The Problem With Nina and Maggie in ‘Good Omens’ Season 2
After four long years, Good Omens Season 2 has arrived, and with it, some of the most romantic moments these characters have ever seen. While it’s true that Crowley and Aziraphale seem to be living in their version of a romcom for most of the season, there is a glaring issue with one of the subplots.
While the angel and the demon try their best to solve the mystery of Gabriel’s missing memories, they have also decided it is good to help Maggie with her romantic woes. While that seems adorable on paper, there are a few things underlying it all that don’t sit well with some viewers.
Maggie is sweet, shy, and in love with her fellow business owner down the street, Nina. Unfortunately, her awkwardness creates problems when bringing these two wildly opposite people together. This makes for a cringy, not well-executed love plot that Season 2 can do without.
The Problem with Maggie
Let’s start at the beginning with Maggie and how she is introduced. Initially, we only see Maggie interact with Aziraphale about music, business, and the rent she technically owes Aziraphale.
Right off the bat, we understand she is shy and doesn’t engage in typical social interactions very well. She comes across as a bit aloof and naive about what love should be.
While this isn’t something to begrudge anyone — it’s the bread and butter of some of our favorite rom-com moments — it plays into why it feels like the pairing of Maggie and Nina isn’t genuine. This naivete gives this plot a forced component that doesn’t work out as the writers probably hoped.
In her naivete, Maggie continues pursuing her crush on Nina despite Nina telling her she is attached to someone else and isn’t interested. It quickly molds into a situation where Maggie’s every interaction with Nina makes the audience uncomfortable.
To top it all off, Maggie seems suspicious throughout the season, like she’s hiding something deeper about herself. There are several clues that imply she could be an angel or a demon in disguise.
The first clue is when she writes that note for Aziraphale but misspells a common word. This would be innocent enough if Good Omens didn’t place so much emphasis on the fact that angels and demons aren’t always very smart.
In fact, the inability to spell is an especially noteworthy trait of demons.
Then there is the added suspicion we get when Maggie lets the demons into the bookshop during the showdown at the end of the season. Aziraphale and Crowley have made it abundantly clear that they don’t want anyone — who isn’t already in the bookshop — to be invited in.
Yet, during the height of the situation, she gives the demons permission to enter the establishment. Why would she do that if she wasn’t in league with them?
While Maggie’s suspicious behavior is something to note, it’s still hard to pinpoint precisely what that means for Nina now that they are technically together. It does, however, make it harder for viewers to root for her to succeed at love in the first place.
Why We Shouldn’t Be Rooting for Nina Either
Maggie comes with her own faults, which aren’t big enough to count her out entirely. If only the other half of what is supposed to be a pairing worth rooting for compliments her shortcomings.
Unfortunately, Nina does not. She is a prickly pear of a person tied to someone else when the season starts — even if that person is a piece of crap; cheating is still cheating.
Then there is the issue: Maggie is bubbly and energetic, while Nina is grumpy and seems to hate people. While that difference in personality works very well for Aziraphale and Crowley, it creates an insurmountable barrier for these two women.
Unlike her counterpart, Crowley, Nina isn’t friendly to Maggie at all. That is, unless there is a bit of “intervention” from two ineffable beings. Nina goes so far as to belittle Maggie’s job and interests constantly.
Some viewers would argue that Nina is only reflecting on how she is treated in her relationship, but that doesn’t suddenly make what she is doing okay. Maggie deserves to be in a relationship with someone who sees her passions and encourages them.
Whenever Aziraphale is excited about something, Crowley might grumble a bit, but ultimately they support the angel in whatever he wants to do. There is never any real bullying or disparagement between the demon and the angel, but the same can’t be said for Nina and Maggie.
Despite Nina’s faults, she doesn’t try to get with Maggie when she’s still with her partner. So, a small win for no cheating. However, that has more to do with her disinterest in Maggie and less with her desire to want to.
Sometimes it feels like the only reason Nina shows any interest in Maggie is when the angel and demon are involved. This makes a strong case for everything being one significant manipulation, but more on that later.
Even at the end of Season 2, when Maggie and Nina finally decide to start discussing a relationship, it doesn’t feel genuine. We know that Aziraphale and Crowley had been meddling with their lives the whole season, and Nina has been steadfastly uninterested.
