1.
Chidi *did* end up in the Bad Place because he drank all of that almond milk on Earth.
}
NBC
“So ultimately, we know that everyone (for the past 500+ years) was going to the Bad Place due to the phenomena of unintended consequences. Essentially, the act of buying an iPhone, even as a gift for grandma, was a ‘bad’ act because it indirectly supported child labor, lined the pockets of racist and sexist CEOs, etc. — even buying tomatoes at a supermarket was considered bad due to the economics involved. Unintended consequences threw off the algorithm, which was admittedly obsolete when it was revealed it was created when a caveman gave another caveman a gift of a rock.”
}
NBC
“A running gag since Season 1 of The Good Place was Chidi thinking he was in the Bad Place because of buying almond milk on Earth. It was unsustainable and bad for the environment. (This was revealed long before unintended consequences, which weren’t discussed until a few episodes from the finale.) Little did he know he was actually right. The unintended consequences of buying almond milk were indeed why he (and everyone in existence since 1500 AD) had been going to the Bad Place.”
}
NBC
“It was therefore appropriate that Chidi rewrote the afterlife algorithm so well that even Shawn agreed to it.”
—u/Elranzer
“Wasn’t Chidi specifically in the Bad Place because of his indecisiveness? I thought I remember them saying as much.”
—u/corsair1617
“That was the conclusion he came to once he started working on his neurosis but as the original poster stated, even if he had lived an otherwise exemplary life, he was still hell-bound as a consequence of supporting the almond milk industry.”
—u/ActualSpamBot
2.
The Good Place Committee was unhelpful, useless, and pure ding-dongs on purpose.
}
NBC
“The Committee from the real Good Place was comically useless and never managed to take any action because its members were too busy forming committees upon committees, conducting investigations, and demoting themselves for the slightest upsets. While at first this might’ve seemed like a gag about how over-the-top the Good Place was, Season 4 showed another possible reason. Given the state of the Good Place with everyone as pleasure zombies and how quickly they shoved responsibility onto Michael and fled (which would seem contrary to the long lengths of time it took them to decide anything), it’s possible they were deliberately impeding the efforts of the main party.”
}
NBC
“They wanted to prevent new people getting into the Good Place or any change in the system that’d make it easier to get in because more people meant more problems they couldn’t solve. They couldn’t drop their ‘good guy’ persona and tell the truth, so they used the facade of being comically ineffectual to keep their problems from getting worse.”
}
NBC
—u/[deleted]
“You could almost argue that even the Good Place was actually the Bad Place, just like Michael’s original ‘Good Place’ — literally so good, you’d get burned out and zombified, only to be stuck in an endless kind of purgatory hell. But once Michael and the crew took over and added the option to walk through the door and literally stop existing in any way, shape, or form, it became the actual Good Place.”
—u/not_sick_not_well
3.
Judge Gen was smarter than she appeared and actually knew what was going to happen to each and every character by the end.
}
NBC
“Judge Gen was actually omniscient in the traditional sense. Chidi asked this point-blank, but while Gen didn’t say yes, she also didn’t say no. My theory is she knew more than she let on and played up the persona of a kooky, dorky aunt so she could remain impartial and instead manipulated the Soul Squad into fixing the afterlife for her. After all, the Supreme Court can’t automatically decide tomorrow that water balloons are banned — they have to hear a case about it first. Gen is just a judge, not a dictator. We noticed this in her first appearance.”
}
NBC
“In my opinion, Gen knew the whole time everybody but Eleanor never improved enough to go to the Good Place, hence why the tests seemed to be rigged. Chidi still made a decision even if it took an hour, but pilot Chidi would never be able to do such a thing. And Tahani still had a revelation even though she opened the door to her parents. I think Gen needed to stall so Michael and Janet could come through and simply acted dumb the whole time after that.”
}
NBC
“She acted like she didn’t realize Janet was deceiving her, she acted like she didn’t know Michael went to Earth dozens of times, and when she took care of Trevor, why didn’t she just do the same to Michael and Janet? Why just send them back to the Bad Place?
Even in Season 4 when Gen decided to reboot the Earth, she only did so so the Soul Squad could make a new system and stall everything. I say that because some of what she said made no sense: She said that she was going to start the universe over from scratch, but then she said, ‘I’m rebooting and then going back to my chambers!’ which technically wouldn’t exist anymore.”
—u/CapriciousSalmon
4.
The Good Place wasn’t just four incredible seasons of Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason trying to be better people. It was “Eleanor’s test in the system she helped create.”
}
NBC
“We learned that time worked differently in the afterlife (Jeremy Bearimy, baby). Events happened both before and after events took place. For argument’s sake, the movie Arrival is a close parallel on how time worked in the afterlife. Even Janet mentioned she saw time differently, almost like Dr. Manhattan. With that in mind, Eleanor helped create the system from the start, went through the system, and was in the Good Place at the same Jeremy Bearimy.”
