
In season 1, Aziraphale was determined not to kill anyone to stop the Apocalypse. He wouldn't even tell Crowley where the Antichrist was, because Crowley's only solution was to kill him.
And because Crowley consistently didn't have any ideas ("not one single better idea??"), Aziraphale took it on himself to pursue the only option left––to ask God to intervene and stop both Heaven and Hell from destroying Earth. Therefore, Aziraphale had to keep the integrity of his angel status by distancing himself from Crowley, while the world was still in danger.
Despite this dedication avoid bloodshed, when God didn't have an answer, Aziraphale went against one of his core beliefs to help save the world. He was willing to murder a child.
For Aziraphale, that takes guts. And (seeing how he reacted at the end of the Job minisode), I wonder that if he had killed Adam Young, Aziraphale would have checked himself into Hell.
Going to Heaven for Aziraphale is ultimately a conscious choice, one that he is clearly afraid of. We see him constantly steeling himself again the Metatron in the end, covering his fear and hurt from losing Crowley with a placid smile and a flippant attitude. He's wearing so many masks, to Crowley, to himself, to the Metatron...
All season we've seen him playing roles (detective, magician, doctor, landlord). But the final role is warrior. Going up that elevator, we first see Aziraphale's eyes searching, worried, panicking, but unable to show it because he's not in a safe space. He swallows, blinks, he's breathing hard (you can see his entire shoulders rise and fall).
But as he goes up, his expression steels. He's quite literally putting on a mask (to himself): a vengeful, hardened expression of pure anger and rage (to drown out the fear and uncertainty he so clearly still has).
Michael Sheen conveying contained anger in both Good Omens and Masters of Sex.
Cuz this isn't just him scrambling to kill a kid, this is him walking calmly and knowingly into sacrificing everything he loves most (Crowley, the bookshop, his entire life on earth) to create a world that will always be safe for him and Crowley and humanity for the rest of time. Where he would have to go up against the most powerful angels, the Metatron, and God Themself to change things. He can't be the kind, sweet angel he was on Earth. That won't cut it in Heaven if he wants to make a difference in any real way.
He wanted to do it with Crowley, with the love and support and strength of his demon. But without him, Aziraphale has to channel something else to keep his resolve afloat.
Something he had when he was a warrior, fighting on the front lines of a battle between Heaven and Hell, when he very likely led a platoon into divine fields of bloodshed before the earth was born. When he was an avenging angel.
I haven’t done this since the Great War.
It was a time and an identity he had chosen to leave behind, because it wasn't the kind of angel he was anymore ("I'm not fighting in any war!"). In this context, you can read Aziraphale's passionate unwillingness to take a life (his pacifism) directly into his past experience as a warrior. It is often the veterans of terrible wars who are the most earnest advocates for peace. (And especially in Britain and Europe, where the violence of the world wars is still such a powerful and painful national memory.)
As he goes up the elevator, he's breathing so hard we can hear it mirrored in the soundtrack, and he is so hyperfocused on steeling himself that he doesn't even care that the Metatron is watching him. He doesn't rest until he's psyched himself into that warrior mindset necessary to carry out this mission entirely by himself, to be both the moral advocate and the uncompromising leader of angels who had intimidated him his entire life. To demand respect and to talk to the very face of God and tell Them they are Wrong.
(Please read this Neil-approved meta for further thoughts on God and Aziraphale.)
That creepy smile is clearly not there because Aziraphale is happy to fall into a toxic parent's false love. There's no comfort or wistful nostalgia in that face. There's no "it'll be so much nicer" in that smile. It's not a happy smile. It's an I'm-gonna-fuck-shit-up smile.
Because it's a warrior's smile before they go into battle, before they put on that armor and, for a while, become something they're not in the name of some greater good. He's fucking furious and it's downright frightening.
Because I have no doubt that the angel Aziraphale we get in Season 3 is the angel Aziraphale who can say this:
He's not quite there yet in the TV show. But this bravery, this anger, this flaming rage is how it starts.
