#good omens eden | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

vidavalor · 2 months ago

Note

Hey there :) I love your metas and would like to know why you think they decided to show satan as an actual being, but not god? Or do you think we will see god in the final episode?

Hi there! 💕Thank you & very interesting questions. *rubs hands together* This'll be fun. I know God is big on reminding people to not avoid salads but I also have chocolate cake so we can have a bit of both, yeah? *gets plates*

To answer your questions, I've got to share some ideas about The Voice of God that I've had lately that I think could come about in The Finale. If it winds up anything like this, it might not just change how we see God in the series but also completely upend our understanding of the novel at the same time...

So, throughout Good Omens the tv series so far, we've had what appears to be three beings who are the ones in charge of Heaven and Hell: The Metatron, Satan, and, kind of out here in her own world a bit, God. The Metatron claims to be the spokesperson for God but that is in doubt in a lot of people's minds, my own included. I think he's a fraud who cannot speak to God and whose power is dependent upon the angels believing that he can. I'm pretty sure that The Finale will see the main characters challenge him on this and expose his deception, leading them to be able to overthrow him and create a better system in Heaven.

Satan and The Metatron are dependent upon one another for power so if one of them goes down, they both do. Exposing The Metatron would cause the angels to realize that God didn't judge the demons-- The Metatron did. This would mean that the angels and demons would realize that they're all just angels and that they are on the same side against both The Metatron and Satan. I'm pretty sure that's why those two villains were working together to get rid of Aziraphale and Crowley in The Final 15 and want Gabriel dead-- they don't want the angels and demons to talk to one another long enough to figure it out and start a revolution.

So, let's say that all of that is close to (or is) accurate and we get to a point in The Finale when we find out that Heaven is a sham and The Metatron can't talk to God. This then brings up a big question that the characters in Good Omens aren't really seen asking a lot but that will suddenly be as big to these angels as it is to us humans:

Does God exist?

We might think we already know the answer to this, right? Of course she does! She's the ball of light that sounds like Frances McDormand! She's narrated S1 for us and she's talked to Crowley and Aziraphale and Job! When you ask if I think we'll see God in the finale, this is the being that you're probably asking about, right? The God we listened to who narrated S1 to us was crazy about humanity, yes? You'd think she'd want to participate since, as God, she'd know that would be what living really is. Does she, as you ask, have a body? Is she a living being? We might think she really does exist because we've heard what she sounds like but I think we might not quite yet have the full picture on that, as you'll see...

We can see what they're doing with The Metatron and Satan more clearly right now, I think. These two are two sides of an evil coin. Heaven and Hell are equally terrible. Neither has any sense of individuality, boundaries, or bodily autonomy. They are full of toxic, harmful ideas and are inflicting horrific abuse on the angels and demons. How they are presented to us as beings also reflects those horrors.

The Metatron is the only supernatural character in the story who does not have a full human corporation. He is just a floating head and that is the, well, pardon the pun, but the most meta thing in this story imaginable. He presents himself as above the other angels and nearer to God by virtue of the fact that he just needs a head to get around and doesn't deal with having a human body. His presentation is saying to the other angels that they couldn't ever possibly live up to his standards of holiness because they might all be magical but they have bodies, which are, by definition, unholy. They aren't supposed to feel or need anything that requires a body and what's extra fun for them is that everything does so the angels are made to feel like they cannot win from the get-go.

Fuck it up and wind up in Hell? Now, you are evil and belong to Satan for eternity. Violence, torture and assault from which there is no escape awaits you. I'd argue that while Satan is an actual being, as you put it, because he was an angel before, that we might not have actually seen that true form yet.

In 1.01, he attacks Crowley while being basically vapor and using the voice of Freddie Mercury. (That's definitely the most bizarre-sounding sentence I've written this week lol.) In 1.06, he is coming to claim Adam and Adam is told by Crowley and Aziraphale right before that this is what's about to happen so I think that Satan appeared as Adam would think The Devil would look like. He was eleven at the time, so, a giant, angry, horned, red devil cliche beast that sounded like Benedict Cumberbatch was probably about accurate. Satan has so far appeared not necessarily as himself but as whatever being might be most torturous to the person he's showing up to or whatever being might meet his end goals-- which is how he is appearing as The Metatron With A Body in 2.06. He's coming to tempt Aziraphale to Hell and Aziraphale would only ever think the offer genuine if he thought it was coming from The Metatron so that's who Satan made himself appear to be.

