Good Omens has always been a very clever show filled with equally clever references to all sorts of pop culture. Its second season—which has been available for streaming on Prime Video since July 28—continues that tradition, filling its six-episode run with echoes of the previous season as well as easter eggs and references to a whole bunch of other pieces of media.
So here are some of my absolute favorite easter eggs from Good Omens season 2, which include the ones I spotted pretty much immediately and the ones that took some chatting with my fellow fans to notice. If I missed your favorite reference or easter egg, let me know in the comments!
This article contains spoilers for Good Omens season 2.
Terry Pratchett, of course
Good Omens is based on the 1990 novel of the same name, written by authors Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Pratchett sadly passed away in 2015, before production on the show began, so of course both seasons are filled with references and homages to both him and his works.
Among the ones featured this season are Pratchett’s signature hat and scarf, which are hanging in Aziraphale (Michael Sheen)’s bookshop. Speaking of the bookshop, when the archangels descend from Heaven looking for the missing and memoryless Gabriel—played by a hilarious Jon Hamm—he tries to sell them on the wonders of “bendy books” by brandishing the very first novel in Pratchett’s Discworld series, The Colour of Magic.
There are many more references to Discworld, like Mrs. Sandwich (Donna Preston), one of the shop owners on Whickber Street—the SoHo street where Aziraphale’s bookshop is located—trying to explain her job during Aziraphale’s ball but managing only to say that she is a “seamstress” instead of the madam of an escort service. The city of Ankh-Morpork, one of the biggest in Discworld, also has a pretty sizeable guild of seamstresses.
And then there’s Pratchett’s own portrait—where he’s dressed as a general of the Witchfinder Army—that hangs in The Dirty Donkey pub that Aziraphale and Crowley (David Tennant) visit in London.
And some Doctor Who references
You can’t have David Tennant prancing around a show and awing everyone with his spectacular acting skills without also having a whole bunch of references to Doctor Who—the main one being Tennant himself, who famously played the 10th Doctor between 2005 and 2010 and will resume the role as the 14th Doctor sometime in the future.
But then there’s also the moment when Aziraphale is speaking with Mr. Arnold, another one of the shop owners on Whickber Street, and promises to give him a very rare proof copy of a Doctor Who Annual. All the while, Tennant is in the background of the shot, during which you can also hear a very faint TARDIS noise somewhere off in the distance.
Speaking of the TARDIS, when Shelley Conn’s Beelzebub describes the container flies they gift to Gabriel, they describe it as “bigger on the inside”—something pretty much everyone, whether they be Whovian or not, know the TARDIS to be.
And then there’s Crowley back in the ’40s, wearing a fez while Aziraphale is looking for a magic trick for his West End show. It’s definitely a callback to the 11th Doctor—played by Tennant’s successor Matt Smith—who loved this kind of hat very much.
And—why not—some Sherlock as well
When talking about iconic British shows you also can’t not stop for a second and mention the modernized version of Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the world’s most obnoxious and brilliant detective. One of the recurring stars of that show was Mark Gatiss, who played Sherlock’s older brother Mycroft. Gatiss also appears in both seasons of Good Omens, where he lends his face to Mr. Harmony, one of the Nazi agents looking to buy prophecy books from Aziraphale during the Blitz, and then the zombified version of the same character.
Another minor Sherlock reference is the fact that the first way Crowley suggests dealing with the memoryless Gabriel is by packing him up in the Bentley and dumping him somewhere around Dartmoor where no one will ever find him. Dartmoor is the area of Devon where most of the plot of The Hound of the Baskervilles takes place.
There was plenty of Pride and Prejudice, too
Jane Austen—whom we now know was a criminal mastermind as well as an acclaimed novelist—and her works are directly mentioned more than one time throughout Good Omens season 2, since Aziraphale takes direct inspiration from her to arrange for Maggie and Nina—played by Maggie Service and Nina Sosanya respectively—to fall in love. Pride and Prejudice is also one of the novels that Gabriel-as-Jim decides to shelve by order of the first letter of their opening text.
