When asked “Why isn’t there a sequel?” in a Q&A for the 2006 publication of Neil Gaiman and the late Terry Pratchett’s 1990 masterpiece “Good Omens,” the co-authors responded as follows:
“We experimented with concepts, but we were never able to muster the enthusiasm. In addition, we had additional goals in mind (some of which likely found their way into the works of both of us, altered slightly). But lately, we’ve both been questioning whether “never again” is unalterable. So, a sequel could happen eventually. Maybe. Perhaps. The future? Don’t we?
The second season of the TV adaptation of “Good Omens,” in which Michael Sheen and David Tennant reprise their roles as apocalypse-fighting, epoch-spanning best friends—the fussy angel and rare book dealer Aziraphale and the fast-living demon Crowley—was released on July 28 on Amazon Prime Video, so we do now know.
This second season expands on the original source material written by Gaiman (“The Sandman,” “American Gods”) and Pratchett, the prolific author who produced the immortal “Discworld” series of fantasy novels, which Gaiman wrote in its entirety for the 2019 season of “Good Omens.” It was initially planned to be a short-run series. However, the programme received a second season renewal in 2021, and Gaiman then disclosed that he and Pratchett had discussed the possibility of a sequel before Pratchett passed away in 2015.
It has been 32 years since Terry Pratchett and I laid in our respective beds in a Seattle hotel room during a World Fantasy Convention and plotted the sequel, according to Gaiman’s statement in Amazon’s announcement of the renewal. “I was able to include parts of the follow-up into ‘Good Omens’; it is where our angels originated. Although Terry is no longer present, we discussed “Good Omens” and the direction the novel should go when he was.
The second season of “Good Omens,” written by Gaiman and John Finnemore, goes back further in time than the first did, to the “before The Beginning” period of Crowley and Aziraphale’s friendship, while also showing them avert yet another catastrophe of Biblical proportions in the present. The two work to avoid further issues with their old employers (having been expelled in Season 1) by hiding the archangel Gabriel (Jon Hamm) from Heaven and Hell throughout the six-episode season. They also try to figure out why the archangel Gabriel (Jon Hamm) turns up at Aziraphale’s bookshop in London with amnesia.