Not so much a theory, but something I noticed in The Good Place that everyone else I've talked to seems to have missed: By the final episode, the 4 main human characters end up becoming exactly what they pretended/thought they were in the pilot episode. This is most obvious with Jason, simply because Janet says it out loud on screen. He spends tons of time waiting for her to come back, silently living by himself, and when he explains that to her, she says "like a monk". ie Jason went from pretending to be a monk at first to becoming an actual monk by the end. In the first episode, Michael told Eleanor that she was in The Good Place for her work as a lawyer helping to free innocent death row inmates. By the end of the series, she works to help people condemned to The Bad Place for no good reason to avoid that punishment. So she had become the actual savior of the condemned that she originally pretended to be. Chidi spent his life teaching philosophy, and the beginning of his afterlife trying to teach Eleanor and Jason to be better people so they can stay in the "Good Place". By the end, he's helping design a system to help everyone become better people so they can make it to the real Good Place. And Tahani spent the first few episodes of the first season trying to make their "Good Place" neighborhood better for everyone. She was really just doing it to try and make herself look better to everyone else. But in the end, she becomes an architect, so she can design neighborhoods, for the actual betterment of the people who live there.
One of my personal headcannons/theories is about Disco Janet. I haven’t seen anyone really talk about her, or why there’s only one of her. I think she is a failed version/prototype of the Good Janet. I don’t have much evidence to support this but I have a feeling that like the Janet we know, she was rebooted multiple times during the 80s due to malfunction and would become obsessed with disco. And maybe then, the Judge used her for entertainment while in her chambers, but after trillions of bearimys she might’ve become sick of her.
I haven't looked up any The Good Place theories online, so I don't know which ones are out there, but one theory that I believe is that the little voice Eleanor used to hear, the voice that told her to do good things, were the people who chose to cross the gate on the Good Place all along. The timeline in the afterlife is not straight like the human world, it loops around itself, so Eleanor was hearing the people she would eventually save. It's possible one of them could've been Chidi too.
It can't be "the bad place all along" because they spend *many* jeremy bearmies in what they perceive as heaven, after reforming it, and growing into better people. That's far more time than they spent being stressed out and "tortured" by the plot.
My theory is similar to the “Always in the Good Place All Along.” It is that they have always been in the “new system” that Chidi creates all along, and everything they go through was all a part of their numerous tests to progress into the real Good Place. All of their trying to reform the system was all what they needed to do to pass the test. The system was already reformed. Here’s a twist with it too, Michael was also being tested all along, so that he could also be reformed. So he was not ‘in’ on it. His final decision to become a human is kind of like his final test.
or to add to this: since time happens in a jearimy bearimy theyve already reformed the system in the show and are testing themselves with the system to make the system
Back when season 1 was new I was completely convinced that Eleanor did become a good person on Earth and actually was a death row lawyer, but that they accidentally erased her memories of that when they erased the memory of her death. It wasn't until the very end of Season 1's finale that I finally gave up on that theory.
I always felt like the Judge was “God”. Like everything else though… we just got the concept skewed. God is an umpire calling balls and strikes rather than the “creator”
I always went with the Judge is omnsicent in the traditional sense but occasionally turns it off. But like the Fates from Hadestown, she still knew how things were going to happen and had to make sure they proceeded a certain way.
Talking about the judge there's something interesting. When she met Tahani she told her that Tahani is a beautiful name, that her name is Gen which means something like time but it's boring and she doesn't like it. We did not name ourselves at least at first and I don't think the judge gave herself that name because she said she doesn't like it. Maybe there are some entities above the judge, but they're not related to the Good Place or the Bad Place so they are never mentioned because for the judge or Michael or Shawn they are not relevant for what happens in the show.
The "who is god" theories really annoyed me because one thing I liked about the show was how non-secular it was. Why does there have to be a singular "creator"? there are many religions/belief systems that don't follow the Jewish/Christian/Islamic idea of a singular "God". Plus it was interesting that the afterlife was so messed up because all these super powerful beings and entities were flawed and therefore the system was flawed.
While I personally subscribe to the one God view, this series definitely steered away from that. The hints from the IHOP point to a multiverse where the powers that be do not control and so leave the ultimate question unanswered. That said, the proposition that all fall short of heaven was an amusing nod to Christianity.
Interesting to see a show tied together well enough that it's near impossible to imagine a derivation of the real plot that wouldn't take away from the message ahah
I am rewatching the series now, and in the first episode, Michael says that the supreme commander Zortraxx the merciless frog God is at the top of the org chart. But then he says that he's kidding. But maybe not... The doorman has an obsession with frogs.
i feel like this has a loose connection to the series Dead Like Me. “I'm going to tell you a story. Not my story, that's later... This is just a story... ready? Once upon a time, (or more specifically at the dawn of time), god-lower case "g"-was getting busy with creation, as the kids these days are saying. He gave Toad a clay jar and said, "Be careful with this. It's got death inside." Pleased as punch and oblivious to the fact that he was about to become god's fall guy on the whole death issue, Toad promised to guard the jar. Then one day Toad met Frog. "Let me hold the jar of death, or whatever you call it," Frog begged. With a nod to Nancy Reagan's pearls of wisdom, Toad just said 'no'. But Frog was determined, and after much whining, Toad finally gave in. "You can hold it, but only for a second," he said. In his excitement, Frog began to hop around and juggle the death jar from one foot to the other. Frog... was an asshole.” - George (narration), S1E1: Pilot funny how the doorman is the connection from the living to the dead world and he favors frogs. And frog the the fault of death, hence his possible connection to the doorman. maybe frog and toad represent the doorman. idk i just thought this is too weird of a coincidence tht both shows share this frog connection and since in Dead Like Me we dont know what the Afterlife is like … it leaves room for speculation. Maybe Dead Like Me inspired The Good Place and the mention of frogs is a little love note or something. i just realized jj philbin, wife of schur, did some excerpts, story consulting, and episodes on Dead like Me …
a theory i came up with around the end of the series is that kamilah is actually just an alternate personality and illusion of tahani that only she can see and acknowledge and interact with and her reunion and eventual love of kamilah is her accepting the trauma that she was given by her parents dissapointment of her
I thought the twist for the end was Jason was God. Made perfect sense to me. He hated how now everyone was going to the bad place but wanted them to fix it not just him step in and change it. He set it up so he was one of the 4 humans. He acted dumb so they wouldn't look to him for help, but he could say innocent things that would lead the others to grow and figure out things on their own. He gave Michael a safety net, where he could become better without fear of being judged. Eleanor someone to trust because they both "thought they were in the good place by mistake", even though Chidi knew it was different since he thought he was rightfully in the good place. Chidi someone so opposite to his over thinking, same with Eleanor but she did it for mainly selfish reasons at first while Jason just didn't think. Tahani someone to relate to that was so far from how she would have been with before she grew past her jealousy of her sister and her feelings of inadequacy by her parents. And was the reason Janet evolved how she did. All of these were instrumental in fixing the afterlife.
biggest supporting point for this theory is that Jason waited an impossible amount of time (1000 Jeremy Bearimy's) to give *his* Janet the gift he misplaced (in his other pocket).
