A story ending with the whole Universe being Reset isn’t an inherently bad idea that no one should ever use. Very few Tropes are inherently bad ideas that no one should ever use, but one should be aware of how to use them and how they affect the story. Because when it comes to a Universe Reset, what it generally does is create a sort of… Bottleneck of Meaning. If the climax of the story has the characters decide on the creation of a whole new version of their universe, which is actually where all the Endings and Character Resolutions take place, that centralizes that one decision to reset the Universe (or maybe the multiple decisions of hows and whys and whats of resetting the Universe) as the One and Only Thing everything in the story has been leading up too, that everything in the whole previous universe has been leading up too on some level.
This is just such a Ridiculously Big Thing to happen in a story with consequences for Literally Everything in the Whole Universe and then also the slate on the previous interconnected web of causes and effects of everyone’s actions have been quite literally wiped as cleanly as it could possibly get. Pretty much everything that has happened before has to be measured via that lens of how much it has effected the Universe Reset, whatever it made the Reset possible or changed the type of reset or effected which characters were present at the Reset or how it might’ve effected their arcs and thus their decisions about the Reset. Even if there’s some implication of, like, reincarnations or cosmic echoes from the previous Universe affecting things, a Universe Reset is just an overwhelmingly huge Thing that has such overwhelmingly huge effects that it can easily overshadow everything else.
And all of this is not an inherently bad thing, a well-constructed Universe Reset plot, where you can totally retroactively see how every little detail along the way has led us to that moment, if not narratively, that at least thematically, can be a pretty damn cool thing. But one must be aware that this is the effect this kind of plot device tends to have on stories. And this is why Universe Reset plots are a particularly hard sell in Sequels. It’s very easy to have it feel like it just rendered the original story totally irrelevant.
And it feels like an especially Bad Fit as a Sequel for Good Omens, a story that originally took a pretty wide lens on the Apocalypse. Where saving the world was a Group Effort of at least eight humans and two supernatural beings, where the silly little everyday decisions of ordinary people and little coincidences that may or may not be manipulate by God had massive and/or unexpected ripple effects, and especially in the book there are a lot of fun little asides and tangents about the life stories of even minor characters and how people from all over the world are handling the sudden apocalypse-related weirdnesses.
Even when the world snapped back to Non-Armageddon Mode (a superficially kinda similar but distinctive thing to a Universe Reset), a lot of these specific little events and the memories of them did seem to remain, even if the majority of Humanity decided to shrug its shoulder and pretend everything is Normal. It’s fun to imagine how these specific people have been dealing with the aftermaths and the sudden return to ‘normalcy’.
That's much harder to pull off with a Universe Reset, it just kinda pulls everything into a very narrow focus.
And then it also feels especially discordant and unfitting when the Universe Reset Decision involves no actual Humans. And not only that, it’s basically up to just God and Crowley (with Aziraphale seemingly just here to relinquish his decision to Crowley and Satan here for just comic relief and symmetry). Like. not having any Human Involvement in ‘saving’ the world the second time would be a pretty lousy artistic decision for any sort of Narrative Resolution in a Good Omens sequel, but especially when it’s a Universe Reset because of that Narrative Bottleneck.
It kinda recontextualizes Everything That Has Happened in the story, in Human History, in the GO Universe as a whole, as being about Crowley, about getting him to the point in his character where he comes to a decision. It's all been about the point about Free Will that this one Supernatural Entity had to learn. (While Aziraphale’s story is recontextualized to be about nothing but his relationship with Crowley, since his part of the Decision is framed so heavily around the relationship stuff rather than Aziraphale's own worldview on Free Will and the Universe and Humanity). Which is just like… so against the basic themes of Good Omens I don't even know where to start.
And then it’s not even does a particularly good job at that because Crowley's arc flips from "Aziraphale let's run away together screw everyone else" to "Aziraphale we must kill ourselves for the Greater Good" on a dime, and any sort of transformation or arc he's supposed to have is downplayed by a narrative that just doesn't want to explore his flaws and instead acts like he just burst out fully formed from God's brow. And there's just so much stuff, even just in GO3, that doesn't seem to fit into the Narrative Bottleneck, and just feels like a superfluous time waste because of it.
A Universe Reset is not an inherently bad idea for an Ending, but it's a hard sell as an Ending for a Good Omens Sequel and this was a particularly badly-executed one.
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