Neurodivergent (Headcanon) Alley: Crowley (Good Omens)

Since I started Neurodivergent Alley, some of the characters I’ve highlighted have included Ariel/Eric, Stede Bonnet/Edward Teach, Leslie Knope/Ben Wyatt, Elizabeth Zott/Calvin Evans, and now Aziraphale/Crowley. It really hammers home that I’m not just drawn to individua; characters that I read as neurodivergent—it also greatly influences my favorite fictional couples.

Anyone who’s a fan of both Good Omens and Our Flag Means Death draws inevitable comparisons between them, especially between Aziraphale-Stede and Crowley-Ed. There are numerous parallels to be found within the two sets of characters, and that extends to neurodivergent headcanons as well. While Aziraphale, like Stede, feels more clearly autistic to me—both were the first characters on their respective shows who “pinged” for me in that regard—Crowley and Ed are a bit more covert. As with Ed, Crowley feels more AuDHD to me in that he’s better able to mask and often appears less outwardly stressed than his better half in social situations. He knows how to do what’s expected of him and can quickly adapt to situations, putting on the correct face to keep himself alive and recognizing the cues/ulterior motives that Aziraphale might miss.

(Side note: Neil Gaiman has recently been open about being autistic himself. I wouldn’t say that canonizes my ND interpretations of Aziraphale or Crowley, but I do think it lends credence to them!)

In the ol’ “plushy vs. stabby autism” continuum, it’s no secret where Crowley would fall. Even though he knows how to fit in in various settings, he prefers not to if it isn’t a matter of his or Aziraphale’s safety. He likes rubbing people the wrong way, whether that’s sauntering in drolly when other demons are impatiently waiting on him to deliver the Antichrist child or being rude/threatening to humans. He projects a “keep away from me” air of prickliness, and he can even include Aziraphale in that, despite how much he really does value Aziraphale’s company. When Aziraphale asks him for favors, Crowley often puts on a cantankerous show of refusal before eventually giving in.

Asking questions is deeply embedded in Crowley’s character, to the point that he suggests it’s why he fell and became a demon in the first place. He wants to understand things—facts, but also reasons. And in a cosmos where angels pliantly followed the will of God, wanting to know why you’re meant to be doing something is a big no-no. Questions are doubts, questions are challenges. There’s something that feels sooooooo autistic about Crowley being thrown out of Heaven for his honest and unquenchable desire to understand.

Hand in hand with asking questions comes wanting justice. Crowley may know how to play the part of a demon, pretending he doesn’t care about what happens to others, but he cares deeply. He can’t fathom how God would wipe out the entire Earth beyond the Ark with the great flood. When tasked by Hell to bring devastation upon Job, he can’t bring himself to kill Job’s goats, let alone his children. He can’t resist poking at Aziraphale’s hardline stance on morality, asking how an urchin in 19^th century Edinburgh can be expected to make righteous choices when she’s weighing the options of steal or starve.

Oh, and there’s a scene where Crowley is so upset, his entire body starts smoking in the middle of the street, which is evocative of meltdowns in such a visceral way!

Favorite Characters: Crowley (Good Omens)

Dipping my toes into Good Omens again. I’ve already written about Crowley and Aziraphale together – twice! – but they’re both great on their own as well. Today is all about a certain snake-eyed demon with a taste for Queen and Bentleys (some Crowley-related spoilers.)

Crowley is, in a sense, framed as the numero uno evil since literally the dawn of humanity: in snake form, he’s the one who tempts Eve to the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. He’s responsible for the first sin, and yet, from the very start, even that moment is cast ambiguously. After the deed is done, he and Aziraphale meet and discuss the recent falling-out between God and the first humans, and the two of them wonder whether Crowley’s act was in fact part of God’s Divine and/or Ineffable Plan, making it not evil at all. Crowley good-naturedly muses on the possibility of his having done something “good” by accident.

And that’s Crowley, really. He talks a big demon game, but when you get down to it, that isn’t who is. By the time we get to the main thrust of the story, he’s long since grown tired of what he regards as the tedious and pointless business of tempting humans to sin, and so he instead pursues his own interests on Earth, maintaining his reputation in Hell by sending reports of the outrageous sins he’s just pretending to inspire. Though he’d be the first to argue this point, we see him doing good far more often than he does evil; he saves Aziraphale more than once throughout history, and while he insists that his motives are purely self-serving, he’s the one who comes to Aziraphale suggesting they work together to stop the apocalypse.