Why the sudden change of heart? It doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the season and doesn’t give her chemistry with Maggie just because the writers want there to be.
They might be “working” together, but there is no real intimacy or care to their actions as we watch the final scene play out. It all comes down to the fact that these two characters feel incredibly forced together.
What Did Aziraphale and Crowley Do?
This brings up the final point, so much of what has happened with this pairing seems manipulated and forced. Aziraphale and Crowley were using them for most of the season as an excuse to avoid the very real Gabriel problem.
Ultimately, there is no reason we shouldn’t believe they are together simply because a miracle was performed on them. Even in those final moments, their lack of chemistry gives a strong case for this theory.
And since there is a strong chance everything about their relationship has been manipulated, that puts a big red flag on everything. If they are being manipulated into being together, they aren’t choosing this relationship of their own free will.
Yes, Maggie has been crushing on Nina since the season started, but that doesn’t mean she wants to be manipulated into being in a relationship with her. To further back this up, is the highly suspicious turn of events that caused Nina’s relationship to break down as fast as it did.
Crowley might not have meant to lock the two in the coffee shop, but who’s to say they don’t influence how Nina’s partner reacts to each new moment Nina has with Maggie?
After all, Aziraphale and Crowley are trying to create a big miracle by bringing these two people together. If one of them already has a partner, that poses a huge problem.
The lack of explicit consent between Nina and Maggie for all of Season 2 brings their “relationship” into question. Sure, bringing them together is an innocent enough desire to start.
But by the end, it creates a problem because viewers cannot know if the two genuinely have started to fall in love mutually or if they are being miracled to believe they are.
Therefore, rooting for Nina and Maggie as a couple comes with many icky feelings that take away from what could have been a cute love story between two complex women.
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New ‘Good Omens’ Season 2 Featurette from San Diego Comic-Con! [Video]
Mads Misasi
Mads is a part-time entertainment journalist and full-time marketing content creator. They love any and all TV Dramas with a few sitcoms mixed in. Join in the fun talking about TV by following them on Twitter: @dorothynyc89.
3 comments
It’s a strange feeling to find a personal shipping manifesto labeled as a piece of tv criticism. On one hand – yay, fan culture reached mainstream tv criticism! On the other – yikes, this is amplifying all the worst issues of current fan culture, treating shipping as a moral excercise and imposing such attitude on readers.
Because what is presented here is basically a list of reasons not to “root for” Maggie and Nina, i.e. antishipping manifesto. While I would expect from media criticism at least a consideration that characters and relationships can serve other purposes in the story than just to be shipped=rooted for. It’s noticed here in passing that they are mirror of Aziraphale and Crowley and then this thread is not investigated at all: what do our angel’s and demon’s respective attempts at getting them together tell us about their vision of romance and relationships? How does the state of Maggie and Nina’s relationship reflect theirs by the end of season? There’s so much juicy detail to dig into here which is ignored completely in favor of listing and inflating reasons why they’re Bad Together and shouldn’t be rooted for. Or sometimes inveting reasons, since, for example, Maggie and Nina definitely are not together at the end of the season and the whole point of their subplot was that Aziraphale and Crowley DIDN’T influence their feelings with a miracle, but had to clumsily orchestrate circumstances they believed would make them fall in love.
There’s nothing wrong in not liking the pairing, believing they dont have “chemistry”, but lets be honest – this is a subjective opinion of the writer. Instead of transparently discussing a subjective interpretation, we are given an ex cathedra lecture in which the autor frames their personal dislike of a pairing in terms of Moral Purity, explaining how Maggie and Nina are Problematic, not perfect for each other, and therefore shipping them is icky. If this is what telltaletv wants to publish, thats great, but please label it honestly as an opinion piece at least.
Some would say your comments are harsh – but considering how many glaring errors are in this anti-shipping diatribe, which you didn’t mention, I’d say you were quite kind.
Starting with, no, at no point is there a decision about whether it would be a “good idea” to help Maggie with her romantic woes. Aziraphale panics when trying to explain away the miracle that set off alarm bells in Heaven, and claims to have miracled Maggie and Nina into falling in love. When he first finds out about her feelings for Nina, Aziraphale says, “Can I get back to you on that? I think right now I’m a bit out of miracles.” Maggie takes that as a subtle way of saying he can’t help her and has his own problems. But one could easily argue that his response to her is quite literal – that after he’d gotten them out of the Gabriel mess he probably would have tried to help her. But he never once makes a decision to, external from tricking Michael and others that he already HAD miracled Nina and Maggie into falling in love, nor does he ask discuss it with Crowley external from that angel-tricking goal.
