I wouldn't say that the third and final season of Good Omens would've been perfect if it hadn't been cut down to a movie-length finale (I'm assuming that it would've ended the same either way), but it definitely would've functioned better, story-wise.
There are multiple moments where characters suddenly jump from acting one way to acting another, or times we're told and not shown a series of events (or not shown enough), or we're not given a full explanation how a certain thing is possible or necessary (or it just didn't have enough build up, full stop), and it's CLEAR that these aspects, at least, were almost certainly a result of only having 1.5 hours to work with instead of 6 (assuming that each of the original 6 episodes that the season was supposed to be would've been an hour long).
You can tell that certain characters would've benefited from legit foreshadowing. That we would've gotten more of those fun and clever flashback scenes that the first two seasons delighted in showing us. There were so many times during my viewing of season 3 that I could feel the absences like phantom limbs, tracing the stitches where the story was almost certainly cut.
And the most interesting thing to me is how, so far and on Tumblr at least, I haven't seen someone point this out. Almost all of the posts I've seen are about the ending itself, how things are tied up in a bow in the last ten minutes. About the plot, but not how it was squished down. The closest I've seen people refer to the finale being rushed is how Jesus felt like an afterthought regarding the plot as a whole, but they still didn't really cite the lack of time as a real culprit.
I think I know why this is, why I haven't seen people lamenting/blaming the slashed time. One reason is just a big "yet." The loudest voices are the shippers reacting to the immediate ending, or people who would've always cared about the ending first before analyzing how the story got there (and who could blame them, with how things ended?) I'm confident that if the season remained the six episodes it was supposed to be, that we'd be hearing about the reactions to the final episode for ages before opinions on the previous ones began properly circulating.
And the other reason is, well, why the season got slashed to begin with. How, according to the articles I've read, it was due to Neil Gaiman not being involved as direct showrunner anymore (although, according to the credits, he still co-wrote the screenplay and was the source for the overall story) and his production company pulling out as well. And since we know WHY he and the company stepped back, I think some people may be hesitant (for now, at least) to directly address the length of the season being an aspect of its limitations, as it may sound like a wish that the production had avoided cutting ties with him, or otherwise condoning Gaiman's past actions for the sake of improving the work of art we like. And I'm not even saying this kind of reaction is wrong, necessarily, but it's definitely noticeable.
Or maybe the loudest voices on Tumblr will shift and we'll see people talking about the finale length any day now, I dunno. The tags could've just been unbalanced in the moments I checked. But those are the only two cents I feel like sharing for now.
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