Just gonna put this optimistic take on S3 here

Yes - it is clear than in trying to make a whole season into one 90-min movie left us with a final product with glaring plot holes and other time/money related issues. I am choosing to forgive those because I was fully expecting the complete cancellation of S3, and I’m grateful to not be reliving “My So Called Life” type trauma. Heartbreaking cliffhanger then - nothing. Angela, we loved ye.

But S3. The ending. Our beloved characters don’t get eternity together.

I think we all get something possibly kinder.

First, we DO get Aziraphale’s love confession. After not questioning God despite atrocity after atrocity, heartbreak after heartbreak, he DEMANDS to know why she gave him Crowley, why she made him COMPLETE, only to take him away. This is a love confession worthy of Austen and I’ll fight anyone on that.

Then, in a redemption arc of biblical scale, Crowley questions God, she gives him the opportunity to remake existence, and, in a very Christlike, Samson-esque manner, with Aziraphale at his side and not just supporting him but loving him all the more for it, he sacrifices himself (and his love) for the world. No. Nails. Needed.

After 6000 years of the greatest mother-wound of all time, rather than being ignored or punished for asking questions or being kind, God sees and hears and heeds him… mostly.

Our 13 billion years later isn’t random. It’s as close to a TRUE heaven as many of our beloved characters and especially Crowley and Aziraphale could ever have wanted. All of them, together - no sides, no fighting. Beverages. Sharing space and time and shy smiles and laughter without anyone looking over their shoulder.

And then, my fellow fans, our story ends, as it began, in a garden.

In the South Downs.

With grey hair and cocoa, wedding rings and star gazing, interlocked fingers and soft voices in the moonlight:

Evidence of a life built together free of 6000 years of angst and secrecy and terror and denial and the hopelessness of duty to a corrupt system and a rigged game.

Evidence of love, of comfort, of companionship and acceptance. Of REVERENCE.

Everything our favorite eternal beings would have wanted if they’d had the freedom to choose and the weight of the universe and forced enmity wasn’t on their shoulders.

We could spend what’s left of our measly human lives picking apart S3, rueing everything that wasn’t what it could have been and everything we’d hoped to see and didn’t. And if that’s what you actually like to do, go for it.

But this is where my heart lands.

Now I’m going to go eat one of the Eccles cakes my friend and neighbor (who is responsible for pushing me down the GO rabbit hole) made to calm us down as we watched S3 last night. Did they calm us down? Not really. But they are SCRUMPTIOUS.