He’s an undercover agent of Hell who, let’s be honest, was never really that sold on the party line, and after millennia on Earth, he’s gone native. He likes tooling around among the humans, having fun and low-key keeping Aziraphale out of inadvertent trouble. He admits at one point that he “didn’t mean to” become a fallen angel, and that, when he became a demon, it was more about asking questions than being evil. (And question he does: I love the flashback of him running into Aziraphale as Noah’s building the ark, seeing him try to wrap his head around how flooding the earth could be part of God’s plan.)

All this isn’t to say he’s a secret softie who wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s certainly not as bad as he purports to be, and he has a soft spot for Aziraphale a mile wide, but calling him “just a poor misunderstood demon” wouldn’t cover it. He’s willing to get plenty underhanded in service of his goals, even if those goals are ultimately for the greater good. This comes in handy, as Aziraphale is chronically averse to crossing lines and you don’t avert apocalypses playing by the rules. Still, he plays dirty and he’s not afraid of a little collateral damage. He can definitely be selfish too – when it looks like their plan isn’t panning out, Aziraphale wants to keep working at it, but Crowley is ready to get the hell out of there, wanting the two of them to abandon the earth to the Antichrist and escape to a different solar system.

In other words, he’s a character with a lot to offer: smart and savvy, jaded and self-serving, bored and mean, curious and determined, imaginative and wrathful. At any given moment, he’s at least several of those things at once, and he’s always delightfully cool while doing it!

A Few More Thoughts on Crowley & Aziraphale (Good Omens)

The last time I talked about Good Omens’s central relationship, I discussed Aziraphale and Crowley’s unlikely dynamic as an angel and demon who, over the millennia, have ultimately become very close and team up to save the world from Armageddon. I’m circling back around to them, though, because I want to talk a little about shipping (spoilers.)

I’ve brought up slash ships on this blog before, and I’ve written about plenty of male-male relationships on shows and in movies that are very popularly shipped but non-canonical. But for me, watching Good Omens, I didn’t see a non-canon ship. I instead saw a relationship that, while it remains unexplicit, is pretty definite. I would be very hard-pressed to believe that Sheen and Tennant weren’t playing it like their characters are in love with each other (come on, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the Tenth Doctor give that exact dreamy smile to Rose,) and the dialogue and story aren’t far behind. When they argue to the point of hurting one another, it’s with the intensity of a breakup, and when they’re at their best with each other, they have such a surprisingly-tender way about them.

I know that they don’t say the words “I love you” or “you’re my boyfriend,” and I know that they don’t kiss or hookup, but it still feels different to than something like Steve & Bucky or Sherlock & John. It’s hard to articulate what it is about them exactly, but I know it when I see it. It’s in the way Crowley cries when he thinks Aziraphale is dead, in the way Aziraphale knows that vowing never to talk to him again is the way to spur Crowley to a world-saving idea. It’s in how Aziraphale keeps seeking Crowley out even as he frets about Heaven finding out about his “fraternization” with a demon, in how Crowley insists one moment that he isn’t “nice” and in the next does something nice for Aziraphale just because.

That said, just like I don’t see it as ship-teasing or queer-baiting, I also don’t really see it as a “make it gay, you cowards!” situation, a la the “subtle” (read: barely-existent) approach taken with Dumbledore. Part of it, maybe, is just the fact that they are an angel and a demon, so I don’t necessarily need to apply human labels or expectations to their relationship. But for whatever reason, it’s plain of day to me that Crowley and Aziraphale love each other, and good luck convincing me that the production didn’t want us to believe that.

I’ve seen some online who champion the idea of them as asexuals, either as romantics or as aros in a platonic partnership. I could totally get behind one of those interpretations, leaning more toward romantic aces for me (I wouldn't go as far as to write an Asexual Sighting about either of them, but I can definitely picture them that way.) Because, even without the usual physical signs of affection, the love between them just doesn’t seem like something that’s supposed to be up for debate. There’s no nervous backpedaling when someone insinuates that they’re a couple, no women shoehorned in toward the end to provide a convenient proof of heteronormativity for one or both of them. What we have instead are the way they look at each other, the way they bicker like two celestial beings who’ve literally known each other since the the world began, the way they argue like the world’s ending (even when the world really is ending!), and the way they keep coming back to each other, no matter what happens between them. It’s so lovely, and I’m thoroughly glad that this relationship exists on my TV.