My favourite theory is that this is all an environment as a new torture method but its for Micheal. Micheal is ALWAYS getting the end of the stick. When they find out again and again, his actors leave, his breakdown , EVERYTHING! Even when they get to the 'good place' he is still going through hell.
@reagancondry116 yeah the Michael is being tortured this g has been around since season 1. Popularized by MatPat though others came up with it first as usual with his theories. Them talking about it later in the show was them addressing it.
These are a lot of fun. I’m usually a fan of theories with shows and media, but I really like to think there wasn’t something deeper, and this show put its moral out there. Life loses it’s value if it never ends, so living your best life before you die IS the Good Place. Utopia is a state you achieve in life, not after death.
The theory that I've just come up with right now is that we (the "real world") are in a "Good Place" scenario that operates as the Matrix, but the Matrix is Purgatory and rather than expend the energy it takes to run every human through these trolley car scenarios ad infinitum, we are given *simulated scenarios*, aka "media" that puts our brains through every iteration of the Good Place reboots, (similar to the Blade Runner tests) through each tv show, repeating morality-based story tropes over and over and our responses to such, (as our brains are monitored) our engagement with said media is our test - to gauge our responses to the moral quandaries presented by media and that we will be judged by our responses to them.
The another small detail that supports the Janet is god theory is the fact that the judge doesn't know what I going on on earth while Janet knows all which God has been said to be all knowing
Yeah but Janet only knows everything that's going on with Earth but not in the afterlife. Also Janet's knowledge is 'given' to her, almost like a continuous stream of conscious thought as opposed to just 'knowing' it. It comes from somewhere else and is not inherent to her.
Ok i am suprised nobody figured this out. Mindy dies on a subway and is a cocain addict, so she died MAXIMUM around 100 years ago. In a further episode we find out that nobody made it to the good place in 500 years. Nobody else has their own medium place, therefore Mindy is the best person in modern history.
It says in the show she died in the 80's... that's why she was hooked on cocaine, and dressed in the suit with the giant shoulder pads, cuz everyone was on coke in the 80's and women with careers would wear those suits with the pads to make their shoulders look broader.
I don’t understand the way no one thought of tahani to be the creator. In the end of season 4 she literally became everything and anything she ever wanted to be and even ended up working for the “department”. What if she either worked so hard she became the creator or if she had this elaborate plan the whole time and just hid behind her wealthy girl fasade?
I have a dark good place theory. It's based on a question that I don't know if anyone even asked: Where do the Demons skin suits come from? My theory is that their skin suits are taken from actual humans that were sent to the Bad Place. My main piece of evidence for this is that in Season 2, one of the demons (I can't remember which one) claims that the skin suits are really itchy for them, which tells me that they weren't actually made for the demons. Because they used to belong to humans
Janet is nothing more than an existential mainframe designed to help run all the neighborhoods good and bad. Think of this "not a person" as a SMC or DDOS program
Tahani as the creator being makes a lot of sense in the same way Janet's theory works. Tahani is an incredibly self motivated perfectionist, even when she no longer has her family to try to impress. She wants to be the one who does everything and have everyone love her for what she did so perfectly. She as a creator believed she created a perfect system, and the only way to know for sure is to test it herself, because obviously a perfect being who does everything perfectly would get into the Good Place easily. But without her micromanagment of everything, all the beings she created to run it began to fail. And in her own vanity, she fails to get into the Good Place because of how the other immortals screwed up. She then becomes the one of the core cast to NOT go through the passage that ends existence. And she can't, because she is immortal- just as Michael was unable to end. She becomes an architect after she masters all the skills that humanity had to offer- meaning she improved as a result of her creation and she wasn't as perfect as she believed- and she joins and likely eventually oversees the whole organization of the Architects governing a superior system created by beings who were not as 'perfect' as she believed herself to be. She will spend eternity making sure that this system works flawlessly and no such errors as caused by her making herself mortal will ever occur again. I also got in my head that all the humans could be former immortals put through life in the same time span to test that their system was working as intended only to find out it was not because in their absence the other immortals got it HORRIBLY wrong without their leadership. I could probably make this more extended theory work but this is a youtube comment and I don't want to put that much effort into something someone else probably thought of anyway.
The thing with the bad place theory is that I consider them always having hope and fighting for something to me that is considered the good place. Since the good place in the end of the show shows how boring and bad it is for humans to never be challenged especially if there's no ending. The problems occurring in season 1 also made me think it actually was the good place since the idea of heaven like the actual good place just straight up sucks. Heaven sounds like straight up torture to me. And endless perfectness bur your loved ones might not even there. That sounds like actual torture. The fake good place was to me how after life could be possible. Not the actual heaven idea of what the after life is according to people. I'd rather die and have nothing after that because heaven (the christian or muslim one) or the good place of season 4 before they changed the system sounds like straight up hell.
Didnt Michael at one point mention «The creators of Light, Darkness and everything in Between» I always assumed those guys were the gods of this universe
A funny tiny theory or observation is that we actually see the dot on the i of the "Jeremy Beremy" as that's where all of the afterlifes bureaucracy is located
Genuinely, this is the first show that I think makes a compelling case for, "it's purgatory, actually." That final spark of Eleanor visiting Michael suggests that the gate is NOT in fact oblivion, but that one enters into existence itself, what Christians call "God." The entire good place is, in fact, preparation for eternal beatitude.
