One of the worst sins S3 commited was implying that if Anethema haddnt burned the second book, she and humanity might have had a chance.
The book probably had predictions on how the second coming was going to go, so it probably would have been pretty easy for her to tell aziraphale that michael was going go steal the book of life before it even happened. Humanity could have been saved that easily.
But that frames anethema burning the book as a negative. In fact, she absolutley did the right thing, after lifetimes of her and her ancestors acting for the sake of others, she finally did something for herself, and she was entirely justified in doing so.
I think part of the problem with GOS3 is a similar problem that a lot of sequals have, is that it takes an already complete story with its own narrative arch and themes and makes it act 1.
Good Omens season 3 failed because it wanted to adress the same theme that season 1 and the book did; free will. Season 1 starts with the belief that nobody in this world has free will, it is written that there will be a great war, adam must become the antichrist, crowley must deliver the baby, and so on.
But in the end we learn that they had free will all along when they are shown to exercise it, when the them kill the horsemen, and aziracrow stick it to heaven and hell. That was the moral of the story, we can choose our own paths, even if everything feels against us.
Season 3 realised that good omens cannot exist without the topic of free will and wanted to discuss it in a new way. Instead of reinforcing that sentiment, they tried to do something bigger and more bombastic (as many sequals do), but in doing so, had to entirley deconstruct the story thus far. Season 1, the story that we fell in love with became act 1, the ending insignificant to the greater ending that season 3 had in mind. Therefore the belief that free will is always present was just a belief, it can be swept under the carpet because according to season 3 its okay that they never had it, because we have it now. Its a sad story with a happy ending.
Personally, i fell in love with good omens when it ended with a ritz date, and a boy and his dog, that ending in my eyes is perfect because not only did they have free will then, but they had it all along even if they diddnt know it.
on the simplest level i just dont understand how you can be a fan of good omens and be okay with a finale that destroys everything it stands for. if you wanted a story that thinks sacrificing lives is a good thing, or that a broken world can never be fixed, or that humans are helpless and dont have free will, then why did you like good omens? the book is firmly hopeful about the world and about humanity. if you wanted a story with pessimism about the future or predetermined soulmates, theres plenty of them out there! but it was never good omens. the whole finale's ideologies and morals are completely incompatible with the story terry pratchett created
About Free Will and the Ineffable Plan
They love humanity precisely because humans have free will, the ability to choose who and what they want to be. Humans had the very thing Aziraphale and Crowley believed they themselves lacked — free will. But they had it all along. Otherwise, Aziraphale would never have lied to God, never given away his sword, never interfered with the divine plan by saving Job’s children, never made the Arrangement with Crowley, never chosen Crowley over and over again, never agreed to stop Armageddon in the end. Crowley would never have asked questions, never helped Aziraphale save Job’s children, never talked Elspeth out of suicide (which, ironically, he himself ended up committing in the finale), never saved his angel time and time again, never kept choosing Aziraphale, never done good deeds when he was explicitly told to do evil instead, never stood side by side with his angel to stop Armageddon. Free will always existed, absolutely. For angels and demons alike.
And free will doesn’t belong only to them. All angels and demons have it — it’s just that, unlike Aziraphale and Crowley, none of them spent enough time on Earth to become more human and fully realize that free will, enough to stand against the system that kept telling them they didn’t have any in the first place.
To me, Good Omens also reflected our own reality — how many people in positions of power use God and the “divine plan” as a shield for their terrible actions. I always saw God in Good Omens as something like a bored but merciful being who genuinely loves Her creations — and that’s exactly why She gave them free will. That was her original plan all along, otherwise, as Crowley himself said at the beginning of season 1, She would’ve put the Tree of Knowledge on the Moon, on a mountaintop, or simply never created it at all if She didn’t want humans to have free will. That is Her Ineffable Plan — to give humanity free will. When Aziraphale says in the finale that they want a universe where there is “nothing ineffable,” he is literally saying “no free will.” It feels like the people behind the finale heard the phrase “Ineffable Plan” but never actually understood what it meant.
And when She made the wager with Satan during the Job story, She already knew Crowley wouldn’t destroy the goats or kill the children. She knew Aziraphale wouldn’t allow it to happen either. She knew he would lie in order to do the right thing. Precisely because he has free will. She is omniscient — She knew everything from the very beginning. She knows what was, what is, and what will be. She is not cruel — the cruel ones are those who speak in Her name. The Great Plan does not belong to Her; only the Ineffable one does. The “Great Plan” was invented by those claiming to speak for Her.
The original theme, free will as part of the ineffable plan, felt lost and replaced with cheap drama. What began as a comedic story with religious motifs that satirized the idea of total self-sacrifice for a “better” world instead of actually trying to fix things, ultimately ended with exactly that kind of sacrifice, along with a strange, inconsistent drama that doesn’t align with established characterizations.
The finale erased all of that, threw it away, and forgot about it.
I really feel like the entire finale is based on an enormous rug pull that, actually, the world isn't the one we'd been led to believe it was, that it was actually always bad, unfixable, always doomed to failure, that anything anyone did would not bring about any real change.
That's just not the world we've seen in the book or the previous seasons.
If I am to take the view of the world from s3 as true, my struggle becomes: fundamentally, the problem is the inevitability of the great (ineffable) plan, not the matter of having free will. And that's not really part of the deal that Crowley and Aziraphale make with god.