All good things must come to an end and The Good Place is no exception. After four seasons of brilliantly witty philosophy and drama, Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani and Jason’s journey finally comes to an end.
The final episode begins with Michael failing to play guitar. Janet offers him a guitar that plays for you, but Michael tries to explain that the idea of playing is to learn it for yourself. This concept of struggle and self-improvement is essential to our finale.
Next, we see Jason enjoying the perks of paradise. Jason wakes up next to Janet in his favorite restaurant and then heads out to meet his dad and play a videogame. He scores, the crowd goes wild, and after what we learn is his 433,000th try, Jason plays the perfect game of Madden. Now that Jason has achieved his biggest dream, he is at peace. His time in the afterlife has come to an end and he is ready to move on and allow his journey to come to an end.
As the episode unfolds, the other characters follow in his footsteps. Tahani achieves everything on her to-do list and leaves the Good Place to become an architect. Despite Eleanor’s reluctance to let him move on, Chidi also comes to be at peace and walks through the door. Watching each character pass over to the other side is heartbreaking despite being the happiest ending anyone could ask for. As humans, peace is all we can really hope to achieve and yet when we are presented with it, the concept seems uncanny and oddly sad.
The rest of the episode follows Eleanor as she tries to do everything she needs to do so that she too can be ready to move on. She helps Mindy St Claire enter the system and finally, she helps Michael achieve the one thing he has always wanted. She makes him human.
It is at this point that Eleanor is finally ready and Janet admits that she has no idea what is waiting for her on the other side. Chidi likens life after death to a wave returning to the sea and ultimately, this is the depiction we are given. After thousands of jeromy bearimys, Eleanor walks through the door and becomes a ball of pure light. In the next scene, we see a ball of light gently nudge a man on earth, prompting him to deliver mail to his neighbor. Of course, this neighbor turns out to be Michael, who gives him the best piece of advice the series gives: “take it sleazy.”
In the end, The Good Place ending could not have been more perfect. It gave us the happiest ending and showed us that sometimes, the happy ending isn’t quite what we expected or even what we hoped for. The message here is that life is about the journey and all the while we are making mistakes and pulling ourselves up from the ground, we are living a meaningful existence.
5/5
