Since Wednesday, I’ve been approached by more people than I can count with a variation of the same question, “How are you feeling now?”. Some of you have noticed that I’ve been keeping myself busy offline over the last few days. Experiencing and processing Good Omens 3 as a part of in-person, physical community was a conscious decision which I don’t regret — on the contrary, I’m deeply grateful to each person who’s been a part of that journey so far and happy to meet even more of you tomorrow. But I think that the rest deserves some kind of answer as well.
There’s a plethora of elements that I enjoy and genuinely love about the Finale, to the point where I’m called overtly optimistic or deep in the denial. I don’t mind either of those labels, and I’m sure that I will continue writing about those specific topics and other things that spark joy for a good while. But there are also some aspects of the production as well as the discourse around it that aren’t a matter of preference and need to be addressed in a broader context — not as a witch hunt or a morality contest, but a sign of the challenges we face on personal and societal level at the very moment and have to be more conscious about. And I’m sure that we can do it in a mature, nonviolent way, with kindness and compassion to everyone involved, no matter their circumstances and interpretations. But first, we have to establish some common ground for this discussion, which is why I will start by quoting Rachel Talalay’s TV Insider interview that has fuelled the initial fandom response into the blazing inferno it seems to be at the moment:
I mean, there was conversations throughout, quite specific in the script about that, there wasn’t another huge kiss. And the main conversation with Michael and David was, what could we do that means more than what was in Season 2? And the answer is the plot line is greater than what happened in Season 2, but another kiss would be — and I know that I say this with great love for the fandom because I know they desperately want, and they can write their whole sex scenes in fanfic, but definitely the whole group together felt like another kiss would be the same or less, and therefore really heading toward the emotion of it.
This is not meant to be criticism on a personal or professional level. I am deeply aware that Rachel — who joined the Good Omens 3 production team when the original six episodes were already scripted and in development, and yet tried to bargain for the best possible outcome with the fans in mind throughout her time as a director on this challenging in more than one way show — is slightly older than my own mother and possesses a set of life experiences that I, as a young demisexual lesbian, am unable to fully relate to. And vice versa, which is a completely normal and expected occurrence in itself. Unfortunately, even the most well-meant and delicately selected phrases sometimes fall flat, or, as it’s the case here, tone deaf, and I firmly believe that addressing those instances directly and deliberately is the only way to achieve some level of understanding and to move forward as better individuals and communities. I also believe that we should start the conversation by calling this kind of phenomenon by its name, unconscious bias.
Unconscious bias or implicit associations are a set of associations we hold outside our conscious awareness and control as a result of background, personal experiences, societal stereotypes and cultural context. It is not just about gender, ethnicity or other visible diversity characteristics — height, body weight, names, and many other things can also trigger unconscious bias. They affect absolutely everyone to some degree as a quick workaround enabling our overwhelmed brains quick judgement and assessment, but once identified and acknowledged, they can be absolutely managed. Unconscious bias are also the reason why the current discussion is so heated on the fandom’s part. After years and years of on-hands experience with all shades of queerphobia in the film and TV industry as much as in their personal lives, people quickly jump to conclusions that the director must be homophobic, the ending changed, and the characters’ identities maliciously erased. Which would be straightforward prejudice.
Let me reiterate with all of my gentleness and love: Good Omens, including its divisive Finale, is not about sex. Never has been, and seeing the wonderful kaleidoscope of fandom only through this particular lens seems not even disrespectful, as some have phrased it, but boringly predictable. After all, sexualising and even fetishising same-sex presenting couples has been an ongoing struggle both in the media and in the real world for far longer than either of us has been alive. Leaning in some way on those objectively toxic cultural norms when struggling for intellectual and emotional stability while raw from exposure to the press is not the worst thing a 67-year-old grieving widow can do, nor something she can feel particularly proud of when she’s more conscious of her actions. A woman that is openly a fan of the Good Omens novel herself and who publicly supported the fans on multiple occasions, including this interview:
I want them to feel that they’re in the hands of somebody who cared — and cares.
Attacking Rachel on a personal level is not the way to move forward, just a temporary solution for understandably vulnerable individuals wanting to redirect their disappointment and anger at someone even more vulnerable and at the same time more approachable than the unclear Forces That Be. Because the problem we’re all dealing with seems more political and in major part systemic, and needs to be addressed as such. Luckily Good Omens is a story about systems of oppression as well.
