It’s been more than six months since the Season 2 finale of The Good Place aired, and we’ve spent every waking moment since trying to figure out just what the motherforking shirtballs it means for the show’s upcoming third season premiere on September 27.
Were the four dum-dums sent to an Earth-like simulation (much like Chidi’s trolley debacle) in order to more accurately test their newfound morality? Is this another one of Michael’s elaborate and torturous tricks? Or are our core four actually, as show creator Michael Schur seemingly confirmed to Rolling Stone, now “straight-up back on Earth, in a new timeline where they didn’t die”? It’s looking like… yes, they actually are.
‘The Good Place’ Should be an Impossible Show to Write
What does that mean for Season 3 of The Good Place? Honestly, if the unprecedented and now-famous twist at the end of Season 1 proved anything, it’s that it kinda doesn’t matter. Yes, the rules on Earth are different (Michael won’t be able to snap his fingers and reset everything, Eleanor can finally stop saying “fork,” and there won’t be any clam chowder fountains), but The Good Place isn’t great because of where the characters are, it’s great because of why they’re there.
The Good Place is wholly unique in that the story manages to keep raising the stakes after the highest-known stakes have already played out. Narratively, the worst imaginable outcome for any story (any human, really) has already come to pass: Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason died. They went to hell and were emotionally tortured by a demon. Where most stories end, The Good Place begins.
Because the worst has straight-up already happened by the time the pilot begins, Schur and The Good Place writers have to raise the stakes in endlessly creative and surprising ways. As we already know, the first season finale did that by turning the fish-out-of-water trope on its head: No, Eleanor isn’t in the wrong place (the Good Place). She’s actually in the right place (the Bad Place). Eleanor and her friends are supposed to be there because they’re terrible people; they died and went to Hell, not Heaven.
That realization resets every established goal, giving the second season a familiar but clean slate, and a new path of action for both Michael (resetting his beloved neighborhood 802 times) and the core four (realizing where they actually are 802 times). So how, oh how, could the second season possibly raise the stakes beyond dying and going to hell? By bringing our beloved screw-ups back to life (via the endlessly charming Judge Gen and her burrito).
The Big Twists Aren’t Ever as Big as the Show’s Heart
So far, The Good Place‘s big twists haven’t suffocated the show; the Season 1 reset bolstered and expanded the story. For as big as that big old twist was, the show’s heart still proved bigger throughout all of Season 2. And it’s no small wonder — Schur has had a hand in creating some of TV’s most earnest and loving moments: Leslie and Ben’s “I love you and I like you” on Parks and Recreation, Pam slipping a yogurt top into Jim’s bag before his big interview in New York, and Jake and Amy’s wedding on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
The Good Place’s sophomore season was engaging because we saw Michael turn from precarious ally to true friend; Eleanor and Chidi finally kissed (hot diggity dog!); Good Janet embraced sentience and told Jason she loves him; Tahani confronted her parents; and no one got in the moral hot air balloon to the Good Place because if one person couldn’t get in, no one forkin’ could. The second season so quickly and masterfully established new rules and gags in the wake of the first season’s major twist that just 12 21-minute episodes later, an even bigger finale twist felt earned — inevitable, even.
Season 3 Will Probably Be the Best Season Yet
So far, it looks like Season 3 will follow Michael and Janet as they try to make sure the core four make enough morally sound decisions to earn entrance into the real Good Place when they die (again), while trying not to disrupt the world’s established timeline. The characters have overcome multiple memory wipes in the past — they’ve even overcome death — so there’s no telling what the stakes will be this season. The Good Place is changing the rules of the afterlife and television writing. Maybe there are no rules at all.
In the third season promo, star Kristen Bell revealed that Schur once told her his vision for future seasons and how he wants it all to end — so there is, ostensibly, a master plan. Still, it’s difficult to imagine how the third season could possibly raise those climbing stakes yet again — but if any show can keep its huge heart beating even faster than its expert plot beats, it’s The Good Place.