Both Heaven and Hell are, as Crowley puts it in 2.06, toxic.

But when you bring The Voice of God into this, things start to really interesting.

While it's not hard to see both Satan and The Metatron as evil, God is a little more difficult. This is some of the basis of the theory that The Metatron cannot communicate with God. One of the things that makes the theory have weight is that it's very difficult to see this God that is narrating the story to us in S1 as someone who would actually be behind the atrocities that Heaven claims are her will.

I think most of us like The Voice of God. She is very sharp, very dry-witted, and she's curious about people. She clearly loves all her beings. She really doesn't seem like a vengeful God that could be behind drowning people or casting all these demons to Hell or wanting to murder a laundry list of living beings around Job. The God we heard in S1? She wouldn't believe that Job's children belonged to Job in the first place, let alone want to kill any kids, let alone to do so only to win a bet with Satan.

There's a moment in S1 that I think solidifies that The Voice of God isn't a villain and that's when Crowley arrives at Tadfield Manor with baby Adam. God's narration introduces to us the baby swap plot about to go down by telling us (paraphrased) that it's helpful to understand that events in human history do not happen as a result of people being good or bad but just as a result of people being people. When she says this, Crowley is participating in the misunderstandings of the scene, alongside the humans in it, and God is counting him among the people of which she is speaking.

That's basically the moment that it becomes impossible to see The Voice of God as a villain because here she is, seeing Crowley as human. Here she is, narrating his and Aziraphale's story, and we the audience, for much of S1, really want to tell Crowley and Aziraphale that she is, right? If anything, this is the one thing we're angry with her about...

When Crowley is talking to God alone in his flat and not getting any response, we're angry at the God we also like because we know that she loves Crowley but he doesn't feel that and is suffering. We want her to tell him. We want her to be more clear with Aziraphale, too, after just appearing outside Eden. Even still, though, she's likable in her narration and seems separate from The Metatron and Satan.

There is the feeling that, if The Voice of God is God, that she believes that the universe is the dominion of her creations and that she cannot interfere because to do so would be to force them all to follow her will. She doesn't want to rob her creations of their free will. There is no plan from God but for them to all be free. This would make her a just god and go along with her narration so it allows us to be understanding about the fact that she cannot actually talk that much to her creations directly or stop any terrible things from happening-- because it's up to them to do so, not her.

That may all well be true but, as we will see, there might be some evidence that The Voice of God might have a more complicated identity than we might originally have thought.

If the main characters overthrow The Metatron and Satan in The Finale, it's going to be as a result of the characters talking and realizing that none of them-- including Gabriel and the archangels-- have ever spoken to God. As a result, they will all know that they don't know how to reach her.

They've only ever reported to The Metatron. God didn't even turn up for Gabriel's trial-- a big deal in Heaven, since he was The Supreme Archangel. All of this will lead them to the realization that The Metatron is a fraud but these characters are angels. They believe that they were made by the God they haven't ever actually interacted with entirely for the purpose of serving that God.

When they find out that The Metatron cannot contact God, they're all going to be wondering if God exists and it might be here that we'd think that Crowley and Aziraphale might share their experiences of hearing The Voice of God, yes?

Except...

...think about those known experiences for a moment...

The Voice of God has only appeared (key word: appeared) to speak to three characters: Aziraphale, Crowley and Job. In the first scene we see in which she speaks to a character, it's to Aziraphale, when he is alone outside the wall of Eden, right?

In this moment, Aziraphale has just rebelled more than he probably ever has before. He gave Adam and Eve his flaming sword and helped Crowley get out of Eden and now, here he is, standing outside the walls of Eden, having escaped himself and both thrilled and terrified to start a journey of exploring the Earth. He's been having an internal crisis as to whether or not he did the right thing. He knows that he did by his own moral compass but it's all very much against how Heaven works and he's unsure what it is that the God he believes made him and whom he serves actually wants him to do.

