Those Good Omens Season 2 Leaks Didn’t Prepare You At All

Good Omens 2 is finally streaming on Prime Video, and the Good Omens fandom has been preparing to completely freak out over this long-awaited sequel. Due to some bad judgment from Amazon’s marketing team, one scene from the season finale that Neil Gaiman explicitly didn’t want to be spoiled got leaked in June: A kiss between the angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and his demon soulmate Crowley (David Tennant). Even if you tried your best to avoid the leak itself, you couldn’t really interact with Good Omens fans on the Internet without finding out there was a leak, and that said leak was inspiring intense emotions.

The actual context of the kiss scene in the Good Omens 2 finale is sure to spark even more intense reactions—but perhaps not the ones “Ineffable Husbands” shippers were preparing themselves for. Upon hearing a spoiler that two characters who are clearly in love with each other are going to kiss, the natural expectation is that said kiss will come in the context of the characters admitting their love or taking their relationship in a new direction. And that is what Crowley was preparing to do in his final conversation with Aziraphale in the finale, if only Aziraphale didn’t have other plans.

Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship is paralleled by two other couples in Good Omens 2, their fellow angel/demon pair of Gabriel (Jon Hamm) and Beelzebub (Shelley Conn, replacing Anna Maxwell Martin from the first season), and the happy/surly human duo of Maggie (Maggie Service) and Nina (Nina Sosanya). The former relationship is at the center of the season’s big mystery—the reason why Gabriel was on Earth with his memory erased—and gets its happiest denouement, the couple freeing themselves from Heaven and Hell to go off together. Maggie and Nina, meanwhile, have been coaxed into falling in love through Aziraphale and Crowley’s miracles; Nina wants to take more time for herself following a bad breakup, but Maggie is happy to wait for her.

In talking with Maggie and Nina, Crowley is inspired to speak more honestly with Aziraphale about his feelings. However, before Crowley can say what he’s been meaning to, Aziraphale brings big news: The Metatron (Derek Jacobi) has invited Aziraphale to take over Gabriel’s place in Heaven, and Crowley can be returned to angelic status to work alongside him. To Aziraphale, this is excellent news. For Crowley, this is a betrayal. Aziraphale still sees Heaven as “the side of good” and his new job as a chance to fix its problems; Crowley rejects both Heaven and Hell and wants to continue the life he’s made with his partner on Earth.

And that’s where the Aziraphale-Crowley kiss comes in: It’s not a confirmation or affirmation of their relationship, but of the end of their relationship. It’s a love confession just a few minutes too late to save anything; it’s Crowley showing Aziraphale what he’s already lost. From the leak, you would have expected the kiss to inspire screams of excitement. Instead, they’re screams of pain.

Good Omens 2 ends with two close-ups, shown in split-screen and slowly blurring over the credits: Crowley sadly driving his Bentley down on Earth next to Aziraphale riding the elevator up to Heaven. It evokes the similarly heartbreaking end credits close-up in Call Me By Your Name. Before the credits, however, we are provided with one hint of future adventures, which will almost certainly lead to an ineffable reunion; the Metatron reveals Aziraphale’s new job will involve preparing for the Second Coming.

Neil Gaiman has stated on Tumblr that Good Omens 2 is not adapting the original book sequel plan he made with the late, great Terry Pratchett, but is instead meant to set up a third season that would adapt their original sequel idea. It’s easy enough to imagine a second Good Omens novel taking place a while after the first one ended and starting off with Aziraphale and Crowley in different places, catching readers up on what they missed in flashbacks and exposition.

But the TV series isn’t the book. For one thing, the first season introduced a whole lot more world-building in regard to the other angels and demons, so having a transitional season to build on that makes sense. But there’s an even more important difference: where the book was less directly focused on Aziraphale and Crowley and presented their relationship ambiguously enough that it could be seen as either friendship or romance, the show firmly centered their relationship and shifted its portrayal more explicitly towards romance.

Shippers might be furious with the concept of Aziraphale and Crowley breaking up, but if the plot of the sequel book demanded they break up, then it’s better for the series to actually show them breaking up rather than having it happen off-screen between seasons. Every great love story has conflict, and as hard as it is to end the season on such a cliffhanger, experiencing this heartbreak will make the eventual reunion all the more joyous. Now let’s get the AMPTP to finally sign a deal with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA so Good Omens 3 can actually get the greenlight!

Good Omens Season 2 is now streaming on Prime Video. 

Reuben Baron is the author of the webcomic Con Job: Revenge of the SamurAlchemist and a contributor to Looper and Anime News Network, among other websites. You can follow him on Twitter at @AndalusianDoge.

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