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What Does Aziraphale Actually Believe, Part 8: Armageddidn’t Continued

This is a series of my takes on what Aziraphale believes through the timeline of the show. It is all my personal interpretation, and I am happy to hear others. You don’t need to read them all in order, but know that I am coming from a perspective on Aziraphale’s machinations that can be difficult for people without a psychology background to follow without the first two as a primer. The quick version is that Aziraphale has a set of beliefs that exist in some form or another within his mind. However, at any given moment, only some of them exist ‘with awareness.’ The context of the moment will determine what lives on the surface and what stays buried, whatever arrangement best prevents a threat to Aziraphale’s sense of self and makes whatever he is inclined to do feel right.

In this post I will be wrapping up the major events of Season 1. The focus is mostly on how Aziraphale experiences the shift from being privately opposed to many of heaven's decisions to being outwardly rebellious against heaven in full view, to becoming separated from heaven on paper. About 2.5k words.

Disavowed

Outwardly Aziraphale seems alarmingly unconcerned with the fact that Crowley is in imminent danger of being destroyed by hell, because he has convinced himself that if he can get in touch with God he can sort this all out. I think he isn’t as confident as he is selling, which is frustrating because he’d come across better if he wasn’t selling it. Crowley says “How can someone so clever be so stupid?” Just as Aziraphale underestimates how much it hurts Crowley when he does the ‘hereditary enemies’ thing, I think Crowley underestimates how much it hurts Aziraphale when Crowley calls him stupid. This time Aziraphale says “I forgive you.” While it’s still not what Crowley will respond positively to at that moment, it is a substantial departure from the very recent “May you be forgiven.” Aziraphale is owning the act of forgiveness as his own feelings and judgement, and that is a big step for him.

Aziraphale is ambushed by the archangels outside of his bookshop. They accuse him of being a traitor and call Crowley his boyfriend. He argues the traitor point. Aziraphale makes his case that keeping the world running to let humans have free will to choose between good and evil should be their role as angels. There obviously needs to be two sides, so that the humans can have things to choose. That’s the whole point of the universe. But the choices are for the humans. Celestials aren’t meant to do the choosing sides thing, they just keep things running. This echoes his comments in Edinburgh. Alignment with good and evil is a choice for humans, celestial entities don’t have the same choice. It seems the same on the surface, but there is a big difference this time.

In Edinburgh the idea was that angels are good by definition, demons are evil by definition. They are on a side they have no capacity to choose. Here, when Aziraphale says choosing is for humans, he is rejecting Uriel’s demand that he choose a side, not by arguing that he is with heaven by definition, but by saying angels should be maintaining the existence of the earth for humans, not being on a side themselves. He isn’t saying that he can’t choose a side, he is expressing that he would prefer not to. He wants to remake heaven such that angels and demons aren’t on different sides. He doesn’t specify what he thinks the demon’s role is, he only mentions angels. My personal impression is that he’d be inclined to pardon them all back to angels if he could, making a universal order of grey angels. As they are recalled to heaven, Aziraphale calls the ambush party ‘bad angels,’ almost like someone might say ‘bad dog.’ It reads childish, but I think in truth it’s more condescending.

A Higher Authority

Aziraphale still plans to take the matter of Armageddon up with God. Even though the institution of heaven has just declared him a traitor, he still thinks it’s a good idea to ring the Almighty, because he has been able to believe that no one in the institution of heaven properly represents God for a few thousand years now. As I brought up early on when discussing ineffability, it is notable that Aziraphale has absolutely no time for The Metatron claiming to speak for God. He is part of The Institution, not an extension of God’s ineffable will.

In the last post I brought up my take that if Aziraphale combines ineffability, God’s will is literally incapable of being expressed in words, and the fact that God is willing to play games and misrepresent Her own will, that means that Aziraphale can’t be told what God’s will is by anyone, including God. It is also my view that Aziraphale believes in an absolutely omniscient God whereas Crowley doesn’t. If we take both of those takes as givens, why is it that Crowley talks to God by shouting at the ceiling in his flat, and Aziraphale tries to talk to God by getting The Metatron on the phone and asking to exchange words with God?

