Why didn’t Aziraphale forgive Crowley after the “little dance?” Forgiveness in Good Omens

Here I seek to answer three questions:

1. Could Crowley reverse his damnation and reconcile with Heaven? If so, how?

2. What is Aziraphale really doing when he keeps offering Crowley unsolicited forgiveness?

3. Why didn’t Aziraphale say he forgave Crowley after the apology dance? This last one is incredibly important and I’ll argue that it helps answer the first question.

It’s pretty interesting to Google the theological debate about whether fallen angels such as Lucifer can be forgiven. To summarize and vastly oversimplify, some people say that anybody who truly repents can be forgiven. Others say that angels and fallen angels are qualitatively different from humans and are locked into their initial moral choices with no ability to change them. Others say the ability to truly repent is itself a gift of God that will not be granted to the fallen angels. There’s a variation of this one that says the fallen could repent but because repentance involves humbling oneself and the fallen’s inherent sin was pride, that will just never happen. (This is pretty much Milton’s take, and I think GO owes a lot to Paradise Lost.)

At any rate, it doesn’t really matter what theologians say but rather what the internal rules of GO are. Aziraphale repeatedly suggests the answer is no, that Crowley is inherently evil and one of the bad guys in a permanent sort of way. I strongly suspect that Aziraphale is wrong, misled by his tendency to oversimplify things into black and white and his holier than thou perspective.

My first reason is that both he and Crowley repeatedly make - and are shown struggling with - moral choices, and bearing the consequences of those choices. This suggests that within the GO universe, they have full moral agency. If they have moral agency, they are not permanently either good or evil. If they are moral free agents, bearing the consequences of their choices, this certainly suggests the possibility that, like humans, they could fully repent, ask for and receive forgiveness.

Another reason I suspect A is wrong is the bandstand scene in S1. Aziraphale offers the first (in the episode tubelike, not the historical timeline) of his unsolicited statements of forgiveness (more on this later), provoking Crowley’s outburst, “I don’t want to be forgiven! Not ever!” Combined with the entire history of this character, I take this to mean that Crowley rejected Heaven not once but repeatedly. He’s seen what Heaven does to humans (and dolphins, and goats), over and over again, and he keeps saying no. That’s why he says “not ever.” That’s also why he says he doesn’t want to be forgiven. He doesn’t want what they’re offering. The price of forgiveness is too high - he would have to say, and mean, that his principled rejection of Heaven’s cruelty was itself wrong.

A third reason I think the answer is yes is what happens with the apology dance, which I think is incredibly important and will discuss below.

Bit first I’ll segue to point (2): what exactly is Aziraphale doing with all his unsolicited statements of forgiveness? As he says to Maggie, forgiveness is one of his favorite things, and he’s very good at it. But is he?

A’s purest expression of forgiveness, I think, is during S2E2, the pivotal Job episode. Crowley looks him in the eye and convinces him that he “longs” to destroy Job’s innocent children. Aziraphale genuinely despairs at this moment. He despairs so deeply that he cannot bring himself to forgive C. But he’s a good enough soul that he wishes that C may be forgiven by a force greater and better than himself. This is a painful moment to watch, and I think reflects Aziraphale’s essential goodness in a way that the other forgiveness statements don’t.

The next time he forgives Crowley, during the spat at the bandstand, he does so in a somewhat mean-spirited way. By granting forgiveness, he sends the message loud and clear that Crowley is wrong, wrong, wrong for disagreeing with Heaven. It’s just another way for A to insist that Crowley is evil. Also, by offering forgiveness, Aziraphale imposes a feeling of control at a moment when he’d otherwise feel totally destabilized by the impending apocalypse, the argument with Crowley, and the proposed elopement. He may have momentarily thought about accepting C’a offer, but when he offers his forgiveness instead, he’s retreating to his firm self image: Crowley is evil and in need of forgiveness, A is good. He is soothing his own feelings, not those of Crowley.

The next time is shortly afterward, when Crowley pulls up in the Bentley and tries to persuade A to flee to Alpha Centauri. (After the lamest apology in the history of apologies - more on that later.) A forgives him again, and this time C reacts in pain as if he’d been slapped. He is actually trying to save A here, and has just been told again that he is evil.

