A eulogy, apparently
After watching Good Omens 3 last week I felt vaguely disappointed. Apathetic, unimpressed. Whelmed.
In my opinion, the finale was a hot mess. Writing, pacing, acting. It had some great moments, but as a coherent narrative? Eehhh. Not terrible, but not good either. Considering the particularly rough development hell the finale went through, I can understand that. I respect the work that went into it, I respect the love and dedication of the crew to this story, I respect that they finished it, despite everything. I don't like it, but I respect it.
H o w e v e r
Upon further reflection, I am angry. Not because Crowley and Aziraphale got unmade, not because there wasn't a kiss, not because the finale was a mess. No.
I am angry about this absolute trainwreck of a line:
"Why give me Crowley? Why make me complete and then take it away?"
To me this is, without question, a disrespect to Aziraphale's character so incredibly awful that I needed to write this rambling disaster of a rant to unpack it. It is very possibly the worst mishandling of any character I have ever seen in any media, full stop, and speaks to the many, many failures of the final scenes of the finale.
I have three interpretations of this line, and all of them suck.
1. Aziraphale is talking about Crowley as an angel.
Out of around thirteen hours of Good Omens, we are shown about six minutes of Crowley as an angel. Aziraphale is obviously smitten, but Crowley is oblivious and uninterested. He's pleased that there's suddenly this appreciative witness to his creations, but otherwise he doesn't really acknowledge Aziraphale much at all. He's more emotionally affected by the bad news Aziraphale brings than Aziraphale himself. They are strangers to each other.
Yes, sure, the wing thing, but even that doesn't hit the same way as the moment it mirrors. It isn't Aziraphale's subtly subversive, character-defining moment of compassion from the first season, but rather a moment of the sort of detached, disinterested "kindness" that is seemingly expected of all angels. Other than that, what are we shown of their pre-Fall relationship aside from a few short, though not insignificant, allusions by both of them that Crowley was a pretty great angel? Literally nothing.
One of the most important things about both Crowley and Aziraphale is that they love being themselves. They both do this despite their peers' disdain for them. Sometimes they even do this in spite of themselves. Even before they actively rebel to prevent Armageddon, being who they are is an act of rebellion for both of them. Furthermore, it is the main component of why they love each other so much, which in and of itself is an act of rebellion even more profound than anything they do to stop the end of the world. It is the beating heart of the entire show.
So for Aziraphale to say that he was only made complete by angel Crowley, and that the Fall took him away? A relationship we never see, a love story we are never shown, overshadowing the literal hours of the deeply romantic and thematically essential story that we do see? It's an abandonment of what the series is about and a massive insult to Crowley, who, I cannot emphasize enough, is standing right there listening to this.
Aziraphale is fantastic character, and his flaws are numerous. He's self-righteous, willfully oblivious, often insensitive, and ruled by fear.
He’s selfish, but he isn’t cruel. Maybe by inaction, maybe by accident, maybe by association, but never intentionally.
Asking this as his One Big Question? Calling Crowley “it”? acknowledging only his own pain when it is something they suffered together? Saying this as Crowley stands behind him, as brave and compassionate and willing as Aziraphale is to face oblivion for humanity? In this interpretation, that is the most intentionally cruel choice Aziraphale could possibly make.
Viewed in this light, this line is a complete and utter disrespect of everything that makes Aziraphale who he is. Where is his kindness? Where is his adoration for Crowley? It is an out-of-character disgrace of a writing choice that completely ignores both why the characters love themselves and why they love each other.
Which brings me to
2. Aziraphale is talking about Crowley as a demon.
In this interpretation, Aziraphale is openly acknowledging their forbidden love. They are the original star-crossed lovers, an angel and a demon on opposite sides of a cosmic war who share six thousand years of tantalizing closeness, desperate longing, and an uncountable number of veiled love confessions that they cannot afford to speak plainly without risking destruction. They have been in love for millennia, but they started their relationship already taken from each other because they can never be together the way they want to be.
On the surface, this is an interpretation supported by the rest of the show, and I suspect it is what the writers intended to reference with this line. It is the premise of Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship from season one onward. It's what makes their story so captivating.
Once again, unfortunately: h o w e v e r
Season one is a complete story. Their forbidden romance, just like every other character's story, goes through a full arc during season one, from The Beginning through to "to the world". Yes, there are things left unresolved between them, things season two does attempt (clumsily, in my opinion) to address. The final fifteen minutes of season two especially feel inevitable. It's a pure distillation of the conflict at the core of their relationship.
This line in season three does justice to neither of its predecessors.
The plot of season one is, at its core, about Crowley and Aziraphale choosing each other. Everything we are shown of their relationship reinforces this: their history, their choices, the things they do for each other. As in season three, they don't say the words "I love you" and they don't kiss, but in season one they don't need to.A kiss would have been great, but they don't need to kiss to show that they love each other."I love you" is already woven into every single thing they do and say.
Back to those veiled confessions of love. That final scene at the Ritz has a veiled "I love you" too, but it is safe. For the first time in their shared existence, they get to say that "I love you" without fear. They get to reciprocate that "I love you" without fear. You can see it in their faces. You can see it in how they sit together, relaxed, receptive, and deliberately contrasted with their tense body language in the previous Ritz scene. It is a profoundly joyful moment for both of them. It is their first moment of true freedom, not just in six thousand years, but since the very moment of their creation, and they get to have it together.