Ok but Jannets are *gods* but sorta like queen bees where when one makes a universe she also makes little potential queens within it. These would -queens are already pretty godlike but can eventually grow from beings that can /only/ create neighborhoods, animals and objects, into their own fully actualized universe creating beings. What would be really neat is how each Jannet's (or Derek's) experience/ values/personality development would then have an effect on the laws of that universe.
my favourite Good Place fan theory is that Eleanor was right when she suggested that the whole thing is Micheal's afterlife and someone is torturing him
I like the idea the Community takes place in The Good Place. Star Burns, or Alex as he liked to be called, is probably one of the actor demons, along with Garret and Leonard and most of the background actors. The Greendale Seven are the main people being tested in the neighborhood, and Dean Pelton is the architect for their neighborhood. Pierce dying could have been him passing the test or being moved to a different neighborhood. He has been at Greendale longer than anybody, so they may have decided that a different approach was needed, but had to explain to the rest of the humans in the trial why he was no longer there. Troy going on his trip was for sure him passing his test. Shirley passed hers and left when she spun off after season 5. And in the series finale, Abed and Annie pass their tests and move. This leaves Jeff and Britta still stuck in the trial, but hopefully they will pass their test soon. This also explains the Frankie factor and why she's identical to the IT lady, but nobody calls it out
Finally! I've been thinking of this show I watched the first 2 episodes, but than I forgot about and than I forgot the name BUT I get it know thank you
The heaven in Lucifer is the good place. There’s a few moments that make me believe that it was no unintentional to make them similar. Particularly when (lucifer spoilers) Chloe is there briefly because that season came out after the good place. Therefore I have accepted that Lucifer wasn’t king of hell, he was king of the bad place.
the way lucifer (at the beginning mostly) acts matches how i think trevor would act if he had any class at all, and being a KING probably makes one a tad more refined, so that tracks. you think the episode where (spoilers?) reese is stuck in a hell loop is his test? moving on and not obessing over linda?
What if Simone was right. Like when she went to the "good" place, she thought she was just in a concussion and her brain was making everything up. The whole show could be fake and nothing is real.
God shifts between the characters. One person has access to everything and the others are the unknown. The characters physically construct from nothing to everything in repeated cycles. Tahini is one of the more linear characters as she starts humans and becomes an architect, so there are chains of assentation within their reality. Every so often, two characters will realize that they remember too much. By the end of the series characters are jumping between times and spaces, I believe from time to time they would jump into realities and meet. We can characterize this meeting of two everything's. One everything remembers, one everything forgets, when they switch they die. Death in this show is depicted as a loss of memory or a reboot. We can see the finality of all convergence when they are in the void as Janet's. When the void begins to collapse, two "everything's" draw closest together. Note: The concept of everything may seem familiar to nothing, in this case picture of "everything" as a singular point in existence. There is a tragedy of the two everything, as both of them will become everything, they will switch places with one another and become their everything, but in their unification of everything there is nothing. two "everything's" must be kept apart from one another for the continued existence of everything. There is a personality between the two everything's, most notably one remembers what the other forgets. Perhaps another way to think of this is mirrors. Near the end of the series seasons 3 and 4, characters begin to talk more incoherently, often disjointed words that only mean something to somebody of a time long forgotten. sort of coded messages. "Elanor find Chidi" after tons of reboots becomes an internalized need to learn philosophy. Off handed surreal comments in the first season, make their return as sight gags in the later seasons. I don't think this often delivers cues, as much as characters are being flooded with past feelings, lives, memories. There are times that Janet is talking to Jason, only to realize she's talking to "That," Jason, things then turn into an oh.. Similar with Elanor and Chidi. Characters parallel relations and revelations throughout the story, showing an inter connectedness of each other. When characters move on, it's because they've realized they've experienced everything, all of the time, always, and they don't want to feel that anymore. Or more aptly, all that they've wanted to do. Characters grown an immense level of emotional awareness, the beginning of the show often talking in small talk or deduction and logic, and the end of the show characters engage with how they feel in a situation as a course of action.
TBH, I watched Superstore and Community shortly after finishing The Good Place for the first time, and I could also see both being in the same universe as different afterlife neighborhoods.
My theory for the show is that little voice inside of Eleanor's head was Chidi, after going through the door. He was her moral compass. What I'm not really understanding, and possibly because only watched the series once, was Tahani's choice to stay as an architect. It seemed rushed, or odd, that she would choose that option. Eleanor staying and becoming an architect would make more sense.
This didnt last long because we got the answer really quickly, but I feel like it was a missed opportunity to not reference reincarnation someway when they went through the door at the end. I spent most of fhat final episode expecting for either a vague answer as to what happened that could imply reincarnation or a direct reference, but nah they inspire others to do good in life. Still cool I guess but I feel that considering they said every religion was a but right, this wouldve been a good way to tie in reincarnation beliefs
I can't really believe in any theory about The Good Place. This kinda shows how well constructed is The Good Place, everything is tied together on the end.
The repeating the same thing over and over once they reach the end of the series freaks me out LOL also I always wondered about aliens too and that's one of the things that had me questioning the God I grew up with, but we don't know 100 percent for sure that aliens exist but it still makes me wonder.
That makes the most sense to me. Ooh actually a new theory: what if God is not one person, but two people who reproduce together to create the earth? I know it sounds crazy but the doorman is a a man and the judge is a woman and those are the two most plausible people to be God so it makes sense
I really like the „it was the bad place all the time“ theory, because if you think about it, every kind of eternal afterlife would be the worst. Even the happiest place you can imagine gets boring after 100.000 years… and then there are still billions of days to come. So I’d say there just isn’t a good place because it’s impossible, therefor it was the bad place all along.
About you said about 'aliens having a parallel afterlife' I just though that maybe every living being can see afterlife beings (such as the judge, architects, demons, etc) in a way that can be more digestible or comprehensible for them JUST LIKE The Sandman and the rest of The Endless, every culture and living creature (like cats and plants) saw The Endless in different ways.
I feel like if they were in the bad place the whole time Michel would be the only one missing in the group and the others did everything without Michel and eventually Michel started to feel bad for them but the bad place couldn’t have that so they wiped Michaels mind and added him with the group but Michael had a Janet and she knew they what happed so they reset her and through her in with the others.
