The Good Place is a roller coaster ride of plot twists, role reversals, and close calls, and fans can’t wait to see what unpredictable stunt is coming on Thursday’s season finale.
Of course, die hard fans can’t help trying to guess what’s coming, futile as it might be. Social media, blogs and forums are chock full of ideas about where the afterlife sitcom might be headed, and each one is more outlandish than the last. Still, none is more outlandish than anything the show has thrown at viewers so far, so anything is fair game.
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Be warned, there are a lot of spoilers ahead.
The season finale is titled “Somewhere Else.” That could imply a pretty straightforward ending — the four humans aren’t terrible, but they’re not good either, so they’ll be sent “somewhere else.” The show even has a precedent for that in Mindy St. Claire, the character who lives alone in a boring but comfortable house in the middle of nowhere.
Even if some version of that is the case, it leaves a lot of questions to be answered, and the dedicated fans of NBC‘s break-out comedy are endeavoring to answer them online. Here’s a look at some of the most popular and plausible fan theories about The Good Place season 2 finale.
Another Reboot
This theory is an obvious favorite for several legitimate reasons. First and foremost, Michael Schur, the showrunner and creator of The Good Place, gave an interview in Entertainment Weekly on Wednesday teasing the finale. The biggest and most blatant hit about the finale he would offer was this:
“The very, very last thing that happens in this season is a pretty perfect bookend as it relates to the first thing that happens in the season. It feels like a completed journey in some way. Not completed like the show’s over, mind you, it’s not a series finale. It makes a lot of sense given what happened at the beginning of the year.”
Of course, the season 2 premiere began with Eleanor, Chid, Tahani and Jason freshly rebooted. However, they uncovered Michael’s ruse within the episode, and Michael rebooted them yet again. This led to over 800 reboots, shown in montage.
Many fans think that this “bookend” Schur is hinting at will be another reboot. Wherever Team Cockroach ends up at the beginning of season 3, these fans speculate their memories will be wiped and they’ll be the subjects of yet another experiment.
Michael The Martyr
Another interpretation of Schur’s “bookend” hint is that Michael, the demon who has learned to love over the course of the last eleven episodes, will give up his existence for his new human friends.
This is based on a closer reading of Schur’s exact wording.
“The very, very last thing that happens in this season is a pretty perfect bookend as it relates to the first thing that happens in the season. It feels like a completed journey in some way. Not completed like the show’s over, mind you, it’s not a series finale. It makes a lot of sense given what happened at the beginning of the year.”
While the season really got rolling with the reboot montage, the very, very first thing that happened in season 2 was a conversation between Michael and his boss, Shawn. Michael assured his supervisor that the second attempt would go off without a hitch, and Shawn disagreed.
“You’ve got to trust me on this, boss,” Michael said. “I won’t let you down.”
“I think you will,” Shawn replied. “I think this entire project of yours is stupid and doomed to fail. I think you’re going to be retired, eliminated from existence, and burned on the surface of a billion suns, and I have no doubt that you and your cockamamie experiment will go down in history as colossal failures.”
Fans speculate that, in a way, exactly what Shawn described will occur. Michael’s idea of having humans torture each other did fail, and it gave the demon a range of compassion and feelings he never expected. The result, they reason, is that Michael will sacrifice himself to save his new friends, ending up retired and destroyed.
They Really Are in The Good Place
This is a popular theory, though perhaps not one of the more likely ones. Fans have speculated, especially on Reddit, that the writers will simply invert the plot twist from the first season’s finale, revealing that the existence Michael, Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani and Jason have toiled through for incalculable time now was “The Good Place.”
The idea is that the afterlife will turn out to be a place that encourages continued personal growth and development, as well as self-discovery. People want to go on journeys, learn about themselves and test themselves, so “The Good Place” concocts adventures like this spanning millennia to allow for that.
The concept is good, though it likely won’t come to pass, according to showrunner Michael Schur. In his interview with Entertainment Weekly on Wednesday, he said there wouldn’t be any more fundamental shake-ups of that magnitude.
“If you just keep yanking the rug out from everybody, and going, ‘Everything you thought is now this totally different thing!,’ then I, as a viewer, would start to go, ‘Well, why should I believe anything you say?’” Schur said. “All you’re doing is watching the show and trying to guess the actual reality is of what’s going on. So, we don’t do that. The end of this season is not ‘Guess what? We were right the first time — it really is the Good Place!’ You could just keep doing that forever, but it’s utterly diminishing returns.
