Heaven in the world of Good Omens is way scarier than Hell.
Hell is…well, the thing is, Hell is obvious. The demons have all got bugs and frogs on their heads and they feed each other to hellhounds for sport and they all live in that grubby basement where your day job’s corporate records are slowly moldering to plausible deniability. They’re bad and they know it. Yeah, they might kill you, but what do you expect? They’re demons. What you see is what you get.
But Heaven…Heaven is fucking terrifying.
It is filled with things we’d recognize on Earth as signifiers of power and wealth, but they’re the kind of signifiers that are always presented in the most obnoxious, deliberately intimidating way possible. It looks like the top floor of a luxury Manhattan apartment building where all the apartments are owned by billionaires who live there two weekends a year. It’s clean, but in a sterile, featureless way. The spaces we see are almost totally empty.
The angels are schoolyard bullies who dress like oil company lawyers coming to seize a small village’s fishing waters through eminent domain. You get the sense that Aziraphale was always the weird kid they loved picking on, and they almost always travel in a pack when they go to meet him, two or three or four against one.
Demons are the kind of creatures who have sketchy informants passing information in dark alleys. Heaven has mass surveillance. And (this may seem like a small point but I think it’s important) they use mass surveillance the way repressive states use it. They don’t actively watch everyone all the time, but when they decide someone is now “suspicious,” they have more than enough passive data collection to dig up any dirt on them.
The differences are really highlighted in the two “trials” that take place in Heaven and Hell. Neither is exactly a model of jurisprudence, but there are important differences. Crowley’s is a demented show trial. There’s no defense and the standard of evidence is…not rigorous. But there’s at least some vague pantomime of it being a trial of his peers, of there being the at least theoretical possibility of multiple verdicts. Demon mob justice may not seem that great, but if nothing else, it’s witnessed. (It’s deliberately set up to be witnessed, in fact.) Someone will know it happened.
Aziraphale just gets disappeared. Gabriel calls Aziraphale’s kidnapping an extraordinary rendition and laughs about it. There isn’t even a mockery of a legal process to be had. There’s just a summary execution, already waiting for him.
But Heaven is scary not just because the angels seem to be more ruthless and more powerful than the demons. The angels are scary because they are doing all this stuff while absolutely, unwaveringly convinced that they’re the good guys, and that everything they’re doing is good and right and justified. What’s a little smiting, the drowning of a few children, the destruction of all life on Earth, when it’s For the Greater Good, when it’s all part of some grand plan they are all very confident they know the details of?
This is the logic of atrocities. The demons are two-bit gangsters and thugs. The angels are ready to commit genocide.
The point is not to avoid the war, after all. The point is to win it. Even the Voice of God says it.
just thinking about how after 5,804 years - 2 million days - Aziraphale felt settled enough that he could create something permanent, that he could put down some roots, that he could join one specific community in one specific human location, that he could have a personal, safe haven for himself and his treasures
andthat was the day Gabriel and Sandalphon arrive to tell him he’s finally “allowed” to “come home”?
there’s no way that’s not deliberate. there’s no way that’s not malicious.
yeah and imo they weren’t giving him a medal out of recognition either, it was about messing with him
Absolutely. A reminder of where his loyalties SHOULD lie. The suggestion that if he just tries a bit harder, maybe one day they’ll give him the kindness and appreciation he needs…
The clue there is that Gabriel tells him “Keep the medal” at the end, when Aziraphale’s told to stay on Earth. If it was a sincerely given medal, of course Aziraphale would keep it. It’s his medal. He was awarded it. By saying “Keep the medal”, Gabriel clues us in that it was only ever a worthless and manipulative prop.
Just looked up the script, and the first thing Gabriel says isn’t even “You get to come home.” It’s “We’re bringing you home.”
Oh.
Of course that’s what’s happening.
For another thing, Crowley mentions at the Bastille in 1793 that Az was supposed to be opening a bookshop, so he’s had this plan for nearly a decade at the minimum. Even if heaven checks in rarely, it seems unlikely they don’t have a clue. So them showing up EXACTLY when he opens is even more damning.
