My ‘official’ position on the question of ‘is the GO3 Ending the ‘Terry Pratchett Ending’ or not’ is basically ‘I don’t give a shit!’. At the end of the day Terry Pratchett was certainly a talented writer and beloved for a reason, but he wasn’t some God of Writing literally incapable of ever creating an Ending I personally thinks sucks ass. Plus, there is a difference here between thinking of an Ending and actually writing it down, both in the sense of, like, even if he thought it was a good idea, he never actually committed to writing and publishing it, and in the importance of the execution. Y’know, there are very few truly bad or good ideas, how they are done is often the most important factor. The devil’s in the details and all that.
That being said, whenever I do encounter the discussions about this ending in relation to Pterry, could this have been his ending, why he might’ve thought this ending was a good idea, how this ending is supported or not supported by his previous ‘Good Omens’ writing, as well as general discussions about how this ending could’ve been done better, it always strikes me how many of the factors here were things that were already changed or removed as early as GO1.
Like, while GO1 is clearly systematically critical of Heaven and Hell as institutions, pretty much all the lines where directly arguing for the possibility of a world where they are gone entirely were all cut in adaption.
Same with the lines where Adam calls Crowley and Aziraphale out for their complicity in Heaven and Hell’s Cosmic Imperialism. Instead, the framing in GO1 suggests they have a much more positive relationship with him, and by extension, humanity.
In general, while every version of Crowley and Aziraphale has some level of being both complicit in the system and victimized by it, Book Omens certainly emphasizes the Husbands’ complicity, while GO1’s reframing of them from ‘Cold War Spies’ to ‘Corporate Drones’ also coincide with a reframing that emphasizes their victimization. That makes the audience root for an uncomplicated Happily Ever After for them much more than feeling like they’ve got to ‘sacrifice’ something.
There’s also a lot to say about the shift in their characterization from the Book to the Show and how it effected the build up to the ending, but even on the most basic level, while the TV Omens version of Crowley and Aziraphale are still hedonists who try to save the Earth for mostly self-interested reasons, they also struggle with selflessness to some degree. Aziraphale thinking he should give up on his happiness with Crowley for the greater good, and Crowley being unhealthily self-sacrificial in the relationship. That makes a Heroic Sacrifice maybe a less ‘necessary’ conclusion to their characters compared to something that emphasizes the balance between selfishness and selflessness.
And the increased focus on romance and invoking the structure and tropes of a Romantic Comedy, both with the way the Ineffable Husbands Plotline goes in GO1 as a standalone narrative, and the way that GO2 seems to sell itself as the first half of a bigger, this-time-for-all-the-marbles Romantic Comedy with the post-Third-Act-Break-Up resolutions happening in GO3… that also makes a more uncomplicated ‘And They Lived Happily Ever After’ feel like the most appropriate ending.
In addition, making the Ineffable Husbands’ relationship so tumultuous and full of Mutual Pining, unlike in the book where they seemed pretty stable and you could infer that they were pretty satisfied with whatever relationship they had, makes it all so much more tragic. Unnecessarily tragic maybe. Like, sacrificing a centuries-long relationship would also be pretty sad, but sacrificing the possibility of even getting a chance to be together after 6000 years of doubts and fumbles and yearning and desires that never came to be is on a whole other level.
This romance-centric angle also makes it a story that’s…. at its most charitable interpretation is about how systematic change requires sacrifice sometimes, and making that thing that has to be sacrificed ‘a queer couple’s only chance at a Happy Ending’. Which is… certainly a choice.
And if we are doing, like, an Asa and Anthony thing, keeping Crowley and Aziraphale’s more functional and stable relationship might make Asanthony feel more like ‘aww, they’re picking up right where they left off’ and less like a stupid magical solution to the very realistic and human problems in the relationship in an ending that’s supposedly all about the beauty of mundanity.
And, y’know, GO2 generally giving so much focus to Crowley and Aziraphale’s personal and interpersonal struggles and how healing and solving them is a complicated and non-linear process is another thing that makes an ending where they actually live and get to work on these problems the actual mundane normal way feel like the most appropriate one.
GO2 also has generally a lot of focus on further ‘Humanizing’ (for the lack of a better word) other Angels and Demons. Again, emphasizing that they can all be victimized by the system, rather than just extensions of it.