Humans are social animals. In academic terms, face-to-face interactions are often described by the famous 55/38/7 rule: 55% body language (facial expressions, gestures, and posture), 38% tone of voice (pitch, volume, and the rhythm of speech), and 7% spoken words (the literal vocabulary used). Now think about losing a person important to you — not necessarily a romantic or sexual partner, but a parent, a child, a dear friend. When saying goodbye to someone you love and consider your entire world, you automatically engage social and personal intimacy scripts as a way to reassure them about you still being there for them, especially when it’s impossible to tell whether they can fully hear or see you at that point anymore. Depending on your circumstances and cultural background, it can be achieved in many ways — through holding or kissing their hands, face, hair, even a full-body hug — but what matters is that on a visceral level, you simply want to be close to them and not let go until it’s really truly over.
For Aziraphale and Crowley, the entirety of their time together spent in the shadow of the Second Coming has been a painfully prolonged goodbye — yet tragically, neither of them allowed himself or his counterpart this small mercy of universally recognised and socially accepted intimacy above friendship. It’s obviously not like they didn’t share any physical contact through the ninety minutes they were given. There were multiple instances of handholding, steering each other in the right direction or grounding in their place when needed. All full of affection, but also all with a comfortable level of deniability that in the wider context can be seen as genuinely problematic. None of those gestures follow any recognisable cultural norms or media tropes expected of this type of relationship as theirs, and neither does the dialogue, which is why the film feels like a blow to so many disappointed fans, not because of the lack of fan service in the sense of more or less explicitly sexual content. Although let’s be honest, automatically equating kisses with sex is more than a bit baffling and would have never happened in a context of a cisheteronormative couple.
Queer people are primed to look for clues and signals around them all their lives because for them it’s a matter of survival. A lifetime of denied open communication and representation leaves all kinds of marks on a person and a community, especially when reinforced by the conservative-leaning media exposure. It makes the option of a fantasy world where queer love isn’t worse or different and truly conquers it all, in bold, all capital letters and Disney-like gestures, ever so appealing. This is why finding a fandom like Good Omens, which seemed not only unapologetically, beautifully open to all kinds of outsiders, but actively subverting their typical role of background comic relief and making them main romantic leads in the story — their story — has been so life-altering for multiple people I’ve talked to over the years. It was a transformative safe space and a centre of excellence for all kinds of creative activities, a source of joy, inspiration, and human connection that was unfairly unattainable for so many of fans throughout their lives so far. And I hope that amongst the current chaos, it will remain as such, even if irrevocably changed in so many ways now. Unfortunately as it often happens, removing that openness as the one particular element that felt so significant in this community building exercise had started a domino effect of truly Biblical proportions.
On a painfully personal level, I used to have a Crowley in my life as well, someone who was by my side through my formative years, inspired me in thousands of little ways and, for better or worse, helped me grow into who I am today. Ironically, someone I met shortly after reading Good Omens for the first time, even though the parallel became apparent to me only years afterwards, when it was already too late for us to laugh about it together. It took us not six millennia, but six years to get properly together, and waiting this long had never seemed like a big issue. When she requested the same thing as Crowley did, I still said categorically and unequivocally no, with the full knowledge of the price I would pay for it. And I never regretted it. Because I believe that living in a world actively denying your very existence is the act of ultimate rebellion and ultimate sacrifice at the same time. Being queer is the real adventure of a million lifetimes — the incessant weight of expectations, the nagging what-ifs of family members or authority figures, the responsibility of being seen and acknowledged not only as a person, but an entire community you might feel more or less connected to.
There’s a saying that each openly queer person is an ambassador of their entire minority group for the majority and a role model for those in-groups who need one. It’s a never-ending performance for the sake of others, even if you choose to just live as yourself, because just by embracing your queerness and otherness you become a walking source of hope and will to live in times and places painfully deprived of it. When you’re young, you’re the promise of a better future your elders fought for. When you’re older, you’re a living, breathing proof that life doesn’t have to end with each badly accepted coming out, unrequited love, or even personal loss — a statement that so many children and teenagers still need and deserve to believe in. It’s a lot of responsibility when you’re just a regular person. When you’re a main character of a beloved story, you become more than a symbol — a living legend. And legends have the power to shape the world on levels completely unattainable to even very powerful individuals. Which is why all of this seemingly irrelevant fandom discourse is actually incredibly important in a broader context.
