The ending of Good Omens Season 2 felt a lot like a fanfic

Season 2 of Good omens wasn’t really ever supposed to happen. The first season was originally planned as a miniseries, a one-off adaptation of the classic 1990 novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. After the first season of Good omens dangling the question of Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship, fans read and wrote fic by the truckload, imagining all the different ways things could play out after the curtain falls. But once Season 2 was in fact green-lit by Amazon, there would always be a question of how closely the continuation would fit into the many imagined ever-afters of the collective mind of fandom. And the result is… actually remarkably close to what the fanfic thought it could be.

The first season faithfully followed the many intertwining storylines of the original book. While Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and Crowley (David Tennant) were certainly the stars, Anathema and Newt, Shadwell and Miss Tracy, plus the denizens of heaven and hell all got a look too, alongside plenty of time spent on the adventures of its apparent protagonist , Adam Young, and his friends. But while the second season (available now on Prime Video) has an assortment of new secondary characters to support its plot, there’s really no pretense at all that it’s supposed to be anything other than the Aziraphale and Crowley Show.

Some of that may be due to issues encountered shooting during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as Good omens did. Reducing the show’s world to a skeleton cast on a soundstage, reducing the number of complicated location and audience shots in favor of intimate scenes between main characters, likely eased production pressures and allowed the shoot to run smoothly.

But there’s also the fact that, at the end of the day, that was the most interesting and, in fact, the obvious direction for the series to go in. and focus closely on the central relation which is a if not thebig draw of the show.

Watch season 2 Good omens I had a strong feeling, as if I saw a fanfic come to life. Parts of it, like much of the fiction written in the aftermath of Season 1, was curtain fic. Centered on domestic tranquility – figuratively “buying curtains together” – it’s low stakes, high reward. But as the season progressed, it started to look more like a casefic. Casefic is a genre of fan fiction that replicates the structure of a canon (usually a procedural or mystery show) to create a plot-heavy story, often containing non-canonical elements such as a romantic plotline.

All elements were present. There was the mysterious plot to get the characters moving – how did Gabriel lose his memory and how can our heroes protect him from heaven and hell? There was the cast of new OCs (original characters, in fandom parlance), including a flirtatious demon (Reece Shearsmith’s Furfur), an overzealous angel (Quelin Sepulveda’s Muriel), and a gender-swapped human reflection of Crowley and Aziraphale (Nina and Maggie, played by Nina Sosanya and Maggie Service). And, of course, there was the fact that all those things mattered little in light of what we’re all here for: for them to come together.

The chemistry between Tennant and Sheen (after starring together in three seasons of their BBC two-hander in the meantime staged) is unreal. Every look is loaded, every touch weighed. Crowley has a key to the bookshop; Aziraphale drives the Bentley (“our car”, as he calls it). Several characters refer to them as, or mistake them for, a couple – much more explicitly than the oblique references in the first season. And the banter is, of course, impeccable, made even better by co-writer John Finnemore of Cabin pressurewhose fingerprint can be heard throughout the charming, witty exchanges that pepper the scripts.

A well-written casefic is a wonderful thing. While all genres of fanfiction have their time and place, from the quick-and-dirty PWP to the sprawling novel length Slow combustiona story that makes you feel like it really could are canon, if canon were to go so far as to make your ship canon, has an exciting, immersive quality to it. It is a five course menu including dessert.

But does that approach work at all when translated? back to its original medium? In case of Good omens season 2… well, kind of. Every time I predicted a beat by thinking, Wwhat would happen next if i read this on AO3, I felt half triumphant, half disappointed. In Episode 5, when Aziraphale drags Crowley off to join a dance spot, I let out an elated sound – but in the back of my mind I couldn’t help worrying about the many plot threads that seemed to have fallen by the wayside.

In a fiction, even a casefic, it’s okay if the plot takes a back seat to the love story. In a true episode of the canon, weakness is harder to tolerate. After four years of hiatus spent enjoying the best, most creative, most elaborate get-together plots the fandom could come up with, the actual version the show gives us isn’t just plain Okay, but it’s not even finished (story as old as time in fandom). The romantic beat that usually comes about three quarters of the way through the story – dubbed “the crisis” or “the dark moment” – lands right at the end of the finale here. It clearly leaves the door open for a final fix in a presumptive season 3, but in the meantime, shippers are stranded in a pool of despondency on a apparently permanent separation between Aziraphale and Crowley. It’s a familiar scenario for long-suffering fanfiction readers who often wait years—or forever—for a multi-chapter story to be completed. Good omens got a second season thanks to its adoring fans, and so the season certainly does its best to give the fans everything they want – but only up to a point.

“We’re real people, you can’t just pair us up for your amusement,” Maggie Crowley, on her and Nina’s behalf, admonishes in the finale. It may be sensible enough in the context of the story, but it certainly comes across as a judgmental tsk-tsk to the fans, as they believe that after six episodes full of purposeful teasing and blatant hints, they can finally see their favorites achieve an uncomplicated romantic live happily ever after. I don’t think I’d be that frustrated with a fanfiction that played out in exactly the same way as the season – in fact, I think I’d love it unreservedly. But translated to television, the same meandering approach a fiction reader cherishes, lingering on domestic affairs and faster plot beats can feel a bit like a letdown.

But the good news is that I know exactly where to go next and how to resolve these complicated feelings: on my way to reading all the new fanfiction that’s being written right now.