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Culture > Entertainment

An Amateur Analysis of the Good Omens Title Sequence: Part One

Savannah Tew
Her Campus Placeholder Avatar College of Charleston Contributor
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at C of C chapter.

On May 31, 2019, the Amazon Prime released the TV series adaptation of Sir Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens. The show follows the events of the days leading up to Armageddon, all in accordance with The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, and the efforts of several parties interested in putting the whole business to a stop. Said interested parties include an angel and a demon, a Witchfinder Private/computer engineer who isn’t great at either and a witch, a group of kids too young to know the impact they could have on the world and one Antichrist, and a Witchfinder Sergeant and his long-suffering neighbor. 

The show boasted an incredible cast, starring David Tennant as the demon Crowley and Micheal Sheen as the angel Aziraphale, both of whom executed their roles to perfection. The soundtrack featured Queen and Tori Amos, among others, and the original score, composed by David Arnold, was wonderfully suited to the quirky sincerity of the show. The series is still streaming on Amazon Prime and can be watched comfortably in the span of a single afternoon if you’re so inclined. 

One of the most incredible aspects of this series has got to be the opening title sequence. It is a playground of symbolism, easter eggs, references to the book, and so much more. Not to mention, it is breathtaking in its stylization, using  2-d, 3-d, and paper cut animation as well as live-action sequences all stitched together into one glorious love letter to this story. Since my very first viewing last spring (the first of about five viewings total), I have been seized by the desire to break this sequence down second by second to pull out as many of the details as possible, to puzzle and to theorize, if not to simply appreciate all of the efforts that went into making it. 

So I gave it a shot.

To the best of my knowledge and ability, here is my assessment of the symbolism, imagery, and references in the Opening Sequence of Good Omens, as well as how they relate to the story and what I think they mean in the Narrative. Due to the absolute mass of this essay, I’ll be breaking it up into two parts for readability. 

Notes: 

  1. When I refer to God, I am referring to the God that appears in the narrative of Good Omens, and any claims on Her will or intentions are in a purely fictional context, not at all meant to offend or make assumptions about the God that any reader might themselves believe in. References from the Bible are used occasionally for confirmation of possible religious references and to resolve timeline issues. 
  2. I am only a fan, not an expert on Good Omens. I am simply outlining what I think some things could mean, and I’m not sure that any of it is right. I’m just having a good time.
  3. Wensleydale themed drinking game: drink every time I say “actually.” 
  4. Beware ye, reader, for here, there doth be spoilers. 

In the first fifteen seconds (0:00-0:15) of the opening sequence, we see the sunrise over Crowley and Aziraphale as two hooded figures follow behind them. As they move forward, a gnarled apple tree with a yellow eye in the middle of it grows next to their path, and a redheaded imp takes an apple from it. The sequence then fades briefly to black, as the characters enter the garden of Eden. 

The very opening shot, where only Crowley and Aziraphale are walking together in an empty landscape, is supposed to represent the creation of the earth at the beginning of time. According to Creative and Art Directors Peter Anderson and Red Issac, as well as Senior Animator Alex Knowles, there was an emphasis on creating a linear story, following the characters from the creation to Armageddon throughout the entire sequence. The landscape is barren on purpose because nothing had really been made yet by this point, including Eden. 

As we approach the wall of Eden, Crowley and Aziraphale are joined by two hooded figures. I believe that these figures are Adam and Eve being led into Eden right after the creation of man and woman. There was a theory by the Nerdist that the imp who plucks the apple from the tree as they passed by was meant to represent the temptation of Eve and the downfall of man. However, since we’ve already decided for the sake of this analysis that the events of Eden have yet to take place, I would offer an alternative theory. 

Apples are a symbol of knowledge in Good Omens, especially forbidden knowledge. Characters are constantly questioning, resulting in a variety of consequences.  Eve eats the apple and humanity falls, but humanity still manages to create lots of beautiful things. Adam nearly destroys the world because he can’t fathom why people have just let it waste away. Newt chases knowledge of computer engineering even as he fails time and time again, only to have what he considers to be his fatal flaw save them all in the end. Crowley falls for asking questions. 

