Good Omens 3: An Academic Read
Spoilers Ahead
I will preface this analysis by sharing I am an a-religious religion scholar, literature scholar, and linguistics scholar (to a lesser but significant extent) through higher education and on-going self-directed study. I'm also an author IRL, again taught the craft of fiction through higher education, post-college study, and self-directed education.
Michael Sheen and David Tennant give an incredibly moving performance. What sits wrong in my gut about the final installment of the TV version is how it contradicts and rewrites what exists in both the novel and how Good Omens 1 and 2 accurately represent what's in the novel. This post explains my interpretation. Fiction can have many equally valid interpretations based on facts from the text.
I'm going to begin by quoting every mention of free will from the novel, some of which contains relevant information about other aspects of the novel that GO3 contradicts or rewrites.
And that'd be that. No more world. Just endless Heaven or, depending on who won, endless Hell. Crowley didn't know which was worse.
(...)
But there was no getting out of it. You couldn't be a demon and have free will.
***
It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.
***
And just when you'd think they [humans] were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they could occasionally show more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of. Often the same individual was involved. It was this free-will thing, of course. It was a bugger.
Aziraphale had tried to explain it to [Crowley] once. The whole point, he'd said (...) was that when a human was good or bad it was because they wanted to be.
***
[Humans had] come up with some stomach-churning idea no demon could have thought of in a thousand years, some dark and mindless unpleasantness that only a fully functioning human brain could conceive, then shout "The Devil made me do it" and get the sympathy of the court when the whole point was the devil hardly ever made anyone do anything. He didn't have to. That was what humans found hard to understand. Hell wasn't a major reservoir of evil, any more than Heaven, in Crowley's opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.
***
I DON'T UNDERSTAND, he said. SURELY YOUR VERY EXISTENCE REQUIRES THE END OF THE WORLD. IT IS WRITTEN.
"I dunt see why anyone has to go an' write things like that," Adam said calmly. "The world is full of all sorts of brilliant stuff and I haven't found out all about it yet, so I don't want anyone messing it about or endin' it before I've had a chance to find out about it. So you can all just go away."
***
Then [Adam] said: "I don't see why it matters what is written. Not when it's about people. It can always be crossed out."
***
Humans have free will according to Good Omens. True free will, but the thesis of Good Omens 3 is that they don't. The actual issue is that angels and demons are beholden to the toxicity of Hell and Heaven toward them. Aziraphale and Crowley don't have the freedom humans do to "be on their own side."
God's ineffable plan is always framed in GO1 and GO2 as separate than the Great Plan the Metatron tries to push through. GO3 makes God complicit or, perhaps, the architect of the Great Plan. This conflation retcons what is already well-established.
In GO1, both Gabriel (head archangel and lacky of the Metatron) and Beezlbub (Duke of Hell and Satan's lacky) argue the Great Plan is necessary, Heaven and Hell's final war to prove, once and for all, which side is stronger. It's to take place on Earth as the apocalypse that will destroy Earth.
As Adam says in the novel, humans wrote this idea themselves and can cross it out. In GO1, Aziraphale questions Gabriel and Beezlbub whether the Great Plan is God's ineffable plan. The answer is clearly no, and both sides stand down. The God of the novel and GO1 is not the God portrayed in GO3.
In the prologue of GO2, Aziraphale informs Angel!Crowley that the universe will be shut down after 6,000 years. This introduces a new element that seems to be part of God's ineffable plan. In and of itself, it's a problem that can be solved according to the philosophy wrought through the novel and GO1.
GO3, however, frames the issue as humans not having true free will due to the interference of Heaven and Hell and, ultimately, God. This frame directly contradicts the novel and GO1's philosophy that humans indeed have free will, that God doesn't "play games with the universe."
The frame of GO3 should've been, to be consistent, about the dissolution of the Great Plan, dismantling of Heaven and Hell's bureaucracy, and God -- Her presence expressed through Her voice rather than as a physical manifestation -- agreeing not to end Her creation after all.
