With NBC’s The Good Place returning for its fourth and final season later this month, the philosophically-minded sitcom has started promotions in earnest, releasing a slew of photographs from upcoming episodes. And while, at first glance, the stills are suitably vague for this notoriously twisty show, it is entirely possible that the character portraits may have tipped the show’s hand and spoiled its ending.Released via the show’s official Twitter, the portraits show our six heroes -- Eleanor (Kristen Bell), Michael (Ted Danson), Chidi (William Jackson Harper), Janet (D’Arcy Carden), Tahani (Jameela Jamil) and Jason (Manny Jacinto) -- framed against pastel-colored backgrounds and staring off into the middle distance. There’s a notable lack of anything spoiler-y to work with there.Well, almost.
All six of the portraits seem to be mimicking the photo of Doug Forcett that hangs in Michael’s office. It’s explained in the very first episode of The Good Place that Forcett is a renowned afterlife celebrity for actually figuring out, during a magic mushroom trip, how the mechanics of post-death life actually work.
The photo in question was taken in the 1970s, and Forcett, played in the present-day by Michael McKean (Good Omens, Better Call Saul), is revealed to have fully devoted his life since to accumulating enough points to get into the Good Place.
Despite some eccentricities and a pathological lack of self-concern, Forcett is, as Michael argues, undoubtedly a good person, and his exclusion from the Good Place is what sets the back half of the third season -- and the upcoming fourth season -- in motion. Choosing to expressly mimic that character’s iconic photo must mean something then, right?
The first option is simply that, like Forcett, Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani and Jason are simply mortals with an intimate knowledge of the inner working of the afterlife. Michael, after all, was still evil in the first episode, and the original “Good Place†was actually in the Bad Place. Michael’s adulation of Doug Forcett was certainly real, as revealed in the third season, but being legendary in the hereafter doesn’t necessarily make one good or evil.
The inclusion of Michael and Janet, however, would suggest that there’s more to it than that. They’re not mortals, after all, and they were already well aware of how things worked. So it’s entirely possible then that the portraits are foreshadowing that our heroes will be instrumental in reshaping the Good Place/Bad Place system, as was their stated goal last season.
In Season 2, we saw that the Bad Place was more than willing to celebrate changes to their accepted system, with animatronic models of our heroes placed in the Museum of Human Misery to celebrate Michael’s groundbreaking method of torturing humans. If they could do the reverse, and fix the Good Place, it would make sense that they would be celebrated for that too.
Alternately -- and far more likely, really, given creator Mike Schur’s love of happy endings -- the portraits could be showing us that, like Doug Forcett, our characters are in fact inherently good, and destined for the Good Place once these pesky point discrepancies get cleared up.
Like Forcett, Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani and Jason have dedicated themselves to being better people, and -- while there are certainly some technicalities around their actually gaining points, thanks to their knowing about the afterlife -- the entire thrust of the third season is that good people shouldn’t be punished based on technicalities.
In fact, Season 3 of The Good Place goes out of its way to explain that modern life has become far too complicated, and even a seemingly good action, like buying roses for your mother, will ultimately result in losing points. No one simply goes and picks a rose anymore, the show argues, and all the hidden actions behind the rose (exploitation of workers, racist CEOs, corporate malfeasance, etc.) are unfairly held against the purchaser of the rose, even though the system is rigged in such a way that they had no choice but to be a part of it.
If even Doug Forcett doesn’t have enough points to enter the Good Place, Michael’s argument goes, then there’s something wrong with the points. Jason, Tahani, Chidi and Eleanor are evidence of that -- they are good people, despite what the points said. Michael, too, has switched sides, going from revolutionary demon to a proponent of Good Place reform. Janet, an impartial not-a-robot, has also evolved into a very much good not-a-person.
The choice of character portraits then, so obviously evocative of Doug Forcett’s, could be the show’s way of answering the lingering question laid out in the pilot and telling us that, yes, our heroes are good people, and they belong in the Good Place.
That, or maybe that’s just how employee head shots are taken in the afterlife.
Returning Thursday, Sept. 26, on NBC for its fourth and final season, The Good Place stars Ted Danson, Kristen Bell, William Jackson Harper, Jameela Jamil, D’Arcy Carden and Manny Jacinto.