This is the exact moment when The Voice of God appears and has a short little chat with him about it-- dryly dubbing him "The Angel of The Eastern Gate" and asking him what he did with the flaming sword. This scene is fun because we all figure that, if this is God, surely she knows what Aziraphale did with the sword, but we get to watch as he lies straight to her ball of light. We think that she approves because nothing ever happens to Aziraphale as a result of this.

However, there's no real proof in this scene that The Voice of God was ever actually talking to Aziraphale. Aziraphale is the only other character in the scene and one could theorize that he has imagined God talking to him more than God actually talking to him.

We tend to never question the fact that, while God doesn't seem to be talking to anyone else in the story in S1, that she does briefly talk to Aziraphale. This makes sense to us because Aziraphale's role in Eden was a big deal in the whole series of events on Earth and we already feel like God feels that Aziraphale and Crowley are important because she's narrating their story. Not only do they appear to have been chosen to be in Eden to help jumpstart human life on Earth but they're important enough in everything for God to be telling us their story as she chats with us. Because they're our main characters we don't see anything off about God seeing them as main characters, too.

We actually use Eden in our minds as some of the foremost proof that God exists in Good Omens. These angels act like she must and Aziraphale's spoken with her so it must be true, yes?

Except... what if it's not?

What if Aziraphale was having a crisis of faith in Eden and basically imagined speaking with God?

What if The Voice of God isn't The Voice of Actual God (if God even exists) but rather The Voice of God in Aziraphale's Head?

We've never seen any proof that any of the angels or eventual demons have ever actually spoken with God, including prior to the creation of Earth. We assume that God is real because they all talk like she is but we've never been shown any concrete proof that they aren't all just believing they work for someone they've never met.

But, wait, you might say, what about Crowley and Job hearing her in the Job minisode, right? Isn't that proof?

Well... that's a bit suspect, too, and I'll show you why. It's largely hinted at in the sound mixing and context of that scene.

Like Aziraphale was outside the wall in Eden, Job was a man of faith in the midst of a massive crisis when we saw him. He and Sitis had been weathering what they believed was the wrath of God. Job's whole world was under siege and his children were in danger and his wife was begging him to go ask God for answers. When Crowley and Aziraphale come up on Job appearing to speak with God, several things are contextually important that suggest that this isn't quite what it appears to be.

Diluting the visuals is that, in this scene, the post-storm, dawn sun is starting to come through the clouds a bit, much in the way it was after the storm clouds of Eden were clearing when God appeared to Aziraphale in Eden. Job was under the light, praying and appearing to be communicating with God. Crowley and Aziraphale stop far back from Job and, when we're near them, we cannot hear God clearly. The key is in the sound mixing in this scene. When we're near Crowley and Aziraphale, God sounds like she's speaking in a wind tunnel ten miles away. We can catch snippets of words on the breeze but there's nothing tangible there. It would have been literally impossible for Crowley and Aziraphale to hear a single, complete sentence of any of this... and, based on what Job tells Sitis afterwards, he doesn't hear it, either. To add to this, Crowley is unreliable where this scene is concerned because, when it happens, he's drunk enough that we're shown him having trouble walking.

These two were drunk on food and wine in the midst of having moral crisis and watched a man pray under stormy, dawning daylight a half-mile away and think that, maybe, he might have been talking to God. That's it.

Job was in a state of madness and thinks he heard his own Voice of God when asked what happened the next day by Sitis. Crowley and Aziraphale think, from what they can see, that God really is talking to Job-- but they're so far back that they cannot hear basically anything that she's saying. They are both different kinds of intoxicated and likely seeing light and sound from the dwindling storm/emerging daybreak highlighting a man experiencing a kind of religious ecstasy and taking that for possible truth.

We hear her accurately when the camera gets closer to Job... but this all influenced by Aziraphale remembering these events as he reads them in his Bible in the bookshop, so the real is overlapping in this moment with the Biblical account... and it's also clear that Job doesn't remember much of anything he thinks that she said. He returns the next morning and tells Sitis that it was all too wonderful for him to comprehend and something something whales and ostriches. Basically, Job went a bit bonkers and convinced himself that he heard God and she was going on about different animals.

So, look at what we're saying here...

...if Job cannot remember what God said and Crowley and Aziraphale didn't hear it because they heard sounds on the wind and Crowley was drunk and Aziraphale thinks God had spoken to him before but was, that night, only speaking to Job... then from where, in the Good Omens universe, did the Job passage that is supposedly what God said to Job and was recorded in The Bible actually originate?