Now, Crowley mentions that he “didn’t mean to fall, [he] just hung around the wrong people” (“The Book”). But overall his thirst for knowledge and his questioning of the Almighty is eventually what led him to fall, which might have been stoked by Lucifer’s influence but certainly was not caused by it (“The Doomsday Option”). Just like Eve, Crowley wanted the knowledge that was forbidden to him, and, just like Eve, he found out the hard way that Heaven does not tolerate curiosity. He describes the process of falling as painful, and resents being referred to as “a fallen angel” (“Hard Times”). And to top it all off, Crowley never actually gets his answers. He is still, after all this time, asking “Why?” The main plot of the show ends with the realization that no one, not even Heaven and Hell, has even the faintest idea of what’s going on.  

The Biblical timeline supports the theory of this representing the Fall as well. In Genesis 1:1, “God created the Heavens and the Earth.” I’m going to take this as something of a summary of everything that happens in the rest of Genesis, not that She literally made it all at once. Since “heavens” is plural, I’m going to interpret it to mean both Heaven with a capital-H and, like, space and stuff. So we have Heaven made and all the angels there within, including Lucifer and the angels who fall with him. Then in Genesis 2 and 3 we have the events of Eden. In Good Omens, the serpent is Crowley and in the Bible the serpent is Satan, but regardless of who it’s supposed to be, they were once an angel and have now, in between the creation of the Heavens and the exile from Eden, fallen.

In short, this apple here could represent both the constant search for understanding and justification that the characters seek over the course of the story, as well as the events that led up to the Fall. 

Once the sequence fades back in, we see that we are now in the Garden of Eden, and the procession has grown longer. Over the span of another ten seconds (0:16-0:25), the group traipses through the Garden before transitioning to the modern day in the next scene change. 

Eden is significant not only because it was the setting for the downfall of man, nor simply because it was the first place that Azirphale and Crowley met. It was the scene of Aziraphale’s first instance of doubt in the Almighty and his first rebellion against the choices made by Heaven. Doubt in Good Omens is interesting because it’s not brought about necessarily by disillusionment with an authority figure. This can be the case with Aziraphale, but his doubt is more to do with what it means to be an angel. When Crowley reacts with surprise to the fact that Aziraphale gave his flaming sword away to Adam and Eve, Aziraphale responds with “Well, I had to” (Pratchett and Gaiman 4). In the show, episode 4, when the angels come to tell him to choose sides in the coming war, Aziraphale clearly states that he believes it is their duty to “keep all this working so [humans] can make choices,” essentially saying that its right to avoid Armageddon because it would give more people the chance to live their lives and maybe go to Heaven (“Saturday Morning Funtime”). Now, I think he knows he’s not going to convince Uriel, Micheal, Sandalphon, or Crowley but it’s important to him to know that what he’s doing is still in the written parameters of his duties as an angel, even if, technically, it seems like he’s going against the will of the Almighty. He decides that his identity as an angel is centered around protecting humanity, even if he has to find the loopholes in the Head Office Memos to do it. We can make an important distinction between the characters of Crowley and Aziraphale here: Crowley’s doubt manifests itself in demanding answers while Aziraphale fills in the gaps between what he knows and what he doesn’t with his own interpretations. Aziraphale doesn’t need answers, he makes his own. It is interesting to note that while Crowley was originally leading the procession, Aziraphale switches places with him once they reach Eden. 

And how about that procession, eh? This is a great place, while the group is small, to point out that many of the characters in the procession are either real people or cutout figures with the 2-d manipulated faces of David Tennant and Micheal Sheen animated over their heads. This was done, so say the creators, to establish early on that every character has a little bit of good and a little bit of evil in them, and that no one is really extremely one way or the other. This is important because it reminds us the characters are defined by the choices that they make. 

Right behind Aziraphale is Crowley, who causes a cactus to wilt simply by walking past it. I’m taking this as both a mini representation of how Eden falls because of Crowley’s involvement and as a reference to Crowley’s home garden and his distaste for plants who don’t grow well enough for him. Behind Crowley, we have a hunched man in robes with a beard, the same hooded figures, a woman in a veil, another, a different imp with a large head, and another, taller, robed man. Both of the robed men could possibly be monks casting guesses about the date and time of the creation. The hooded figures I still believe to be Adam and Eve, only now they are being led out of Eden. I have no idea who the imp is supposed to be, although he does make several appearances throughout the rest of the title sequence. 

That brings us to the lady in the veil. Now, this is probably a stretch, but I think that this woman might represent Agnes Nutter, and I believe that it is appropriate for her to be in the procession in Eden because Agnes Nutter could be a stand-in for God. 

