Warning: contains major spoilers for the Good Omens season 2 finale.
It took over two years for Prime Video to announce that Good Omens was coming back, and four years for it to actually return.
The first six episodes of the fantasy-comedy about angel-demon soulmates Aziraphale and Crowley aired in May 2019. Fans loved it, and naturally wanted more. Then, due to a combination of the global Covid pandemic, plus the extremely busy schedules of creator Neil Gaiman (who also had TV adaptations of The Sandman and Anansi Boys cooking) and his stars David Tennant and Michael Sheen, Good Omens season two was eventually confirmed in June 2021.
Now, in July 2023, it’s finally here, and it had better not take another four years to finish this story. Not after that ending. With major finale spoilers ahead, let’s dive in.
Archangel Gabriel and Lord Beelzebub
“I just found something that mattered more to me than choosing sides.”
After season one’s averted apocalypse, both sides – heaven and hell – wanted to claim victory. Without actually having fought a celestial war though, the spoils and the bragging rights belonged to no-one. Hence the generals of the respective armies – Archangel Gabriel and Lord Beelzebub – getting together to decide the next step. Over several meetings, the angel and the demon chose peace… and fell in love.
That’s why Beelzebub was so keen to find Gabriel after he went missing from Heaven – she loves him. After Gabriel delivered his unpopular plan to the heavenly war council, he was tried, demoted and sentenced to having his mind erased. Before they could wipe his memories though, Gabriel stored them in a TARDIS-like fly container Beelzebub had given him that was “bigger on the inside” and travelled down to Earth, naked. There, memory-less, he drifted towards Aziraphale’s shop instead of reuniting with Beelzebub as planned, and the whole Jim saga began.
In the finale, “Jim” regained his memories via a fly-eyeball encounter, and Gabriel and Beelzebub chose to quit heaven and hell and disappear off together. Which sparked something in Crowley…
Maggie and Nina
“You’re the hard-bitten one who can’t trust anyone ever again and Mr whatever he is is the soft one who still believes in magic and people being basically good and all that.”
It took Maggie and Nina’s intervention for Crowley’s spark to become a flame, and for that flame to find its way memorably onto Aziraphale’s lips. The coffee and record shop owners told Crowley that they were not going to be pawns in anybody else’s love game, but would instead take their love story at their own pace. The pair conceded though, that they had needed a push by Crowley and Aziraphale to tell each other how they really felt.
Maggie and Nina repaid that favour with their own little push. They told Crowley that though he and his angel spoke all the time, they never told each other what they were really thinking, and it was time that they did. Crowley listened, and chose to act. Instead of sliding back into the old routine and having the planned “extremely alcoholic breakfast at the Ritz”, he planned to tell Aziraphale exactly how he felt.
Aziraphale’s Decision
“You idiot. We could have been us.”
In true rom-com second-act timing, Crowley’s declaration came at the most inopportune moment. While he was being coached by Maggie and Nina on the ways of the heart, Aziraphale was receiving a different kind of proposal – the top job in heaven, plus full reinstatement of Crowley’s angel status. It was a dream come true, for Aziraphale, who, despite several adventures involving lessons about moral relativism this season, still hadn’t shaken off the idea that heaven equals good and hell equals bad, or truly understood heaven’s tyranny.
Disgusted by Aziraphale’s naïve proposal, Crowley confessed his love and kissed his man, only to meet a confused, pious “I forgive you” in return. “Don’t bother,” snarled Crowley, swaggering to his Bentley to watch his angel leave the bookshop to go to his new life in Heaven with the Metatron. The series ended with cameras trained on both their faces as they absorbed their new separation. Heartbreak, in short.
The Second Coming
“To set into motion the next step in the great plan.”
The Metatron, or the highest-ranking angel in Heaven (played here by Derek Jacobi) is clearly not to be trusted, not that Aziraphale can see it. To revive Heaven’s reputation after Gabriel’s defection, the Metatron attempted to re-recruit both Aziraphale and Crowley, the latter of whom had been banished to hell millennia ago for displaying independence of mind. Aziraphale took the Metatron’s bait, but rebel Crowley refused, not wanting to be part of either Heaven or Hell.
Now, with his beloved bookshop in the dubious care of sweet but stupid Muriel, Aziraphale is the new Gabriel. He’s been brought in to direct the next step in Heaven’s great plan: “the Second Coming.”
In season one, Aziraphale and Crowley dealt with the Antichrist, if season three is confirmed, it looks like they’ll be dealing with the son of Christ – and not together, but apart…
Good Omens Season Two is available to stream now on Prime Video.