Who wrote it?

Who is the real Voice of God, when it comes to the Job passage and, likely, in general?

Who wrote the line that prompted Aziraphale to think back on the Job minisode in the first place-- the one that was the only thing which Gabriel could remember at first?

You know why this is all Gabriel can remember and why he looks awfully distraught at the recollection of it? Because Gabriel doubts the existence of God. He's been The Supreme Archangel for thousands of years and she's never spoken to him and The Metatron's a total bastard and God didn't even show up when Gabriel was thrown out of Heaven. What has he been clinging to all these years regarding her existence and his own sense of what the right path to take is? He's been clinging to the bit in The Bible that detailed what it was that God apparently said to Job.

Gabriel not only clings to this as proof of God's existence but he clings to it as proof that he is right to think what he does. Gabriel's own moral compass is at odds with The Metatron and Heaven, just like Crowley and Aziraphale's is. He is The Supreme Archangel of Heaven but he doesn't believe that the demons are all evil and beneath the angels. He actively works to keep angels and demons alike from The Metatron and Satan finding out that they are talking to one another. He wants to believe that God is not a villain and that she approves of this mentality and, as proof that she does, Gabriel clings to the line from Job where God told Job wistfully that she was there "when the morning stars sang together and all the Angels of God shouted for joy." He sees this as God supporting his mindset that the angels and demons are all angels of God and to mistreat the demons is wrong.

But... if The Voice of God is The Voice of God in Aziraphale's Head, then when we hear Frances McDormand, we're hearing Aziraphale.

When it came time to write what it was that God said to Job, though, it was Crowley and/or Aziraphale who actually wrote the passage below, which is why it sounds so much like how they view things:

Job, you've got questions for me? I've got questions *for you.* Do you know how I created the Earth? Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth, Job? Were you there when all the morning stars sang together and all the Angels of God shouted for joy? Do you know the rules of the Heavens? Did you set the constellations in the sky? Can you send lightning bolts and get them to report back to you? Did you give wings to peacocks, Job, or teach the ostrich to run?

What is credited to God here are actually things that Crowley and Aziraphale did, as suggested by the Before the Beginning scene, when we see that Aziraphale was involved in the creation of Earth and Crowley designed the stars. The line to which Gabriel clings is one that God didn't say-- Crowley and/or Aziraphale wrote it, explaining Crowley's hesitation when he says to Aziraphale: "your, ah, boss... said that to Job" in response to Gabriel quoting it, as well as what it is that Aziraphale wants to talk about when he says "Crowley" upon finishing reading the bit of The Bible recounting the Job minisode-- most of which was actually written by he and Crowley.

Ok, so, if The Voice of God is really more like Aziraphale's Voice of God? This explains a few things...

It explains why we haven't heard Frances McDormand's voice speaking to any other beings besides Aziraphale and ones who are otherwise unreliable. The only being who reliably hears her is Aziraphale and that's because she is how he imagines The Voice of God. She is the one that lives is in his head and talks to him.

It also explains why her conversation with Aziraphale in Eden opens the 1.03 Cold Open and why the two instances where she shows up to Aziraphale are both very early on chronologically in Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship. It's showing that Aziraphale's Inner Voice of God is something that is always within him-- because she is him-- but that hearing The Voice of God in his head was something that was probably happening with more frequency in the earlier part of Aziraphale's story-- back when he was more on his own for long stretches of time and before he had Crowley more frequently in his life to talk with about how he felt about things.

Interestingly, the last scene of the Job minisode begins with Aziraphale sitting under the sun/light of God alone, afraid that he's about to fall, echoing some of the scene outside the wall at Eden... but ends with the shot of Crowley sitting with him, after supporting him and their mutual admittance that they're both lonely without the other. The Voice of God can be seen as something of a feature of Aziraphale's loneliness but maybe he has those conversations with her/himself less frequently from the Job minisode on because both his perspective on Heaven/Hell has changed and, just as importantly, he has Crowley to talk to.

After all, remember how we said that she showed up as Aziraphale was having a whole inner crisis in Eden? The same was true in the Job minisode. Not only was Aziraphale having a whole moral dilemma over what to do about Job's kids when he apparently hears The Voice of God speaking to Job but he's just recently seen Crowley again and they are basically on a little date.