“We tried to remain true to the DNA of the show in that we tried to do things that are interesting and surprising and maybe you didn’t see coming, but everything that you have learned about them to this point remains similar. Or actually, really true.”
They’re in Purgatory
Some fans speculate that the entire point system-based afterlife that the show is set in is a test of its own, designed to determine which eternal fate all the characters are suited for. This applies not only to Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani and Jason, but Michael, Shawn, Vicky and all the other “demons” running the bad place.
The idea is that truly evolved minds will come to realize they’re in an artificial construct and find their way out.
This theory is confusing, as many fans already think of Mindy St. Claire’s house as “purgatory.” This defines an entirely different kind of purgatory — one that is a test rather than a trap.
Michael is in The Bad Place
This theory has grown in popularity ever since the season 1 finale. It suggests that Michael is being tortured infinitely, and he’s only been tricked into thinking he’s a demon. His failed project to build a self-sustaining torture neighborhood for Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani and Jason was only another part of his eternal damnation.
This theory has only gotten more credible as the season has gone on, and Michael has begun to exhibit more and more capacity for compassion and goodness. Fans point out that none of the other demons have ever shown the remotest inclination to learn new things or value lives other than their own.
The big question left by this theory what that makes the human characters. It seems unlikely that the writers would turn around at this point and tell us that they’re actually the demons, especially considering Schur’s promise that they won’t “pull the rug out from under” us.
Either way, many fans thing that Judge Jen will provide more insight as to who Michael is and why he’s different in the season finale.
Janet is God
Many fans can’t wait to see Janet interact with Judge Jen. How the omnipresent judge on high played by Maya Rudolph reacts to the embodiment of Siri will tell us a lot about Janet’s position in the pecking order.
Some redditors believe that Janets everywhere represent the show’s closest analogy for God. They suggest that the shared mission of all Janets is to play referee and attempt to bring order to the universe.
This theory lends itself nicely to a religious interpretation of the show, as Bad Janet would therefore represent the devil.
While this revelation might be coming, there’s no telling what it might mean for the future of Team Cockroach.
Michael Takes Over The Bad Place
This theory is beloved by fans, not least of all because it allows for the show’s longevity. Michael and Janet’s arrival in Judge Jen’s chambers came just a moment before the humans were cast down to The Bad Place, but to really save them, he’ll need something to convince the judge to spare them.
One redditor suggested that he might simply point out all the corruption and poor management in The Bad Place under Shawn. Michael is better equipped than anyone to point out how much a demon can get away with these days, and he has a record of Shawn’s biggest mistakes.
With that in mind, Judge Jen could decide to oust Shawn and have him retired. She’d need someone to fill his slot, and Michael would be the obvious choice, having just brought her the reports of corruption.
At that point, even if Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani and Jason did get sent to The Bad Place, Michael would be their torturer, and the show would go on.
A New Place
With the episode title “Somewhere Else” in mind, fans have looked for ideas as to where else Team Cockroach could go. The answers are all but infinite given the rules of the show, but one Reddit post has a pretty popular take.
The user points out Michael’s conversation with Shawn in the season’s penultimate episode. Michael says that his hundreds of reboots have accidentally shown him that humans have a capacity to grow and learn that he’d never understood before. He expresses doubts in the points system that sends people to either the Good of Bad Place.
Shawn, of course, brushes this off, but fans wonder whether Judge Jen would be so quick to do the same. Perhaps, if puts the same evidence before her, she’d consent to a self-contained experiment under her supervision, to see if the humans became measurably “better” over time.
This would put the show back where it started — in a contrived reality that studies morality and philosophy like a petri dish. Fans even note that this could include another reboot.
There is Only One Place
One convoluted theory posted on Reddit points out the contradictory logic in the supposed point system that landed Team Cockroach in The Bad Place. This fan argues that the show has been showing more and more faults in the rules they’ve established, hinting that something else is on the way.
This user contends that the afterlife is one big, confused messed — just like reality itself. Good people and bad people are left to figure things out for themselves, and the system Team Cockroach has been shunted around by is just peoples’ best attempts to make order out of chaos.
This again, goes back to the idea that the afterlife is about growth and self-discovery rather than reward and punishment. The idea is strong, though it leaves the possibility of a third season pretty open ended.
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Pictured: (l-r) Melissa Peterman as Gabby, Belissa Escobedo as Isabella, Reba McEntire as Bobbie on 'Happy's Place' — (Photo by: Casey Durkin/NBC) -
Photo Credit: Paramount Network
