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Gabriel’s (missing) cross

Let’s put everything we know about that spooky statue of the Archangel Gabriel in one thread to make the conversation about its possible meaning as a Good Omens 3 clue more structured. Starting off with the relevant part of the official commentary from X-Ray:

Douglas Mackinnon got one thing wrong in his part of the interview — Gabriel wasn’t carved by “some guy in Italy,” but a British sculptor and prop maker David Field working as a part of the team at 3DEye in London.

Technically speaking, it’s a gorgeous piece of hand-carved expanded polystyrene with a clay sculpted head on top of it — even if the Archangel’s smug likeness isn’t that pleasant to look at, all things considered. The scenic artists from 3DEye made it look like stone afterwards.

The body itself took ten days to sculpt and is a faithful copy of the famous statue on Ponte Sant'Angelo in Rome called Angel with the Cross by Ercole Ferrata. It stands on the inscription “Cuius principatus super humerum eius” (“Whose government shall be upon His shoulder”, Isaiah 9:16), and this quote makes much more sense for Gabriel than the cross in his hands. The usual iconography of the Archangel uses a trumpet or a white lily instead.

Ponte Sant'Angelo was originally used to expose the heads of those sentenced to death — each of the angelic statues on it carry Arma Christi, the Instruments of the Passion. Like the Second Coming, what seems to be a hopeful message to the Chosen Ones can also be a warning for the others.

The statue of Gabriel, first shown in full in the cemetery scene of the Good Omens 2 title sequence, reappears at the very end as a part of the bridge leading to the biggest Easter egg — at least according to Peter Anderson, the animator behind it — which is the lift in the background, implying how we’re getting closer towards the Second Coming. Notice how the cross broke down in half at some point between these two scenes!

And it disappears in the plot as well: Gabriel’s memory depicts it only from his point of view, with the camera deliberately moving slightly to the right and stopping at his eye level. The centered, establishing shots show the statue with empty hands as a bookend.

I believe that this cross is meant to serve as a foreshadowing, a reminder of the absolution of sins and eternal life through Christ’s sacrifice and Second Coming. We see it only through Gabriel and Aziraphale’s eyes — when Beelzebub looks at the statue, the cross is not there.

As seen in the BTS photos and videos, it’s not an editing error, but a deliberate positioning of the physical props on set. The cross was clearly meant to be a removable part of the statue and displayed in a specific way to convey a message to the audience.

The question remains: is it a reassurance, something to look forward to, or maybe rather a warning?

Not helpfully at all, the traditional use of angelic imagery in Christian cemeteries matches both interpretations.

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LATER

#AAAAGGGGHHH #good omens #aziraphale #crowley #aziracrow #ineffable husbands #this is SO GOOD

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I think the most fun part of monsters inc is boo calling sulley “kitty” and mike wazowski by full government name

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I live for the parallels!!!

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some of my favorite replies to this tweet. happy lesbian visibility week!

#this made my day 🥹 #lesbian visibility week

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A little animatic I made after brainrotting “It Only Takes a Moment” after rewatching WallE. It took two months but I DID IT

#🥹 #good omens #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #good omens animatic #good omens fanart #aziraphale #crowley

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thinking about how like. as a kid growing up in the light-polluted suburbs, space was always somewhere else. it was in the eyepiece of a telescope, star clusters and the andromeda galaxy and the orion nebula (good luck seeing any other galaxies or nebulae from suburbia) all faint and fuzzy, and outside the eyepiece, nothing. just a handful of stars in a not-that-dark sky. it was either that or look up hubble pics

i knew, in theory, that the night sky was space. but in practice i found that hard to believe since the sky i could see barely resembled the wonders of the cosmos described to me in documentaries or books. that telescope eyepiece was like a gateway into another world where faint hints of these things really did exist, because they didn't exist in my sky

and then i started going to dark sky sites, and it's all just. there. it's real. you can just see the plane of our galaxy with its star clouds and dust lanes

one time, a friend and i stopped in the middle of nowhere in kansas on the way back from a road trip. it was the darkest and most remote night sky i've ever seen. she pointed to a fuzzy little cloud fairly close to the horizon, like a puff of steam rising from the spout of the teapot of sagittarius. it was the lagoon nebula. she also pointed out the andromeda galaxy, a distinct smear on the sky

not with a telescope, but with the naked eye. everything was just there! sure, it didn't lookk like hubble pics, but it wasn't just the night sky anymore - it really was space

i think one of the saddest things about light pollution is that we live in a time where humans have unprecedented knowledge about the universe and our place in it. we can look at features of the night sky and understand the immensity and significance of it all. you can look at the puff of steam in sagittarius and know that suns are being born there

but for most people, these facts are distant and irrelevant, because they can't see them in the sky above their heads, and i think that's a tragic loss for our species

#this is one of the few perks of living in numbing bumfuck nowhere ill admit

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I get my media recommendations the old fashioned way: by watching someone I follow on here go on an unhinged reblog spree of media related content until I eventually decide to go "alright, what's all this then"

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New discourse: it's actually predatory to date someone with a different star sign than you, because the differences in your personalities means you'll never be able to have exactly the same life experiences, thus leaving a knowledge and power gap between the two of you which will inevitably lead to an abusive relationship!

also if you're a Sag and you're dating a Taurus, that means you're secretly seeking a May-December relationship, which is age gap coded!

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It’s so funny how Crowley is constantly saying “nothing to do with me! The humans thought of that themselves!” about various human atrocities. Oh no, that’s terrible, who gave humans the idea to think for themselves? We’re all trying to find the guy who did this.

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reminder that digital libraries aren’t owned, also why pirating digital content is a necessity

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#I remember they had me count while they put me under anesthesia as a kid #and I thought I could pretend to nod off but actually stay awake and watch the surgery #didn't work but to this day I swear i could do it if I have another go #I wonder if it would be weird to bring a cam-corder and ask them to film it