Hear me out. 

Agnes is privy to and makes public information about the events leading up to Armageddon in her book The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. God does the same thing by disclosing information about the Great Plan to Heaven and Hell. Both have their word taken as gospel, both are never doubted by their followers (Heaven and Hell for God and Crowley, Aziraphale, Newt, and Anathema for Agnes). And, most importantly, both clearly have the knowledge that the world isn’t actually going to end at Armageddon, but they don’t let on until after everyone else already knows. For Agnes, this is evident through the writing and publishing of Further Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter. For God, I’ll have to rely on Aziraphale’s insistence that the failure of Armageddon/the Great Plan must have been because Armageddon wasn’t a part of God’s Ineffable Plan (“The very Last Day of the Rest of their Lives”). This isn’t to say that Agnes Nutter is literally God, only that she seems to be to humanity (and Crowley and Aziraphale and the Antichrist) what God is to Heaven and Hell. 

It’s appropriate for Agnes to be here in the procession if she is a stand-in for God because God did literally walk in Eden using a physical form, as described in Genesis 3, right before She cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden. It’s easily possible that I’ve completed over thought this woman; she could definitely be a nun or a different significant figure. 

As the group moves through Eden, they pass two huge statues of a pair of toddlers, which are identical to the babies on the cards that God uses to explain the baby-swap mistake in episode one (“In the Beginning”). Moving forward only a few seconds more, and we can see a third toddler statue, this time with a tail and a pair of horns. This is, of course, the Antichrist. 

Passing the Antichrist (0:26-0:30), we finally reach the modern-day, where we see Aziraphale and Crowley toasting as the procession continues on in the background. The table is from the Ritz, and the toast can be either a reference to the first drunken conversation that led them to intervene in the raising of the Antichrist or to the final “to the world!” toast in episode six (“The Very Last Day of the Rest of their Lives”). The Bentley and the Bookshop both make an appearance. The upper floors of the Bookshop are on fire, which is a reference to the fact that…the Bookshop is set on fire in episode four (“Saturday Morning Funtimes”). A fun easter egg in this segment is the red telephone booth that Crowley calls Aziraphale from in episode one. It’s a small thing; I think it’s funny that no matter where David Tenannat goes he can’t escape association with telephone boxes. Also, the red phone box, which is sometimes called a Scott Kiosk, is something of a British cultural symbol. This is in line with the production team’s desire to make the title sequence “feel like a British, bonkers epic.” 

The procession has been pushed to the back, where they are walking over a cracked desert. The desert is reminiscent of the one that lay just beyond the walls of Eden in the show. There is a sense of exodus to this. Ultimately, the procession is fleeing Armageddon, and we start to get the idea that all paths lead to the inevitable. 

The sequence then cuts to the procession (0:31-0:38), which has grown even larger, mounting an up-escalator against a backdrop of a sprawling village, with Noah’s Ark braced against the scaffolding. The village is Adam’s hometown of Tadfield. The vastness of the village in the background speaks to how Adam sees his little hometown. Not only is Tadfield “all the world” Adam wants, but it is also his whole world, and he does everything he can to protect it and make it a nice place to live (“The very Last Day of the Rest of Their Lives”). And then there’s the Ark, hanging over it, literally in a position to destroy Adam’s entire world. Of course, in the narrative, the Ark itself isn’t actually a danger to Adam, but it symbolizes two major threats: Heaven and Hell’s will, and Climate Change. 

We don’t typically think of the flood story as being an apocalypse in its own right, but when you think about it, the Great Flood was the original apocalypse. While there are many key differences between the Flood and Armageddon, the gist of both is that God has apparently decided that humanity should be wiped out to make a statement about how righteousness and Heaven always prevail over wickedness and Hell.  

Now, I say Heaven and Hell’s will instead of God’s will because the audience kind of gets the sense that God isn’t really hands-on for actual Armageddon and that it’s being mismanaged by the folks who are actually in charge. In one of my favorite book scenes, Aziraphale briefly possesses a phony televangelist while the man is trying to give a sermon about Armageddon, and says, to a live audience, “Who has time to go round picking people out and popping them up in the air to sneer at the people dying of radiation sickness on the parched and burning earth below them?” (Gaiman and Pratchett 255).  In essence: the Rapture isn’t going to happen because no one’s organized enough for it, and neither Heaven nor Hell particularly cares what happens to the humans during all of this. This is in stark contrast to the Flood, where God did take the time to get Noah and his family and at least one pair of every animal out of dodge before it started raining. Not to mention that, from a non-human perspective, the flood was successful. The righteous got saved, God made the necessary covenant with humanity, and all of the animals (save a couple of unicorns) made it to repopulate the earth. Armageddon, on the other hand, is much sloppier, much more uncertain, and nothing at all like the water-tight Great Plan that Heaven and everyone else is saying it is. It’s like a disastrous game of Celestial Telephone–no one actually knows what they’re supposed to be doing, which makes this even more dangerous than if it were as cut and dry (metaphorically speaking) as the Flood. 

