I’ve had my share of [Crowley voice] you idiot thoughts at both of them over their terrible communication skills and severe chronic inability to say what they mean. But like. I get it.
For 6000 years, they had to talk in code. They had to express themselves in grand gestures and subtext and plausible deniability, out of fear of being found out. And they got really good at it! They developed a whole secret language of ways to say I love you because they couldn’t say it out loud.
But now that they can—and need to—talk about what they are to each other with actual words, they don’t know how.
“I won’t be forgiven. Not ever. That’s part of a demon’s job description. Unforgivable. That’s what I am.”
The thing that fucking guts me about these lines and the way Tennant delivers them is that…I don’t interpret them as Crowley saying that he is undeserving of forgiveness. I don’t believe that, deep down, Crowley actually thinks he is unworthy of forgiveness, because I don’t think Crowley thinks that what he did to get kicked out of Heaven was actually all that bad.
Look at how he talks about it throughout the series. His explanation keeps moving around. “I hung out with the wrong people.” “All I ever did was ask questions.” He even says, “I didn’t mean to.” This isn’t someone who made a bad choice, or even just a stupid choice, and has to learn to live with the consequences. This is someone who did something he didn’t even think could be bad and was confused and hurt when the punishment for it was so harsh. On some level he’s still trying to understand it.
And look at what he questions or objects to about human suffering. Disproportionality. (“Bit of an overreaction, if you ask me. First offense and all.”) Indiscriminateness. (“But they’re drowning everybody else? Even the kids?”) Mercilessness. (”You said you’d be testing them, but you shouldn’t test them to destruction.”) Punishments for breaking rules he sees as arbitrary. (“I don’t see what’s so bad about knowing the difference between good and evil.”) Situations he sees as a setup. (“Why put the tree in the middle of the garden?”) He has a deep sense of fairness, which includes the possibility of mercy and second chances.
When Crowley says unforgivable, I don’t think he thinks that he is innately unforgivable. I think he’s repeating back a label that was put on him. When he says I won’t be forgiven, it’s not a value judgment on himself. It’s an explanation of how God works. Crowley, more than any other character, has an accurate read on how God behaves and what to expect from Her. Not what She may or may not feel towards her creations deep down, but how She acts.
He’s not saying he thinks he’s undeserving of mercy. He’s saying we are all deserving of mercy, but we won’t get it. So don’t act like it’s going to come.
Crowley knows this from firsthand experience. Aziraphale still has hope, that God is merciful and will listen to appeals for help. And Crowley is trying to warn him, no, God isn’t like that. She’ll hurt you. Even as Aziraphale is rejecting him, Crowley’s still doing what he always does for Aziraphale. He’s trying to protect him. He’s still trying to protect him even in their second breakup scene outside the bookshop. (“There are no right people!”) But Aziraphale still has to go through his own experience of appealing to God for mercy and being bitterly disappointed before he gets it.
And the thing that’s just so heartbreaking is that even when Crowley knows full well what God can be like…he still talks to Her. He talks to Her more than any other character does, directly, not like you talk to a boss but like you talk to a family member. He still pleads with Her. He’s still going over what he did all those years ago to lose Her favor. He thinks the idea of sides and Heaven’s rigidity and hypocrisy are bullshit, and I don’t really think he would go back to being an angel if he had the chance. But there’s still some tiny part of him that wants God’s love and approval and mercy, even if most of him knows he should know better than to expect it.
RAARARARARGH it’s the way some of the things that were so romantic about their s1 dynamic have spiraled into these unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Aziraphale, who was valued so little in Heaven, found someone who valued him SO MUCH, who always, always showed up for him. But now he’s gotten so used to Crowley showing up, always being there, maybe with a few grumbles but always going along, that he’s shocked when Crowley gives him a hard no on something and they have no way to work through it. He sees it as Crowley refusing to help him, abandoning him for reasons he doesn’t understand, just when it looks like they could be getting everything they want.
And Crowley who was always circling Aziraphale, keeping a watchful eye out for both of them, has just wound himself tighter and tighter around his only friend, no connections to the humans they just helped save (not even the acquaintance-level ones that Aziraphale has with his neighbors), no hobbies or pastimes it seems (waiting around in the shop for Aziraphale is not a hobby), no home, never more than a few minutes away from being at Aziraphale’s side (I’m betting that alley where he parks is close by). It’s fear, it’s all fear, but buddy that’s not healthy. And then the gut-punch that after all that, maybe Aziraphale never really saw him at all.
Still heartbroken by the fact that Crowley doesn’t leave until he sees Aziraphale go to Heaven.
He leaves the bookshop, but he doesn’t leave. He waits to see if Aziraphale would change his mind. He gave him one last chance to come back. And only once Aziraphale makes the final choice to go to heaven does Crowley get in the Bentley.
Also, the fact that GO posted this as a promo image when they knew what scene this is from is evil
In the first episode Crowley says that there should be a suggestion box so that they can advise God on their plan. The closest thing to a ‘suggestion box’ is the Metatron as he is the 'Voice of God’ and a direct link to them.
