Good Omens Season 2 Premiere Recap: The Boys Are Back (and One’s in the Buff) — Plus, Grade It!
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To an eternal being, four years probably doesn’t seem like such a long time. But to us mere mortals, the wait between Good Omens Seasons 1 and 2 felt interminable. Thank the heavens, then, that today Prime Video brings us the next chapter in the exploits of the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley.
The premiere episode, “The Arrival,” opens with a flashback to Crowley and Aziraphale’s first meeting “before the beginning,” as a title card tells us, when both were angels gazing upon the brand-new cosmos. “Look at you, you’re gorgeous,” David Tennant’s Crowley coos, and Michael Sheen’s Aziraphale is nearly beside himself with joy… until he realizes that his fellow celestial being is talking about the universe laid out before them. Aziraphale then harshes Crowley’s buzz when he mentions that this new world will include humans soon, and that they’ll be the focus of everything. An irked Crowley doesn’t like that, and says he’s going to take it up with their boss, aka God. “How much trouble can I get into just asking a few questions?” he wonders.
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Then we cut to present-day London, where Crowley is in a funk, wondering what the point of… well, anything is anymore. He’s soon visited by Shax (Miranda Richardson), Hell’s posh new ambassador to the capital city. She’s heard that something is going down in Heaven, but Crowley has no intel: He says he doesn’t talk to Aziraphale anymore. (Gasp!)
Meanwhile, a naked Gabriel walks down a street in SoHo, seemingly unbothered by both his complete absence of clothes and the reactions of passers-by. He’s carrying a cardboard box that covers his holiest of regions, but it doesn’t leave much to the imagination. The angel winds up at Aziraphale’s shop and is so happy to see him that he hugs him (that booty shake!), then amiably asks for help figuring out who he is and also “who I am.”
Aziraphale, highly ruffled, ushers him inside and covers him with a blanket while trying to figure out what the heck is going on. Gabriel says he doesn’t recognize Aziraphale and has no clue what’s up, but he was guided by a feeling. “You know what it’s like when you don’t know anything at all but you’re totally certain that everything would be better if you were near one particular person?” he wonders — and my, doesn’t our favorite blonde angel react strongly to that? Gabriel, oblivious, goes on to add as an afterthought that “something terrible” might happen and there’s a “thing” he’s supposed to give Aziraphale. The mystery item is supposed to be in the box… but the box is empty.
What’s a flustered angel to do but call his demonic bestie for help? Crowley arrives and wastes no time going apoplectic when he sees Gabriel smiling blandly at him, wearing his blanket like a toga. He reminds Aziraphale that the high mucky-muck angel once tried to cast him into Hell, and he refuses to help. “You’re on your own with this one,” he says, so angry that he causes an electrical storm the minute he leaves the shop.
Meanwhile, in Heaven, archangels Michael and Uriel debate who’ll boss everyone around in Gabriel’s absence. Michael very much wants the job. A low-level scrivener named Muriel finds a material object — a near-impossibility in the otherworldly realm — and brings it to their superiors: It’s an empty matchbox from a pub called The Resurrectionist. Gabriel, it appears, has “gone to Earth,” Uriel says.
Turns out, Hell is looking for the MIA archangel, as well. Beelzebub (now played by Bridgerton’s Shelley Conn) yanks Crowley back to Hell to proposition him: If he’ll help find Gabriel, the legions of the damned will forgive him for everything. However, anyone found to be involved in the angel’s disappearance will be dealt with via “extreme sanctions,” aka being erased from the Book of Life. “They won’t just be gone,” Beelzebub warns, “they’ll never have existed.” This shakes the normally unflappable Crowley, but he says nothing about nakey Gabriel.
During all of this, two of Aziraphale’s neighbors in SoHo — café owner Nina and record-shop owner Maggie — get locked in Nina’s establishment as a result of Crowley’s electrical storm frying the security system. This is a boon to Maggie, who fancies Nina, but not so much to Nina, whose irate partner keeps texting her from home. Still, before Crowley returns and fixes the locks, it’s clear there’s something brewing between the two women.
Once the ladies are freed, Crowley returns to the bookshop and apologizes to Aziraphale. But the angel demands “the I Was Wrong Dance” before he’ll forgive his friend for ditching him — and though Crowley initially balks, he winds up giving the requested performance, which involves hand flourishes and a twirl. A mollified Aziraphale accepts the mea culpa, and they move on to the bigger problem at hand: What to do with Gabriel?
Agreeing that they need to hide him from both Heaven and Hell, but also acknowledging that performing a miracle is the equivalent of shooting a flare that Heaven certainly will notice, the guys decide to each do half a miracle, which will slip by any celestial censors, right? So they do, and they’re pretty sure it works. They start calling Gabriel “Jim,” all the better to keep his true identity a secret, and seem pretty pleased with the solution they’ve devised.
Cut to Heaven, where alarms are blaring and the two half-miracles have formed one full miracle that definitely drew heavenly attention. Oops.
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the premiere? Grade it via the poll below, then hit the comments with your thoughts!
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