#go s3

[emotional-support-demon-crowley]

What might they have done differently if they had only known how everything would end?

What would they have been willing to risk if they knew all of their caution was ultimately for naught?

[emotional-support-demon-crowley]

You know what could have been fun? Watching Crowley try something other than doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result with the gangsters. What if he brought in Newt to fuck up all the electronics? Or Anathema, and it seems like she's going to do something witchy, but really, she uses her family connections to try to get the business shut down for illegal practices. Hell, set the Them loose on the place, I'm sure they'd have a field day. Or the rats that got cut from season 1 and are alluded to in season 3! There are so many options that are more interesting and far more clever than Crowley getting tricked every night by a very old and obvious scam and never trying anything else.

But, I'm not done yet. To Crowley's frustration, none of his attempts are as effective as they should be, and he can't figure it out (mostly because of the excessive drinking). So when Aziraphale shows up, Crowley's still hyper-focused on the man who took his Bentley, and there's friction between them over where to put their energy until Aziraphale finally storms over and realizes Matatron has been undoing all of Crowley's chaos and the whole loss of the Bentley was entirely a ruse to keep Crowley distracted with his focus away from Heaven.

It wouldn't save the season from being dogshit, but at least it would have connected some of the disconnected story beats and covered up a few plot holes.

[emotional-support-demon-crowley]

Can we talk about GO3 Jesus? What was his significance in the story? I couldn't tell you...

Like they could have him befriend the mafia group, since he likes hanging out with misfit people.

They could have dug into his feelings on missing his earth mom and friends with the fisherman.

Let there be two books of life with one for humanity and another for heaven and hell. Jesus is the key for humanity and he steals the book from Metatron. So now its a race to get to him and book to start the second end of the world...or something.

Jesus was so unimportant that his storyline (if you can call it that) can be removed with no affect to the plot at all.

I have no good answers, only gripes. But I'll tell you my thoughts since you were kind enough to ask.

Jesus's initial significance to the story is to serve as a MacGuffin to get the band (Crowley and Aziraphale) back together.

After Jesus's meeting with Drunk Crowley in Depression Alley, he ceases to have any further, meaningful impact on the story beyond the fact that he takes up valuable on-screen time which was already in short supply. The main plot would not have been noticeably changed in any way if he never showed up in a single frame after that.

In addition, he brings in a wild moment of body horror when he has a little freak-out about how a whole new body was created to house his soul right when he first shows up. Something that is an absolute mindfuck in retrospect when you consider the twist ending of the show takes every single character, all of their memories and experiences, all the time they had lived, all the lessons they learned, all their scars and evidence of their existence to date, and wiped it all away to start them out shiny and new with the intention to portray it to the audience as happy rather than horrific. Because Jesus sure didn't seem thrilled to no longer have the scars he earned during his first life.

Then there's the weird-ass shit Jesus said to the residents of Whickbur Street to... I guess convince them of his divinity? That entire scene could be lifted exactly as is and dropped into a movie about a charlatan who preys on a community's trauma and grief by doing some background research and then cold reading them and it would fit without changing a single thing. Nothing he says feels like it proves that he's the son of god. I'm honestly not really sure what the point of all of that even was, mostly because wiping them from existence directly after this exchange literally kills any desire I could ever have to look for meaning in the story line because if the writers are going to throw it all in the trash by wiping them from the canon, I'm not going to climb into the dumpster to look for the clues.

But even if we assume that New Jesus has some special 'I'm telling the truth' vibes, the things he said to Mutt's Spouse and Mrs. Sandwich were insane choices from a narrative perspective. The tone of season 3 was all over the place anyway, so just add this sudden swerve into darkness to the pile, but finding out that Mutt's overdose was an accident feels like a short-lived relief at best. Yes, he didn't take his own life, that's good. I also acknowledge if we're playing by catholic rules, there's more significance (we've never really been shown any of the criteria of how human souls are actually judged after death unless you want to take the fact that we only ever seen angels in Heaven as a sign that people never make the cut in this universe I guess, but I really hesitate to dabble to lean to heavily towards any particular flavor of requirements for salvation here). But knowing it wasn't on purpose doesn't wipe out the potential for deep feelings of grief and guilt and the trauma over the loss. People who lose loved ones to accidents can still have a lot of negative feelings to work through. Knowing it wasn't on purpose certainty doesn't make everything all sunshine and rainbows. And Mrs. Sandwich is basically handed oops all bad news. Being told her sister still refuses to reach out even though their mother is dying, a mother she must also be estranged from, otherwise she'd probably have some clue about her degrading health, means her sister is bitter enough not to change regardless of the circumstances. So Mrs. Sandwich has to do all the work, be the bigger person, fold herself up into a socially acceptable format and probably beg for forgiveness whether she wants it or not, whether she thinks she's done anything that requires asking for it in the first place, if she wants to have a chance to say goodbye. Kind of a shitty revelation to drop on someone as if it were tidings of comfort and joy, my dude.