It's said in practically every religion on the planet that God leaves his mark on creation. His fingerprint, his... signature. Yeah, that's where I'm going. Jeremy Bearimy is the God of the schurverse.
while i dont believe there is a god in the good place considering they never bring it up, and i mean, youd think theyd go to the creator of everything if they were going to change something as massively important as the afterlife, the text would most support the judge as god imo, considering she says the only thing in the universe before her was hydrogen. nothing else was before her. you can ask 'well, who made the hydrogen?' but like, maybe it was just always there, idfk. im just saying
This isnt really a theory, just my perception the first time i watched this show. I kind of imagined the original good place workers/architechs as the creators of the universe. They, in a way, kind of have everybody working for them. They created the point system, years later saw it and the whole concept of the good and bad place were very messed up but did nothing to improve it. They eventually left Micheal in charge because of the pressure and difficulty it would take, making him and all of the others that fixed the system the gods, because they are in charge/ alot of people working for them. Plus, with the new system, everybody will eventually go tot the good place. That gives bacically no power to the demons from before and all the power to the gods of this universe, aka the 5 main charachers.
I don’t know if this theory is really consequential or not, but I think the entire TV show is set inside of a Janet, or something of equal makeup. building off of what the video said, with enough resets, both derek and janet have the ability to create life and expand upon their creativity, each hosting their own little world inside. It would also explain why the “good” and “bad” point system is so mechanical and doesn’t leave room for situational context: the system hasn’t had a reboot in a while. It would also explain why the last season was wrapped up so hastily, with the “good place council” having little reason to actually be anything but “good.” the system was overloaded and the background characters didn’t have enough time to become fully fleshed out with real character motivations. ….apart with crap writing, but it’s alright, shows sometimes get cut off or live for too long and stray from the main point. Anyway, I think the show about improvement of one’s self would definitely buy into the meta and funny character arc of “self improvement means janet becomes a god! and then her creation becomes a god! and then his creation becomes a god!”
Good Place episodes were very hit and miss - and I always thought that the Jason character drug the show down - but not only is the twist absolutely amazing, it has what might be the greatest finale of a sitcom ever.
Jason was cool but he got to be super flanderized. I didn't mind him in the first two seasons, but he got to be really annoying in the second half of the show.
Generally, I don't think the "it's all the ___ place" theories work within the conceit of the show and the story that it's trying to tell. If I'm REALLY stretching the lens at which I'm looking at the piece of media as a whole, MAYBE the "always the Good Place" theory works, as the characters are the "heroes" of their story, and get to do something none of the billions/trillions of people to die before them have done, which, objectively, fulfills the very human want to "matter" or make some kind of tangible difference. But even then, I think there's a lot of logical fallacies and suspension of disbelief involved that I just don't buy into. It's a fun idea to think about, but I don't think either could be substantially justified given the context and substance of the source material.
Not so much a theory, but something I noticed in The Good Place that everyone else I've talked to seems to have missed: By the final episode, the 4 main human characters end up becoming exactly what they pretended/thought they were in the pilot episode.
This is most obvious with Jason, simply because Janet says it out loud on screen. He spends tons of time waiting for her to come back, silently living by himself, and when he explains that to her, she says "like a monk". ie Jason went from pretending to be a monk at first to becoming an actual monk by the end.
In the first episode, Michael told Eleanor that she was in The Good Place for her work as a lawyer helping to free innocent death row inmates. By the end of the series, she works to help people condemned to The Bad Place for no good reason to avoid that punishment. So she had become the actual savior of the condemned that she originally pretended to be.
Chidi spent his life teaching philosophy, and the beginning of his afterlife trying to teach Eleanor and Jason to be better people so they can stay in the "Good Place". By the end, he's helping design a system to help everyone become better people so they can make it to the real Good Place.
And Tahani spent the first few episodes of the first season trying to make their "Good Place" neighborhood better for everyone. She was really just doing it to try and make herself look better to everyone else. But in the end, she becomes an architect, so she can design neighborhoods, for the actual betterment of the people who live there.
i never thought about this but that's spot-on!
This is so spot on
holy crap thats awesome!
Amazing!
You’re right, that’s not a theory.
My personal favourite theory is that they were dead the whole time
Bruh . . .
That's literally the entire premise of the show
LMAO!!!
@@thesymphonyoflife3950 r/whoosh
Love this theory 🥴😂😂😂
Doubt it
What a twist!
One of my personal headcannons/theories is about Disco Janet. I haven’t seen anyone really talk about her, or why there’s only one of her. I think she is a failed version/prototype of the Good Janet. I don’t have much evidence to support this but I have a feeling that like the Janet we know, she was rebooted multiple times during the 80s due to malfunction and would become obsessed with disco. And maybe then, the Judge used her for entertainment while in her chambers, but after trillions of bearimys she might’ve become sick of her.
I haven't looked up any The Good Place theories online, so I don't know which ones are out there, but one theory that I believe is that the little voice Eleanor used to hear, the voice that told her to do good things, were the people who chose to cross the gate on the Good Place all along. The timeline in the afterlife is not straight like the human world, it loops around itself, so Eleanor was hearing the people she would eventually save. It's possible one of them could've been Chidi too.
Or herself!
oh god I love this one!
Years late but this makes so much sense
Oh my god I love this
It can't be "the bad place all along" because they spend *many* jeremy bearmies in what they perceive as heaven, after reforming it, and growing into better people. That's far more time than they spent being stressed out and "tortured" by the plot.
You beat bloodborn. Great experience. Someone deletes your save file and you must play it again until the end of time. Sounds shit to me.
@@MaxMustermann-bm7qt Except if you don't remember playing it, then you're just playing it again as if it was the first time. Isn't that a gift?
@@GamesFromSpace I guess.
My theory is similar to the “Always in the Good Place All Along.” It is that they have always been in the “new system” that Chidi creates all along, and everything they go through was all a part of their numerous tests to progress into the real Good Place. All of their trying to reform the system was all what they needed to do to pass the test. The system was already reformed.
Here’s a twist with it too, Michael was also being tested all along, so that he could also be reformed. So he was not ‘in’ on it. His final decision to become a human is kind of like his final test.
