The Good Place, objectively the best show on television ever, is about to embark upon its fourth and final series on Netflix, and the only thing about which we can be certain is that there’ll be some incredible twist and that we probably won’t see it coming and also that it will definitely break our hearts.
After all, if there’s one thing which the series has been based upon it’s been that as soon as we viewers have their head around the premise, the rug gets pulled out from under us.
The twist in the first series was that after being told that this was all about Eleanor Shellstrop being mistakenly sent to the Good Place, she and the other principal characters were actually being tortured in the Bad Place. The twist of the second series was saving all the characters from their life-ending fates and seeing if they could still improve.
The third seemed to be the reveal that no-one had gotten into The Good Place in centuries, thought to be proof that The Bad Place had interfered with the point system but then revealed to be that our interconnected lives made it all but impossible to do unambiguous good and how does this perfect show even exist?
So now we have a series which will definitely have a twist, and which will wrap everything up. Somehow. Probably.
We can probably – maybe? – rule out some of the more arbitrary plot twists doing the rounds of Reddit (Michael is human and this is his Bad Place! There is no Good Place! Everyone’s a Janet! Janet’s a demon! ) purely because the people who write the show are so immensely protective of it and wouldn’t want to cheapen, say, Chidi’s growth and development by making him have been a demon the whole time.
The most obvious and satisfying ending would be all of the Brainy Bunch in The Good Place, living together for all eternity. So we know that won’t happen.
But here are the three things which I suspect and also don’t want to see happen:
1. Michael and/or Janet will die
It’s hard to even know how that works, given that one’s immortal and the other is a… well, a Janet.
But once things end, what’s left for them to do? Build new neighbourhoods? Carry out the experiments… again? Hang out in the void?
I mean, Janet’s damn near omnipotent at this point so she could just build her own universe and populate it with Jasons. Which is a spinoff we endorse.
2. It’s probably going to be about memory
…and alsmost certainly some more memory wipes because the couples can’t possibly live happily ever after.
Tahini loves Jason, but Jason loves Janet. Eleanor and Chidi were in love, but Chidi’s memory was wiped and now he remembers nothing. Even if he gets it back, there’s no way for the current circumstance to settle satisfactorily.
And so much of the series has rested on memory – on how much we are what we remember, on the importance of relationships, on the things we carry with us and how we grow and change (or don’t) – that ther seems no way to sustain the progress the characters have made by learning from their mistakes but also end things so that everyone’s happy…
3. It’ll involve a new level of complexity
Each season adds new wrinkles to the universe of the show and that’s probably going to be the way out.
After all, first there was just the Good Place and the Bad Place. Then we found out there was a Medium Place. Then we found out there was a huge bureaucratic backstage level where The Judge lives, and the Neutral Zone, and the Interdimensional Hole of Pancakes and the Time Knife and again how does this show exist?
So here’s my theory: there’ll be a reset somewhere and we’ll cycle back around. This never ends, and they’re somewhere out of time which, as we learned, is not linear but shaped like a cursive Jeremy Bearimy. Living on the dot of the I, just like Chidi said.
Mind you, that feels like a hopeless sort of an ending for a show all about hope, so… goddamn what would a happy ending even look like here? How can we possibly expect to finish up the show without being tortured by the thought of these characters being…
Wait a second: is this… is this OUR Bad Place? OH GOD THIS GOES DEEPER THAN I EVER THOUGHT.