Jesus also doesn't act like the boss-ass-bitch that flipped tables and braided whips so he could chase fuckers around with them, who turned water into wine and told people they could absolutely stone a woman to death for her sins so long as they themselves had lived a sinless life first. Jesus of the bible had the perfect response to everyone who tried to outsmart him and back him into a corner. He was wise to the ways of humanity. The Jesus we're shown is naïve as a newborn lamb.

Beyond that, everything he represents and everything they try to do with him outside of his status as a MacGuffin that briefly motivates Crowley and Aziraphale is a colossal waste of time because of how he abruptly ceases to exist before his character arc can go anywhere meaningful. He didn't save himself or a single human. It hardly matters if he learned anything or made a difference for anyone he spoke to because in the end, it turns out none of them ever existed anyway. Every moment we spent following his journey was a moment that our time was utterly wasted.

It's almost like the writers forgot Jesus is literally god with the ability to do miracles (including resurrecting the dead) who was able to outsmart his haters at every turn and who desperately loved the ones who were outcast and written off by society. Any accurate portrayal of Jesus should have taken one look at Rock-Bottom-Crowley and decided to do something about that active disaster of a former demon.

What we got feels more like someone going, 'oh shit, they said the words second coming at the end of season 2 so... I guess... we have to have some sort of Christ?'.

Adam was more savvy at 11 years old than Jesus, fully grown with his original memories still in tact. What do you MEAN that man died for and shouldered the sins of all of the world? Did they even think about this for more than five minutes?! Because I'm not buying it!

He either should have been cut back entirely to be a MacGuffin and nothing but a MacGuffin, or he should have been allowed to show up in the Bookshop at the end and actually have some impact on the trajectory of the story (which would have screwed the whole erasing the Good Omens OG universe plan, I understand the writers couldn't do anything clever with Jesus and still fuck the narrative up it's own metaphorical ass - I can see the necessity of why they neutered Jesus to get where they wanted to go).

[emotional-support-demon-crowley]

So... god's absence from the narrative is literally a plot point right up until the boys summon her to the bookshop.

And the supposed lack of free will is never portrayed as a problem. We aren't actually shown anyone struggling in any way because they're prevented from acting by a force beyond their control. Crowley seems to think they can't make a difference (even though they already did in season 1?), but his epically destructive levels of depression make his conclusions questionable at best here. I'm talking about actual evidence we have witnessed with our eyeballs.

If you had paused the show at the moment Crowley and Aziraphale landed in the bookshop on a first watch and had to brainstorm the problem that they needed to resolve in that moment, I doubt anyone would have seriously presented the existence of god and the lack of free will inherent because of god's existence as a serious suggestion.

I'm just saying 12 episodes and an hour in, we're suddenly told our main characters have decided they need to give up each other and their entire selves so they can... get rid of a presence that hasn't had any active impact on everything we've watched so far? So they can resolve a problem that we didn't even know existed (and I could argue that we have plenty of evidence that proves the exact opposite is true in this world, actually)?

And then we're shown the result of their sacrifice and... it looks exactly like the old earth. So getting rid of god and giving humans free will didn't have any noticeable impact AT ALL, as far as we're shown, on how human history turned out?

I'm just saying, you can't ask me to get on board with my favorite characters doing a self-sacrifice for a problem that contradicts everything that came before it and wasn't actually even discussed until the actual moment when they decide how to resolve it.

That's bad writing! It's quite possibly one of the most egregious examples of telling instead of showing I've ever seen in my life.

[pendragyn]

does anyone remember all the angst fics that came out after S1 (and maybe s2?) that were just straight up tragedies all the way down? like the worst possible outcomes for the world? (not saying they were bad just incredibly angsty/tragic/sad/depressing)

Everything I'm hearing about the finale makes me think of those only bad because most of the sadfics were at least in character (A&C in love, Crowley the optimist, Aziraphale who loved the world) and kept in line with the book's themes of free will and humanity being both the best and the worst and everything in between.

i can't be the only one to remember? is my hunch accurate or nah?

[emotional-support-demon-crowley]

You ever meet two motherfuckers less likely to go gently into that good night?

That bastard angel and his demon love were uniquely qualified and well past overdue to rage, rage against the dying of the light.

[emotional-support-demon-crowley]

We could have had PASSION! Angst! Self-sacrifice for undying love! Love confessions while dying!

They should have been fighting to get to each other when they realized there was danger and clinging to one another for one more second together as the end came for them.

I get they had a huge breakup fight, but you're telling me Crowley and Aziraphale just, POOF!, switched off thousands of years of care and affection and pinning? Willingly risking everything they were just to have a little more time in the others presence for lifetimes to bickering like someone you used to work with but never really liked?

We could have had something sweeping and romantic with swelling orchestral music and dramatic slow motion of the most devastating moment of loss.

Instead, we got 90 minutes of 'oh, it's you'...

*wet raspberry noises*

It was so beige! UGH!

I'm not actually arguing in favor of a sad ending here. I'm just saying, if we were going to lose them anyway, I would have rather watched them fighting until their last breath for one another rather than just... giving up. And spending all the preceding time just faffing about and not being in love with each other like they were before.

[ineffablyethereal]

⊹₊˚‧︵‿₊୨ᰔ୧₊‿︵‧˚₊⊹

~not half as bad as when they unfriended each other on roblox ! ! ~