That scene always felt a tiny bit off to me because it is (I’m pretty sure) the only time we see Gabriel, or any angel for that matter, compliments Az without some nasty undermining little dig on the side (“Gross matter”; “praiseworthy but doomed to failure” etc etc).
They didn’t have to be snide because the whole theater production was just about twisting the knife.
Although Crowley’s own bit of theater must have worked, because if Gabe really knew about the arrangement Az would have been outright punished. Maybe that’s what frustrates Gabriel about Az the most: he really can’t catch him making a major mistake. We joke about Az being a terrible angel, but the evidence is that he’s actually extremely good at his job (barring that one time in Eden); it’s his PERSONALITY that the angels hate (his cardinal sin of liking humans and all their creations).
The saddest thing about this is that Az does keep the medal, and even displays it, because no matter how disingenuous the angels were about awarding it, it’s still the only praise he’s gotten in 6000 years.
Theydo get in a dig though, at one point during the ceremony.
When they’re giving him the medal and telling him that he has to come home, Aziraphale tries to protest by pointing put that he’s the only one who can ‘thwart the wiles’ of the Evil Demon Crowley.
And Gabriel says, apparently to reassure him: “I do not doubt that whoever replaces you will be as good an enemy to Crowley as you are.”
Whoeverreplaces you.
Aziraphale’s just said that he thinks he’s the only angel capable of handling Crowley. And, as far as Heaven knows, that’s not an unreasonable assumption to make. Aziraphale has been on Earth for over 5000 years by this point, after all, and working against Crowley all that time.
(And probably has shown pretty good results, actually, if only because the Arrangement is pretty much designed to ensure that they end up with good results to show their bosses.)
And Gabriel has responded by basically saying “anyone could do your job.”
“We haven’t even picked a replacement yet, because that’s how low priority this is. Maybe it’ll be Michael, but it really doesn’t matter in our eyes. As far as we’re concerned you personally bring nothing to this job that we can’t get from any other rando we decide to dump down here.”
And this is during the fucking award ceremony.
(Note how Crowley’s response to this is to immediately let Aziraphale know, very plainly, that he doesn’t want Michael. That, for him, Aziraphale can’t be replaced that easily.)
But what always gets me is what happens after they come back.
I mean, look at the scene from Aziraphale’s perspective.
Gabriel and Sandalphon show up to award him his medal and tell him he gets to come home as a reward for all his good work. Let’s put on our Gabriel-glasses for a moment and pretend that he is genuinely delighted by all this.
Gabriel and Sandalphon then go to see Gabriel’s tailor, leaving Aziraphale alone in the shop. Maybe he’s meant to be taking it all in, or packing or whatever, but it’s hard not to see this as him being considered less important and worthy of attention than Gabriel’s new suit.
Then, the weird bit. They come back, tell him they’ve changed their minds, say he can keep the medal, and leave.
Admittedly we enter a bit into their conversation, but given that Aziraphale shows no signs of knowing what happened (and in fact is described in the stage directions as being confused by this turn of events) we can assume that they didn’t tell him about the incident with Crowley.
So, from Aziraphale’s perspective— leaving aside the fact that Crowley probably waltzed in about five minutes later and told him the whole story over drinks— he got told that he was going to be taken home to Heaven as a reward, and then about half an hour later had that reward unexpectedly revoked, with no explanation given.
As far as Gabriel and Sandalphon are concerned, they’ve gone from thinking that Aziraphale is just a bumbling idiot with a job anyone could do, to learning that he’s apparently the only thing keeping the Serpent of Eden from taking over the world. Yet despite this, they don’t give Aziraphale any extra praise, or acknowledge this change in any way.
In fact, by rushing out the door and leaving him behind, right after framing his return to Heaven as a promotion, they if anything imply that he’s done something to offend them. They’re effectively punishing him for being unexpectedly good at his job.
Yeah, Aziraphale himself doesn’t mind all this (and is probably very relieved) but if you consider what Gabriel thought he was doing— leaving Aziraphale alone and friendless, to be slowly corrupted by gross matter and the absence of other angels— it’s actually kind of horrific that he’d do this without even explaining to Aziraphale why he thinks it’s necessary.
