The second season of Good Omens dropped all at once on Amazon Prime Video at the end of July, and fans are still talking about it. We weren’t even sure we’d ever get this. After all, the first season adapted the whole of the original Good Omens book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. This sequel season is all original material, extending the story of celestial life partners Aziraphale and Crowley, an angel and demon who form an ineffable bond over the course of millennia.
We still don’t know if Aziraphale and Crowley will be back for a third season on Amazon Prime Video. While we wait and hope, let’s go over all six episodes from season 2 and rank them from worst to best, with the understanding that they were all pretty solid:
It’s fine: Episode 203, “I Know Where I’m Going”
The first season of Good Omens gave us a conflict where several different forces were trying to either bring about or prevent the Biblical apocalypse, with Aziarphale and Crowley doing all they can to keep up. Amazon needed every minute of those six episodes to get us acquainted with the characters, their relationships, and their stakes in the cessation of life on Earth.
Season 2 is a much milder affair. Mostly it’s about Aziraphale and Crowley realizing that they love each other. There aren’t nearly as much moving parts. If this season just included the things we needed to know for the story to move forward, it would probably be over in a few episodes.
To fill that time, Good Omens dives into the past, showing us how Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship has evolved over the past several million years. Some of these flashbacks are pretty charming. In Episode 3, we see the angel and demon sparring over the morality of a poor girl in the 19th century who digs up and sells corpses to support herself and her beloved. It’s nice, the acting’s nice, the sets are nice, the costumes are nice…but it doesn’t really tell us anything about these characters we didn’t already know.
Meanwhile, in the present, the angel Muriel pretends to be a real human police officer and spies on Crowley and the amnesiac Gabriel as they hide out in Aziraphale’s bookshop. It’s a cute bit, and Quelin Sepulveda is charming as Muriel.
It’s fine+: Episode 204, “The Hitchhiker”
Once again, we get barely any movement of the main plot. In the present, the demon Shax (played with clueless venom by Miranda Richardson) figures out that the archangel Gabriel is hiding out in Aziraphale’s bookshop and plans to storm the place. That’s it.
The main action takes place in the past, where Aziarphale gets the opportunity to perform magic for visiting GIs in London during the Blitz. What elevates this episode is how unspeakably good a time actor Michael Sheen is having playing Aziraphale. You’d think that in an angel-demon buddy comedy, the demon would be the one causing all the trouble and the angel the one following him around trying to clean up his mess, but no; time and again, Aziraphale’s enthusiasm for pretty much everything gets him into sticky situations, and his buddy Crowley has to help him out.
In this case, Aziraphale wants to perform a magic show — a show-stopping magic show, if possible — despite the fact that he has next to no idea what he’s doing. He pulls it off with Crowley’s help, literally by the skin of his teeth.
Sheen is just really entertaining as he goes from incurably cheery to desperately panicked, although he constantly tries to fails to keep his fluttering emotions to himself. David Tennant is great as the hard-bitten Crowley, but to me, Sheen steals this show as Aziraphale.
It’s-a getting closer: Episode 301, “The Arrival”
Overall, I think I preferred the episodes set in the present to the ones set in the past, especially when the season gets off to a decently strong start. In “The Arrival,” Aziraphale and Crowley are minding their own business when a buck-naked Archangel Gabriel shows up on his doorstep completely unaware of who he is or why he’s here, but could Aziraphale help him please?
Being of a generous spirit, of course Aziraphale invites Gabriel in. Soon Crowley gets involved, and before they know it they’re hiding this sought-after celestial superbeing from both heaven and hell.
It’s a fun, albeit slow-moving, way to kick off the season. I was immediately curious about why Gabriel was here and what happened to his memories, and I enjoyed watching Jon Hamm do his thing as the amnesiac angel. Hamm got famous playing Don Draper on Mad Men, a very serious role, but he’s always seemed like what he really wants to do is make people laugh. He gets that chance in Good Omens.
Also, you gotta love the opening flashback to when Aziraphale and Crowley were both angels at the dawn of creation.
Party: Episode 205, “The Ball”
“The Ball” can’t be at the top of the list — it basically ends on a cliffhanger with Shax’s demon horde on the precipice of entering Crowley’s bookshop — but after three episodes spent mainly with Crowley and Aziraphale in the distant past, it was nice to get some plot momentum.
Ever helpful, Aziraphale decides to take the monthly meeting of local shopkeepers and turn it into a Jane Austen-themed party for the benefit of Maggie and Nina, whom Aziraphale and Crowley must convince the agents of heaven are actually in love because of a byzantine plotline worthy of a very strange sitcom. Anyway, the dancing is fun, and we get some strong hints that their may be more to Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship than just being platonic life partners.
It’s not a perfect episode. The scenes where Shax recruits demon’s in hell are a little slow, but it’s all worth it for the moment when Gabriel walks out of the bookshop resplendent in a big white furry coat and a doofy smile, ready to give himself to the legions of darkness. Did I mention that Jon Hamm is really fun in this role?
Close to ineffability: Episode 202, “The Clue”
My favorite of the flashback episodes is “The Clue,” which features an Aziraphale who’s torn over whether to follow the will of God after the almighty makes up His mind to smite the saintly Job, mostly just because he can. That would cause a crisis of faith.
As usual, Crowley is around to stir up trouble on the sidelines, but it’s Aziraphale who goes through the big growth arc here, as he does the unthinkable and undermines his heavenly father to help a family of mere mortals. Also he discovers that he loves the taste of meat; see Sheen’s hilarious expression above.
Job’s haughty kids are also a highlight, as is a pre-amnesiac Gabriel. And at the end, we see Aziraphale and Crowley bond over their shared understanding of the imperfection of creation, a moment that will ring down through the ages.
There just seems to be more going on in this flashback than in the other ones. We get some movement in the present, too, as Aziraphale and Crowley team up to repel the suspicions of angels sniffing to investigate Gabriel’s disappearance. Finally, I crack up whenever Sheen enthusiastically declares that he’s found “a clue!”
Ineffably marvelous: Episode 206, “Every Day”
This was a pretty easy pick. The season 2 finale is divided into two halves. First, we get the resolution of Shax’s attack on the bookshop, which despite sounding crazier is actually the less interesting of the two. The special effects are a little underwhelming and everyone kind of looks like they’re shuffling around. Still fun, though.
The episode really starts singing once the battle is over. There’s a long cooling off period where the forces of heaven and hell argue over what this all means and we finally find out why Gabriel has no memory: he lost it for love. He and the demon lord Beelzebub run off to the far reaches of the galaxy together, a heartwarming end that has Crowley considering his own eternal life.
The best scene of the season comes right at the end, when Crowley tries to take his relationship with Aziraphale to the next level, but meets resistance from his life partner, who has just been offered a cushy new job in heaven. The show has kept things very light and fluffy up to this point, but their breakup hurts. I hope these
kids
eternal beings make it.
I hope we get a third season at all. Until we hear something, what were your favorite episodes?
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