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So Aziraphale wants to return to Heaven and fix it--admitting by implication that, yes, it's utterly FUBAR as things stand. But it remains the only power bloc standing for Goodness, even if it's simply awful at it, and Aziraphale remains loyal to good, and self-identifies as "angel."
Crowley wants to run away and just be "us" with Aziraphale somewhere. No Heaven. No Hell. And, unfortunately, no commitment to good, either. Crowley is not good. He's actually been among one of Hell's most effective, if least understood demons. As he says in GO2, he's a demon doing the best he can until he can't go any further. He's willing to be evil, but some of it upsets him.
And Aziraphale is an angel doing the best he can until he can't go any further. He's determined to be good--and only deviates when the announced goodness just fails to make sense as good to him.
These things are parallel, but not the same, and that makes a difference to everyone. Because in the relationship standoff, Crowley wants to escape the entire issue of good and evil and just be "us," outside any of the rules, while Aziraphale wants them both to realign with Heaven and work together to make Heaven actually be good. In essence, Crowley doesn't want to play poker, even though poker is the only game in town, and Aziraphale wants to play poker and make everyone play it honorably. Crowley doesn't want to play Monopoly. Aziraphale does and has opinions on how it should be played.
The challenge is for them to find a context that permits Aziraphale to remain aligned with good, and permits Crowley to remain chaotic neutral. Which means dinging a "game" they can share that both admit is good enough AND chaotic neutral enough for both to express their own fundamental natures.
Where's that?
Earth. Humanity. The fundamental system that functions above and beyond and around the Heaven and Hell paradigm. In GO 1, it's established that Death, for example, is not good or evil. "Nature's Shadow." Death exists in a way that frames the paradigm but does not partake of the system. Humanity, likewise, keeps failing to match the Heaven-Hell framing, being better than the angels--and so much worse than the demons they leave the poor damned critters in shock at human inventive and audacious wickedness.
Aziraphale was cut off from Heaven. But his bookshop remained an embassy.
The polarity of Heaven and Hell, and the way Crowley tends to confuse amorality with escaping the heaven and hell game leads to people missing that morality exists outside Heaven and Hell's framing. They're based in choice, which does not exist if you're not free.
Aziraphale and Crowley need to become defenders of choice and freedom. Of creativity. Of the invention of choices. Taht doesn't remove good and evil, or for that matter Heaven and Hell. It just means that while Heaven and Hell may be left to judge and deal with the choices people freely make, good and evil and grey and black and white, and death and life, and all that jazz exist in the realm of choice and honor and duty, with chaos and neutrality and innovation thrown in. Humans can do evil like nobody's business--but they can do good just as well.
I don't know if all that means Aziraphale and Crowley have to become mortal--I hope not. I hope that they become the guardians and defenders of the liberty of choice--the grey realms, the areas of creative solution, the refusal to become autocratic in goodness OR evil. Humans need that more than anything. Aziraphale and Crowley ruling a potent little team of people based in the bookstore, defending the space of human ambiguous choice, would create a world that gave Crowley a reason to fight for his own idea of good, and give Aziraphale a reason to turn his back on the Heavenly OR Hellish bureaucracies. It would give them a realm of "us" that didn't deny either of them their core characters or moral frames.
Meanwhile--Metatron's always been a fork-tongued slime. Never trust anyone who tells you that when you talk with them you're talking with God. Metatron would actually seem to be the Evil Vizier in both GO 1 and GO 2.
Aziraphale starts to be up to something in the long, quiet interlude of the credits of CO 2. Sheen plays character change, where Tennant plays more straightforward mourning. I don't know if the change is just Aziraphale beginning to realize that Crowley LOVES him, but just plays it a bit erratically (no chance at rehearsal after all.... LOL), or if Aziraphale is beginning to see some way of at least dealing with the jumble they're currently in (which may be as erratic as poor Crowley's attempt, for the same reason....) or if he's got even a trace of a degree of suspicion about the Metatron and a Second Coming plan. But Sheen is playing Aziraphale in those last minutes as contemplating something and having a quiet, quiet little revelation. One that ultimately pleases him. Given how truly stricken he was at where things were leaving off...
Sheen plays Aziraphale very complexly in the entire ending of GO 2. He's going to turn down Metatron at first--looking for excuses to say "no" until he's given the option of taking Crowley to Heaven and giving him back his angel status. He's falling to bits when Crowley rejects him--and just plain broken over the rejection and Crowley yelling at him ending with that forced kiss. He tries to find a way to back out and stay when Metatron comes to collect him, he openly mourns to see Crowley aloof with the Bentley...and definitely has concern when Metatron brings up the Second Coming. All those little performance beats, all those implied thoughts, and then watch his face in the elevator up: he's got an idea. He's got a wee, subtle little smile. He's got an IDEA...and it's an idea that he at least thinks may fix everything. Magic. He's as excited by his idea as he is by a nice bit of magic...
Feel free to comment, or to add odd bits of "I don't know quite how this will play into GO 3, but I think they will" stuff. Because--it's not empty, and it's not over.
Oh--and for the record, I think Gaiman already has the script to GO 3 written. Or at least intensely well outlined. This is not just a sort of random "let's leave the door open." This is a carefully constructed bridge episode aimed at what I suspect is intended to be a conclusive third portion of a trilogy. You have to know a lot about the third part of the trilogy to write this effective a bridge episode.