Warning: Spoilers follow for the first two seasons of Good Omens.
Note: Quotes from this piece are from an interview that took place before the strike.
In Good Omens Season 2, Michael Sheen gives one of the best performances on television this year. Co-star David Tennant meets Sheen beat for beat, but it’s the man behind the angel Aziraphale who makes the slight, mostly sweet story of Good Omens 2 work as well as it does. That’s because, while Tennant’s Crowley is much less demonstrative, Aziraphale spends nearly every minute of this season looking at his best friend with hearts in his eyes. Good Omens Season 2 (the six-episode season hit Prime Video on July 28) is a full-blown love story, and Sheen’s lovestruck angel sells it perfectly – up until the surprisingly bitter end.
We spoke to Sheen about how he approached the show’s theme of “love in all its forms,” and the Aziraphale actor noted that he took inspiration not just from the source material, but from the idea of falling for someone in general. “For me, from the beginning of Series 1 playing an angel, my starting point in a way was not only the script obviously and the book, but also the idea of a being of love and how would that manifest itself and how would that express itself,” he shared. It’s a concept that comes through loud and clear in Season 2, which is built on sidelong glances, small intimacies, and shared moments of trust as much as any actual plot. The storyline it does follow, involving the amnesiac angel Gabriel (Jon Hamm), ultimately turns out to be a love story, too.
Until its jarring cliffhanger brings the good times to a screeching halt, Good Omens 2 unfolds like one long Valentine’s Day special, and the chemistry between the two leads makes it a winning concept. The supernatural pair have been a beloved odd couple since they were originally introduced in the 1990 novel by Gaiman and late co-author Terry Pratchett, but their relationship in the show’s first season was more subtextual. This time around, in another season co-written by Gaiman and John Finnemore, the nature of their love is plain as day on Sheen’s face, and his smitten looks and flustered mannerisms are enough to make shippers of us all.
Sheen makes an interesting comparison, saying that when it comes to post-heaven and hell Crowley and Aziraphale, he “always [thinks] of the Beatles where they talked about how they became so close because no one else could know what it was like to experience what they were experiencing.” That’s surprisingly fitting, and it also rings true because often Sheen’s angel looks at Tennant’s demon like he’s the only person in his world. Sometimes he hides his smile, and other times he beams outright. When someone else mistakes them for a couple, he can’t help but look pleased. There’s something about the actor’s performance that makes butterflies beat ferociously in one’s stomach, and five-plus hours of that in a row is enough to make a person giddy.
The majority of Good Omens 2 is a fluffy, sweet comfort watch that puts a fantasy spin on classic romance tropes. The last 10 minutes of the season are something else entirely. Just as Crowley is about to tell Aziraphale he loves him after centuries of loving but undefined companionship, his angel decides to take a job in heaven, where Aziraphale imagines he’ll be able to restore the demon to his former glory. If most of Good Omens Season 2 feels like taking a ride on a fluffy cloud of wholesome, queer love, this is the moment the cloud suddenly evaporates and leaves us – and Crowley – plummeting toward the ground with nothing to break our fall. The gulf between the pair’s ideological split is too vast, and when Aziraphale chooses faith in heaven over faith in his friend, the conversation abruptly starts to feel like a breakup.
The fact that Sheen so deftly employed a charming crush performance leading up to this moment makes the twist of the knife when Aziraphale fails to meet Crowley halfway all the more painful. According to Sheen, that ending was built into his performance all season long. “We always knew where they were going to get to at the end of this particular part of the story,” he told IGN. “And I think retrospectively thinking about that, it made it a more, I think, interesting and exciting journey to be able to seed in things all the way along that would mean that endpoint that they get to be as difficult and as satisfying and as challenging and heartbreaking and all the rest of the things that you would want it to be.”
It’s certainly difficult and heartbreaking, made all the more so thanks to the way Sheen’s nimble rom-com performance transforms into something darker at the last moment. Aziraphale’s naivety has always been perfectly tempered by Crowley’s cynicism, but this is one time in which the pair’s complementary ideals are no match for the larger bureaucratic forces at play. Sheen performs self-importance and thinly veiled heartbreak just as well as he does infatuation, making the moment in which Aziraphale refuses to reciprocate Crowley’s kiss – saying “I forgive you” instead of “I love you” – feel about as cutting as a third act betrayal can be. As the credits roll, the giddy butterflies have gone completely, replaced by a jagged feeling of loss in the pit in one’s stomach.
A round of applause for Michael Sheen, everybody! That is, once we’re finished laying in a puddle of tears on the floor.
Interview by Amelia Emberwing