There is nothing in Maggie’s introduction that is remotely “aloof” about anything, including love. Nor is there a moment where she comes off as genuinely naïve about it. The only mention of love in Maggie’s introduction is saying she loves the shop – which is the shop she’s probably run most of her adult life, a shop originally opened by her great-grandmother, that she probably played in as a child. Of course she loves it – it’s absurd to suggest that response is naïve or demonstrates any immature attitudes about love.
Let’s also not forget, that our first introduction to Maggie is while in a state of mild panic, as she admits defeat and offers to move out of the store that’s been tied to her family for four generations, because she doesn’t have the rent – AFTER the trauma that was Covid lockdowns (which she specifically mentions as a reason for her financial hardship). She’s not even going to Aziraphale to beg for another extension. She’s accepted that it’s over and expects him to evict her, when she admits she has no way to catch up. To suggest this scene paints her as naïve is just obtuse – she’s scared and overwrought, and is then miraculously offered a reprieve from a man she already feels like she’s unfairly imposed on. It might even be that the weight lifted off of her in that moment is why she finally got up the nerve to actually speak to Nina, not just make small-talk while placing an order.
And no, Maggie does not “continue pursuing her crush despite Nina telling her she is attached and uninterested.” First, no words approximating “uninterested” EVER come out of Nina’s mouth. Not once – in fact, the only thing Nina ever says about their potential compatibility is, “I know. I’m not your type,” in response to Maggie saying she’s not the type of person to have an affair. If anything, Maggie’s comment about “hoping we’d have a chance to talk” is in a reference to the fact that she would’ve already known about Nina’s relationship if she hadn’t been so afraid to have a more in-depth conversation with her beforehand. But both Maggie AND Nina react to that mention of them being alone together, NOT just Maggie.
But, under no circumstances does that brief note of recognition in the coffee shop amount to Maggie pursuing Nina, or Nina even coming close to the ballpark of cheating. It’s simply one of several moments where at least some shared attraction is on display, without ever becoming more than a fleeting moment.
Also, no, there are not “several” clues to Maggie being a demon. There are, at best, two clues. The two you mentioned – the spelling error and the invitation. Though I would say that her letting the demons into the shop is less a clue than it was a deliberate reference to a supernatural TV show trope, one of many in Series 2. She’s pulling a “Dawn invites Harmony into the house” mistake – that scene might as well have been Buffy season 5. But then again, Dawn didn’t turn out to be entirely human either, so that does reinforce the possibility that this moment is meant to foreshadow Maggie not being entirely human. I ended up on this post specifically while looking to see if I was the only one who saw that spelling error as a potential hanging-lamppost.
We also have no evidence that Nina is a grumpy person by nature. If anything, we see Nina at a moment in her life just as scary and frought as Maggie’s is – because her deteriorating relationship is documented in the conversation she has with the neighborhood “seamstress,” and because Nina tells Maggie that the end of her relationship was a long-time coming. We don’t know how long exactly Nina has endured the emotional abuse and manipulation of her partner – but again, if the working-girls have been discussing Nina’s coffee-making skills on the days she gets more or less abuse, it’s been happening for some time. If it was building to a break-up, it’s entirely plausible that Nina is not prickly on a normal basis at all.
There’s also NOTHING to suggest her treatment of Maggie is about reflecting the abuse she’s experiencing at home – she is exhausted, emotionally and physically, throughout the first episode (arguably the whole season). She is mostly oblivious to Maggie trying to get to know her better, until well past the point that the audience has noticed. And when she realizes that she’s given Maggie the impression she’s mad at her, and not simply upset because of Lindsay’s overreactions, she shows remorse.
Nina also does NOT constantly belittle Maggie’s job and interests. She doesn’t ONCE belittle anything about Maggie’s ‘interests’ – because such topics never come up. And it’s Maggie who inadvertently makes a stupid and judgmental comment about Nina drinking. Nina makes 2 snarky comments about the record shop, and she goes from the 2nd comment to asking why someone would choose to sell a product that is entirely rooted in nostalgia and is no longer used by most people – that’s a perfectly rational question. She is not dismissive of Maggie’s story about her great-grandmother and her connection to Mr. Fell, and for the rest of Series 2 she never again belittles Maggie’s shop or life choices.