I love this one!!!💕
This would make more sense than them being in the good place the whole time
Yessss and if it’s a time loop then that makes it even better
Yes to this
or to add to this: since time happens in a jearimy bearimy theyve already reformed the system in the show and are testing themselves with the system to make the system
Back when season 1 was new I was completely convinced that Eleanor did become a good person on Earth and actually was a death row lawyer, but that they accidentally erased her memories of that when they erased the memory of her death. It wasn't until the very end of Season 1's finale that I finally gave up on that theory.
thats actually not a bad theory! that wouldve been a cool plotline too tbh
Why death row lawyer? Where did that spesific idea come from?
@@drcjtonkin michael told eleanor that she was a death row lawyer saving innocent people in episode 1
I always felt like the Judge was “God”. Like everything else though… we just got the concept skewed. God is an umpire calling balls and strikes rather than the “creator”
She's also the first thing in universe besides hydrogen she came in with the universe but didn't make it
I always went with the Judge is omnsicent in the traditional sense but occasionally turns it off. But like the Fates from Hadestown, she still knew how things were going to happen and had to make sure they proceeded a certain way.
There is a scene where Michael reads Janet's manual. He reads:
"Janet, Brought you by: The creators of light, darkness and everything"
The judge SPECIFICALLY states she was created after the universe began. There is no creator in TGP universe.
Talking about the judge there's something interesting. When she met Tahani she told her that Tahani is a beautiful name, that her name is Gen which means something like time but it's boring and she doesn't like it.
We did not name ourselves at least at first and I don't think the judge gave herself that name because she said she doesn't like it. Maybe there are some entities above the judge, but they're not related to the Good Place or the Bad Place so they are never mentioned because for the judge or Michael or Shawn they are not relevant for what happens in the show.
They totally covered who god is in the good place. It's derek.
Maximum Derek !
@@simonbrassac4062 I hope we same place again, very now.
@@existenceisrelative oh yall better become best friends now. am i witnessing a relationship blooming through youtube comments?
No they don't. He BECOMES the nexus of the universe, he is NOT it's creator.
The "who is god" theories really annoyed me because one thing I liked about the show was how non-secular it was. Why does there have to be a singular "creator"? there are many religions/belief systems that don't follow the Jewish/Christian/Islamic idea of a singular "God". Plus it was interesting that the afterlife was so messed up because all these super powerful beings and entities were flawed and therefore the system was flawed.
Thank you!
While I personally subscribe to the one God view, this series definitely steered away from that. The hints from the IHOP point to a multiverse where the powers that be do not control and so leave the ultimate question unanswered.
That said, the proposition that all fall short of heaven was an amusing nod to Christianity.
Do you mean secular? Non-secular means religious
There is no just/all-knowing/all-powerful eternal God on the Fantasy Good Place series. In reality there is, thank God.
@@BillWilson-kd2jpThat's debatable. Very debatable.
Interesting to see a show tied together well enough that it's near impossible to imagine a derivation of the real plot that wouldn't take away from the message ahah
I am rewatching the series now, and in the first episode, Michael says that the supreme commander Zortraxx the merciless frog God is at the top of the org chart. But then he says that he's kidding. But maybe not... The doorman has an obsession with frogs.
i feel like this has a loose connection to the series Dead Like Me.
“I'm going to tell you a story. Not my story, that's later... This is just a story... ready?
Once upon a time, (or more specifically at the dawn of time), god-lower case "g"-was getting busy with creation, as the kids these days are saying. He gave Toad a clay jar and said,
"Be careful with this. It's got death inside."
Pleased as punch and oblivious to the fact that he was about to become god's fall guy on the whole death issue, Toad promised to guard the jar. Then one day Toad met Frog.
"Let me hold the jar of death, or whatever you call it," Frog begged. With a nod to Nancy Reagan's pearls of wisdom, Toad just said 'no'. But Frog was determined, and after much whining, Toad finally gave in.
"You can hold it, but only for a second," he said.
In his excitement, Frog began to hop around and juggle the death jar from one foot to the other.
Frog... was an asshole.”
- George (narration), S1E1: Pilot
funny how the doorman is the connection from the living to the dead world and he favors frogs. And frog the the fault of death, hence his possible connection to the doorman. maybe frog and toad represent the doorman. idk i just thought this is too weird of a coincidence tht both shows share this frog connection and since in Dead Like Me we dont know what the Afterlife is like … it leaves room for speculation. Maybe Dead Like Me inspired The Good Place and the mention of frogs is a little love note or something.
i just realized jj philbin, wife of schur, did some excerpts, story consulting, and episodes on Dead like Me …
@@daimionkaizafox Yeah, Dead Like Me, absolutely love that series!
W h a t
I think that The Bad Place actually killed Simone on purpose to ruin the others experiment. That's why Shawn thought it was hilarious.
This is confirmed to be false in the mini serie Selection. It is just a very convenient coincidence
I thought this too until I saw The Selection. It mentions that she had just died by coincidence.
a theory i came up with around the end of the series is that kamilah is actually just an alternate personality and illusion of tahani that only she can see and acknowledge and interact with and her reunion and eventual love of kamilah is her accepting the trauma that she was given by her parents dissapointment of her
Woah I love that so much 😍
that’s an amazing theory. So would the statue of Kimalah actually be a statue of her parents?
That's brilliant wth
@@weird_mango42 Since in this theory they are two personalities living in the same body, it would be a statue of what she perceives as "Kamilah"
what about when chidi met kamilah?
I thought the twist for the end was Jason was God. Made perfect sense to me. He hated how now everyone was going to the bad place but wanted them to fix it not just him step in and change it. He set it up so he was one of the 4 humans. He acted dumb so they wouldn't look to him for help, but he could say innocent things that would lead the others to grow and figure out things on their own. He gave Michael a safety net, where he could become better without fear of being judged. Eleanor someone to trust because they both "thought they were in the good place by mistake", even though Chidi knew it was different since he thought he was rightfully in the good place. Chidi someone so opposite to his over thinking, same with Eleanor but she did it for mainly selfish reasons at first while Jason just didn't think. Tahani someone to relate to that was so far from how she would have been with before she grew past her jealousy of her sister and her feelings of inadequacy by her parents. And was the reason Janet evolved how she did. All of these were instrumental in fixing the afterlife.
biggest supporting point for this theory is that Jason waited an impossible amount of time (1000 Jeremy Bearimy's) to give *his* Janet the gift he misplaced (in his other pocket).
