Seasonal Summaries
Season 1
Due to a clerical error, self-centered Eleanor Shellstrop finds herself in a perfect afterlife neighborhood filled with frozen yogurt, endless cocktail shrimp, soulmates, and many wonderful and accomplished people who lived exemplary lives on Earth. She is determined to stay despite the error and tries to hide the truth from Michael, the neighborhood’s architect. However, Eleanor soon realizes that her presence is bringing chaos to the whole neighborhood and its residents, and convinces her assigned soulmate, Chidi, a moral philosopher, to teach her ethics so that she can become a better person and stay in the Good Place. Things only get worse when Eleanor and Chidi discover one of their neighbors, Buddhist monk, Jianyu, is actually small-time criminal Jason who has also been sent to the Good Place by accident, and the three of them struggle with ethics and keeping secrets. Meanwhile, wealthy socialite Tahani attempts to help Michael deal with the chaos. Eventually, Eleanor realizes that she, Chidi, Jason, and Tahani have been in an experimental Bad Place neighborhood all along, and that their eternal punishment was to emotionally and psychologically torture each other.
Season 2
Michael, now known to be a Bad Place demon, has erased the memories of the four humans and restarted the neighborhood with some modifications to ensure maximum torture experience. The only problem? Michael was only given one chance to prove that his idea would work, and so far, he has rebooted the neighborhood countless times. The humans discovered the truth every single time. Now, desperate and with his soul on the line, Michael teams up with Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason to get them into the real Good Place. They convince the Judge to give them a chance to prove that they can become better people, and are sent back to Earth with their memories erased once more.
Season 3
Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason are now back on Earth in a new timeline where they never died, now with a second chance at life to become better people and to get into the Good Place. Back in the afterlife, Michael and Janet- a human-like, all-knowing archive- are in charge of keeping track of the four humans’ moral progress, but they soon realize that all four of them have reverted back to their old ways and are quickly losing points. Michael and Janet, desperate to ensure their success, begin interfering with the humans’ lives against the Judge’s orders. Noticing that they become better people when with each other, Michael gets the humans together in a research study led by Chidi and his colleague, Simone. The four humans eventually discover the truth about the afterlife and how no human has been able to get into the Good Place in centuries. Together, they confront the Judge about how fundamentally flawed the points system is. They propose that humans can develop morally with proper support, and are given the chance to prove their theory in a year-long experimental Good Place neighborhood.
Season 4
In the final season, the experimental neighborhood is underway, but not without opposition. Shawn, Michael’s old boss, repeatedly tries (and fails) to sabotage the experiment and when his attempts are discovered, the four test subjects are decided to be Simone, Chidi’s former co-worker, John, a gossip columnist, Brent, an entitled chauvinist, and Chidi himself. Eleanor, who becomes the acting architect following Michael’s breakdown, works with him, Tahani, Jason, and Janet to encourage the four test subjects to become better people by working together. The year-long experiment proves, at the very last minute, that humans are capable of moral self-improvement, and the Judge decides that the afterlife system is indeed flawed. The Judge’s solution to fix it, however, is to erase all of humanity and restart the universe. The six scramble to come up with a solution that does not end in humanity’s erasure. They suggest a new system in which humans will be able to earn their way into the Good Place, where they are then given the option to end their eternal existence. In the series finale, Jason, Chidi, and Eleanor all choose to leave the Good Place forever and disappear when they walk through the door; Tahani becomes an afterlife architect; and Michael is allowed to live as a human on Earth.