#good omens s2 intro

[mintmillipede]

things i noticed in the good omens 2 opening title sequence part 1

i watched this frame by frame and have had many thoughts. i'll put things which are interpretation or my perspective in purple. feel free to watch along whilst you read if you haven't seen it yet.

also couple of disclaimers which u may feel free to skip: i grew up with chrisitan iconography but am not christian but because of that i know more about that perspective of abrahamic texts so keep that in mind! i'm using guy as a vibe more than a gender but am happy to take criticism on that bc i'm not sure myself yet. also i haven't looked at any other analyses because i want this to be like a fun little puzzle so apologies for overlap/missing things/being wrong. ok enjoy!

ok, scene 1. mountain range, not sure which one but it could be a biblical reference? so possibly judaean mountains but that is a big stretch. aziraphale is coming down from the heavens whilst crowley emerges from a glowing orange crater, which looks a lot like hell especially with the context later in the intro.

they emerge behind a rock into scene 2 into a tunnel and crowley lights a match with his hell powers? this actually interests me because why use a match if you have fire powers? perhaps he's conserving miracles.

scene 3: we don't actually see them emerge from the tunnel, they're seen up ahead later. we start with an animal's skull in the foreground, and i think it's a ram. there's other ram skeletal remains later and there are various rams eating on the hills. from stage right enters: a delivery guy. they've got a delicate package. it's giving me like holy land vibes? idk i grew up christian and it's like christian movie landscape to me.

anyway the delivery guy is trailing behind a figure all in black who is almost camouflaged in the murky landscape. there's also a tree by them which i think is a mustard seed tree!!! there's a parable about it and it's the vibe of starting from small beginnings like the small little mustard seed grows into a tree which birds chill on.

the figure in black is following a couple of steps behind aziraphale and crowley, and they pass a little ram on a rock which has a fleece which reddens. rams were often used as sacrifices in the old testament and probably in other abrahamic texts. not a good omen.

a raven is on a cart with bags which look like they are full of coin. they are having a little snack. this may be about matthew 6:26 where jesus basically says don't worry so much about money look god's feeding the ravens (sometimes translated as birds in general) and they suck (bc they are seen as unclean maybe because they eat carcasses) and you're better than them. it's like god cares for fucking ravens so he's gonna care for you sinners. also they're omens of death. this will be important very shortly.

there's also some real funky looking birds with four legs on the mountain and those were not in the bible (/j idk if they are or not but i couldn't remember them and i feel like i would have). and the paths on the mountains are scrolls, suggesting maybe that the world around them is literally made of scripture.

crowley sets fire to a little bb ram and now they're all on fire it's very mean of him. no i am not colouring that in purple. i think in this context it might be to cleanse the sins of humanity?

scene 4! finally ok immediately wtf aziraphale why are you secretly a lamp??? my bf thinks this is a supernatural show so i looked it up to spite him and there's a bunch of references to lamps in the torah and talmud but bc english-speaking christians can't be bothered to learn hebrew or greek the bible has the most direct reference i could find: 'the spirit of man is the lamp of the lord'

also crowley is a vibe! not sure what gender she's presenting as here but i'm hazarding a guess as femme. blue has a bunch of meanings but none i was sure about, but i saw a bunch of references to the sky. the funky guy behind him does have a human face with a helmet of black hair i think and is carrying something big that i cannot make out. the person in front of them is giving zombie and they are in a graveyard and there's more context later imo for that being accurate.

going stage left, we have another aziraphale and crowley, not in disguise. if i had to guess, these would be muriel and another new ally who are disguised as them to take the heat off of them. i think.

everyday on a gravestone? could be a reference to the song everyday by buddy holly which has been used in promo so far. it's a song about working up the courage to ask someone out... which could signify a development in aziraphale and crowley's relationship but also could signify something coming in the plot relating to heaven/hell. on a gravestone, the song could reference the fast approach of death. could be a combo of these things too. or could be none! i am no oracle. or am i...

at the back, a bucket of pickled herring is being transported by a skrungly little guy. pickled herring does have links to jewish culture but we know there's a pickled herring scene in edinburgh which maybe more suggests scottish fishing culture (not that the two are mutually exclusive of course). the guy travelling alongside the cart with a goth vibe has a shovel suggesting he's a gravedigger.

jane austen! suggests some of her themes popping up in the show but also suggests they're around winchester cathedral, and it does look like they're going into a building but it looks more like a crypt/mausoleum to me. i tried to find more information about a building like this in winchester but i was looking on ecosia and thus found nothing.