In Crowley’s case he doesn’t really have the option to call heaven, and taking this up with management is kind of the origin point of his whole situation. It isn’t that he isn’t inclined to speak to the manager, it's that he already tried that and it went about as badly as it could. Now he’s doing the equivalent of chucking pebbles at Her window.

Aziraphale is a more complicated question. I think he usually doesn’t bother trying to talk to God because his most common beliefs don’t find there to be any merit to it. He is informed of God’s will through his faith in his intuition, not through the use of language. When God appears before Job, Aziraphale is in awe of God’s presence, but doesn’t seem to express the jealousy that Crowley does. Crowley wants to ask God questions to Her face. Aziraphale might not bother. He comments that Job isn’t likely to get any answers out of the exchange.

So why try to talk to Her now? Because for this stretch, his faith is wavering, just a little. At the bandstand he seemed resigned that The Great Plan was going forward, heaven will win, and there is no indication that Crowley will be saved. Aziraphale was wavering on his team up with Crowley because the only plans Crowley offered were kill a child or hide in lifeless space and Aziraphale wasn't willing to do either of those things. He wants a sign from God that the hypothetical Ineffable Plan where Armageddon fails is the real one.

We might be inclined to say that he doesn’t get a sign from God, just silence, but that's the thing about faith and signs, they are very ineffable. Had God answered the call and said some words at Aziraphale, that could mean anything. It could be games, a test, who knows. The sign Aziraphale needed to break with heaven on The Great Plan was heaven ordering him to do something he intuitively knew he absolutely could not do. He was ordered to go to war, and he knew with no hesitation that he could not do that. He got his sign from God, clearer than if She had spoken to him.

The Anti-Climax

He goes straight to Crowley, spills the beans about the antichrist. He’s getting himself and Crowley to the airbase, and they will figure something else out from there. He won’t go in Crowley’s body though. Angel, demon? Probably explode. He wants to remake heaven so angels and demons aren’t putting themselves on opposite sides, but he still thinks mixing an angel and a demon together in one body would cause an explosion. (It’d cause something to explode, that's for sure.)

Crowley pushes Aziraphale into shooting at Adam in the name of the greater good, and it's something Aziraphale believes in enough to let himself be pushed. Madam Tracey can feel how much it hurts him and stops it, though the shot wouldn't have done anything anyway. Aziraphale finds his peaceful solution by proving that Gabriel and Beelzebub didn’t know if the Great Plan was the Ineffable Plan either, to Crowley’s genuine shock. Aziraphale and Crowley stand together against their bosses and make the case for not war. They win the argument, and I’m commandeering a few paragraphs of this character study instalment to make one of my own.

I have seen dozens of posts arguing that Crowley and Aziraphale did nothing to prevent the apocalypse, that they didn’t even need to be in the story, they contributed nothing to the resolution, they didn’t save the world, ect…. With every fiber of my being I disagree. The story is about heaven and hell being determined to fight a war to destroy all of existence to prove who’s side is best. ‘The war is to be won, not avoided.’ The theatrics of the Great Plan were not the only problem. Adam and the Them stopping Satan and the Horsemen was necessary but not sufficient.

It took Aziraphale and Crowley working together and arguing the point together, with both of their philosophies merged over thousands of years of collaboration, to convince Gabriel and Beelzebub to make peace. And love. Without that the forces of heaven and hell would still have destroyed all creation to have their war anyway.

Do not look at the state of the world and tell me that convincing people that finding peace by stopping the war is better than destroying the enemy by winning the war is an easy or trivial thing to do. For the record I do believe self defence is better than not self defence, that goes to the not being trivial part.