Why is god sleeping with tahani?? That is not very ethical
B99: "I was legally dead for 5 minutes. I met god."
"dope, what was she like?"
"racially ambiguous."
My favourite theory is that this is all an environment as a new torture method but its for Micheal. Micheal is ALWAYS getting the end of the stick. When they find out again and again, his actors leave, his breakdown , EVERYTHING! Even when they get to the 'good place' he is still going through hell.
Eleanor says this to him on earth when they’re at a bar
@reagancondry116 yeah the Michael is being tortured this g has been around since season 1. Popularized by MatPat though others came up with it first as usual with his theories. Them talking about it later in the show was them addressing it.
These are a lot of fun. I’m usually a fan of theories with shows and media, but I really like to think there wasn’t something deeper, and this show put its moral out there. Life loses it’s value if it never ends, so living your best life before you die IS the Good Place. Utopia is a state you achieve in life, not after death.
The theory that I've just come up with right now is that we (the "real world") are in a "Good Place" scenario that operates as the Matrix, but the Matrix is Purgatory and rather than expend the energy it takes to run every human through these trolley car scenarios ad infinitum, we are given *simulated scenarios*, aka "media" that puts our brains through every iteration of the Good Place reboots, (similar to the Blade Runner tests) through each tv show, repeating morality-based story tropes over and over and our responses to such, (as our brains are monitored) our engagement with said media is our test - to gauge our responses to the moral quandaries presented by media and that we will be judged by our responses to them.
The another small detail that supports the Janet is god theory is the fact that the judge doesn't know what I going on on earth while Janet knows all which God has been said to be all knowing
Yeah but Janet only knows everything that's going on with Earth but not in the afterlife. Also Janet's knowledge is 'given' to her, almost like a continuous stream of conscious thought as opposed to just 'knowing' it. It comes from somewhere else and is not inherent to her.
The Good Place Field Guide can be a great continuation series!
Yes!
Ok i am suprised nobody figured this out. Mindy dies on a subway and is a cocain addict, so she died MAXIMUM around 100 years ago. In a further episode we find out that nobody made it to the good place in 500 years. Nobody else has their own medium place, therefore Mindy is the best person in modern history.
It says in the show she died in the 80's... that's why she was hooked on cocaine, and dressed in the suit with the giant shoulder pads, cuz everyone was on coke in the 80's and women with careers would wear those suits with the pads to make their shoulders look broader.
Oh, good point! I guess that was an unforeseen consequence of first writing Mindy and later revealing nobody made it into the Good Place in 500 years.
I don’t understand the way no one thought of tahani to be the creator. In the end of season 4 she literally became everything and anything she ever wanted to be and even ended up working for the “department”. What if she either worked so hard she became the creator or if she had this elaborate plan the whole time and just hid behind her wealthy girl fasade?
since time is non-linear, maybe she goes back and creates everything
I have a dark good place theory. It's based on a question that I don't know if anyone even asked: Where do the Demons skin suits come from?
My theory is that their skin suits are taken from actual humans that were sent to the Bad Place.
My main piece of evidence for this is that in Season 2, one of the demons (I can't remember which one) claims that the skin suits are really itchy for them, which tells me that they weren't actually made for the demons. Because they used to belong to humans
That’s dark indeed 🫣
I think they mentioned in The Good Place podcast that Lost was actually a bit of an inspiration for certain aspecects of TGP.
What do you mean we’re not told what Janet is? She’s a Janet!
Janet is nothing more than an existential mainframe designed to help run all the neighborhoods good and bad. Think of this "not a person" as a SMC or DDOS program
"Not a Janet"
I thought the end would reveal that everything was actually a test for Michael or any other demon trying to get out of the bad place.
Tahani as the creator being makes a lot of sense in the same way Janet's theory works. Tahani is an incredibly self motivated perfectionist, even when she no longer has her family to try to impress. She wants to be the one who does everything and have everyone love her for what she did so perfectly. She as a creator believed she created a perfect system, and the only way to know for sure is to test it herself, because obviously a perfect being who does everything perfectly would get into the Good Place easily. But without her micromanagment of everything, all the beings she created to run it began to fail. And in her own vanity, she fails to get into the Good Place because of how the other immortals screwed up. She then becomes the one of the core cast to NOT go through the passage that ends existence. And she can't, because she is immortal- just as Michael was unable to end. She becomes an architect after she masters all the skills that humanity had to offer- meaning she improved as a result of her creation and she wasn't as perfect as she believed- and she joins and likely eventually oversees the whole organization of the Architects governing a superior system created by beings who were not as 'perfect' as she believed herself to be. She will spend eternity making sure that this system works flawlessly and no such errors as caused by her making herself mortal will ever occur again.
I also got in my head that all the humans could be former immortals put through life in the same time span to test that their system was working as intended only to find out it was not because in their absence the other immortals got it HORRIBLY wrong without their leadership. I could probably make this more extended theory work but this is a youtube comment and I don't want to put that much effort into something someone else probably thought of anyway.
i love your thinking, thatd be a really cool plotline (to both of your theories)
The thing with the bad place theory is that I consider them always having hope and fighting for something to me that is considered the good place. Since the good place in the end of the show shows how boring and bad it is for humans to never be challenged especially if there's no ending. The problems occurring in season 1 also made me think it actually was the good place since the idea of heaven like the actual good place just straight up sucks. Heaven sounds like straight up torture to me. And endless perfectness bur your loved ones might not even there. That sounds like actual torture. The fake good place was to me how after life could be possible. Not the actual heaven idea of what the after life is according to people. I'd rather die and have nothing after that because heaven (the christian or muslim one) or the good place of season 4 before they changed the system sounds like straight up hell.
actually in the muslim heaven you never get bored of the perfection, you keep reliving it again and again in the exact same amount of glory
@@menaalhassan109 I think heaven shouldn’t be like the one in good place it should be so perfect that perfectness wouldn’t bother you
Didnt Michael at one point mention «The creators of Light, Darkness and everything in Between» I always assumed those guys were the gods of this universe
Would love to see more from this show- great work
A funny tiny theory or observation is that we actually see the dot on the i of the "Jeremy Beremy" as that's where all of the afterlifes bureaucracy is located
I kinda wished that when elenor went through that door we hear a pleasant "Beep" and the whole screen fades to white. And the show ends.
i always felt like it was meant to be michael’s bad place
and he finally escapes when he gets to be human
Genuinely, this is the first show that I think makes a compelling case for, "it's purgatory, actually."
