Good things come to those who wait, or so everyone says. That is doubly true in the streaming era, where years passing between seasons of popular shows isn’t just commonplace but now an unfortunate norm. If we’re honest, Good Omens fans have been suffering more than most. It’s pushing three years since season two aired in the summer of 2023. The finale episode finally allowed its long-pining leads to kiss, only to break them up in heartbreaking fashion mere seconds later. The angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) chose to return to Heaven, leaving his demon soulmate Crowley (David Tennant) behind on Earth and subsequently emotionally destroying viewers. And until recently, the show and its fandom were stuck in an increasingly frustrating limbo, waiting for a happy ending that felt like it might never come.
Season two’s ending was a shocking plot twist that went firmly against the tone of the episodes that came before it, which were sweet, gentle, and deeply romantic. Absolutely no one had “surprise, everyone ends up in tears” on their Good Omens bingo card. To add anxiety to angst, the second season cliffhanger arrived with the show’s larger fate still uncertain. In fact, a renewal announcement wouldn’t arrive for nearly six months.
But that wasn’t the end of a string of increasingly cursed events surrounding the series’ conclusion. Good Omens was originally meant to end with a six-episode third season. But following the multiple allegations of sexual misconduct against Neil Gaiman, the series’ showrunner and one-half of the pair who wrote the book the series is based on, things were looking pretty bleak indeed. Gaiman has repeatedly denied the claims, but several of his other projects were outright buried or canceled in the wake of the news. Production on Good Omens’ final season was paused, and for a good long while, it seemed all too likely that such a bleak fate might be in its future, too.
But the Ineffable Plan moves in mysterious ways. Gaiman stepped down from the production, and Prime Video ultimately pulled something of a King Solomon on the whole situation, giving the series a 90-minute feature-length episode to wrap things up. Is this special likely to be everything that fans and folks involved with the show wanted? Of course not. But the fact that we’re getting an ending at all feels fairly miraculous in the face of everything else. That is, of course, Good Omens’s entire brand. Few stories deserve the chance to end on their own terms as much as this one does. And even fewer onscreen relationships—particularly queer ones—that deserve the happily ever after that’s surely headed their way.
It was a long and winding road to bring this story to live-action. The original novel, co-written by Gaiman and the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett, was published in 1990, becoming a cult hit among nerds everywhere. However, it did not quite break into the mainstream the way fans desired at the time. A feature film adaptation from Terry Gilliam never off the ground in the 1990s, and we had to wait until the 2019 TV series to see Aziraphale and Crowley on our screens.
That the show was successful enough to spawn a second season was remarkable given that the original effort exhausted the source material. Now, the fact that we’re not only getting a third installment that will explore what the authors wanted the original ending to be for a sequel years ago is quite the gift. What I am saying is: All of this didn’t happen for us not to get a happy ending when it counts. But, more importantly, ending Good Omens with anything other than a fully joyous embrace of love in all its forms would be to spit in the face of the message the entire franchise is based on.
Technically, Good Omens is the story of a fussy angel (Aziraphale) and a caustic demon (Crowley) sent to Earth to guard and/or tempt the human population. They ultimately join forces to thwart the Apocalypse and save the world they’ve both come to consider home. But, at its heart, Good Omens is—and always has been—a love story. It is built of many themes and parts. There’s love between two celestial beings and the world they’ve made their home, between a group of teen best friends, between a witch and a witchhunter, between God and all the creation She has made. And, yes, between an angel and a demon who’ve spent the better part of six millennia entangled with (and pining for) one another.
That Crowley and Aziraphale love one another has always been apparent. Fans have been rooting for this crazy odd couple to become canon pretty much since the book’s publication date. And the Prime Video series has fully leaned into the idea in a way an early 1990s fantasy novel simply couldn’t. It replaced the original text’s winks and nudges toward the true nature of Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship with an open acknowledgement of how much they mean to each other. It also doesn’t hurt that co-stars Michael Sheen and David Tennant share the sort of lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry that’s the stuff of legend, infusing each scene with the quiet, lived-in affection that speaks of literal centuries of connection. There are longing glances, quiet gifts, co-dependent ticks, shared property rights, dramatic rescues, and even Regency-style dancing.
The show is the purest of rom-coms, built of familiar tropes, references, and plot beats that reinforce not just the arc that Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship is so clearly following, but the larger mission statement of the entire series. In this world, love is a radical act. It is meant to change us, to reforge us, to leave us better than we were before. It is the means by which not only we grow, but also by which we change the world around us. It is the greatest gift that God has given to us, and the greatest gift we can give to each other. It is, after all, love that saves the world in the end.
On almost any other show, this kind of storytelling would feel deeply cringe, like the sort of pedantic moralizing that turns off non-believers, casual viewers, and people of faith alike. But Good Omens is so heartfelt, so completely uncynical in its optimistic view of creation, that it’s almost impossible not to be affected by it. We want to believe in the world it models for us, where hereditary enemies can fall in love, forgiveness is always possible, and faith is a promise that comes to pass in its own time.
It’s glaringly apparent at the end of the Season 2 finale that Crowley and Aziraphale’s story is unfinished. It is the sort of third-act break-up that traditionally forces its protagonists to face deep-seated fears and flaws before coming back together stronger and more certain of one another than before. With the final season’s now-reduced runtime, it’s very likely that Good Omens won’t be able to do much with several of its larger plots as we might like. But that’s okay! It’s not like any of that is what we’ll be tuning in for anyway. Is it a nice bonus? Sure.
However, we’re all really here for something bigger, a reminder that light can still shine in the darkness of dire circumstances—both real and fictional—and love can, and will, still conquer all. Crowley and Aziraphale belong together, and we deserve to see them realize that dream… with a little cottage in the South Downs on the side.