I say Heaven and Hell’s will period because the institutions are alike in many ways, and their stubborn devotion to both tradition and a set of instructions that they’ve never actually heard verbatim are ultimately what threatens Adam’s beloved village. So even though Adam is supposed to be working for Heaven and Hell, to set the stage for their epic battle, he’s concentrating his powers on protecting his world first, even if it means directly defying who he was born to be. 

The Ark is significant to Aziraphale and Crowley, who were present for the flood and who both voiced dissent to the idea that God was going to take everybody out. Neither of them does anything in canon to mess with the Flood, but if they’ve become so attached to humanity after just one single millennium to say out loud that they disagree with the Almighty, we can see how they’d go practically feral trying to keep Heaven and Hell from destroying humanity after 6000 years of hanging out on Earth. 

The Ark is also a manifestation of a new fear of Adam’s, one he recently learned about from Anathema: Climate Change. Good Omens places Climate change in the center of Adam’s concerns for the future, referencing overfishing, sea-level rise, endangered species,  the shrinking rainforest, and the unsustainable cattle farming situation. It even has Pollution take over for Pestilence as one of the four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse. Climate change is a real threat to the up and coming generation, and many of us Gen-Z folks are making a point of shedding light on the reality of climate change, in the hopes that the adults in charge right now will listen to us and do a little bit of good. Of course, we are limited constantly by our institutions and rely on governments who often literally don’t believe in the problem to get started on solving it. We’d like to do it ourselves, but it’s sort of a time-sensitive issue, so it’s very irritating. It is easy to see how a child would react to this problem with an attitude of “scrap it all and start over.” But Adam and the Them eventually move past their frustrations and resolve for themselves to make it right, which puts the Them at direct odds with powers that seem unstoppable, just as many others of our generation have stood up to our governments and institutions, demanding to see change. 

The procession in this part of the title sequence has definitely picked up some more important figures. I will tackle these roughly one at a time, going from left to right. Death is at the back of the line. Even though Death is the last Horseperson to join the gang, he is everywhere all the time, so it makes sense to introduce him first in the title sequence. We have the brass band from episode 6, which could be a nod to the trumpets that are supposed to play at the beginning of the rapture. Next is a figure that I think looks a lot like Crowley in the 1862 scene of episode 3, which isn’t helped by the fact that this character is also sporting David Tennant’s face. I’d be more likely to think this really is Crowley if I could find Aziraphale somewhere in the line, but it does look an awful lot like him. After him, there’s one of the Aliens that pulls over Newt in episode 3 (“Hard Times”). Next is a duck from St. James Park, where Crowley and Aziraphale frequently meet to discuss the Arrangement, or Holy Water, or Armageddon things. Then we have the first of what appears to be a  couple of wolf-faced creatures with powdered wigs on. We finally get an unambiguous Satanic Nun from the Chattering Order of St. Beryl (the order that delivered the Antichrist and botched the baby swap), then a pair of imps, one of whom is the white-haired one from the Eden Sequence. Directing them all up the escalator is the demon that Hastur drops in the Holy Water bathtub during Crowley’s trial. The escalator itself is a reference to the escalators that Aziraphale and Crowley each take to their respective Head Offices. 

This is also roughly the midpoint of the title sequence (0:38), so this is where I will leave off for this article. But what we can see from the work so far in this title sequence is that we have a whole bunch of people from all sorts of places moving together to some inevitable end and that locations play major roles in setting the tone of the title sequence. Be on the lookout for Part Two, which will arrive in about two weeks. 

Sources:

 

Savannah Tew

C of C '23

Savannah Tew is an Art History and Arts Management major at the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC. She hopes to pursue a graduate degree in art history and a career in museum administration. In her free time she enjoys creative writing, drawing, and playing the guitar.
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