That final spark of Eleanor visiting Michael suggests that the gate is NOT in fact oblivion, but that one enters into existence itself, what Christians call "God." The entire good place is, in fact, preparation for eternal beatitude.
Groundhog day being apart of the good place universe makes so much sense.
I love the Good Place content!! Please keep this up, great work :)
Ok but Jannets are *gods* but sorta like queen bees where when one makes a universe she also makes little potential queens within it. These would -queens are already pretty godlike but can eventually grow from beings that can /only/ create neighborhoods, animals and objects, into their own fully actualized universe creating beings.
What would be really neat is how each Jannet's (or Derek's) experience/ values/personality development would then have an effect on the laws of that universe.
the Groundhog Day theory is crazy. wow . kinda blew my mind this morning . thank you
to clear up the line " the moment when nothing never happens" does not exist, due to the fact that something is always happening.
9:10 I think pushing daisies and dead like me would make sense
I watch this when it first came out, and all the other season, and omg the intro just punches me in the face with nestolgia
my favourite Good Place fan theory is that Eleanor was right when she suggested that the whole thing is Micheal's afterlife and someone is torturing him
I like the idea the Community takes place in The Good Place. Star Burns, or Alex as he liked to be called, is probably one of the actor demons, along with Garret and Leonard and most of the background actors.
The Greendale Seven are the main people being tested in the neighborhood, and Dean Pelton is the architect for their neighborhood.
Pierce dying could have been him passing the test or being moved to a different neighborhood. He has been at Greendale longer than anybody, so they may have decided that a different approach was needed, but had to explain to the rest of the humans in the trial why he was no longer there.
Troy going on his trip was for sure him passing his test. Shirley passed hers and left when she spun off after season 5. And in the series finale, Abed and Annie pass their tests and move. This leaves Jeff and Britta still stuck in the trial, but hopefully they will pass their test soon.
This also explains the Frankie factor and why she's identical to the IT lady, but nobody calls it out
Guys watch the last episode of the good place, the actor of ron swanson literally teaches tihani how to make a chair
But there cannonically is a plethora of gods: "The creators of light, darkness, and everything"
Finally! I've been thinking of this show I watched the first 2 episodes, but than I forgot about and than I forgot the name BUT I get it know thank you
Oh, thank you for this! I love this show and I love these fan theories! 💗
The heaven in Lucifer is the good place. There’s a few moments that make me believe that it was no unintentional to make them similar. Particularly when (lucifer spoilers) Chloe is there briefly because that season came out after the good place. Therefore I have accepted that Lucifer wasn’t king of hell, he was king of the bad place.
the way lucifer (at the beginning mostly) acts matches how i think trevor would act if he had any class at all, and being a KING probably makes one a tad more refined, so that tracks. you think the episode where (spoilers?) reese is stuck in a hell loop is his test? moving on and not obessing over linda?
What if Simone was right. Like when she went to the "good" place, she thought she was just in a concussion and her brain was making everything up. The whole show could be fake and nothing is real.
yeah but like. why
God shifts between the characters. One person has access to everything and the others are the unknown. The characters physically construct from nothing to everything in repeated cycles. Tahini is one of the more linear characters as she starts humans and becomes an architect, so there are chains of assentation within their reality.
Every so often, two characters will realize that they remember too much. By the end of the series characters are jumping between times and spaces, I believe from time to time they would jump into realities and meet. We can characterize this meeting of two everything's. One everything remembers, one everything forgets, when they switch they die. Death in this show is depicted as a loss of memory or a reboot.
We can see the finality of all convergence when they are in the void as Janet's. When the void begins to collapse, two "everything's" draw closest together. Note: The concept of everything may seem familiar to nothing, in this case picture of "everything" as a singular point in existence.
There is a tragedy of the two everything, as both of them will become everything, they will switch places with one another and become their everything, but in their unification of everything there is nothing. two "everything's" must be kept apart from one another for the continued existence of everything.
There is a personality between the two everything's, most notably one remembers what the other forgets. Perhaps another way to think of this is mirrors.
Near the end of the series seasons 3 and 4, characters begin to talk more incoherently, often disjointed words that only mean something to somebody of a time long forgotten. sort of coded messages. "Elanor find Chidi" after tons of reboots becomes an internalized need to learn philosophy. Off handed surreal comments in the first season, make their return as sight gags in the later seasons. I don't think this often delivers cues, as much as characters are being flooded with past feelings, lives, memories.
There are times that Janet is talking to Jason, only to realize she's talking to "That," Jason, things then turn into an oh.. Similar with Elanor and Chidi.
Characters parallel relations and revelations throughout the story, showing an inter connectedness of each other.
When characters move on, it's because they've realized they've experienced everything, all of the time, always, and they don't want to feel that anymore. Or more aptly, all that they've wanted to do.
Characters grown an immense level of emotional awareness, the beginning of the show often talking in small talk or deduction and logic, and the end of the show characters engage with how they feel in a situation as a course of action.
TBH, I watched Superstore and Community shortly after finishing The Good Place for the first time, and I could also see both being in the same universe as different afterlife neighborhoods.
My theory for the show is that little voice inside of Eleanor's head was Chidi, after going through the door. He was her moral compass.
What I'm not really understanding, and possibly because only watched the series once, was Tahani's choice to stay as an architect. It seemed rushed, or odd, that she would choose that option. Eleanor staying and becoming an architect would make more sense.
This didnt last long because we got the answer really quickly, but I feel like it was a missed opportunity to not reference reincarnation someway when they went through the door at the end. I spent most of fhat final episode expecting for either a vague answer as to what happened that could imply reincarnation or a direct reference, but nah they inspire others to do good in life. Still cool I guess but I feel that considering they said every religion was a but right, this wouldve been a good way to tie in reincarnation beliefs
I feel like god would play the mean rich girl to not be suspected like the backstory for her is like he mashed up all the reality tv stereotypes
I love the idea that Janet is "God". Like maybe Janet eventually evolved so much that she transcended time as a whole and created everything.