And GO2, and GO1 to a lesser-but-still-definite extant, really putting the Humans and Humanist themes on the back-burner for the sake of cool supernatural drama and indulging in just being the Crowley and Aziraphale Show (as well as Human characters being written with less and less vibrancy and uniqueness in general)… that all makes the swerve to suddenly making Humanity the Most Important Thing and the thing that the audience needs to be invested more in then in Crowley and Aziraphale’s happy ending to be very discordant and jarring. And I think it runs the risk of being that even in an ideal version of GO3 where it had the full six episodes to build up to it's ending.
Also GO1 being as self-contained as it was and clearly framing itself as a happily ever after and a satisfying ending for Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship problems and to their affiliation with Heaven and Hell makes it harder for GO3 to sell its at-best-very-Bittersweet ending as ‘the only way they could be happy’. Like Book Omens also ended with them happily dining at the Ritz and a nightingale singing at Berkeley Square, but they were also still employed by Heaven and Hell, but there was a much bigger emphasis on what’s going to come next and whatever or not the Husbands are ready for it.
I mean, I won’t say to the level where Book Omens feels like an unsatisfying, incomplete or ‘bad’ ending to them in a meaningful way but… maybe it is one that would do a better job of convincing the audience that a GO3-style ending is the two’s best shot at true happiness and freedom. While the pure complete happiness of the GO1 ending is much harder to sell as a temporary respite, even if that’s what it was retconned into in-universe as of GO2, because the audience is aware that this is not what the narrative was trying to communicate to them during GO1 (and GO3 is clearly trying to engage with things from a meta-narrative perspective so it’s hard to look at things purely in-universe).
(And this is just counting problems in GO1-2 as the lead-up to GO3, that’s not counting the writing issues of GO3 itself, as it was absolutely not the best-executed version of its own concept, even considering its less-than-ideal circumstances.)
… The thing I'm still having a real hard time even trying to justify is the Full Universe Reset thing though. Like, the idea of using "the world is better off destroyed, let's start from scratch" as a metaphor for the massive societal change that's required for dismantling oppressive and harmful systems that seem inescapable is maybe not inherently bad, but it's certainly a hard sell as a sequel to a work where "the world is better off destroyed, let's start from scratch" was a metaphor for… destroying the world.
Plus, the idea that the entirety of human existence happened pretty much identically in the "Real Universe" feels even more implausible and hard-to-suspend-disbelief within the Book Continuity, where Crowley and Aziraphale (and especially Crowley) have been doing a lot more meddling in Human Affairs (even if it's silly goofy meddling like inventing various annoying taxes and game shows).
Then there's also still "the first day of the rest of their lives", "the first day of the rest of the world" (as the Husbands' part of Sunday calls it), the constant implications that Adam still has a long future ahead of him, Agnes' ghost laughing at the sight of Anathema burning her second book (which is not the reaction I'd expect her to have if this book was basically about how Anathema and all of her family and everyone she knows and the whole world is gonna Fucking Die.)
That part of the Finale still feels like a hard sell in pretty much every version of Good Omens, and maybe makes even less sense with Book Omens.
But, like, well, first and foremost I guess this really just proves what I said above about the execution being more important than just the vague Idea of the ending. An idea could be… I think still emotionally difficult but potentially thematically resonant and bittersweet in one version of the Canon, but transplanted into a slightly different version of the story and it becomes a dismal and depressing mess.
But also I can't help but feel like it's kinda ironic, like, okay, for all that I said of how a version of this ending could've gone better under another context, I can't pretend like I prefer it to "and then Crowley and Aziraphale lived happily and self-indulgently ever after for literally forever". But if there is one version of the Ineffables that could thematically support this ending it's their Book Omens version, and they're the version who just got to live Happily Ever After. And meanwhile, the one version of Crowley and Aziraphale who most needed a romantic Happily Ever After, narratively, thematically, are the TV Omens version and they got the fucking GO3 ending.
It's almost like their endings have been swapped. And I'm honestly very thankful that my Book Boys remained untouched and happy and it's delightful seeing the low-key Book Omens resurgence after TV Omens' dismal ending but… If I lived in a timeline where the Book Ineffables story ended in a bittersweet kinda-philosophical way and then to cheer themselves up, the fandom went to the TV Continuity to see the characters living Happily Ever After, I'd at least feel like the universe makes a little more sense, y'know? Instead it feels like TV Aziracrow somehow ended up becoming Book Aziracrow's Picture of Dorian Grey.
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