I personally don't like season two very much, but I do think that it successfully examines the deeper nuances of how messed up Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship is. Did I think their story needed that after the complete arc of season one? Absolutely not, but at least it commits to that dissection. The final confession is wrenching in every dimension, just as it ought to be, and it is a direct confirmation of everything season one tells us they are to each other. As underwhelming as I find season two, it still did justice to the characters and their history, and it doesn't disregard the Entire Goddam Point of the story.
Obviously the Entire Goddam Point of the story is up to interpretation, but I think a lot of people would agree that at least one Goddam Point of the story is that Crowley and Aziraphale complete each other.
In season one it’s shown through their best qualities and in season two it’s shown through their worst, but regardless of the season the message is the same. They complete each other, they always have, and most crucially, they both know that. Down to whatever magic or atoms or fundamental truth of the universe that governs their physical reality, Crowley and Aziraphale know that. Before the Fall, after the Fall, it doesn't matter. They complete each other.
So what is Aziraphale talking about in this moment of season three? From this angle, this line is still a travesty character-wise, still a flagrant disrespect of their relationship, but more than that it is a rebuke of everything meaningful that came before it. It crumples up the first and second seasons and throws them in the trash. It asks the viewer to forget everything that makes Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship what it is.
Why? Could the writers not think of something better for Aziraphale to say? Were they so married to the idea that they had to say that the characters complete each other out loud instead of relying on the literal hours of show before it that already made that abundantly clear? Did they really have that little confidence in their work? Do they really have that little faith in their viewers’ comprehension?
It's just. Bad. Really bad, but not nearly as bad as
3. Aziraphale is talking about the end of season two.
This interpretation is admittedly a shaky one. I think it's probably not at all what the writers meant to convey, and my take here is absolutely influenced by my dislike of the writing choices made in season two. I still think it's worth addressing, though, because it gets to the to the root problem of the finale: the lack of any type of resolution for season two.
So first off, obviously, nobody "took Crowley away" from Aziraphale at the end of season two. Aziraphale left him behind by choice. I can see how Aziraphale might not see it that way. Maybe he sees it as an impossible choice, offered to him by God directly through the Metatron. Maybe he considers, consciously or not, that Crowley is who he is because God created him that way and that somehow indirectly Crowley's rejection of him was God "taking him away" because neither of them can be anything but what they were made to be.
It's an uncharitable interpretation of Aziraphale's character and it ignores the character growth he had in the first season, but I do think there's a nugget of truth there. One of Aziraphale's most important struggle is with his own free will, and I can see how him feeling that God "took Crowley away" from him at the end of season two could be a complicated, twisted consequence of that struggle. I don't think that's his primary motivation at the end of season two, however, and even if it was, season three does nothing to show it.
Season three does basically nothing to tie up the ragged edges intentionally left behind by season two. Instead, it messes those edges up even further and doesn't seem to know how to fix them again. The unaddressed nastiness of "do you want an apology from me" and the selfish regression of "I was trying to do the right thing". The request for forgiveness and the immediate granting of it without any elaboration whatsoever. The complete absence of any honesty from either character about the choices they both made at the end of season two. I didn't need or want a frank, itemized, couples therapy discussion about their feelings, but I sure as hell wanted something. Some sort of conversation, some sort of resolution, some sort of satisfaction. Something.
I don’t think this is a consequence of six episodes being squeezed into ninety minutes. The writers could have made different choices about what to prioritize, and we do get something. Sort of. God says out loud that Aziraphale loves Crowley. Cool, I guess, but once again, it completely misses the Entire Goddam Point, and here is where the finale really fails for me.
Good Omens is about choices. It's about free will and rebellion and big, unanswerable questions. It is about Crowley and Aziraphale loving each other, completing each other, not because of God's great plan but in spite of it.
To take that final "I love you", veiled or otherwise, away from Aziraphale. To give that final confession to God, their negligent creator who is, in the same conversation and in concert with the literal Devil, actively mocking them. For God to say that she liked watching Aziraphale love Crowley with no mention of Crowley loving Aziraphale and implying that she only allowed it because it made her smile. It robs Crowley and Aziraphale of their agency, not just in that moment, but retroactively for the entire show. It cheapens the sacrifice they ultimately make for humanity. It takes everything from them. Everything they did for each other. Every choice they made, every risk they took. Every triumph, every failure.
It dismantles the brilliant, beautiful gift of a story we were given in season one and builds a rushed and ramshackle conclusion from its remnants. It expects us to believe that Aziraphale and Crowley never had a real choice, because the rules they have spent six thousand years quietly refuting by loving each other are actually immutable fundamental truths and that every moment of their existence was predestined by God's mercy.
That is not a resolution. That is a deus ex machina so literal it's insulting. It is a betrayal of every character arc in the show and a desecration of everything that makes Good Omens such an important, impactful story. It is lazy, boring, bad writing, and the anodyne fan fiction ending we get as a result is a cold fucking comfort.
Crowley and Aziraphale deserve more than that. The viewers deserve more than that. The people who worked hard to make this story deserve more than that.
I started this post angry, and I am ending it sad. It didn't have to be better. It didn't even have to be good. It just needed to be honest; it just needed to be kind. It just needed to be true to itself, and it wasn't. It lost itself, and that is a sad end to a story that means so much to so many people.
