Good Omens Season 2 Review: Tennant and Sheen Delight

Prime Video’s second season of Good Omens is a pleasant TV outing, offering the charming banter and undeniable chemistry of its leads. The six-episode series elicits more than a few chuckles and the story presents audiences with an appealing mix of gentle romance and light mystery. One could almost describe it as “nice” — which is exactly the problem.

Good Omens continues the story from where we last left off, but with a new twist. The demon Crowley (David Tennant) and angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) are enjoying their time on Earth, having prevented the apocalypse while avoiding their own destruction, when a naked Archangel shows up to disrupt their lives. Before long, the two old friends find themselves pulled between the forces of heaven and hell once more as they race against the clock to uncover, and then prevent, another cataclysmic event that threatens their way of life.

Good Omens was a hit for Prime Video back in 2019. The adaptation of Terry Pratchett (rest in peace, sir) and Neil Gaiman’s beloved novel struck a chord with audiences, thanks in no small part to Gaiman’s involvement with the first season. The series stays true to the original novel in many ways, but expands the world in fun and interesting directions — including the introduction of Jon Hamm‘s Archangel Gabriel and a general augmentation of heaven and hell. While the TV version of Good Omens veers a bit off course from the book, it remains faithful in the areas that matter.

Season 2, which has no source material to draw from other than a basic idea Pratchett and Gaiman had for a sequel to their hit book, falls into the obvious trap: it needs to recapture the spirit of its predecessor but with an original story using the same main characters. Unfortunately, this is a nigh-impossible task that Gaiman and his Series 2 collaborator John Finnemore struggle to pull off. Series 1 was a complete, self-contained story that ended with a satisfyingly and definitive finale that did not set up another journey. Trying to extend this into a whole other chapter requires a soft reset that undoes much of the previous character development while feeling repetitive and somewhat derivative.

The new faces in Good Omens 2 include record shop owner Maggie (Maggie Service) and coffee shop owner Nina (Nina Sosanya), who fill the human bystander roles previously held by Anathema Device (Adria Arjona) and Newton Pulsifer (Jack Whitehall). While Anathema and Newton’s involvement in the plot made sense given their family histories, as well as the twin themes of legacy and fate, Maggie and Nina are much less thematically relevant. They get included in the overall plot literally because they were nearby — not for any other reason; their storyline doesn’t stem organically from the main story, which makes their screen time feel forced, awkward, and unnecessary.

Even the dynamic between demon and angel is diminished. Crowley and Aziraphale are as sharply satirical and over-the-top whimsical in the Prime Video Original as their book counterparts (perhaps even more so). The first season established how the two cosmic beings met and how they bonded over many historical events — gradually turning the two from enemies to reluctant allies to bosom buddies. In Series 2, Crowley and Aziraphale seem pretty friendly from the get-go, but the story shifts from one about begrudging friendship to something deeper. This in itself isn’t really an issue; in fact, it’s the natural next stage for their relationship to explore. The issue is how this new direction is retroactively applied to events set in the past.

The result is a season that both feels overly familiar, retreading the same path as the previous one did, and also slightly disingenuous. There are other issues too: the plot feels more meandering, the central mystery is much less interesting, and the storylines don’t converge in a satisfying manner. Taken as a whole. Good Omens 2 is a perfectly fine six-episode series, but it fails to live up to expectations.