The Good Place Is Over. Everything Is Fine.
by Reuben BaronWARNING: The following contains spoilers for the series finale of The Good Place.
After four seasons and countless Jeremy Bearimys, The Good Place is over. The NBC comedy is ending at the right time; at the rate the series zoomed through plot, there really wasn't much more that it could do without overextending itself. The finale, "Whenever You're Ready," is twice as long as the average episode, and it's the most relaxed the show's ever been. The major story of fixing up the afterlife was already mostly taken care of in the previous two episodes, so the finale is essentially an epilogue, one last chance to spend time with the four humans, demon squid and not-a-robot we've come to love.
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It's as happy an ending as any series finale involving half of the main characters choosing permanent death could possibly be.
Yeah, the penultimate episode's solution to the problem of eternity by offering an exit of nonexistence has been understandably a bit controversial on two fronts: There are theologians who disagree with it as a solution, and there are viewers upset at the solution's resemblance to suicide. The finale, however, handles this exit so elegantly that it makes a persuasive argument that it's a good system. Seeing how and why these characters actually arrive at their decision to go through the door makes it clear this is unlike Earthly suicide.
Jason Mendoza is the first of the humans to make the choice to go through the door. The pleasures he experiences in The Good Place might be the silliest, but they also leave him with perfect contentment. It's fitting that the guy whose original form of torture in The Bad Place was being mistaken for a Buddhist monk actually ends up being the first to essentially achieve nirvana. In his peaceful state, he's ready to go through the door, but he's also not desperate to escape. He can be happy waiting by the door for thousands of Bearimys just to give Janet one final parting gift.
Tahani Al-Jamil is the one human character who doesn't go through the door despite achieving readiness. Instead, after doing everything she wanted to in The Good Place, she decides to become the first human Architect for The Good Place. This is essentially the Bodhisattva option, achieving nirvana but holding off for the sake of helping save other souls.
Next is Chidi Anagonye's goodbye, which is the most tear-jerking of the bunch. Those tears might be mostly happy tears, but it's still impossible for anyone invested in the romance between Chidi and Eleanor Shellstrop to not feel some sadness over Chidi leaving before Eleanor. We find out Chidi's been ready for a while, only sticking around because Eleanor isn't ready for him to leave. Eleanor tries to delay the inevitable by distracting him with a series of exciting dates, but she realizes she doesn't want to hold him back, and so she lets Chidi go... though Chidi does make her a sexy calendar for her troubles.
So Eleanor's the last human from Team Cockroach left, but she still doesn't feel ready to leave. She thinks convincing Mindy St. Claire to leave The Medium Place and join up into the newly reformed afterlife system is the last thing she needs to do (one side-note on The Medium Place: upgraded Derek is the funniest of the finale's many cameos). It turns out there's an additional being she needs to do a favor for: Michael.
Demons, Judges, Janets and Good Place Architects are theoretically built for eternity in a way that humans aren't. Michael, however, has become too human in his psychology, and now that all the problems with the afterlife have been fixed to everyone's satisfaction, there's nothing left for Michael to do. He wants to go through the door but can't. Eleanor realizes there's only one thing he truly wants, and convinces The Judge to bend the rules and give it to him: the chance to become human.
It's here where The Good Place throws a bone to its theological or philosophical critics: Eleanor acknowledges that by the time Michael dies as a human, the afterlife might look completely different. Just because the current system seems to be working ideally now doesn't mean it can't change. Given a demon's becoming human, a human's become an architect, the Council has split up and The Bad Place surely still wants to mess with things, uncertainty is the only certainty.
This is honestly the smartest way for the show to thread the delicate balance of providing answers and finality in addressing themes which can't actually be given final answers. The Good Place is a show about unanswerable philosophical questions. Its final conception of the afterlife, which parallels the Jewish concept of Olam Haba as well as Buddhist ideals of nirvana, will be for some as satisfying an answer as possible, but the nature of these questions means no answer, let alone one proposed by a sitcom, can truly be right or satisfying to everyone. Having a possible answer but giving the leeway of change and uncertainty is only fitting.
With Michael now in the mortal world, Eleanor is ready to face her own great uncertainty: she finally steps through the door and enters her next great adventure. Like water leaving the form of a wave, "Eleanor" as an identity no longer exists, but we see her essence floating to Earth, communicating in the subtlest of ways... even if that way is convincing a mailman to deliver Michael some junk mail. Even after saving billions of souls, you can always take it sleazy.
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