*** This article will contain minor spoilers for the first episode of Good Omens season 2, so be warned. ***
The second season of Good Omens is finally here, after a cool four years of waiting for it. I personally blazed through it in half a day—blocked my calendar for it and all—and now I am very much still reeling from everything, exchanging frantic audios with my friends, and diving headfirst into the Tumblr tags.
I’m pretty sure Neil Gaiman, Good Omens’ showrunner and creator, is there as well, looking at all the reactions to this season’s six episodes like someone looking over a job well done. Because it really was.
While there are so many things I desperately want to over-analyze and cry about—those of you who have reached the end of the show definitely know what I’m referring to—there’s one detail in this season’s first episode, “The Arrival,” that immediately made me a) squeal with delight and b) realize we were on an excellent track and that we were going to get everything our little fandom hearts ever wanted. And that’s one of the songs that David Tennant’s Crowley listens to while in his Bentley.
As we know from the first season of Good Omens—and the book as well—Crowley’s Bentley is just like any normal car. It’s vintage and perfectly kept, despite its owner driving it around London like there’s no such thing as traffic laws. Crowley has had it for so long that the car has developed somewhat of a personality of its own. The most notable example of that is that any music (be it cassette tapes or CDs) that’s left in it for more than a fortnight will inevitably be turned into a “Best of Queen” compilation.
We’ve had plenty of instances of the Bentley choosing the perfect Queen song for the moment in season one. From playing “Bicycle Race” when Crowley and Michael Sheen’s Aziraphale accidentally crash into Adria Arjona’s Anathema to a poignant “I’m in Love With My Car” when Crowley manages to cross the ring of fire surrounding London as Armageddon is about to descend on Earth.
And I’m so happy we got a similar moment in season two. When Crowley learns through Miranda Richardson’s Shax that whoever is found helping the memoryless archangel Gabriel (brilliantly portrayed by Jon Hamm) is going to be punished by Heaven with extreme sanctions, he jumps in his Bentley and rushes to Aziraphale’s bookshop to the tune of Queen’s “Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy”.
It might not seem important at first, but that’s where fandom and fancams come into play. Among the many soundbites that fans enjoy using to make edits of their favorite ships, there’s also one that has enjoyed a bit of popularity, especially on TikTok. Even if it all starts from a Tumblr post, as it always does.
Said post, by user @mattussy-murdock, reads: “My favorite ship dynamic is good old-fashioned lover boy x killer queen.” This inspired fancams that feature audio mash-ups of these two songs, with excerpts from the show or film or media du jour that explain the old-fashioned lover boy/killer queen dynamic.
You’ll find plenty of Crowley and Aziraphale fancams under this sound, and that alone should tell you that the powers at play behind Good Omens are perfectly aware of what the fandom is thinking and creating. But it’s the fact that they associated “Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy” with Crowley specifically that is the perfect reassurance that creators and fans are pretty much on the same wavelength.
At first glance, Crowley might seem like the killer queen of the relationship, and Aziraphale the good old-fashioned lover boy, based on their personal style and general attitude towards humanity. But it doesn’t take much to realize that it’s actually the other way around.
(featured image: Amazon Prime Video)
Published: Jul 30, 2023 02:22 pm