Warlock's the one who really gets fucked tho, I mean you have Adam who gets everything, Greasy gets a happy ending, he has his prize-winning fish and even though he's "sad and oversized {..} not exactly fat, but simply huge and wearing almost the same size clothes as his father." he's given the opportunity to discover American Football, which he's practically designed for, but what does Warlock get? Spoiled, yes, but nothing of substance.
This is the big like, tragedy of Warlock, because like.
he gets taken away from a genuinely loving family in the shuffle
he’s given to Mr and Mrs Dowling instead
who in the book canon, hire Nanny and Francis when he’s about three, and in the TV canon, hire Nanny and Francis when he’s about five
who, by all accounts, have enough contact with the child that he can talk casually about destroying the earth and have his parents not notice at all
and I know that kids have weird things to say, but like, the language he uses is very biblical and not the sort of thing your average five year old picks up from cartoons
Nanny also being the one that tucks him in and sings him a lullaby, presumably every night
now I love Nanny and Francis but like. whether it’s the book canon Ashtoreth and Francis or the TV canon Aziraphale and Crowley, tug-of-war isn’t a good way to raise any child, even if you do think he’s the antichrist
and Warlock is taught all these weird things that put him out of joint with his friends, I imagine
So then they swap over and he has Mr Harrison and Mr Cortese, and they’re presumably good tutors, but like...
Yes, he’s spoilt. Yes, he’s a little rich lad with too much stuff, who’s just a little bit of an ass, because that’s what kids are like when you starve them of attention and try to replace it with money (or with screens... but that’s neither here nor there).
But what we see specifically laid out in the canon is that Warlock is not an evil boy. He makes mischief, but not enough to harm any animals or hurt anybody without cause; he gets taken away with the excitement, but he doesn’t think about hurting someone and then go out and do it; he’s spoilt and bratty, but compared to all his friends, he actually seems pretty mild.
And it does make me quite sad, actually, to see people talk about how much they hate Warlock, because his situation, where this whole Apocalypse has actually made him so many times more neglected than he otherwise would have been, isn’t his fault. This isn’t a man going out and choosing to harm people, to be a horrible person - this is a little boy visibly desperate for attention, who due to the unluck of the draw, got tossed into the big, impersonal house of a misogyny-obsessed Republican and his harried, exhausted wife, who comes across as uncertain of how to even talk with her son. That might just be because of the moment we see, where she’s frustrated and worried about upsetting him, and actively she’s a very loving, involved mother, but like...
I personally don’t have that much faith in that.
It just strikes me as... kinda concerning that people are so willing to brush off very obviously troubled children as somehow deserving of their own distress, or not worth helping because they’re a bit of an asshole. Like, it’s a kid, like. Asshole is kind of in the trade description, even if they’re an angel 99% of the time.