The ball at Aziraphale’s bookshop directly mirrors the many balls Austen describes in her novels—though since it’s mainly Pride and Prejudice we’re talking about and we do end up seeing Aziraphale and Crowley dancing together, I would argue its most direct inspiration is the Netherfield ball.
And along that same line, Crowley’s confession that results in heartbreak and further complicates things is very much reminiscent of Darcy’s first proposal in Pride and Prejudice. What’s fascinating, though, is that while it’s Crowley who does the confessing, both he and Aziraphale are Darcy and Elizabeth at the same time.
Casting choices
Among the many known faces of British film and television who make an appearance in the second season of Good Omens, some really are easter eggs unto themselves.
Like Peter Davidson, who plays Job, and who was also famously the Fifth Doctor in Doctor Who, his tenure being from 1981 to 1984. He also happens to be David Tennant’s father-in-law. In 2011, Tennant married Davidson’s daughter Georgia, who incidentally played the Doctor’s cloned daughter in a 2008 episode of the series.
And then there’s Job’s son Ennon, played by Ty Tennant, who as the surname suggests is David Tennant’s son, as well as the son and grandson of the aforementioned Georgia Tennant and Peter Davidson. Ennon very much does a bit of flirting with Aziraphale, which I’m sure must have been a hilarious scene to film for everyone involved. And if you’re wondering where you’ve seen Ty Tennant before, let me point you to teenage Aegon Targaryen—the eldest of Alicent Hightower’s children with King Viserys Targaryen—in House of the Dragon.
Derek Jacobi, who plays the Metatron in the show, also appeared in an episode of Doctor Who—in 2007, so precisely during Tennant’s tenure—as the Master in disguise. Given that the Master has always been the Doctor’s arch-nemesis, it makes sense that he’s back to complicating the Doctor’s life in Good Omens as well.
Finally, there’s the fact that Mark Gatiss and Steve Pemberton, who play the two Nazi agents Mr. Harmony and Mr. Glozier, together with Reece Shearsmith, who plays the demon Furfur, were three of the four members of the comedy group The League of Gentlemen, which aired from 1999 to 2002.
References to the original Good Omens novel
Of course, some easter eggs and little details directly reference the canon material from which the show is adapted. First and foremost there’s Gabriel-as-Jim shelving a book that starts with “It was a nice day. All the days had been nice,” which is exactly how Good Omens starts.
And keeping with the theme of Gabriel and books, we see him using a large tome to chase a fly. That tome is The Wicked Bible, an actual version of the Bible which exists and owes its name a printing error that led to one of the Ten Commandments saying “Thou shalt commit adultery”—which is mentioned in Good Omens as being part of Aziraphale’s extensive collection of Bibles.
And some miscellaneous references
The fact that Heaven has a unit of measure for miracles is already hilarious. The fact that it’s called a “Lazarus,” from the episode of the Gospel in which Jesus Christ raises Lazarus from the dead, is even more hilarious. Aziraphale and Crowley trying to perform a minor miracle together and having enough force to raise Lazarus 25 times over is just pure genius.
During the battle in the bookshop, we see Aziraphale pull out his halo and use it to disperse the demons that were threatening him as well as Nina and Maggie—something that incidentally could have counted as an act of war. While telling Crowley what he did, Aziraphale says that the last time he used his halo was during the Great War. It might be a reference to the episode of the Angels of Mons, a story of the supposed appearance of heavenly warriors who fought alongside the British Army against Germany during the Battle of Mons in Belgium, in August 1914.
Among the books that Gabriel continues shelving with his own personal method, there is A Tale of Two Cities by author Charles Dickens, recognizable by its incipit, which Gabriel reads aloud: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Further down this iconic opening text, there’s yet another juxtaposition, which says, “We were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way,” which I just think is neat in a show about an angel and a demon.
Finally, as a Supernatural girlie, I couldn’t help but notice that the human name Aziraphale gives the now-memoryless Gabriel is Jim—which, sure, Aziraphale takes from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, but it’s also the name of the human man whose body becomes the angel Castiel’s body.
(featured image: Prime Video)
