The fall finale of The Good Place left a lot of questions to be answered, and this week provides a much needed solution to the show’s main problem: what to do with humanity.
Last time on The Good Place, The Judge (Maya Rudolph) decided she was going to erase Earth and start over. However, that would completely wipe out the current good place and bad place, as well as the four humans, Michael (Ted Danson) and Janet (D’Arcy Carden) that we love so much.
The group knew the only way to save humanity was to restore Chidi (William Jackson Harper)’s memories, and he has a piece of paper that says “There is no answer, but Eleanor (Kristen Bell) is the answer.”
This week’s episode picks up with Chidi trying to figure out how to save humanity, and developing a brand new sense of confidence with his restored memories. Within the first few minutes of the episode, he begins to brainstorm and tells Eleanor that he loves her.
While the four humans and Michael are developing a plan, Janet is trying to keep the judge distracted while she searches through each Janet’s void to find the Earth eraser clicker. This includes several hilarious moments and even a disco session between Rudolph and Carden that’s beyond hilarious.
After developing a plan to officially instate a medium place, the group tries to get Shawn (Marc Evan Jackson) on board. However, they keep continuing to fail. That’s when Michael gives a speech that inspires Chidi to create a better plan, but the Judge and Shawn still won’t listen.
Janet decides to take matters into her own hands, trapping everyone in her void so they have to listen to the new plan. The way she lures The Judge is by conjuring her own personal Timothy Olyphant, who is a nice addition to the episode.
The group begins to explain the plan, laying out the idea that people have the opportunity to continue to better themselves by being placed in tests laid out by the good and bad place architects together.
The new system involves people living their lives, still earning a specific amount of points, and then the number of points serves as a baseline for the difficulty of the test in the afterlife. At the end of each test, the architect will explain what the person did well or poorly, and then be rebooted to try again.
The reboot doesn’t wipe away a person’s memories, but instead helps them retain a vague memory of what they learned in the evaluation sessions. The hope is that with enough chances, people will be able to qualify for the good place. However, some people will never get better or make progress through the experiment, and those people will go to the bad place.
The Judge agrees to their proposition, but Shawn still says no. Michael realizes that Shawn only wants to get a rise out of him and keep fighting, so he pretends to give up and let humanity be erased.
Shawn becomes upset that he’ll miss out on a fight with Michael and torturing humans for a billion years, so the two talk about it. Shawn admits that fighting Michael is the most fun he’s ever had, having sparked a newfound sense of fun in his job.
“I know buddy, it’s hard when things end,” Michael said. “And one way or the other this is over. The only question is, what’s next?”
Right before The Judge ends humanity, Shawn agrees to the proposal and they all turn to Chidi for advice on how to start the redesigning process.
With only three episodes left, it’ll be interesting to see what happens to the afterlife, and what the four humans will do once their time in redesign is over.
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The Good Place airs Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. on NBC.