Jesus, after experiencing humanity again, likely would've (or should've) been part of arguing the case with Crowley and Aziraphale. Theologically (as Christianity eventually developed), Jesus is also God, one who had a human experience and compassion for all humanity.
Because of the compression of a six-hour story into ninety-six minutes, plus a rewrite by people other than the original novel's authors, GO3 was unlikely to be a continuation and ending consistent with GO1 and GO2. This phenomenon isn't unique to the Good Omens TV series but many TV series where the original creator and showrunner leaves (for whatever reason).
At the end of GO2, the story promise is that the Second Coming will be Heaven's attempt to carry out the Great Plan. As Crowley tells Aziraphale in GO1 after they helped thwart the apocalypse, the next attempt will be all of humanity against Heaven and Hell. Not God. Heaven and Hell.
Adam in Hebrew means man as in human. Genesis in the Torah uses adam to refer to humanity and to refer to a specific human, Adam. The choice of naming the Antichrist in the novel Adam is not about reflecting the first human but all of humanity. Adam is human at his core. He has ultimate free will, and he understands humanity also has true or real, to use Crowley's GO3 word, free will.
Jesus and Adam Young in the original six-episode GO3 had a subplot. I hope that Adam's conversations with Jesus were largely about human free will and were consistent with the Adam of the novel and GO1.
Unfortunately, Jesus is essentially irrelevant in GO3. Remove him from the story, nothing changes. Truncating his role doesn't fulfill the promise of GO2, where his return is clearly meant to be inextricably connected to the events and outcome of GO3. The Book of Life replaces Jesus's role as the potential catalyst of changing Earth and existence as a whole.
Instead, Michael's anger at her lot in existence, at her lack of control, becomes nihilistic. Aziraphale seems to have circumvented the Great Plan once again, and Michael is the one who destroys existence by destroying the Book of Life. This character arc or plotline may well have been part of the original six-episode GO3, but its development and execution was likely different.
Aziraphale and Crowley need not have sacrificed themselves had GO3 remained true to the source material and the story setup in GO2. They needed to risk challenging God, yes, but the ask would not be to make human free will real. It is real. The ask would be been to restore creation without the arbitrary 6,000-year time limit, without Heaven and Hell's interference or existence.
The consequence -- the sacrifice and reward -- to Crowley and Aziraphale would've been the loss of their divinity and immortality. God wouldn't tell them as such, only that they would experience death as a consequence of their request.
Their disintegration would be a fake-out. We'd think they're gone, but Aziraphale would awake in his bookshop, Crowley in his Bentley, both utterly confused. They'd find each other and Aziraphale would say, "I thought we were supposed die."
Crowley, realizing the truth before Aziraphale, grins. "Oh, we will. Just not today, Angel."
"Do you mean ... ?"
"We're human. Completely flawed humans -- " he laughs -- "with the free will to be as stupid or as brilliant as we want."
"Our lives are our own," Aziraphale whispers. "To do good because we believe it's the right thing to do, not because it's an order."
Crowley says, "Well, what do you want do to now? Adopt a dozen orphans or something like that?"
"I want to dine at the Ritz." Aziraphale grasps Crowley's hand. "With you."
Crowley gestures to the Bentley. They enter. Next scene is the two former angels dining at the Ritz, a parallel to the end of GO1. They toast to the world -- "and," Aziraphale adds, "to us."
Then the show flash-forwards twenty years to their cottage in the South Downs. Nightingales sing. Crowley and Aziraphale have aged and their wedding rings are present, just as they are in the GO3 that exists. Their conversation is both mundane and profound.
They so loved humanity that they become human themselves. But as themselves. That's the inevitable conclusion I see.
They've chosen Earth and humanity since the beginning of Good Omens. Thus, they choose Earth and humanity at the end.