here lies the former shell of beelzebub is a canon reason for the change of actors, but here lies adam?!?!??! i know time could have just passed, but it's still mean!!!!! maybe it's a different adam?

scene 5! i think they've entered down a secret passageway in the crypt - you can see some coffins there and i think the masonry fits well enough. we've got some more people following behind the ones who are dressed like azi and crowley. it's a bit too blurry but i've spotted a few who could be aziraphale in disguise as the odd lantern is gone - i think though he is dressed as the gravedigger now as the original gravedigger seems to have changed their garb. a few more could be crowley although crowley's original form with the blue headscarf is still there. the figure in white near the front gives me undead vibes. helmet hair guy is more visible now. we've got someone holding a lantern near the back who is a vibe (could be religious or in some way guiding the souls of the dead). they're followed by a real funky looking guy who i think is wearing a mask??? hard to tell

ok so so so there is so much around them. skeletons and gravestones suggest we're still in a cemetery. if you look on the left, it's the box the delivery guy from the beginning had!!! so many thoughts about this. mentions of a delivery are everywhere. this box is in the recent prime insta post with angel and demon feathers emerging from it. basically this is very very important, so how did it end up here? was the delivery guy buried with this on his body?

we see a web. we'll come back to that!

little feature i like the skull we see has a backbone and a ribcage which is a vibe

scene 6! a lot of ppl too many to talk about in full but def some skeletons. i think religious figures. there's a cool looking punk? too many things so many stimuli. anyway i think this is a crowd of undead people being led into hell to assist on a mission. why just the undead?

they're exiting something that looks like the crypt they came in from, suggesting it's a secret entrance to hell. might this be where hastur met crowley in season 1?

we've got a big wheel which looks like it's used for some kind of pulley contraption imo, but i don't think it would be for the guillotine unless they wanted to adapt the guillotine somehow, perhaps automate it? big stretch

we've got the pyres of files and computers and office chairs. this is a metaphor for capitalism sucking balls.

web! like before. ok so theories perhaps it's a metaphor showing the web of all of the connecting entrances. perhaps it's a big magic hell thing drawing power from everywhere to its centre. perhaps hell listens to people from webs. maybe demons can travel through webs? idk maybe one of these is 25% right. also later we see a spooder so maybe she has laid eggs?

oooh mysterious fire cave. mayb that's where satan is chilling. the inverted pentacle's outside of it. could also be the government of sorts. my boyf thinks it looks like a skeletal face in a witch hat and i think he is festering with lies.

leetle dragon gargoyle!!!! i love her she can do no wrong

i like to think we see the different stages of their headquarters. the castle was the first, the grey building is the current/s1 one, and the blueish lighting is coming from what they're upgrading to. this may also be why there's the pyres of stuff: they're doing a little clear out!

also the crushed metally thing in the foreground... i don't want to say it's the bentley.............. so i will not i refuse to be devastated before the show has even begun

scene 7: we come out of the stairs leading up to the public loos by liberty's london which is right next to soho, the implication being that that's another entrance to hell which is in fact true irl. the old-timey underground logo (probs oxford circus) suggests we're not in present day (so maybe adam is fine! or maybe they're time travelling?) which suggests we're in the blitz (ww2) because of the barrage balloon and the aircrafts. this is also suggested by the old routemaster bus.

ok we're up to 0:33! coffee break meet back in like a day i did not expect this trailer ok i have things to pretend to do

[mothsshoes]

me and the bestie on the rooftops while heart bombs fall from the sky around us

[most-normal-eccles-cake-ignorer]

while I was looking for gabriels in the intro, I noticed this redheaded person w dark clothing and lighthaired person w light clothing that appear to kiss in the theatre:

i'm making this about the 1941 kiss theory

---

edit oct 7: a few kind people have mentioned that they remember a post from the official good omens account (possibly on twitter) that said the two people kissing are War & Pollution, and the shadow beside them is Famine. (If you have the link please send it this way! I have done a fair bit of searching but with no luck and it's haunting me bc it must be real but i can't find it)

@0owhatsamsays also pointed out that in the X-Ray bonus video "Title Sequence Easter Eggs" Peter Anderson says there are specific characters from season 1 in the highlighted boxes, and as you can see, the kissing booth (top level, far right) is one with a little trail of stars coming off of it.

[justhereforthemeta]

Yup... there was a conspicuous lack of passenger aircraft in S2, and that's one conspicuous bird.

This picture is a zoomed in screencap from the Good Omens season 2 opening credits. It shows a section from the cinema sequence, with posters for the episode, The Arrival, on the left, and an interior of the theatre's foyer on the right. On the far right wall, there's a neon sign that reads "The Parousia".

