#im literally just doing this so the multiple theories might flow somewhat cohesively

[thesherrinfordfacility]

another batshit theory for the ages...

though tbh it's just a summary that interweaves a variety of them. it's long and rambly im sorry

so @booksandmate added this increíble addition to what was honestly meant as a half-hearted shitpost, and then allowed me to pepe-silvia at them in their DMs, but it's been spinning in my head ever since - because if we consider if crowley had managed to reach ten before the lightning strike, and managed to control his temper... well, what would have happened?

but that's not necessarily what im looking at here, specifically. i am however gonna start with ep1 and the lightning strike, because im somewhat dogged by nina's words in ep6 that now suddenly feel like a healthy helping of foreshadowing:

that everything started with the locked-in-the-coffeeshop-incident, which of course was precipitated by crowley losing his rag, summoning (?) lightning, and it bouncing off the café.

noting a couple of things: the lightning definitely appears to originate from crowley, right? it may well be calling like-to-like, but either way the lightning starts in him, and we suddenly then have either a) a bolt summoned from the heavens, channeled through him, and hitting the café, or b) two bolts, one of which relays back and forth from the heavens, and a further bolt rebounded on the café.

but what... is the point? im relatively on the team that it could just be building crowley-lore, playing into the "crowley is a very powerful demon 💅" characterisation, and it has the ultimate byproduct of kick-starting the events of the s2 plot; like @booksandmate said, without crowley counting to ten and controlling his anger, we wouldn't have the above, wouldn't have nina and maggie locked in the café, etc etc. but.

this locking-in business could easily, i hubristically presume (albeit less exciting, admittedly), have been written as caused by something else, or not occurred altogether (and maggie would still have shared with aziraphale that she thinks she's in love with nina, gave her the LP etc)... so why specifically did it require crowley, and such a raw display of 'demonic' power?

with that in mind, do we assume it serves a different purpose, or at least has another layer? well, we collectively seem to be surmising the latter, given god's words in the job minisode:

do you know the rules of the heavens? did you set the constellations in the sky? can you send lightning bolts and get them to report back to you?

obviously the last two now, in retrospect, seem very significant in the context of what we find out about crowley in both s1 and s2; he created nebulae and hung stars and planets, and now can seem to summon lightning. i originally wondered if it were simply a message to crowley or at least the audience that god was still watching, and had not forsaken crowley at all, but i do now ponder if its something more.

the first one is iffy, but actually... well, it definitely seems that crowley has the better measure of heaven than aziraphale or indeed anyone else has - what its motivations and limitations are, to say the least. even his line about the bees; in this respect, he is deeply perceptive of the intragroup dynamic of heaven in a way that the angels are not. and then, if we hypothesise about crowley in a pre- to post-fall context, that he Only Asked Questions, an action that may turn out to have precipitated the Big Bad, then yeah - maybe crowley does in fact know the rules of the heavens, and learnt it the hard way.

and this doesn't even take into account the whole general parallel between job and crowley in receiving undue punishment "and not even to know why". whilst i do still hold that the minisode flashbacks may well be crowley's POV, that is largely irrelevant; we know crowley displaces his emotions surrounding the fall/god onto his plants in modern day, and we are immediately introduced to the minisode with the display of him doing the same to job's goats.

either way, i think that we can be reasonably certain that whilst maybe unintentional at the time, god's words were a direct mirror to events unfolding/character history revealed for crowley at the very least in s2. even if we step outside taking god's action/inaction literally in job, and see it as a parable, it's a lesson that sometimes suffering occurs for no reason, that the universe is not always explainable and certainly not always good, but trust in god and god's power. icky to think about, at least for me, but the same passage (job 41, god's answers) then brings me to my next thought: the matchbox.

i wrote a follow up to a fab post looking at where i feel the matchbox might come into play (specifically, job 41:19 that is inscribed on the side of it), but here is the précis of sorts:

given that the matchbox features the quote before being dropped in heaven, it was potentially placed there in the pub as a long-standing direction for gabriel 'for when the time came', a mark of omniscience

the passage itself may refer to the leviathan as per job, but imagery-wise refers to the heaven trial in s1, where crowley-as-aziraphale spits out fire at the archangels

it's the last thing gabriel reads before he heads down to earth. he still thinks it's aziraphale (ie. heaven is presumably not aware of the body-swap at that point), and so heads to where he knows aziraphale will be - the bookshop - to seek... protection?

if the message however was put there by god, who is omniscient (and the narrator of s1), they would have been directing gabriel towards crowley, not aziraphale... crowley who is homeless living in his car, but whose own last sanctuary is that same bookshop

and lastly, it seems that it's only crowley that is able to unlock gabriel's memories... we know that crowley definitely has some kind of hypnotic, trance-like power, and this might be key... especially as gabriel then starts recounting memories (and prophecies...?) that he wasn't present for - only god, job, aziraphale and crowley.