Or as he's described in the book when Aziraphale mysteriously does away with the local mafia:
Just because you’re an angel doesn’t mean you have to be a fool.
honestly im very happy you like caitvi, every jayvik fan ive interacted with has hated it and its just been very :(((( all around. about your point on s2: i loved the dictator and enforcer imagery actually - it shows that vi at her absolute core is dedicated to those she cares about and when confronted with the direct fact that “if caitlyn goes after jinx alone, one will end up dead” and folded. because of course she would, thats who she is. she loves so severely she will abandon anything about herself to be there for them, which is also a flaw i love of hers. i think people take caitlyns “dictatorship” a bit too on the nose and forget that, similar to how victor was being controlled by the arcane, caitlyn had a very experienced warmonger in hear ear egging her on the entire way. a girl in her early 20s whos taken no time to grieve and suddenly has all the power in the world to do the one thing shes been trying to do. it makes me really sad for her actually. one scene i love is when caitlyn pushes back against ambessa and goes “why does violence always needed for justice?” when ambessa says for her to unleash troops. caitlyn at her core is not a violent woman, nor wants to be. shes a complex female character that i think is reduced to her bad decisions, while the male characters who have done worse get a bigger pass (think silco, machine heralds arcane controlled eugenics, jayce in s1, etc).
anyway, thats my rant haha. im just so happy to have an actual complex lesbian relationship on screen done by people who love the characters and have sex in a way that is clearly for their love of each other and not because “lesbians are hot”. i miss them dearly 🥲
So late on my reply here omg!! I’m so happy to be a Jayvik fan who loves Caitvi. Like you said, their sex scene was so emotionally-driven and real, and not used for titillations like many lesbian portrayals in media. You make a VERY good point about how in general female characters (and women IRL) are not given as much grace as male characters for the flaws they make. And it got me thinking about the stuff in Arcane’s politics that I take issue with, just in general. (So I rambled on a bit about politics below..)
First off, I love your analysis of Caitlyn! What you said about her trauma and being influenced by Ambessa in the same way Viktor is by the Arcane is absolutely correct. In the same vein, Jinx’s villainy is similarly influenced by Silco. All of these characters, even with those external manipulators are also ultimately driven by trauma (with Caitlyn, the loss of her mother.)
I guess where I really find problems is not Caitlyn as a person, but the narrative and writers for writing a plotline where enforcers as a whole (and Piltover in general) are not ultimately taken to account for the harm they’ve done systemically to a marginalized group (of which the dictator arc is a part).
The show has a Black character tell a police officer about the injustices they face against the upper class, and then have that police officer say, “It’s a misunderstanding,” and then soon after, said Black character is shot in the chest without any warning by another police officer. Because Arcane just doesn’t quite grasp the weight of the images it’s putting out (like the subjugation of the lower class using gas warfare by militarized enforcement). It’s just not a good look in a world where police in many countries are being militarized by the government against their own citizens.
However, all this goes more towards Arcane’s centrist political themes, and not on Caitlyn herself, who is driven by the rawness of her grief. Unfortunately, Arcane as a show doesn’t believe that social injustices are systemic. They even have Heimerdinger comment on the entire imbalance created by the invention of hextech, saying, “I’d always presumed it was due to mankind’s turbulent relationship with power, but perhaps it is a property of the Arcane itself.” Basically invalidating one of the most important metaphors in the show––that powerful resources can and do shape the world because of the people in power. Instead of addressing the social issues they brought up in season 1, Arcane season 2 just tacks it all up to fantasy magic gone wrong. What analogue do we have for that in the real world?
(And that is why Piltover and Zaun don’t really change in the end of the show, because Arcane the show wants a gritty, persecuted undercity against the glittery topside. It’s baked into the video game and it cannot change.)
It’s the one major failing in the show and why I can’t get behind it on a deeper thematic level. I enjoy the nuanced psychology, the relationships, and the art of its animation, but its politics ultimately leave something to be desired. Season 1 was mostly great, though, often because of Caitlyn and her journey, where she starts off very naive and sheltered, then she learns the humanity of the Undercity and how her government was wrong in how it dealt with them. Her quotes are some of the BEST ones about the wrongs of Piltover against Zaun:
CAITLYN: Ekko, it's wrong what's been done to you. You'd be well within your rights to keep it. I couldn't blame you. But... if you do, this cycle of violence will never stop. This is our best shot at setting the record straight. This city needs healing. More than I ever realized.
CAITLYN: You know what else reflects on the Council? It’s citizens living on the streets. Being poisoned. Having to choose between a kingpin who wants to exploit them and a government that doesn't give a shit.
It’s Season 1 plotlines like this show where Arcane can go right. It just doesn’t stick the landing.