Finally, in the closing scene of E6, after Crowley forces the kiss on Aziraphale, Aziraphale pulls himself together and spits out his forgiveness through tight lips. This again has absolutely nothing to do with C, but is all about A trying to feel in control of the situation after losing his sense of agency. Not only was the kiss forced on him, but for an instant he actually wavered - he toyed with the idea of returning the kiss. Through his statement of forgiveness, he rejects that moment of uncertainty and reclaims his identity as an essentially heavenly (and asexual!) angel who is very good at forgiveness. He uses it to put the world back in its familiar black and white categories, telling Crowley yet again that Crowley is evil and he himself, Aziraphale, is good.

When Maggie thanks him for forgiving her rent, he downplays it to Crowley by calling it “a purely selfish action.” This, I think, is far truer than A thinks. Generally, when A forgives, it IS selfish. It’s to make himself feel better, cling to his self-image as a good being, and feel in control of a situation that otherwise threaten that self image.

This finally brings us to question (3). So what’s going on with the apology dance, and why DOESN’T this earn Aziraphale’s forgiveness? The little apology dance is incredibly important, not just to C and A’s relationship, but as a model of the act of repentance.

First, let’s touch on Crowley’s previous lame-ass apology, at the Bentley during his second attempt to get A to flee with him to Alpha Centauri. He says “whatever I said, I’m sorry. Work with me here, I’m apologizing!” But that’s a textbook example of a non-apology. He’s not sorry for what he said, does not want to know why A rejected him last time, and is just trying to force him to agree to come away. There’s concern here for A - he’s terrified that A will suffer during the upcoming apocalypse - but it’s also pretty selfish and un-selfaware.

That brings us to the incredibly important genuine apology in Ep 5. Crowley has learned that Aziraphale is in the direct line of fire of heavenly retaliation, that it is too late to dump Gabriel in Dartmoor, and that the only possible hope is to protect Gabriel. He doesn’t (yet) feel any sense of compassion for Gabriel (though that does come later when he makes Gabriel a cup of cocoa), but he realizes Aziraphale was right about having to help Gabriel.

But (as Milton would agree) one of the defining characteristics of a fallen angel is pride. Crowley tries to avoid apologizing by asking Aziraphale to “take it as said.” Aziraphale recognizes his opportunity here, because (for the first time?) Crowley clearly actually feels remorse. But remorse isn’t enough. There has to be repentance too. So Aziraphale insists on the apology itself “with the little dance.” In other words, he insists not only on the clear verbal statement of remorse but also on Crowley humbling his pride. Despite Crowley’s prideful attempt to hold his head up and glare at Aziraphale in the final move of the dance, it is designed to end up with him bowing his head to Aziraphale, a classic physical gesture of humility.

This event is, I think, critical to the earlier questions of repentance and forgiveness. After being prompted (coached?) by Aziraphale, Crowley heals the rift with Aziraphale by not only feeling remorse but also expressing repentance in words and body language. NOTICE THAT AZIRAPHALE DOES NOT SAY HE FORGIVES HIM. He says, “very nice.” (For the moment let’s skip over the incredibly lascivious expression that Michael Sheen adds here …)

The message here is that Crowley himself healed the breach between them by (a) feeling genuine remorse and (b) genuinely humbling himself by expressing repentance. Aziraphale didn’t do it by forgiving him. It was entirely up to Crowley the entire time. He could come home to Aziraphale at any time, and finally figured out how to do it.

Now I hope you can see why I think this is directly related to question 1 above. Could Crowley get back into Heaven by feeling remorse and repenting? Yes, I think so. I think the apology dance shows that it’s entirely up to him. But we know he doesn’t feel remorse for his rejection of Heaven. As he says, “they’re toxic.” And there’s no way he’s going to go through the humiliation of repenting without that genuine sense of remorse.

So in my book, (1) Crowley could get back to Heaven under his own power just as he came back home to Aziraphale under his own power; (2) Aziraphale generally uses forgiveness not as an act of compassion but as an expression of control and a way to reinforce his self-image as a good being; and (3) Aziraphale didn’t forgive Crowley after the dance because that’s not how their relationship would be fixed. Their relationship just needed Crowley to do the work, and to do it right. That’s what Aziraphale is acknowledging with his (distractingly thirsty) “very nice.” He’s saying, “you did it.”

(A really important corollary: If Crowley is a full moral agent with the power to ask for and receive forgiveness, then the Metatron’s offer is even more bogus than we already suspected, because nobody but Crowley could do the work of repentance required for forgiveness. It can’t be given to him, by Aziraphale or anybody else.)

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