(tbh, i then wonder how far the 'signs from the almighty' might extend to buddy holly playing in that bar, for beelzebub to introduce the concept of music to gabriel, 'information in a tuneful way'.)

i also want to pay some attention to the 25-lazarii miracle, because im still obsessed by the idea that the miracle didn't quite work as intended, or at least not in the way crowley ends up describing in ep6. summary:

gabriel took his gabrielness and put it in the fly, and the fly followed him into the bookshop and continued to chill there quite happily for all of s2

michael and shax seem to be able to sense gabriel to varying degrees - michael in ep2, and shax in ep3 - where i think it's possible they're sensing the consciousness of gabriel stored in the fly. in any case, they are all able to perceive and acknowledge jim as a inconsequential human, which in any case goes directly against 'not noticing' him in that form

when aziraphale and crowley do the miracle, they hold hands with jim - where gabriel definitively isn't - and attempt to hide gabriel. but if gabriel isn't in there, and it didn't work on jim, and yet a miracle still registers up in heaven, what did the miracle actually do? did it hide someone else?

if god is somehow channelling themself through jim, as we see in ep2 and ep3, did the boys - in fact - hide god?

but then, now that im thinking about, would a miracle of that magnitude only take 25 lazarii? what if instead it's the son of god, who has the power of words to give eternal life? the power, when he returns, to grant humanity eternal salvation, or eternal punishment? john 6:68 (yes, the verse number struck me dumb for a minute):

hold that thought (sorry) for a minute though, because the lightning strike came before hiding anything... so, does the lightning serve a different purpose, in the wider narrative? well, let's consult matthew 24 and break it down:

lighting strike? ✅* (more on this later on)

carcass around which eagles (or vultures depending on the version) gather? im gonna hazard a ✅

or considering the more metaphorical:

sun shall be darkened, moon will not give her light? bit of a stretch, but darkness fell pretty quick in ep5, certainly more rapid than would be warranted for 6.30pm, and lasted that way, presumably, until the demons had all been eviscerated... so, tentative ✅ (though given the green lighting... it could have all just been the demons, sure)

stars from heaven, and powers of heaven will be shaken? not too sure on the stars, unless you potentially count it in with the above darkness thing, but the metatron making a surprise appearance would suggest that the powers definitely be shooketh ✅

if we look at verse 30, this suggests that this hasn't happened just yet; that whilst we may be gearing up towards the second coming, it hasn't actually happened*, and this is where we'll lead into s3.

but if we continue matthew 24 (discussed in this post and this post too by @paperbunny):

days of noah: okay so yeah this could well be a literal flood, and tbh i still think (i wear glasses, so full disclosure ok) that that little snippet behind aziraphale in the first link looks like an optical illusion of a flood, but the chapter continues to clarify a little more about what was happening before the great flood, that humanity will exist in a similar bliss until the second coming arrives... so, a tentative ✅

eating and drinking ✅ there is a lot of eating and drinking imagery in s2, no doubt, but i feel like the coffee and eccles cakes in ep1, before the lightning, play a potentially major part here* (again, more on this later on)

marrying and giving in marriage ✅ if you take into account the whole maggie/nina subplot, gabriel/beelzebub subplot, and then The Big One that is crowley's marriage proposal in ep6

one shall be taken, the other left ✅ 💀 i don't need to explain this surely

two women grinding at the mill, one shall be taken, the other left ✅ ...ish. grinding maybe as a reference to how maggie and nina end up in the café together, working together, then visit crowley and end up Not Getting Together for Good Reason, but where crowley leaves them is that maggie is back in the record store, asleep (and waiting for nina to heal)

but where i come back to the *s is twofold:

nina says eccles cakes would calm someone down. aziraphale seems to consider it, and believe her. he takes the eccles cakes with him, deliberately hands them off to crowley so he can open the door, and the last interior shot before crowley loses his mind is the cakes, untouched, on the table. we know aziraphale seems to have a knack for unconscious miracles/reality manipulation, so what if by believing the eccles cakes would in fact calm crowley down, they actually magically take on the attribute that they would calm him down? im calling this diversion-from-matthew-24 #1

and then the lightning strike itself; crowley fails to rein in his temper, and the lightning shenanigans happen... but matthew describes that it cometh from the east, and shineth unto the west... but in crowley's case, the lightning strikes the bookshop, which lies to the east (going by the compass in aziraphale's bookshop) (actually technically north-east i guess)... diversion-from-matthew-24 #2.

this where im wondering a few things, as a culmination of all of the above...

did god foresee a good portion of all of this, and the events that follow, and warn gabriel ahead of time to seek out aziraphale and crowley via the medium of the matchbox?

does crowley, having not eaten the cakes, summon lighting because he did not Calm Down, constituting as the first sign of the second coming - and was just a wee bit ahead of schedule?

and did he botch it, à la s1 baby swap, by it hitting the coffeeshop instead of the bookshop (going to the east, not the west)? and is the lightning reaching upwards towards the heavens significant?

did crowley's lightning summon jesus, yank his... spirit? soul? out of heaven, and bring it earthside, and it attached itself to jim, currently a vacant vessel?

aziraphale and crowley hide said jesus spirit inadvertently with the 25 lazarii miracle, expecting to hide gabriel?

when jim goes all purple-eyed-mystic-meg, is that jesus speaking? speaking as an omniscient being with his mother's voice, and prophesying the rest of the second coming with "a tempest... great storms"?

and yet, despite this, all the signs of the second coming continue throughout s2, and possibly even kick-start the last judgement, with the various mentions of people going missing? hell being understaffed?

if you've made it this far, kudos