Review: Good Omens finale sticks the landing

It’s been a three-year wait, but Prime Video finally released the series finale forGood Omens: a 90-minute single episode that sought to wrap everything up in a neat little bow. Verdict: Truncating the final season so drastically definitely hurts the first half of the series finale, which feels chaotic and rushed. But once that stupendous on-screen chemistry between co-stars David Tennant and Michael Sheen kicks back in, the old magic shines through, strong as ever, giving us a fitting end to this beloved comic saga. Here’s abrief recap, since it’s been a minute since the S2 finale. The series is based on the original 1990 novel byNeil Gaimanand thelate Terry Pratchett.Good Omensisthe story ofan angel, Aziraphale (Sheen), and a demon, Crowley (Tennant), who gradually become friends over the millennia and team up to avert Armageddon. Season 2 found Aziraphale and Crowley getting back to normal, when the archangel Gabriel (Jon Hamm) turned up unexpectedly at the door of Aziraphale’s bookshop with no memory of who he was or how he got there. The duo had to evade the combined forces of Heaven and Hell to solve the mystery of what happened to Gabriel and why. In the S2 finale, the pair discovered that Gabriel had defied Heaven and refused to support a second attempt to bring about Armageddon. He hid his own memories from himself to evade detection. Oh, and he and Beelzebub (Shelley Conn) had fallen in love. They ran off together, and the Metatron (Derek Jacobi) offered Aziraphale Gabriel’s old job. That’s when Crowley professed his own love for the angel and asked him to leave Heaven and Hell behind, too. Aziraphale wanted Crowley to join him in Heaven instead. So Crowley kissed him, and they parted. Once Aziraphale got to Heaven, he learned his task was to revive the stalled plans to bring about the Second Coming, i.e., the End Times. The original plan for the third and final season called for six episodes, but production was delayed first by the 2023 writer’s strike and then bymultiple allegationsofsexual assaultagainst Gaiman. (Gaiman has vehemently denied allegations of any nonconsensual sex or abuse, but admitted to being selfish and “careless with people’s hearts and feelings” in aJanuary 2025 blog post.) The fallout led to Gaiman withdrawing from the project and Prime Video opting for a 90-minute finale rather than a full season. And here we are. The finale picks up a few years after the S2 cliffhanger. Aziraphale is now Supreme Archangel, with plans for the Second Coming well underway—except he’s tweaked them to be a bit more upbeat, bringing peace on Earth and universal happiness rather than the rampant death and destruction of Armageddon. This doesn’t go down well with some of his fellow angels, who prefer the original plan. A heartbroken Crowley, meanwhile, is spending his time drinking heavily and passing out in a Soho alley, having lost his sense of purpose when Aziraphale refused him. The Second Coming rollout soon hits a snag. First, the Metatron mysteriously vanishes, removed completely from reality by someone who has stolen the Book of Life. In the ensuing panic, Jesus (Bilal Hasna) wanders off down to Earth and is befriended by a former street hustler named Harry the Fish (Mark Addy). The Archangel Michael (Doon Mackichan) and plucky assistant Muriel (Quelin Sepulveda) focus on solving the Metatron’s murder, while Aziraphale heads down to Earth to hunt for the missing Jesus, lest the demons of Hell find him first. He enlists a reluctant Crowley’s help. Good Omenshas always embraced the colorfully comic side quest; it’s part of what makes this such a rich fictional universe. But you need time to flesh it all out for those subplots to really work, and time is what the finale just doesn’t have. Hell and its demons, in particular, seem little more than an afterthought here; they’re not even particularly effective as comic relief. The beats just don’t quite land. That said, the sequence where Aziraphale helps Crowley (who can no longer perform miracles since quitting Hell) win back his classic Bentley from local gangster Brian Cameron (Sean Pertwee) is quite amusing: Aziraphale challenges Brian to a cryptic crossword contest, which the angel wins handily. That subplot also introduces the metaphor of three-card monte that runs throughout the episode. And Jesus re-creating the miracle of the loaves and fishes in Soho’s streets with a magical pizza box that always replenishes is a nice touch. But there’s just no time to really delve into his burgeoning friendship with Harry (a great character we barely get to know) or his search for his purpose, because two more archangels have been murdered, and the end might really be near this time. Ultimately, though, we’re really here for Aziraphale and Crowley—truly a love story for the ages—and Sheen and Tennant do not disappoint. We’ve watched this unlikely pair bond for millennia through flashbacks over all three seasons, so of course they’re going to team up