Also, are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that the most Crowley has ever done to Aziraphale is grumble? No bullying or disparagement? Are you kidding?! He’s thrown him against a wall! (https://youtu.be/gQK-qGqt5iM?t=125 in case you really missed it somehow) And why? Because Aziraphale dared to suggest that Crowley was nice. A scene, let’s not forget, that is interrupted by the former Sister Mary Loquacious (Nina Sosanya’s Series 1 character). Crowley is also NOT that supportive of the things he wants to do, and has disparaged Aziraphale quite frequently – like when he wanted to perform magic at Warlock’s birthday party, or his on speaking crappy and stunted French when he could (by way of their angelic abilities) speak any language fluently. Nor was response to the plan to help Gabriel certainly supportive, at first.
I adore their relationship, but to suggest somehow that Crowley and Aziraphale have a less tumultuous – or potentially abusive – relationship that anything we see with Nina and Maggie is laughable. The whole reason that Aziraphale’s “No, I want your help, but if you won’t you won’t” response is so delightful in the first episode of this season, is that it establishes that he’s developed more of a backbone in how he handles Crowley’s more belittling and unsupportive tendencies – he’s setting clear boundaries to make their relationship more equitable, and it’s almost tragic to think that Series 2 starts there and ends with him choosing a new leadership position in Heaven over Crowley. Especially when we see how much time Crowley spent trying to open Aziraphale’s eyes to the hypocrisy of Heaven and his beloved, ineffable boss.
The “doesn’t feel genuine” bit of this Maggie/Nina evaluation is even more outlandish though. Not only do they NOT end the season together, the closest they come to discussing a relationship is talking to Crowley about being manipulated, where Nina states categorically that she isn’t ready to get into a new relationship, that it would be a rebound, and that she would not presume to believe that Maggie will be there when she does become ready. In fact, that’s literally the only moment of them “getting together” that ever happens in this season – when Maggie responds that she will be there, and Nina says, “You’re not helping, angel.” And I think we all know that was as much a nod to the way Crowley sometimes addresses Aziraphale, as it was a nod to some real affection between Maggie and Nina.
There is NO sudden change of heart – there is a change in circumstances. They do get to know one another over the course of the season, they do establish at least some interest, and Nina stops being in a relationship – not because of anything she actually did wrong, and not in a way that can be blamed on her or Maggie. The ONLY moments between Nina and Maggie that are manipulated and forced are the (accidental) power outage, the rain/awning debacle and the fully Jane-Austen moments of the ball. That’s it. And “whose to say” that Lindsay’s ongoing abuse isn’t just because of the power outage situation? The fact that both Nina and Mrs. Sandwich SAY so. Again, it’s established that at least some of Nina’s regulars have noticed Lindsay’s overreactions in the past, enough that it’s been a topic of conversation around the brothel. And when Maggie asks if Lindsay leaving was her fault, Nina says, “That night was the last straw of… it’s been coming for a long time.”
So, the facts of the story say that Lindsay’s abuse and Nina’s emotionally raw state throughout this season, are the product of a relationship coming to a close – a relationship which, even if it didn’t start that way, ended up being toxic and abusive.
We don’t need to know if Nina and Maggie have really fallen in love at the end of the season, because THEY never imply they have – even Maggie says “pretty sure” when confessing her feelings to Aziraphale, owing to the fact that it’s hard to fall in love with someone you barely know. There is no consent problem, because again, no one has consented to so much as a first date. If they had shown them actually falling in love you’d have a point, but since that never happens, you don’t. If the author’s feelings about Nina and Maggie are icky, I would suggest that’s owing to how much garbage they either ignored or projected onto the couple – considering just how many details they got flat-out wrong, about both their relationship and the long-term relationship of Crowley and Aziraphale.
This doesn’t just read as an opinion piece, but a poorly-informed-opinion piece.
I don’t think that it was intended to root for them to get together in the end, so I don’t think that a problem of the season.
I think that one of the main purpose of this was to understand better the relationship of the angel and demon, not only because they mirror Aziraphale and Crowley, but to show that they didn’t really understand what even is a successfull, healthy relationship
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