Caitlyn’s story and her angst is purely personal and emotional. It’s a poignant drama. She’s influenced to take on more power and violence because of Ambessa’s influence, exactly like Jayce did because of Ambessa in Season 1. The show doesn’t really judge Caitlyn for what she’s done, but that’s because Arcane as a show generally sees everyone so completely from a personal and emotional lens and doesn’t really see the injustices of the class struggle as something to take a stand about.
Interestingly, though, Jayce is narratively “punished” for his involvement in creating hextech. He has to climb from the bottom of the fissures to the top of the hexgates, symbolically reliving the lives of people like Viktor and thinking about what he’s done to destroy the world. Before he’s zapped into the alternative world, Ekko tells him point-blank, “So instead of it exploding in your neighborhood, it would blow up in ours. These are the same utility ducts that carry our water and facilitate our ventilation” (gotta love Ekko). And on the bridge, Viktor tells him off specifically for his prejudice. Ultimately, Jayce dies to right the wrongs he’s committed. In addition, he realizes that, “I thought I wanted to give magic to the world, but now, I just want my partner back.” In a thematic sense, it’s basically telling us that trying to improve the world or be ambitious to change it would force us to lose the people who matter to us (this is what happened to Vander too).
In the show itself, both Silco and Viktor die because of their actions, even though both of their stories are presented very emotionally and sympathetically. But Silco quite blatantly gaslights Jinx (in quite a visceral scene in episode 1x07), and so many people around Jinx weaponize her trauma for their own ends (Sevika too). Silco has genuine love for Jinx as his child, but he’s not above using her for the Cause, which is ultimately his failure, because in the end, Vander’s philosophy is presented as the right one: some things, like the people you love, are not worth losing for a righteous cause. And so Silco dies for the fatal error he’s committed.
Mostly Arcane is telling us that your personal relationships are not worth changing the world for. Or in general, the risks of losing who you are in the pursuit of greatness. This idea is Arcane’s ultimate message. That’s reflected in the AU universe, in the convo between Ekko and Powder:
EKKO: Your ideas change the world. I can't shake the feeling that that's who you're supposed to be.
POWDER: Things are good, Ekko. I like my life. I don't wanna lose what makes me "me" chasing some wild dream.
Arcane channels Jayce and Viktor’s arcs through this thematic too. Jayce tried to change the world for the better, and ultimately his actions result in the destruction of everything he cares about. Viktor tries to start a healing commune, but it’s fundamentally corrupted, because he’s killing everyone in it in order to evolve them, and he’s picking and choosing what makes a person perfect (eugenics, like you said). The narrative uses Jayce to punish Viktor, when Jayce kills him and puts an end to the farce that is Viktor’s commune. We the audience are shown that under the gold and white shell, there’s a horrifying emptiness that screams into the void as the souls of Viktor’s victims leave the world. It’s a horrifying scene that shows us exactly what sins Viktor has committed.
The show tells us that Viktor’s actions were driven by the tragedy of his disability (much like Caitlyn’s and Jinx’s actions were driven by trauma, or Silco and Ambessa who were motivated by love). All Viktor needed to know was that these human imperfections were beautiful (a wonderful thing in the context of an individual).
But I suspect the show takes the same stance towards imperfections in a society as a whole: That they’re not something we need to fix, because that much effort and risk would force us to lose who we are, and lose the people we care about.
That’s why there’s so many think-pieces about the political themes from season 1 falling on its face in season 2 (from revolution to propaganda, I think one video essay quipped), because for all its acknowledgment of the issues in society, Arcane doesn’t believe they can or should be changed. And this is where I think Arcane is wrong, because allowing the injustices in the world to fester and propagate just because “that’s how things are” is exactly what the capitalistic corporate system wants us to believe.
So yeah, whenever I talk about the failings in Arcane thematically, it’s these bigger ideas about its centrist politics more than what any one character did or didn’t do. Fandom is often too black-and-white about who’s evil and who’s good, and Arcane is one of the most psychologically nuanced and morally complex shows in the fandom space today. People like to try to compare who’s more evil or who’s blameless, but Arcane is the show that says these ideas as useless.
Anger about the themes in a show should not be directed at characters, really, but the writers and the narrative and the corporation behind the production of this show. Those are the people responsible for the ethics we are watching on the show. I don’t think it’s healthy to push more blame on one character in order to prove how much another character is morally superior. Arcane isn’t the show for that, because in Arcane, there is no good or evil. There’s just the messed-up lives of people who just want to be loved.
