Summary
A fitting ending to the series that ties up all the loose ends, “The Very Last Day of the Rest of Their Lives” brings proceedings to a close nicely, albeit with one or two plot points slightly glossed over.
Here we go folks, the last episode of the series and the fate of the world is at stake. Where will all this end up? Let’s find out.
“The Very Last Day of the Rest of their Lives” opens with us in Hell at the trial of Crowley, who is answering for his crimes against Demonhood (Demonkind? Demonity?). They certainly seem pretty annoyed with him, they made a special courtroom and everything. But let’s put a pin in it for now, shall we? Rewind to where we left off at the end of “The Doomsday Option”.
Crowley triumphantly steps from his flaming chariot with a swagger and just as he is about to launch into a speech to the guard about how he and his friends need entry to the base, the kids cycle past and the gate opens. Just as they slip by them, Crowley’s Bentley bursts into flames. Momentarily distraught, Crowley falls to his knees leaving Aziraphale to get his hands dirty for once and disappear the soldier. It’s go time.
Everyone is here, the witch and Witchfinder, Adam and his gang, the Angel, the Demon and the Four Horsemen. Death challenges Adam to destroy the world, he is the one with the power, he can do it. Aziraphale has the shot and is about to take aim until Madame Tracy stops him from shooting Adam. Adam takes one look at Aziraphale/Madam Tracy and splits them in half again. Phew, that’s better.
Newt and Anathema are holed up in the bunker surveying the computers, how can we roll back the nuclear war? It turns out the Newt’s secret weapon is his ineptitude, hooray! Every time he touches a computer they break, could that be the secret to saving the world?
Meanwhile in “The Very Last Day of the Rest of their Lives”, the rest of the gang face off outside, young Pepper quite handily and confidently disarms War (who to be fair was giving her quite a lot of sass) and takes her flaming sword from her. She pretty cooly plunges the sword into War declaring that she believes in Peace. One by one, the kids each dispatch their opposite Horsemen using the sword at Adam’s urging. He is a goodie after all! Death, however, can’t be killed, if he is it will bring about the end of the world, so he just decides to get off seeing that he’s probably lost this one.
So, the Horsemen have been dispatched and the nuclear war averted but have they stopped the war between Heaven and Hell? Both sides seem pretty hellbent (geddit?) on having a proper old dust-up. Beelzebub and Gabriel appear on Earth and try and persuade Adam that he needs to start the war and destroy the world. Adam’s not really into the whole ‘destroy the world thing’ anymore though.
Aziraphale seems to have worked out that maybe the ‘Great Plan’ is not as cut and dry and everyone seems to think, it’s you know, Ineffable. The war, it seems, is over. Unfortunately, Satan (Adam’s Dad) is not best pleased by this development and makes an appearance to try and straighten things out. In a moment of quick thinking, Crowley whisks himself, Aziraphale and Adam off to another plane of existence where they talk him into somehow trying to deal with the Devil for them, although they are not really too sure how he will tackle this one.
Satan (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) makes his grand entrance. He’s all like ‘where’s my son?’ and Adam is all like ‘you’re not my Dad!’ and then Satan just kind of gives up and goes home. Phew, glad that’s over. Bit of an anti-climax though.
Aziraphale and Crowley are sat together outside a church sharing a bottle of wine going over the day’s events. The delivery guy arrives (yay! He’s not actually dead!) to collect the Flaming Sword from them and take it back to where it belongs. Realizing that they no longer belong to one team or the other, Aziraphale and Crowley share a moment a reflection.
It turns out that Adam has sort of fixed a bunch of stuff as well (I guess you can if you are the Antichrist) including Aziraphale’s bookshop and Crowley’s treasured car, hooray! It looks like it’s happy endings all around. Adam is back to being a normal 11-year-old, Newt and Anathema are happy lounging around in bed and all the weird supernatural events are explained away. Everything is just as it should be, except Aziraphale and Crowley have yet to hear from their old bosses about the fact that they broke ranks…
Until that is they both captured by the Angels and Demons respectively to answer for their misdeeds. We are back in the courtroom in Hell now and Crowley is being sentenced for his various crimes. The only suitable punishment for him is death by Holy Water, provided by the Angels who are collaborating with them on this one.
Madame Tracy and Shadwell have a nice moment, she’s dressed suddenly like Mary Berry and that is doing things for Shadwell who is all ready to settle down with the landlady/brothel madam/medium. She proposes to Shadwell that maybe they ought to settle down together and seeing as she has just the right number of nipples he agrees.
Now we’re back with Newt who opens the door to Sanjeev Bhaskar who has a special delivery for him. It’s a special box (remember the box from “The Book?”) It was bequeathed to Newt by Agnes Nutter. When the box is opened it contains a letter addressed to the man delivering the box revealing a personal indiscretion along with a bunch of further prophesies. Maybe there is more to come in this story… Except, of course, Anathema doesn’t really want to oversee anymore prophesies so her and Newt burn them.
Anyway, what’s going on with Aziraphale? He’s getting told off in Heaven by Gabriel and team, his punishment is to be burned to death. Both Aziraphale and Crowley seem immune to their punishments, it turns out that neither is a Demon or an Angel anymore. Their adventures have changed them, and they are now too powerful for their former friends. The only thing for it is to let them go and live their lives in peace. Except, it’s not quite that simple, Aziraphale and Crowley had switched bodies before their trials to evade their punishments in a daring maneuver. To celebrate they head to lunch. All is well that ends well I guess. Maybe it was the very last day of the rest of their lives after all.