The Parousia refers to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Going through the opening credits, there's actually a lot of references to the Second Coming, way more than I initially realised. What's matters about this one, though, is that one way "parousia" can be translated is arrival.

What exactly is the significance of this, I wonder. Does it have anything to do with the way Gabriel keeps echoing God's words? Has the Second Coming been in progress since the very first episode?

[pineappical]

nothing lasts forever

[thelarksang]

Catch-22

Many events in the book are repeatedly described from differing points of view, so the reader learns more about each event from each iteration, with the new information often completing a joke, the setup of which was told several chapters previously. The narrative's events are out of sequence, but events are referred to as if the reader is already familiar with them so that the reader must ultimately piece together a timeline of events. Specific words, phrases, and questions are also repeated frequently, generally to comic effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22

Sounds familiar?

[angelcore-bitch]

I AM NOT OK

In the trailer Gabriel says "...and you're totally certain that everything would be better if you were just near one particular person?"

AND THEY SHOW A CLIP OF AZI AND CROWLEY TOASTING AND AZI'S LITTLE AWKWARD SMILE

They like being near each other IT'S CANON

[cat-clawz-art]

Just gonna leave this here...

[byleranalysis]

aziraphale watches maggie + nina fall in love across the street.

crowley is staring at something else—

brought to you by a combination of Spiderverse, Good Omens Trailer announcement, and being so excited I can’t sleep 👍🏻

[flevorite]

Ok.. not gonna lie. For me, this a f**king date. I mean I see Crowley, Aziraphale, together, during a movie in a beautiful 19th century theater, I mean…

Come on let me dream !!

[musical-dealer]

Jay’s Intro!!

He/They

I’m transmasc and pansexual

I’m neurodivergent

INTERESTS!!

Starkid (specifically hatchetfield) Musicals

Team Fortress 2

Baldurs Gate/DnD in general

Half Life

Borderlands

Detroit:Become Human

What We Do in the Shadows

Metalocalypse

Andrew Lloyd Webber Musicals

Ghost (band)

MY BESTEST FRIENDS

@dick-knubblers-husband @shakencharlies

Where else you can find me?

Twitter: musicaldealer

Spotify

AO3

Spacehey

Carrd

If i like you enough ill give my discord 🤷

COMMISSIONS

[thoughtsofthegirlwiththecurl]

I love that in the first 15 minutes of Good Omens season 2, Neil Gaiman took the opportunity to correct the notion from the book (and probably upheld in s1? I don't remember) that you should feed ducks bread 😂

[doot08]

That fucking secret audio clip intro thingy that was posted is really bugging me!

WHAT ARE THEY SAYING WHO EVER THEY ARE!!!???? ( i think there is some crowley and aziraphale there for sure but still!!! )

how dare they just post that?

you can't keep getting away with this prime!!!

all I know for sure ( like many other people do ) is that wine is mentioned somewhere there....

= More drinking with the occult! ( and ethereal )

maybe...

[neil-gaiman]

big good omens fan me. just wondering were there anymore seconds or minutes of the s2 intro that didn’t air? any deleted scenes or extended scenes you might be able to share one day, or at least explain, please? or any ideas you had surrounding that scene with angel crowley and younger aziraphale?

:)

There was one bit of their conversation that we cut for pacing. I'll let you find it here:

[eug3ol]

I finished good omens s2 today and suddenly my fyp is filled with good omens, it hurts.

I need s3, happy fanart, theories and fanfictions to heal 😭

[vidavalor]

"Help may come from an unexpected quarter."

We can take apart all of God's intro to Good Omens in 1.01 at some point if people continue to be into my word nerdy posts but I want to look at just one part of it right now-- the end of the horoscope-- and how it applies to S2 in a way that I think helps to explain The Final Fifteen. That part is:

Help may come from an unexpected quarter:

A coming is an arrival. Gabriel's unexpected arrival is the start of S2 and 2.01 is entitled "The Arrival." One of the meanings of a quarter is that it is a coin-- specifically, that it is American money worth 25 cents. There is not a British monetary equivalent to the quarter-- just as that, if we go by accents, there is only one "American" angel in a sea of "British" ones and that "American" angel is, of course, Gabriel.

The quarter is the coin inserted to play a song on an American jukebox. Gabriel's miracle of a constant state of "Everyday" on The Resurrectionist Pub's jukebox makes him basically a never-ending roll of eternal quarters. So, in this way, Gabriel is the unexpected quarter, right?

So, let's keep going with this and see what we can dig out of the words in the end of the horoscope that God read to us in 1.01 that might relate to what going on in 2.06...