Relationship Spotlight: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)

Catching up on all the Good Omens rambling I missed over the summer because I hadn’t seen it then. Anyone who’s watched the miniseries adaptation of this novel can tell you that the real headline of the piece is Michael Sheen’s Aziraphale and David Tennant’s Crowley, particularly the combination of the two together. Most who adore the miniseries will single out these two as its greatest asset, and even many of those who dislike the miniseries will still admit that Crowley and Aziraphale are great onscreen together. Whatever way you slice it, this is what it all comes down to (some spoilers.)

Right from “in the beginning,” Aziraphale and Crowley have had a complicated history. After Crowley tempts Eve into eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and after Aziraphale gives the two exiled humans the flaming sword he was supposed to be using to guard the gates of Eden, the angel and the demon meet and aren’t altogether sure what to make of each other. They reflect on heaven, hell, God’s Ineffable Plan, and the possibility that they may have bungled which one of them did “the good thing” and “the bad thing.”

The series later takes us on a scenic tour of Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship throughout history, hitting highlights such as Noah’s Ark, the Globe Theatre, the French Revolution, and World War II. Throughout, we get glimpses of this unseen tie that binds them. They’re ostensibly enemies, on opposing sides of a holy war, but every time they run into each other early on, they’re congenial with one another. And not only Aziraphale as you might expect, it being within reason that angels would be nice to everyone – Crowley is also thoroughly pleasant toward Aziraphale, going out of his way to greet the angel in a crowd and make small talk. As time goes on, however, they go beyond even that, moving from amiable acquaintances into becoming very genuinely important to one another. About halfway through that tour of history, we start seeing a pattern of Crowley seeking Aziraphale out, either to get him out of trouble or to proposition him for a two-celestial-being ceasefire (reasoning that he and Aziraphale, working for the forces of evil and good respectively, “cancel each other out,” he points out that they could just not bother and end up with the same result.)

But let’s focus on where Aziraphale and Crowley are in the main time period of the series, during the whole Antichrist/end of the world business. At this point, there’s very little that’s reluctant or tentative about their relationship. They regularly call each other, meet up for lunch or drinks, and discuss the work of their individual sides. Call them friends, call them lovers, call them frenemies, whatever you’d like – these are two celestial beings who are very decidedly in one another’s lives. While it’s not a relationship they’re keen to advertise to their own kinds, there’s no real pretense about them being actual adversaries.

This gets a little thorny for Aziraphale, though. As an angel, like I said, he’s pretty conditioned to be friendly and nice, but he knows he’s also not supposed to “fraternize” with demons. In their relationship, if one of them is going to shy away or pull back, it’s usually Aziraphale. He’s particularly resistant when Crowley suggests they team up to stop the apocalypse. It’s one thing for Aziraphale to let his heavenly orders lie once in a while, but it’s quite another to go against the Great and/or Ineffable Plan, especially working shoulder-to-shoulder with a demon. This is when he starts talking about sides and insisting that he can’t team up with Crowley. Even when Crowley wins Aziraphale over to helping him (after all, if the earth is destroyed in Armageddon, there won’t be any Stephen Sondheim premieres in heaven!), the angel spends a good chunk of the miniseries trying to deny what Crowley really means to him.

As with the “Aziraphale and Crowley throughout history” flashbacks, Crowley in the present day is pretty much all in, both on his plan and his relationship with Aziraphale, which I find continually surprising. For all of Crowley’s growling that he’s dangerous and not “nice” as Aziraphale repeatedly avows, there’s very little that the demon isn’t ultimately willing to do on the angel’s behalf, and he’s often the one fighting for the bond between them. It’s Aziraphale who continues to be unsure. He’s caught between all he’s ever believed in and this friend he technically isn’t supposed to have, one who keeps pointing out how all he’s ever believed in doesn’t actually line up with what he holds most dear. But no matter how often he tries to pull away, he can’t bring himself to cut that tie completely. Ultimately, it comes to him and Crowley standing together between humanity and the end of the world, and there’s no one the other would rather be standing there with.