**Warning: spoilers ahead for The Good Place season three finale**
The Good Place writers really do love a good reboot. Season one ended with Eleanor’s (Kristen Bell) shock revelation that the supposed Good Place, where she and her fellow deceased humans had ended up, was actually — cue Ted Danson’s evil laugh— The Bad Place.
At the end of series two, we saw demon Michael (Danson) warm to his plucky experiment subjects, and convince The Judge to return the four humans to their lives on Earth to prove that they had really become better people.
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“Pandemonium”, the final episode of The Good Place season three, sees the gang recreate Michael’s original experiment, with the aim of proving once and for all that humans are better than the celestial higher powers assume. But Michael’s devilish boss, Shawn (Marc Evan Janson), has thrown a spanner in the works, ensuring that each of the new humans brought in for the experiment has a previous connection to the original four — resulting in Chidi (William Jackson Harper) opting to reboot in order to save the experiment — and potentially the fate of mankind…
Read on for our eight burning questions following The Good Place season three finale…
Who are the two new people in the experiment?
As Tahani (Jameela Jamil) quickly figures out, The Bad Place has sneakily selected four new humans who already have connections with herself, Chidi, Eleanor or Jason (Manny Jacinto) back on Earth.
So far we’ve met John, a gossip columnist who made Tahani’s life a misery during her lifetime, and Chidi’s Australian ex-girlfriend, Simone, whose presence prompts Chidi’s realisation that he’ll need Michael to reboot him to his original timeline (with us so far?), thus wiping his memory of Simone and the others, in order to maintain the experiment’s integrity.
That leaves two more humans, presumably each with a connection to Eleanor and Jason respectively. It’s unlikely that the writers would bring in any more exes, so perhaps instead we might see individuals whom Eleanor/Jason wronged during their lifetimes?
Will Michael continue to be the “mastermind behind-the-scenes”?
At the end of series three’s penultimate episode, “Chidi Sees the Time Knife”, Michael has a melt-down, forcing Eleanor to pretend to be The Architect in his place. Michael later warms to this idea, claiming that it will allow him more time to observe and be the “mastermind behind-the-scenes”.
However, once the human with a previous connection to Eleanor arrives, surely her cover will be busted — potentially risking the entire experiment. And, as Eleanor quickly realises during the finale, she’s not entirely cut out to play an all-knowing quasi-angel, as she’s forced to defer to Michael’s trusty artificial intelligence Janet (D’Arcy Carden).
How will Eleanor cope with Chidi’s memory loss?
Eleanor was – understandably – pretty heartbroken when Chidi opted to wipe his memories of their relationship. Although he reassured her that it will all work out in some wibbly wobbly timeline way (“Time means nothing. Jeremy Bearimy, baby”), she’ll still have to convince him that she’s The Architect — and watch his afterlife reunion with Simone…
Will John’s arrival result in more iconic “Drake + Ruth Bader Ginsberg” stories?
Deceased gossip columnist John has A LOT of questions (much to Eleanor’s chagrin), and he looks set to bend poor Janet’s ear with his nosey demands.
Not that we’re complaining, however, as it looks to be a recipe for comedy gold: after he asked Janet for the most scandalous secret celeb hook-up, she revealed it to be Drake and legendary US Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Tahani later confirmed the hook-up to be true — in fact, she set them up (of course).
How will Chidi react to his ex Simone’s arrival?
OK – so technically neither Simone nor Chidi will remember each other, or their past relationship — Chidi has been rebooted back to his original timeline, to the point where he’s killed by a falling air-conditioning unit, while The Judge also allowed Michael to wipe Simone’s memories of Chidi.
BUT that’s not to say that an attraction between them — or even a weird sense of déjà vu — won’t be present when they reunite.
Will Chidi and Eleanor get back together?
No matter what the universe (or Michael) throws at them, these two always seem to find each other, whatever timeline they’re in. But, as we’ve seen, The Good Place writers love to subvert our assumptions — and the presence of Simone may also prove problematic.
Was that “Jeremy Bearimy” timeline reference a clue?
As already mentioned, Chidi referenced “Jeremy Bearimy”, the name for The Good Place/Bad Place’s loopy timeline, when he bade farewell to Eleanor in “Pandemonium”. Was this some kind of nod or clue from the show’s writers? Heck, Chidi even saw the Time Knife — a trillion different realities folding into one another to form a single blade, keep up – earlier in the season.
Could one of these realities provide the key to the experiment – and ‘The Answer’ Eleanor craves?
Will the experiment work out?
Michael’s track record isn’t exactly stellar – both his initial experiment with the humans (tricking them into thinking The Bad Place was The Good Place), and then returning them to Earth, didn’t work out.
But Michael isn’t in charge this time – Eleanor is. And as we know, our four humans heroes always generate their best ideas when they work together…
All three seasons of The Good Place are available to stream now on Netflix
This article was originally published in January 2019
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