}
NBC
“Eventually, everyone got into the Good Place, they walked through the door, and they became little voices that helped other people do good on Earth. Throughout the series, Eleanor constantly mentioned ‘the little voice’ in her head. After she walked through the door, she became a little voice, implying that people have been walking through the door since the beginning.”
}
NBC
—u/Totalgoodnight
“I actually really like this concept and think it adds a new level of depth to the show! Good theory!”
—u/CarpeDM28
“Awww dip!”
—u/gres06
5.
The dot over the “i” in the Jeremy Bearimy timeline represented a void in the afterlife, not “Tuesdays” or “the time moment when nothing never occurs.”
}
NBC
“The scene where they talked about the Jeremy Bearimy timeline was so weird — Michael’s explanation didn’t make any sense. Basically, he chose the day in the week that’s almost in the middle, the month that’s almost in the middle of the year, and Janet added that ‘it’s also never.’ My theory is that the dot over the ‘i’ in Jeremy Bearimy was actually the void of the afterlife.”
}
NBC
—u/ElementsT
“I mean, you’re not wrong. Jeremy Bearimy was supposed to be mundane and empty. It wasn’t exactly the middle of the week and it wasn’t the hottest time of the year. The dot existed outside of the boundary of a timeline that was already outside the comprehension of time as it exists on our plane of existence — it just is.
Time passes, time loops, time is a fact, time…is. After explaining it, Michael said, ‘You get it.’ The thing is, I don’t think we were supposed to get it — it’s absurd and confusing and just…Jeremy Bearimy, baby.”
—u/TuringMachinery
6.
Michael wasn’t a demon disguised in a Michael suit. He was God.
}
NBC
“I think Michael was actually God because of the dialogue between Michael and Eleanor in the last episode, when he admitted his ‘freakout’ was just a ploy to get her to step up as an architect. That did it for me. Michael and his whole Good Place experience represented one of two scenarios: The first scenario might’ve been that heaven became overly bureaucratic and God didn’t have the influence he used to. In order to correct this, Michael had to expose and bring down the point system from within, and as such, posed as a demon and helped Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason redeem themselves.”
}
NBC
“The second scenario might’ve been that the Good Place was a construct by God (aka Michael) to implement Eleanor’s judgment. Her path of redemption was obvious at that point. She went way further than any of the other characters and in retrospect, the scenarios all seemed a little too custom-tailored for her growth. Because they’d been designed that way all along.”
}
NBC
—u/Dirks_Knee
“While I don’t think I agree with your first theory that Michael was God, I couldn’t agree more with your second theory. I’d argue that Chidi was already redeemed by making the most painful choice possible: Having his mind and memories wiped of the only woman he’s ever loved.”
—u/syrstorm
“I always thought Janet was God.”
—u/Xorro-
7.
When Eleanor went through the door in the finale, she ended up being the “little voice in the head of that guy who went to Michael’s apartment.”
}
NBC
—u/Such-Ad3863
“I think the floating particles we saw were fragments of the good that Eleanor put into the universe. One landed on that guy and gave him a push to do the right thing and bring Michael’s mail to him instead of ditching it. I do think it was a version of the little voice that Eleanor spoke of, but I love the idea that each person’s little voice came from a variety of sources with Eleanor’s glowing particle — and the one kind act it inspired — being only a small part of the total good in the world.”
}
NBC
—u/therapy_works
8.
Chidi was in very good shape because he wanted to emulate his favorite philosophers, who were “historically jacked.”
}
NBC
“Basically in The Good Place, we discovered Chidi was in fact jacked like a ‘typical leading man in Hollywood.’ This was actually more consistent with his character than it first appeared. A lot of philosophers throughout history were physically in good shape. Think of Plato (literally broad shoulders) and Leonardo da Vinci. It was quite likely Chidi had read about them and wanted to emulate them. Furthermore, it wouldn’t be a stretch for Chidi to base his diet solely on this.”
}
NBC
—u/Salmanbhairocks
“Eleanor also said in Season 4 that a 14-year-old Chidi learned pushups alleviated anxiety, so he started doing them and just never stopped.”
—u/nopethanks24
“My headcanon was always that he couldn’t decide which weight to lift so he lifted them all.”
—u/Atomic12192
“All I want to know is which exercise is the most moral…”
—u/ArtWrt147
9.
“A person’s point totals depended on the consequences of their actions instead of the intentions of their actions.”
}
NBC
“In Season 1, while Eleanor was trying to gain points in order to stay in the Good Place, her score didn’t go up because her intentions were ‘flawed’ (she was doing kind things not to be a good person, but for the selfish reason of staying in the Good Place). But later on, we found out that no one was getting into the Good Place for a long time because everyone’s actions had physical, negative consequences on other people. This further proved point totals depended on those consequences and not the intentions.”
}