Aziraphale, in the hours prior to hearing God in the Job minisode, has just tried food for the first time-- a lot of food lol-- and is flirting his way closer to sex. He's literally taking a romantic walk with his demon love when Frances McDormand cameos so the possibility that, while he's having a very nice night, he's also internally having a bit of an ox ribs and lust guilt delusional freakout seems kind of high.

So, now, think about what else happens if Frances McDormand's Voice of God is Aziraphale's inner Voice of God... Gabriel has some scenes in S2 that could be seen as playing around with this a bit.

The first is Aziraphale bringing up the concept of an author when talking with Gabriel about the book organization project. While there is humor in the fact that Gabriel can't remember what an author is-- how could he when he can't fully remember who he is?--- there's also something else at play here, too.

Gabriel's idea for how to organize the books sounds balmy but it's secretly kind of brilliant-- especially when taken as a metaphor for how to view people. Gabriel can't be bothered with categories, genres, types, labels, or titles. All he's interested in is the first letter of the first sentence on the first page of every book. While we're laughing at this because we know that he's going to end up with most of the books just clumped together under a few sections like the one we see him spending time in-- the "I" section, full of "it's" and "I" beginnings of books-- that's also the point.

We have more in common than meets the eye and Gabriel is insightful enough to bypass the labels we put on others and ourselves and just get to the common origin stories and experiences. Aziraphale asks if his plan is to sort the books alphabetically by author and Gabriel says he is by the first letter of the first sentence-- ironically, Gabriel is sorting by author, really, but he's matching up authors based on what they've written, not by their similar names.

Why this matters is because we now have this scene between Gabriel and Aziraphale where the concept of an author is in play. Gabriel can't remember what the word means but his project is based around what is actually a really deep understanding of one. At the same time, Aziraphale knows what the humans refer to as an author but is struggling to claim authorship of his own life. The word author was also at the core of this struggle for him in S1 when he prayed for help in stopping Armageddon. What was it that Aziraphale said he was looking to reach when he prayed?

"A higher authority."

Aziraphale was looking to reach God or anyone with the power to stop Armageddon and his efforts to find someone else to be that higher authority were unsuccessful and that is because we are all the authors of our own lives.

We are God.

Aziraphale is his own higher authority. He is the author of his own plan-- his own life.

And, if The Voice of God in the series that we hear is really Aziraphale?

Then look at that moment when Gabriel pulled a book off the shelf of the bookshop-- one without a title or an author, though someone has written it-- and it turned out to be one with which we're very familiar:

As Gabriel works on his book organization project, we get this trippy moment when he opens up and reads from the first page of a copy of a book that we all know as Good Omens. There is evidence that this is different from just the "lol Aziraphale is a Doctor Who fan" joke elsewhere in the season. This Clue comes in the shot showing us the book itself from multiple angles in Gabriel's hands-- and the fact that the cover is not the same as our copies of the book. It is a red clothbound hardcover with no dust jacket and no visible title or author printed anywhere on it.

The show has already established that Terry Pratchett and that other guy exist in the Good Omens universe because their solo books are visible at different points in the series. When it establishes that the novel Good Omens exists within the Good Omens universe, though, it does so only by establishing that the text of book we know does. The title of it is not visible and neither are any evidence of its authors in our world, despite their existence in this fictional one.

Moreover, by showing us the first page of what we know to be the Good Omens novel, they're showing us a part of the book that we've already heard before, near its beginning. This bit highlighted on the screen to us-- the opening sentence and first, full paragraph of the novel-- were God's narration over the end of the Eden scene in the first episode. Most of the narration of The Voice of God in S1, as we know, is taken from passages of the Good Omens novel and the show establishes in S2 with this Gabriel scene that the text of Good Omens exists in an unmarked book in Aziraphale's bookshop.

I think it's all saying pretty emphatically that Good Omens, in the Good Omens universe, was written by Aziraphale.

The only way that works then is if the voice we've been hearing both read this book to us and seeming to speak to Aziraphale is of Aziraphale's own creation, which would then mean that Frances McDormand is also, essentially, playing Aziraphale. She is just what God sounds like in Aziraphale's head. She is what Aziraphale imagines God to be. She is, effectively, Aziraphale.

