It’s a minor miracle that there’s a second season of Amazon Prime’s Good Omens, considering the first was sold as a limited series that covered most of the source novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchet.
But the show’s initial run was successful enough that Gaiman returned to write a new story about the demon Crowley (David Tennant) and the angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) hiding the Archangel Gabriel from the forces of Heaven and Hell.
Critically, the new season is a darling, scoring an 86 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences seem pretty happy as well, considering the show’s 96 percent audience score.
More officially, Good Omens broke into Nielsen’s Top 10 streaming chart for original content. During its release week of July 24 through July 30, the series landed at number 6, which bodes well for potential future seasons.
What’s most exciting to Gaiman, though, is how no one is launching a campaign against the show like in 2019 when the first season aired.
Back then, a hilarious petition was posted online by the religious group Return to Order, calling for the series to be canceled before more episodes made a mockery of heaven and hell.
Per Variety, despite reportedly receiving about 20,000 signatures, the petition was doomed from the start because, firstly, the appeal was incorrectly directed at Netflix instead of Amazon; and secondly, the six episodes were released all at once, so there was little chance of stopping new content from streaming even with billions of signatures.
This time around, Gaiman said, there have been “no petitions to Netflix or HBO to cancel us.” That’s all the more remarkable since this season features disabled angels and is generally more LGBTQ-friendly.
It’s cute when close-minded people try to stop something that the majority considers a fresh and worthwhile perspective. Here’s hoping season 3 — if it happens — is just as beloved by the people with the cosmic power of the remote control.
