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Tying up loose ends

Good Omens will wrap with a single 90-minute episode

Creator Neil Gaiman has exited the series in the wake of sexual assault allegations.

Jennifer Ouellette | 197
Michael Sheen and David Tennant star in Prime Video's Good Omens. Credit: Amazon Prime
Michael Sheen and David Tennant star in Prime Video's Good Omens. Credit: Amazon Prime
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The third and final season of Good Omens, Prime Video's fantasy series adapted from the classic 1990 novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, will not be a full season after all, Deadline Hollywood reports. In the wake of allegations of sexual assault against Gaiman this summer, the streaming platform has decided that rather than a full slate of episodes, the series finale will be a single 90-minute episode—the equivalent of a TV movie.

(Major spoilers for the S2 finale of Good Omens below.)

As reported previously, the series is based on the original 1990 novel by Gaiman and the late Pratchett. Good Omens is the story of an angel, Aziraphale (Michael Sheen), and a demon, Crowley (David Tennant), who gradually become friends over the millennia and team up to avert Armageddon. Gaiman's obvious deep-down, fierce love for this project—and the powerful chemistry between its stars—made the first season a sheer joy to watch. Apart from a few minor quibbles, it was pretty much everything book fans could have hoped for in a TV adaptation of Good Omens.

S2 found Aziraphale and Crowley getting back to normal, when the archangel Gabriel (Jon Hamm) turned up unexpectedly at the door of Aziraphale's bookshop with no memory of who he was or how he got there. The duo had to evade the combined forces of Heaven and Hell to solve the mystery of what happened to Gabriel and why.

In the cliffhanger S2 finale, the pair discovered that Gabriel had defied Heaven and refused to support a second attempt to bring about Armageddon. He hid his own memories from himself to evade detection. Oh, and he and Beelzebub (Shelley Conn) had fallen in love. They ran off together, and the Metatron (Derek Jacobi) offered Aziraphale Gabriel's old job. That's when Crowley professed his own love for the angel and asked him to leave Heaven and Hell behind, too. Aziraphale wanted Crowley to join him in Heaven instead. So Crowley kissed him and they parted. And once Aziraphale got to Heaven, he learned his task was to bring about the Second Coming.

The series was renewed for a third and final season to wrap up that unresolved ending. Then this summer, news broke that Gaiman had allegedly sexually assaulted five women. Gaiman denied the allegations, but the news prompted Disney to halt production on its planned adaptation of Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. Prime Video put the production of Good Omens S3 on hold, which had been in the earliest stages of pre-production. (Netflix also canceled its Dead Boy Detectives series, although this did not seem to be related to the allegations.)

In September, Deadline reported that Gaiman, while still maintaining his innocence, had offered to take a step back from Good Omens so that the final season could move forward. The folks at Prime Video apparently decided to split the difference with a 90-minute TV movie to wrap up the storyline. Per Deadline:

Gaiman contributed to the writing of the series finale but will not be working on the production and his production company the Blank Corporation is no longer involved. A new writer is expected to finish up the work, although insiders said that deal has not been closed.

Filming starts early next year in January.

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Jennifer Ouellette Senior Writer
Jennifer is a senior reporter at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.
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