Help may come from an unexpected quarter. "Hired help"/"The help" can refer to both to those who clean and to those who cater...

...and also to assistant shopkeepers, in general, whose goal is to try to be as helpful as possible:

Remember how the opening shot of Good Omens in 1.01 is the word WAR but then it expands out and shows us that we were looking at the word WAR within the word WARNING? This tells us that, right from the get-go, the show suggests that we take a close look at its language-- in particular, the roots of words. How they evolved, their histories and how they are related to other words aka their etymologies.

Our first rule of language in GO, per the opening of the show, is to always look for words within other words-- which I'm sure Anthony J. "(d)awning of a new age" Crowley would also suggest is always a fun idea. There can be a lot of deeper meaning in this but there also can just be a ton of humor as well. Case in point:

😂 UneX-PECted QuARTer:

More seriously now, though...

Help may come from an unexpected quarter. Hell: From the Old English and the Dutch hel...

Help may come from an unexpected quarter. Our unexpected quarter is Gabriel. The Metatron makes Gabriel a fallen angel, causing Gabriel to make a run for it, and starting a series of events that lead to Hell coming for Aziraphale:

Help may come from an unexpected quarter:

Maggie: Well, I'm going to my shop to sleep behind the counter... unless you need some help.

Nina: *asks Maggie to go get her 27 different kinds of milk/creamer, all of which come in... quart containers*...which Maggie does. When she returns, Nina and Maggie make the coffee ordered by "The Metatron," which would have been unable to be made without the quart of oat milk.

Help may come from an unexpected quarter...

Homophony: Quarter/Courter.

Courter: A suitor; one who courts. Like The (Apparent) Big Floating Head who shows up with a body for the first time that we've seen-- in a suit-- and courts Aziraphale at Marguerite's... the same place where Crowley was trying to have a date with Aziraphale the day before. All of which was kicked into motion by The Metatron casting Gabriel down-- and taking from Gabriel his signature, much-beloved suit (and leaving him in his "birthday suit" as a result.)

Making Crowley an angel again would undermine the entire Heaven/Hell system. All the demons would want to challenge their own status because if Crowley could, why couldn't they? It would actually cause it all to collapse and there's no way The Metatron would ever allow that... which is a big clue that this ain't The Metatron:

Aziraphale's being courted by The Devil.

Help may come from an unexpected quarter. A quarter of an hour is, as we know, 15 minutes. (God also referred to "almost a quarter of an hour" earlier in her opening monologue in 1.01 before saying "unexpected quarter" later on during it, which I take as a suggestion to always look at the multiple meanings of words in the show.)

The unexpected quarter of an hour = The Final 15 of 2.06. Crowley & Aziraphale fade away from the final splitscreen during the credits at just about Minute 52, I believe. Fifteen minutes prior to that is the moment that Aziraphale leaves the bookshop with "The Metatron" aka Satan:

Help may come from an unexpected quarter...

The unexpected twist-- and realization-- for Aziraphale of: "We call it 'The Second Coming'."

Note also what we said about come meaning arrival earlier... If 2.01 started with an episode called "The Arrival" and featured Gabriel coming to and arriving at the bookshop, if what is said here is to be believed and there is a "Second Coming" that is coming... then someone is going to end up like 2.01 Gabriel.... only, 2.01 Gabriel was the Supreme Archangel when he was cast down, which is what kept him from being sent to Hell. Aziraphale has no such political power.

Help may (and Help may) come from an unexpected quarter:

God sent unexpected quarter Gabriel as help-- speaking through him to remind Aziraphale of Job and of when God said, in Bildad's summary: "Satan and his diabolical ministers may destroy everything Job owns, no questions asked. Hugs and kisses, God."

God wanted Aziraphale to remember when She let Satan take what supposedly belonged to Job and Sitis as a test and he and Crowley worked together to stop it. She wanted him to remember when he thought he'd fall for thwarting her but She couldn't have been prouder because Job and Sitis were not the only ones really being tested-- Crowley and Aziraphale were. They did the right thing and they protected each other and the innocents around them in the process. That is what they should have been doing in S2 in the present.

Aziraphale did not heed the warning, though, so God stood aside and let it be that Help may come from an unexpected quarter as a result...

A quarter = 1/4th. Aziraphale's four, interwoven rings in the magic shop in 1941 that take out the house of cards from the bottom, symbolizing he and Crowley and Gabriel and Beez, who are going to take out the Heaven/Hell system. A quarter of our Ineffable Quartet, then, is Crowley. He is the most unexpected quarter there is when it comes to Aziraphale falling to Hell and Hell comes for Aziraphale with Crowley's help but against his will:

Help may come from an unexpected quarter. The paralleling and foreshadowing of Crowley dragged to Hell in front of the Gabriel statue in 1827, leaving Aziraphale on his own for a time. Sets up the reverse of that at the end of 2.06.