So, Crowley makes the nebula and then goes to make a suggestion by praying or whatever and instead of talking to God, the Metatron answers Crowley instead. THATS HOW CROWLEY RECOGNISES HIM.
In the last episode the Metatron asks Aziraphale how Crowley took the news and he responded 'not well’. The Metatron then says 'Ah, well, he did want to go his own way. Always asking damn fool questions, too.’ AND HE KNEW THAT BECAUSE CROWLEY IS THE ONE WHO SUGGESTED THE SUGGESTIONS TO THE METATRON WHICH INTERN RESULTS IN CROWLEY FALLING.
METATRON YOU BASTARD!! HOW COULD YOU, THEY WERE ONLY ASKING QUESTIONS!!!
I’m sure others have discussed this in a lot of depth, but I can’t help throwing my hat in the ring. Aziraphale has major religious trauma after spending his entire very long existence as a member of a cult. If you’ve never experienced what it’s like to be indoctrinated into a religion, then it might be very hard to understand why he behaves the way he does, so I’ll try to lay it out for you.
Anyone who was raised from early childhood to believe that an all-powerful being is watching them as though they’re in a panopticon (a jail where prisoners are watched by authorities at random moments) and will severely punish them and/or their loved ones if anyone steps out of line (or just on a whim or based on a bet with Satan) either has experienced religious trauma or has somehow avoided it, perhaps through repression or retreating into themselves and managing to ignore what the adults were telling them. Another way to avoid the trauma is to continue to believe that the cult is ‘good’ and that those outside it are ‘bad’ and should seek redemption, forgiveness and salvation.
Not only does Aziraphale have this trauma, but it’s also based on reality in the GO universe. I was able to live with mine by realising that there is no empirical evidence for religious beliefs, by studying philosophy, by having therapy, and by reflecting on it for years. The trauma can still be triggered in me, leading to panic that God might be watching and judging me, and that an afterlife might exist, but luckily I’m now able to move through the panic relatively quickly. Aziraphale can’t do any of this because the beliefs of his cult are all too real. There really is a massively powerful (hopefully not all-powerful, but he believes she is) being who watches and judges him and everyone else at random moments. She has either directly ordered her angels to slaughter babies and children or has stood by and watched them do it. She has severely punished someone Aziraphale cares about, Crowley, who from that moment has been in a situation where he continues to be tortured by his fellow demons with no intervention from God and who simultaneously risks being destroyed by demons, by angels, by humans wielding sacred weapons (e.g. holy water) or by his own hand.
And so Aziraphale suffers from both religious trauma and the trauma of living under a real authoritarian dictatorship. This dictatorship is seemingly unbeatable and eternal, and it possesses weapons more powerful than the biggest nuclear weapons, more powerful than the sun, really more powerful than anything we humans can imagine.
Thousands of years ago, Crowley was kicked out in an extremely painful way, and he suffers his own trauma from that. He clearly doesn’t want Aziraphale to go through all of that, yet he wants Aziraphale to join him on ‘their own side’. At the end of the previous season, I thought Aziraphale was all in. I was happy to leave it at that … even though it isn’t a realistic depiction of someone dealing with the particular types of trauma that Aziraphale has experienced and continues to experience.
Aziraphale and Crowley are still in constant grave danger, and they’re still living in God’s panopticon. That can’t just be hand-waved away. As we’ve seen this season, at any moment their fragile peace can be disrupted by a situation that puts them in danger of being harmed to the extent of being wiped from existence. They can’t actually just go to Alpha Centauri and it will all be cool. (And what would they do there for eternity anyway …?) But yeah there is no way to escape from God, nowhere in the universe that God isn’t capable of supervising – that’s real, not something Aziraphale merely has faith in, as humans understand belief in God. Aziraphale isn’t the equivalent of a human priest or a theologian or a cult member: he is a supernatural being created by a much more powerful supernatural being.
Perhaps there are only two ways for Aziraphale to deal with his trauma: 1) He realises that God and the Heavenly Host can be defeated. 2) He realises that they can be permanently altered in a positive way.
At the end of season two, Aziraphale seems to believe he is being given the opportunity to bring about option 2. We don’t know if he has a plan or a vision for this, but for the first time he thinks he has a chance. Perhaps best of all, he has the opportunity to protect Crowley – permanently! Imagine how anxious Aziraphale must have been, for thousands of years, that Crowley would be destroyed. It could have happened at any time, near or far from Aziraphale. Crowley faces dangers on all sides and also does foolish (from Aziraphale’s perspective) things like good deeds under the influence of laudanum and a heist so he can handle holy water. Crowley breaks and bends rules in ways that could kill him: Aziraphale isn’t catastrophising. This isn’t the same as a religious loved one telling you that you’re going to hell for sinning. Crowley has already been tortured in hell, and he could be tortured there forever, or he could be turned into an oily black puddle, or removed from the book of life etc etc.
What Aziraphale doesn’t understand yet is that Crowley can’t be an angel again and still be the Crowley that Aziraphale loves. He also doesn’t see Crowley as an equal. If they’re going to take on heaven and bring down God’s dictatorship, they are going to have to do it as Aziraphale and Crowley, working in partnership, wielding the immense power of their love.