Don’t get me wrong here, Good Omens has always been a love letter to humanity first and foremost and the idea of Aziraphale and Crowley choosing what amounts to double suicide for the good of mankind is still in line with that sentiment, especially when leading to a much better outcome than intended. The fact that we didn’t learn the path to this decision through Terry Pratchett’s own lines is something that steals a lot of value from it, but cannot be helped — it’s enough that we know that this is the ending that he wanted and his estate fought for. This particular approach would have worked well as an adaptation of that planned sequel over thirty years ago, with the limitations of both their roles as side characters in the story and the real world’s political and social treatment of queer people and couples at that exact point in time. The thing is, it’s 2026 now, Aziraphale and Crowley’s romance grew to become the focal point of the Good Omens universe, and the current combination of recent world events and a series of creative choices transformed the original ending into an unnecessarily bleak political statement that takes away the attention from its intended moral of love transcending God’s ineffable plans as well as how the real miracles can be found in the perfect chaos of an entirely godless, mundane universe. In the context of queer people and their media representation, similar sacrifice storylines will always be seen in a vastly different light. And that surplus layer of meaning has tremendous negative consequences on the active part of fandom as well as the general queer community outside of its circles.
It’s not about the sex, not even the stolen and baited by Amazon Prime in the worst way possible kisses. There are so many ways to physically express romantic love and affection — incredibly important also in the asexual context — and we’ve seen some of them already occur between Aziraphale and Crowley. Erasing an entire level of verbal and nonverbal communication in the Finale is a conscious decision that not only feels like a discourtesy towards the characters’ journey so far, but also sends a chilling in its clarity signal that same-sex presenting love is something uncomfortable and better dealt at a safe distance. Even when that was clearly not the intention of the cast and crew who fought for this title to end on the highest note possible and deserve respect and recognition for their achievements on that front.
It wouldn’t be an issue — or at least an issue of this magnitude — if we were talking only about Aziraphale and Crowley. But unfortunately all of the unconventional storylines from S2 have met some sort of tragic conclusion. Nina and Maggie’s businesses were ruined, their own fates beyond Whickber Street left completely uncertain. Mutt’s seemingly plot-irrelevant and unnecessarily mentioned off-screen death with its weight on their still unnamed spouse shocked to the point that the sudden revelation of Mrs Sandwich’s sex work dividing a family that needs her can be overlooked. Even in the abridged romcom of an alternative human lifetime, Asa and Anthony relied in a big part on easily overlooked or censored context clues like the wedding rings and vague references instead of non-negotiable declarations and actions. And I’m certain that some translators and viewers have already used this window of opportunity to minimise the intended impact of this scene.
Even a simple goodbye hug or a forehead kiss would be a statement that queer characters deserve more than on-screen physicality born out of raw desperation or animal desire. That they can utilise the same nonverbal language as their non-queer counterparts without being judged. That their intimacy isn’t different than that of cisheteronormative couples we’ve seen in multiple beds — even while actively engaging in sexual acts — in the first season of Good Omens. It would be also a sign of what seems forgotten somewhere in the meanders of the production hell and personal struggles: that Good Omens, while intended as a fun summer adventure, grew out of its genre confines into a love story, and deserved to be treated as such. Not just a love story between an angel and a demon, but a story of love transcending the highest power structures and shaping entire universes. Destroying the system together with its institutions specifically built as tools of oppression is the only way towards radical change and freedom of expression, something that Terry has been personally aware of when plotting Good Omens in the middle of the political upheaval of the late 1980s and early 1990s, but the modern TV show had failed to highlight enough. Instead of inspiring and encouraging, the ending can be easily misunderstood as a story about giving up and running away, especially to younger and queerer audiences already dealing with this type of reasoning in terms of representation and their personal lives.
In times of intensified fascist activity targeting queer media and individuals alike, witnessing a spectacular collapse of a community centered around the title that even 36 years ago was seen as a beacon of hope for people like me seems like a tremendous red flag in terms much bigger than storytelling. And it’s clearly not due to the lack of attention to detail or love towards the characters on the cast and crew part, but genuine top-down pressure limiting the creative processes and decisions in this particular context. Who’s more at fault here, Neil Gaiman, Amazon Prime, a secret third option? We can debate this among ourselves and out in the open through available media outlets, but please don’t take the easy way out. Don’t attack those closest to you. This type of reaction is precisely what helps this world become an even worse and less accepting place.
I will just repeat the last message I wrote before the Good Omens 3 release:
The world as we know it might come to an end in a moment, but the one that comes after it is vast and brimming with opportunities. Reach out to one another and take them together, little miracle makers.
theartofmadeline
janainaart
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