You Don’t Have a Side

Crowley signed the document that started the Apocalypse, and Aziraphale signed the document ending it. He knows what he has done, and how it will be received, but his habits die hard. Aziraphle’s life is certainly going to go through a dramatic change after Armagediddn’t. He is incredibly normalised to his life reporting his deeds back to heaven and running his embassy, having his role in the system, being a part of the institution even though he keeps his own opinions. However, I think being separated from heaven on paper changed his day to day experiences more than it changed his perspective on the universe.

Armagediddn’t changed Aziraphale’s relationship to the institution of heaven in the sense that his disloyalty is now visible, but he was already not taking them seriously as an authority on God or goodness or truth. That’s been something he can believe for more than 4000 years. Aziraphale has been keeping his private opinions since Uz, even if they are sometimes so hidden he can’t see them himself. And heaven has always had the power to find out about it if they went looking. The sword of Damocles has been over his head since Job. His opinion of heaven didn’t change, their opinion of him caught up. Aziraphale’s opinion of God wasn’t changed by Armagediddn’t, he doesn’t think the Great Plan was the Ineffable Plan. He participated in stopping the Great Plan, not the Ineffable Plan. As far as he sees it, him and God are still cool.

At the Tadfield bus stop Crowley wonders if the almighty planed it this way, all along. Aziraphale calmly replies that he wouldn't put it past Her. I imagine him going back in his mind to Uz, remembering saying to Crowley "I don't think that is what God wants," wanting to exclaim at Crowley now, 'that's what I've been trying to tell you for thousands of years.'

Crowley offers for Aziraphale to stay the night at his place. Aziraphale responds that his ‘side’ wouldn’t like that. Sometimes when Aziraphale refers to his ‘side’ he is referring to his status as an agent of heaven on paper, often as a component of a faux protest, and sometimes he is referring to his genuine allegiance to God. In this scene it feels like a bit of both. I think he was caught off guard a bit by the offer, and still had some lingering ‘feels wrong’ about it, which he tends to interpret as ‘God doesn’t want me to do this,’ and jumped to his default style of turning Crowley down. He forgot that excuse wasn’t going to work anymore.

Crowley softly but bewilderedly reminds Aziraphale “you don’t have a side anymore,” as if Aziraphale hasn’t realised he is cast out of heaven. I think Crowley hasn’t realised that Aziraphale’s opinion of his relationship to heaven actually isn’t that different even knowing he is cast out. His actual ‘side’ is his personal take on the heaven of God that ought to exist, not the dystopian skyscraper of Gabriel and The Metatron. Aziraphale finds he can ‘feel right’ about going back to Crowley’s flat with him, and they hold hands for the bus ride back.

Aziraphale is surprised to find Michael assisting in the execution. He has always labelled her a bit of a stickler, and feared what she might do to him if she discovered his demon contact. It wasn’t that he was wrong to fear that either. Michael is the one who uncovered their agreement and made a thing out of it, while Gabriel of all people presumed there must be a perfectly innocent explanation. Perhaps he was already having regular chats with Beelzebub, or wanting to at least.

Michael also outed Crowley as unreliable to hell through a back channel. Keep in mind, this would be like if in the middle of the Cold War, a CIA agent called the Kremlin to let them know which of their agents aren’t sufficiently loyal to the USSR. She isn’t serving the interests of heaven by doing that, she is siding with order over heaven the same way Aziraphale sides with his interpretation of God over heaven.

Aziraphale and Crowley reconvene after the failed executions. Heaven has fully disavowed Aziraphale. They have sentenced him to death. They have attempted to kill him. They refer to him as a former angel. And yet…

“With your curly little… and you’re neat white…”

Openly rebelling against heaven didn’t make him fall. Heaven declaring him a traitor and trying to execute him didn’t make him fall. Aziraphale’s ethereal angelic status is fucking titanium. He didn’t lose his ‘side,’ he gained the ability to be honest about being on God’s side, not heaven’s. The 4500 year old sword of Damocles is what fell, and it missed.

Part 8/10

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