This then suddenly makes everything about God's narration make a lot more sense, right? God's love of humanity and her interest in behavioral science and her cheeky, dry-as-a-bone humor is all very Aziraphale. God's love of Crowley and the way that she approves of him and Aziraphale's relationship and sees them as people like her other beings is what Aziraphale believes would be true of the loving God that he believes in and is fundamentally true of how he views their relationship and Crowley himself. God's ability to speak Crowley and Aziraphale's language and the novel being written in it becomes less that God can do so because she's God and more because she's really just Aziraphale.

The whole novel itself takes on quite a different perspective if you look at it as the book above that Gabriel found when he was organizing the books. The one that, as of S2, it was too dangerous to have labeled at all but that we can theorize was written by Aziraphale and is wrapped up and bound in Crowley's signature color and that color of love-- red.

The book we know as Good Omens is, in the Good Omens universe, a book that Aziraphale wrote for Crowley in which they are two of the characters.

This is, more than anything else we've seen so far, the real book of life.

I think that it's saying that if you were to finish the series and find this to be true, you could then go pick up the novel again and read it as if Aziraphale wrote it, with the narrative passages maybe in his Voice of God Frances McDormand voice but with the knowledge that The Voice of God is really Aziraphale himself.

I love this idea because it means that the tv series that keeps giving us more information that reframes our prior understanding of things might wind up ending with a twist where the nature of The Voice of God in the series is such that it won't even just make rewatching the show a extra fun (although it will) but it'll make it so that you'll be able to go all the way back and read the novel in a different way as well, now with the perspective that Aziraphale is meant to be its author.

This also would be fun because it'd then be viewing the tv series as the canon and the book as what Aziraphale wrote happened and any discrepancies and changes as Aziraphale's writing choices. It means you get to read the passages in the book that are descriptive of Crowley or of he and Aziraphale together from the viewpoint that Aziraphale wrote them, which honestly makes them even funnier.

This would mean that God, as she's been presented to us so far in the series, is an actual being because she's Aziraphale and that we will see her in the finale because she's been a part of our main character all along.

So... there's then just one question left... and it's the same one we had earlier on in the meta:

Does God exist?

If The Voice of God is Aziraphale's inner Voice of God then is the story going to suggest that a real God does exist or is it going to suggest that she doesn't or is that going to be left as an open question?

There are a couple of paths that they could take-- two that I can see and likely some I haven't.

One is Agnes Nutter. I know a lot of people have theories that she's actually God. They could suggest or imply that a bit. In some ways, they might already have done so, as others have suggested.

The other path is the one that I think they might take, though, regardless of what they do or don't suggest with Agnes, which is to leave it so that Aziraphale is The Voice of Frances McDormand God and it's an open question as to whether or not an actual God exists.

The reason why I think it's that path that they're going to take is that Good Omens has a lot of themes around recognizing and claiming personal power and living to your own moral code. It's also very much aligning these supernatural beings in its story with the humans in it and it might just be the writer in me but I think it would be a stronger ending to have the angels and demons wondering just as much as the humans if God exists than it would be to definitively give an answer.

They're all going to know that The Ineffable/Great/Divine Plan in the sense that Heaven was saying existed for eons doesn't exist but the angels and demons will be left wondering along with the humans if they have a creator and if that creator made them for any particular reasons... just like how we wonder those things, too.

As much as the story is a religious satire, it's also a romance, and I can't see an ending of this story doing much to say that Crowley is wrong for his romantic notions that he and Aziraphale were made for each other. It's probably going to just leave the existence of God as an open question.

The story is already going to provide the characters with some much-needed peace from the fact that they'll know that what they endured was a judgement of The Metatron and not God. That and the resulting more peaceful system in Heaven will allow Crowley and Aziraphale to go live their life together without as much fear and they will do that. They might be able to put a name and a title on that book and own the authorship of their story. Even if some might label it as fiction, Gabriel, at least, sees it as belonging alongside the other, human-penned books on the I shelf in the bookshop, and he won't be the only one by the end of the story.

Not knowing then if God exists at all will yield just as many questions... but, if they had all the answers, where would be the sense of wonder in that? It will certainly give them some things to talk about for eternity together. 😊