Time for a Refresher on the Leader of Hell in ‘Good Omens’

The second season of Good Omens is fast approaching, with all six episodes set to be released on Prime Video on July 28. 

The trailers released in the lead up to the premiere show Aziraphale the angel (Michael Sheen) and Crowley the demon (David Tennant) trying to enjoy their life together on Earth after stopping the apocalypse. 

Of course, things don’t go as planned. Prime Video’s blurb for Good Omens’ second season tells us that “a naked archangel turns up at the door to renegade angel Aziraphale’s bookshop, with no memory of who he is or how he got there, and Aziraphale and retired demon Crowley’s lives become extremely complicated. Heaven and Hell are both desperate to find the runaway. As Crowley and Aziraphale attempt to fix a human romance, things become increasingly unsafe for them, in the past and the present.”

Heaven and Hell coming down on Aziraphale and Crowley means that we will get to see a whole bunch of new and old characters doing their best to make our favourite duo’s lives as chaotic as possible—and one of those characters is none other than Beelzebub.

So who is Beelzebub in Good Omens?

Beelzebub—who, according to Neil Gaiman, goes by ze/zem/zir pronouns—appears in the first season of Good Omens as Crowley’s boss, a high-ranking demon and Prince of Hell. Ze is the infernal counterpart to Jon Hamm’s archangel Gabriel, who in turn is Aziraphale’s boss during the whole Armageddon situation.

Beelzebub tries to convince the Antichrist, Adam Young, to actually set off the war between Heaven and Hell, promising that he will be able to rule the entire world once the fighting is done—the only time we see zem smiling throughout the whole series—and then appears as the presiding judge at Crowley-but-actually-Aziraphale’s trial.

The term “Beelzebub” appears in Christian theological sources as one of the many names for Satan, while demonology identifies this figure with one of the seven Princes of Hell, also known as the “Lord of the Flyers” due to his ability to fly, or the “Lord of the Flies”—which is clearly the route Good Omens takes, since its Beelzebub appears constantly surrounded by flies and with a fly-like appearance, starting from zir headpiece. 

Portrayed by British actress Anna Maxwell Martin in the first season of Good Omens, Beelzebub will return during the show’s season portrayed by Shelley Conn, replacing Martin due to some scheduling conflicts. We recently saw Conn in the second season of Bridgerton as Lady Mary Sharma, the mother of Simone Ashley’s Kate and Charithra Chandran’s Edwina Sharma.

(featured image: Prime Video)