Help may come from an unexpected quarter. A quarter is a coin, like the sixpence and the farthing were in 1941. In "a blink of an eye", only one of the coins remained-- the farthing had vanished. The farthing is decorated with a wren. The coin with the little bird on it is the one that disappears, foreshadowing "no nightingales."

In 1941, the coin trick led to the magic shop... which led to The Bullet Catch... which led to a different representative of Hell coming for Crowley and Aziraphale and arriving at a different door, after Aziraphale had persuaded Crowley to perform a different type of dance with him in public... Furfur at the dressing room door paralleling "The Metatron" at the bookshop door. Crowley sitting to the side both times; some confusion, at first, over who the visitor is...

...but help may come from an unexpected quarter and it did for Crowley in 1941 because Aziraphale actually is a pretty decent magician and he saved the photo from Furfur (and so saved both of them) the same way that he does his coin tricks.

From the line preceding 'help may come from an unexpected quarter': You may be vulnerable to stomach upsets today...

Vulnerable: In a position to be attacked or harmed. Now, split it up: Vul. Ner. Able. (or A Ble.) Also contains: Vu and Rab.

Vul (in Czech): Both an ox and an idiot. "You idiot! We could have been us." Aziraphale, you're being tempted for real by The Actual Devil this time...

Vu: French for "seen," as in deja vu, which means "already seen" and describes the feeling of having lived through the present once already before. No one is recognizing the being at the bookshop door for who he really is. Also, we've seen these conflicts before-- this is Aziraphale's same daily round of negative thought cycles. At the center of those thought cycles...

Rab: Homophone for Rabb: Term used in Arabic to refer to God as "lord" or "master." The Voice of God may be The Lord and Master of Language on Good Omens but She doesn't actually want anyone to live in her name. She's trying to get them all to go live like whales already.

Ble (in French): Wheat. It is, technically, a fruit that is cultivated as grain. In Hebrew, wheat is referred to as khitah, which is a pun on the word khet, which means sin. The wheat berry has the same fruit structure as an apple, which is one of the reasons why it has been theorized by some humans to be what it was that Adam and Eve ate in The Garden of Eden that led to their fall. Interesting that falling is being mentioned, no?

Ner (in Swedish): Down; headed in a downward direction. Well, that's a great sign... 😂

Ner (in Old Irish): A boar, which is a wild pig. See: Grice, mentioned by Muriel. (A separate meta on Grice is linked at bottom of this meta.) Boar is a homophone for Bore and Boor. Bore is the root word of bored, which is for one of the reasons Crowley said in 2.01 why Aziraphale might call him and is also a Crowley euphemism for horny (see: other meta linked at the bottom of this meta.) A boor is an insensitive person.

Able: To be capable-- to have the power, means, skills and opportunity to do something. Aziraphale is capable of being a boor and of being tempted and of sin and of heading in a downward direction. He is also Able: clever, intelligent, adept... which he will need to get out of the mess he's gotten himself into.

Also: Able: Evolved from the Latin words habere and habilis, meaning, respectively: to hold and handy. (See: below gif. TW for The Kiss TM)... and also: "What's that lovely human expression? Hold that thought!"

Stomach: Originated, in part, from the Greek stoma, meaning mouth. Yeah, 2.06 brought some mouth-related upset for Crowley and Aziraphale (and us lol)... just a bit...

Stomach upset/Upset stomach: Something which causes you to have trouble eating. An upset stomach is probably the best possible way to refer to a temporary Crowley & Aziraphale breakup since food = sex in Ineffable Husbands Speak. For more on that, see: er... honestly... most of my blog lol.

Upsets = Upsets. Some upsets over what's Up. Flip it around, though, and it's... Set Ups. Up = Heaven and it's all a Hellish set up. Aziraphale has been... what's that lovely American expression?

This upset is also a setup and a setup? Is a trap. The Hastur-Aziraphale paralleling doesn't end with their clothes/hair:

Help may come from an unexpected quarter. There are four locations present at the end of 2.06: The Elevator (in motion), Heaven, Earth, a and Hell. We've left Earth, gotten into the elevator, and the button pressed was Heaven, so... the unexpected quarter that may come in S3 is Hell.

But, also in S3...

Help may come from an unexpected quarter. Post-fly, there's two of them, so, unexpected quarter now = Ineffable Bureaucracy.

Grice meta:

Bored/Board meta: