Favorite Characters: Aziraphale (Good Omens)

Today, I'm staying home for my aunts and uncles.
 
After I wrote about Crowley, it was only a matter of time until I came back around to Aziraphale. While this dynamic duo is absolutely a matching set, they’re both great individually as well. Crowley is maybe more the instant crowd-pleaser as the sometimes-“good” demon (who doesn’t love a fun sympathetic baddie?), but pulling off the character of Aziraphale takes a steady hand, one that I think the miniseries manages beautifully (premise spoilers.)

Crowley’s angelic counterpart, Aziraphale has also been on Earth since the literal beginning of humanity. Charged with carrying out God’s divine and/or ineffable plan by inspiring humans toward good actions, Aziraphale, like Crowley, has been at it so long that he’s let his duties slip a little and has gotten distracted by the pleasures of the world. No, not like that – Aziraphale’s vices, chiefly, are food and culture. He has a weak spot for fine dining, and he’s a great lover of old books and beautiful music. These are all things that we as humans think of as an overall good in the world, but for an angel, they’re meant to be extraneous, not worth bothering about. Aziraphale’s collection of little earthly pleasures is an indiscretion on his part.

But despite Aziraphale sometimes slacking on the heavenly job and being more interested in pastries and musical premieres than he’s strictly supposed to be, he is also very genuinely capital-G “Good.” “Good” characters can be hard to do well, or at least there’s a prevailing impression that they’re hard to do well. Drama requires conflict, and it’s tempting to think of “Good” characters as boring. People clamor for inner demons and moral ambiguity. But as shown by the likes of Steve Rogers, Chidi Anagonye, and Kara Danvers, “Good” can be engaging and watchable too, and in Aziraphale, Good Omens brings that across very well.

This is shown in little ways – right from the start, Aziraphale takes the flaming sword he’s supposed to use to guard the gates of Eden and gives it to Adam and Eve, worrying about their well-being when they’re cast out of the Garden, and when Crowley accidentally hits Anathema on her bike, Aziraphale not only uses some of his miracle mojo to repair it, he also upgrades with with speeds it didn’t have before. More than anything, though, I think this comes through in Michael Sheen’s performance. Aziraphale spends plenty of the story being kind of a fussbudget, but when he’s not so tightly wound, he’s capable of the most earnest, delighted smiles known to man, easily making you believe he cares about nothing so genuinely as the person and/or sunglasses-wearing demon he’s sharing the screen with at that moment.

One key to a successful “Good” character is to make sure they’re still flawed, and Aziraphale checks out there as well. Honestly, his worst quality is probably his most heaven-approved: he can be a stickler for rules and expectations. It’s what gives him pause when Crowley suggests they team up to avert the apocalypse (after all, who’s he to get in the way of God’s ineffable plan, even if it does mean the destruction of the Earth and all the people in it?), and it’s why he’s often the more reluctant of the two in his relationship with Crowley, knowing he’s not “supposed to” like a demon. For Aziraphale, then, his personal growth calls for him to worry less about what heaven will think and act because it’s right, not because it’s prescribed. And watching him come to grips with that is anything but boring.