I actually thought they were in purgatory the whole time, learning how to live in the Good Place
ngl i love that groundhog day theory
I can't really believe in any theory about The Good Place. This kinda shows how well constructed is The Good Place, everything is tied together on the end.
The repeating the same thing over and over once they reach the end of the series freaks me out LOL also I always wondered about aliens too and that's one of the things that had me questioning the God I grew up with, but we don't know 100 percent for sure that aliens exist but it still makes me wonder.
What would happen if a neutral Janet was rebooted over and over?
good question probably become more and more neutral
@@TheDonteinferno End of conversation.
God is the doorman.
That makes the most sense to me. Ooh actually a new theory: what if God is not one person, but two people who reproduce together to create the earth? I know it sounds crazy but the doorman is a a man and the judge is a woman and those are the two most plausible people to be God so it makes sense
I really like the „it was the bad place all the time“ theory, because if you think about it, every kind of eternal afterlife would be the worst. Even the happiest place you can imagine gets boring after 100.000 years… and then there are still billions of days to come.
So I’d say there just isn’t a good place because it’s impossible, therefor it was the bad place all along.
Which characters are the same person this time
the its all the bad place theory broke me
The Good Place is such a great show
Omg loved the nice theory... One can only hope
Tahani would be so offended that there isn't a theory that she's God 😂😂😂
Love the idea, great job!!
About you said about 'aliens having a parallel afterlife' I just though that maybe every living being can see afterlife beings (such as the judge, architects, demons, etc) in a way that can be more digestible or comprehensible for them JUST LIKE The Sandman and the rest of The Endless, every culture and living creature (like cats and plants) saw The Endless in different ways.
I feel like if they were in the bad place the whole time Michel would be the only one missing in the group and the others did everything without Michel and eventually Michel started to feel bad for them but the bad place couldn’t have that so they wiped Michaels mind and added him with the group but Michael had a Janet and she knew they what happed so they reset her and through her in with the others.
It's said in practically every religion on the planet that God leaves his mark on creation. His fingerprint, his... signature. Yeah, that's where I'm going. Jeremy Bearimy is the God of the schurverse.
I thought Maya Rudolph *was* the canonical god of the show. I didn't realize that was just a fan theory.
So I was talking with a friend about the after life and I had a theory and he told me to watch this 😂😂
The theory that everything is the good place is something I believe about the real world, too
This was a fun watch. TY
The chicken part from the matrix is surely also pointing to the chicken egg theory! They couldn't figure it out
This also births choice! Free will, duality
thank you for trying to make it a thang
Have you watched Curb? Those can be great Field Guides.
at 1:20, did you make the fast forward yourself?
while i dont believe there is a god in the good place considering they never bring it up, and i mean, youd think theyd go to the creator of everything if they were going to change something as massively important as the afterlife, the text would most support the judge as god imo, considering she says the only thing in the universe before her was hydrogen. nothing else was before her. you can ask 'well, who made the hydrogen?' but like, maybe it was just always there, idfk. im just saying
I love this series _so_ much...
Eternity trying to learn and improve oneself? That would be a useful definition of the Good Place, don’t you think?
Wilfred. Do Wilfred theories next
This isnt really a theory, just my perception the first time i watched this show. I kind of imagined the original good place workers/architechs as the creators of the universe. They, in a way, kind of have everybody working for them. They created the point system, years later saw it and the whole concept of the good and bad place were very messed up but did nothing to improve it. They eventually left Micheal in charge because of the pressure and difficulty it would take, making him and all of the others that fixed the system the gods, because they are in charge/ alot of people working for them. Plus, with the new system, everybody will eventually go tot the good place. That gives bacically no power to the demons from before and all the power to the gods of this universe, aka the 5 main charachers.
I swear, I will be analyzing The Good Place as long as I live. And, I haven’t watched any of his shows!
I thibk its all michael test then when he saved the good place in his test he got hid good place a 1 to 1 copy of earth
When it comes to the Janet theory, what if instead a future Janet is god? One after millions of more resets and then becomesa god like being.
I don’t know if this theory is really consequential or not, but I think the entire TV show is set inside of a Janet, or something of equal makeup. building off of what the video said, with enough resets, both derek and janet have the ability to create life and expand upon their creativity, each hosting their own little world inside. It would also explain why the “good” and “bad” point system is so mechanical and doesn’t leave room for situational context: the system hasn’t had a reboot in a while. It would also explain why the last season was wrapped up so hastily, with the “good place council” having little reason to actually be anything but “good.” the system was overloaded and the background characters didn’t have enough time to become fully fleshed out with real character motivations.
….apart with crap writing, but it’s alright, shows sometimes get cut off or live for too long and stray from the main point.
Anyway, I think the show about improvement of one’s self would definitely buy into the meta and funny character arc of “self improvement means janet becomes a god! and then her creation becomes a god! and then his creation becomes a god!”
Re Tahani is God: my theory is that she is a human who learns of her divine nature by becoming the architect (i.e. embodying the christ consciousness)
Your only evidence for Lost being in this universe is that they have vaguely similar themes.
Good Place episodes were very hit and miss - and I always thought that the Jason character drug the show down - but not only is the twist absolutely amazing, it has what might be the greatest finale of a sitcom ever.
Jason was cool but he got to be super flanderized. I didn't mind him in the first two seasons, but he got to be really annoying in the second half of the show.
Funny how I just finished it
My main takeaway is that I have to go watch Upload season 2 🤣
I want born in July 2nd 1996, Tuesday. The dot in the I is… Tuesday AND JULY.
It's probably some kind of timeloop. And no actuall creater.
Generally, I don't think the "it's all the ___ place" theories work within the conceit of the show and the story that it's trying to tell. If I'm REALLY stretching the lens at which I'm looking at the piece of media as a whole, MAYBE the "always the Good Place" theory works, as the characters are the "heroes" of their story, and get to do something none of the billions/trillions of people to die before them have done, which, objectively, fulfills the very human want to "matter" or make some kind of tangible difference. But even then, I think there's a lot of logical fallacies and suspension of disbelief involved that I just don't buy into. It's a fun idea to think about, but I don't think either could be substantially justified given the context and substance of the source material.
"Janet is God"
Not a god
So.. the afterlife is the ultimate Game Test?
I seriously never thought ide like this show. I've been disappointed many times. For once I'm glad boredom lead me to this show