If “Good Omens 3” has one valid point to make, it’s this: The show should have ended with the first season.

The series, based on the book “Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch” by Terry Pratchett (yay) and Neil Gaiman (boo), began as a largely faithful adaptation of the story, but ran out of source material at the end of Season 1. Season 2 was (allegedly) based on conversations the two authors had about a potential sequel before Pratchett’s death in 2015, but it was hard to shake the feeling that it was a different show altogether, with a vastly reduced supporting cast, a smaller scope and drastically lower stakes.

Which brings us to “Good Omens 3,” which attempts to retread some of the same end-times territory as the first season, but this time with even fewer characters than Season 2 and very little—if anything—to say thematically.

The story picks up a few years after Season 2’s cliffhanger ending, which featured exiled angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and similarly cast-out demon Crowley (David Tennant) finally kissing before the former chooses to return to heaven. Season 3 finds Aziraphale, now Supreme Archangel, preparing for the second coming of Jesus while Crowley, still on Earth, drowns his sorrows in alcohol and gambling.

Aziraphale’s plans for a kinder, gentler end of days are thrown into chaos when Jesus (a charming, but underutilized Bilal Hasna) goes missing. Also missing is the Book of Life, which puts all of creation—heaven, hell and Earth alike—at risk. The angel and demon must team up once again to locate the wayward savior and secure the Book of Life.

“Good Omens 3,” originally meant to be an entire season of television, now reduced to a single special with neither of the book’s authors involved (you can Google why if you want, but let’s just say it’s not Pratchett’s fault), spends too much of its scant 90-minute runtime on meandering side quests and investigative dead ends. Even the Jesus story, by far the more interesting of the two main plot points, is eventually rendered entirely meaningless by the literal deus ex machina of a climax. If you find yourself getting lost in the rapid-fire scenes toward the middle of the finale, don’t worry, by the end, none of it matters.

The finale ostensibly exists for the sole purpose of giving Aziraphale and Crowley the happy ending they were denied in Season 2, and if we measure the success or failure of “Good Omens 3” solely by whether it accomplishes this, the verdict is a resounding “sort of.”

This is not to say it’s all bad: Sheen and Tennant are giving it their all, and the chemistry between the actors remains an absolute joy to behold. The unlikely friendship-with-hints-of-more between the two characters was the standout aspect of Season 1, and became the main focal point of the show going forward. Here their relationship, and its uncertain future, take center stage, which makes the finale’s meandering all the more tragic. Hasna also shines as a charmingly naive—yet paradoxically wise—Jesus in search of his purpose in the modern world. 

It’s difficult not to dwell on how much better this all might have worked with a full eight-episode season instead of a single, rushed episode. Although, in a way, it’s a minor miracle we got any resolution to this story at all, disappointing as it might be.

Recommended reading:  “Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch” by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. If you liked Season 1 of “Good Omens,” you will love this book. Just pretend Pratchett wrote it alone, if that helps.

About the author

If Ben Hooper had a nickel for every time a once-great streaming TV series based on a Neil Gaiman property came to a rushed and disappointing end in the past twelve months as a result of the author’s (alleged) bad behavior, he’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.