“The Good Place” just blew the forkin’ lid off the show — AGAIN

None of us every thought that NBC’s The Good Place would become *the* show for twists and turns, but it managed to very quietly (and hella stealthily) do just that. The first season of the established that our main characters — Eleanor, Chidi, Jason, and Tahani — had all died, and were now living in “The Good Place.” Except, that was a lie, as they were really in The Bad Place masquerading as The Good Place so they could be tortured for all of eternity thinking they were living in bliss, and please try to keep up.

It was a twist no one saw coming.

So how does a show that has literally already reinvented the premise once — and it can be argued that it’s reinvented the show actually every single week — do it again? Would the Season 2 finally find our gang in the Bad Place for real? Would they finally make it to the Good Place? Was a Medium Place their destination?

Oh, no, none of the above. Instead, they went back to the place where it all began — the land of the living.

The season finale completely flipped the show on its head again. Considering the fact that this foursome has actually turned themselves into *better* people since arriving in the Bad Place, they should go to the Good Place — at least, that’s Michael’s argument, but the Eternal Judge (a perfectly cast Maya Rudolph) isn’t so sure. Considering they were not great people on Earth, and that’s where good deeds really matter, they should head to the Bad Place. It’s a catch-22 for them either way, so why not bring them back to life, and see if they can take what they’ve learned in the Bad Place and use it to actually get into the Good Place for real?

It’s so crazy, it just might work.

With a snap of Michael’s fingers, Eleanor finds herself back in the moment when she died, but she doesn’t die this time. Instead, someone gets her out of harm’s way (Michael!) before she can be hit by a stack of runaway shopping carts, and then dragged under a truck. Following this near death experience, she vows to become a better person and turn her life around. And she does…for about six months, until she falls back into her old habits.

Michael — watching and tallying all of this back in the Bad Place – realizes he needs to intervene and give Eleanor the push she needs to become good, once and for all. He gives her some sage advice, and gets her thinking about morals, and also moral dessert. This causes a very alive Eleanor to Google why we should be nice to one another, and guess whose video pops up? One for Professor Chidi Anagonye where he’s spends three hours talking about Kant and blah blah blah blah blah, we get the idea, okay?

Before you can say, “holy forkin’ shirt balls,” Eleanor is on a plane to go see Chidi, a very ALIVE Chidi just like Eleanor is very ALIVE, because she wants to talk to him. Did I forget to mention that moments before everything was ~reset~ in the Bad Place so our characters could get another shot at life, Eleanor and Chidi kissed??

You better believe that we’re going into the next season of the show with some very alive characters, who are now going to have to figure out how to stay alive (obviously) and also be good people, or risk getting sent to the Bad Place forever. But so far it doesn’t look like Eleanor knows she died. So can she fix herself without knowing she’s fixing herself, to avoid an eternity of damnation?

Yes, sure sounds like everything’s going to be fine for Good Place Season 3.