The Good Place Season 2 Finale Explained: What's Next?

As I’ve already written aboutmanytimesbeforeThe Good Placeis an incredible TV show.Parks and Recreationcreator/showrunnerMichael Schur’s follow-up NBC sitcom blends the very best of Prestige TV and traditional network sitcom, resulting in a hilarious, surprising, and consistently compassionate work of art. The show is heavily serialized for a half-hour comedy, but Schur and his writing team have consistently presented “twists” that recontextualize the series in ways that opens up even more exciting possibilities.

Season 1 followed a quartet of characters who thought they had been wrongfully brought to “The Good Place” instead of “The Bad Place”, only to discover in the Season 1 finale that theywerein The Bad Place after all—it was all an experiment designed byTed Danson’s demon. Season 2 then found the show navigating this Bad Place experiment in exciting ways, as the series became about a quartet of “bad people” trying to teach a demon how to be good while also looking for a way into The Good Place.

Last night’s Season 2 finale blew up the show’s premise yet again, but not in the same way as before. While Eleanor (Kristen Bell), Chidi (William Jackson Harper), Tahani (Jameela Jamil), and Jason (Manny Jacinto) had made their cases for why they deserved to be in The Good Place in front of The Judge (Maya Rudolph), Michael (Ted Danson) also argued that if these “bad” people showed the capacity for good while in The Bad Place, perhaps the entire system that sorts who goes where is flawed.

After some arguments and hemming and hawing, Michael and The Judge made a decision to settle this once and for all—we smash cut back to Earth, where Eleanordidn’tdie in the accident that sent her to The Bad Place in the first place. Instead, in what appears to be a simulation, we watched to see if Eleanor could show the capacity to change into a good person without the certainty of an afterlife, if confronted with a near-death experience.

Most of the episode followed Eleanor’s path while briefly cutting to Michael and Janet (D’Arcy Carden) reading stock-tickers that showed the progress of Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason (presumably in the same simulations, although Tahani and Jason never reappear). While Eleanor does change for about six months, she gives up and becomes a “bad” person again, claiming that being good got her no rewards and only made her life harder.

But in the episode’s final moments, aCheersnod found Michael tending bar in front of Eleanor and giving her one last push that leads her to—Chidi! Yes indeed, the episode ends with Eleanor and Chidi meeting “for the first time” in this simulation, as Eleanor is drawn to Chidi—now a professor in Australia—after watching one of his three-hour philosophy talks on YouTube. And that’s where we end.

This doesn’t provide as shocking a cliffhanger as the Season 1 finale did, but withThe Good PlaceSeason 3 already ordered, we know this is setting up another recontextualization of the series when it returns. But how, exactly? And where is this all going?

Ultimately I have complete trust in Schur and his writers, as they capitalized on that Season 1 twist in an incredible way. This is not a show that takes the easy or obvious route, which is why Season 2 only spent a couple of episodes with Michael trying his experiment again and again, only to change things up when he realizes the only way out of this snafu is for him to team up with the humans and figure out a way into The Good Place—which would necessitate him becoming an actually good person.

That’s what’s so brilliant about this show. The storytelling is incredibly compelling and funny and inventive, but it’s always rooted in something deeper. If Season 1 was about whether bad people have the capacity to change, Season 2 was partly about whetherreallybad people have the capacity to change. Season 3 will no doubt continue this theme in an interesting way, as we see how the scenario plays outwithoutmoral dessert. Of course this group works so well as a team we’ll likely get to see them all “meeting” for the first time, and we’ll presumably see the characters in this Earth simulation trying to become better people without knowing for sure that it’s going to lead to them getting into heaven.

Indeed, while it was fascinating to watch the characters try to become better people in the first two seasons, they were almost always under the impression that doing so would get them into The Good Place, which they knew for certain existed. In this new simulation, the characters don’t have that certainty, and thus must act out of the goodness of their hearts. If they do so, it may very well prove that the entire system that sorts people into The Good Place and The Bad Place is inherently flawed.

But predicting whereThe Good Placewill absolutely go is a fool’s errand, and I expect this “simulation” storyline won’t last the entire 13 episodes of Season 3 as Schur and his writing team will find new, exciting ways to explore these high-minded philosophical ideas. But if there’s one thing we know for certain about Season 3, it’s that it’ll contain heart, humor, and brains. And, of course, puns. Lots and lots of puns.