The Entire Good Place Timeline Explained

As the show opens, Eleanor Shellstrop (Bell) opens her eyes and is met with a sign that tells her that "everything is fine." Shortly thereafter, she meets Michael, who tells her some good news and bad news. The bad news is, Eleanor is dead — thanks to an embarrassing grocery store parking lot incident involving a row of shopping carts and a bottle of something called "Lonely Girl Margarita Mix For One" — but the good news is that she's ended up in the "Good Place," the obvious better option as opposed to the "Bad Place."

However, once Eleanor is shown memories of her time on Earth as a virtuous human rights lawyer, she realizes something is amiss; the Good Place has chosen the wrong Eleanor Shellstrop, and this Eleanor, a jerk from Arizona, doesn't actually belong. As she scrambles to figure out what to do, she turns to her assigned Good Place soulmate Chidi Anagonye (Harper) for help, telling him her shameful secret as she inadvertently wreaks havoc upon their perfect, heavenly neighborhood. Eleanor immediately knows she's the only issue with this ideal utopia, but regardless, she's determined to stay, so she asks Chidi for help.

Eventually, Eleanor confesses the truth: she doesn't belong in the Good Place and is the cause of the entire neighborhood's problems. To remedy this problem, the Bad Place sends one of its most irritating demons, Trevor (a perfectly cast Adam Scott), to come and collect Eleanor, who comes face to face with the other Eleanor Shellstrop (Tirya Sircar), a human rights lawyer who grew up as an orphan and spent her life fighting systemic inequality.

As Eleanor stands trial for her crimes and tries to prove that she's improved during her time in the Good Place, the four humans squabble over the fact that the Bad Place claims that they simply need one person to accept their fate and head down to the Bad Place. In the end, Eleanor is the only one who figures out the show's big first-season plot twist: They've actually been in the Bad Place the whole time, torturing each other as a part of an experiment engineered by Michael. The other Eleanor is also a decoy, and is actually just another Bad Place demon sent to trick the humans. Just as she figures out Michael's entire gambit, he snaps his fingers, erasing her memory entirely and starting the entire experiment over again with the same four humans.

Together with Michael, the humans form what they call "Team Cockroach," trying to better themselves and outsmart the Bad Place demons so they can eventually make their way into the real Good Place somehow. Throughout their process, the humans, especially Chidi, try to teach Michael ethics as well, but teaching a demon how to understand human morality proves to be much more difficult than anyone anticipated (in a particularly gruesome example, the gang tries and fails to explain the famous philosophical "Trolley Problem" to Michael). Even amidst an admittedly hilarious midlife crisis that involves an earring and a makeover for Janet, Michael starts to evolve, finally gaining some semblance of humanity.

Ultimately, Michael fails to figure out how to fix the system, so the team manages to infiltrate the depths of the Good Place and find a way to talk to the all-seeing Judge. Though Michael initially sacrifices himself to save the humans, Janet saves the day by tricking Shawn, and the group finds themselves face to face with... a burrito, for some reason.

After the Soul Squad discover Michael's latest scheme, they're told that they are eternally disqualified from getting into the Good Place, and Eleanor suggests that they all work together to improve other people's lives in the time they have left. In the time that follows, Tahani anonymously donates most of her fortune to charity, Eleanor helps her mother, Jason helps his father, and Michael and Janet investigate Doug Forcett (played by comedy legend Michael McKean), the man who accidentally guessed the system of the Good and Bad Places during a particularly eventful night years ago. However, despite the fact that Forcett leads a literally impeccable life, even he doesn't qualify for the Good Place, which means something must be wrong with the system itself.

Ultimately, Michael, Janet, and the gang make an appalling discovery: nobody has made it into the Good Place for over 500 years. As the humans die once again and return to the afterlife, the group's goal is clear — they must solve the problems inherent in the points system once and for all, because without actively rigging the system, the Bad Place is simply benefiting from the fact that life on Earth is fraught and complicated. Alongside Shawn and the Judge, the Soul Squad realizes they need to redo the experiment with four new test subjects.

Aside from Chidi and Simone, the other two test subjects are specifically designed to torment the Soul Squad, starting with John Wheaton (Brandon Scott Jones), who arrives just to torture poor Tahani. John, who was a nasty gossip columnist back on Earth, was especially cruel to Tahani during his life, and apparently, not much changes once he arrives in what he thinks is Heaven. Worse still is Brent Norwalk (Ben Koldyke), a classic chauvinist pig who complains about politically correct terms like "Captain Marvel," keeps calling Janet his "secretary," and whose mere presence is torture for... well, just about everybody.

As the Soul Squad, Michael, and Janet try to help these four humans improve their points totals during the experiment, it goes reasonably well, except for the fact that everybody keeps butting heads with the odious Brent. (To make matters worse, a Bad Janet manages to infiltrate the experiment right in the middle and pose as Good Janet, causing complete chaos.) The entire experiment reaches its nastiest point after Brent's book, Six Feet Under Par: A Chip Driver Mystery, which he regards as his masterpiece, objectifies and mocks everyone in the neighborhood, causing a fight between Brent and everybody else. However, throughout the turmoil, Michael keeps a log of all the ways the humans actually do improve, presenting his work to the Bad Janet who snuck into the experiment.

In one last twist, however, something is seriously wrong with the real Good Place — a perfect utopia sounds great on paper, but in practice, everyone contained within it has grown addle-brained due to a complete lack of challenges or limits. Luckily, Michael and the gang have one last stroke of genius, and introduce a door that reintroduces death, where denizens of the Good Place can walk through and become a part of the universe once they feel complete.

In the series finale, the Soul Squad says their goodbyes, with three of them crossing through the door. Jason, Chidi, and Eleanor, after personal growth and emotional evolution, all make the choice — at separate times — to pass through. Jason makes his decision first, followed by Chidi; though Eleanor tries to stop her soulmate from leaving her behind, for once in his life, he's sure. Eleanor lets him go before eventually deciding it's also her time to cross through — although not before she comes up with one last gift for Michael (more on that in a minute). 

Meanwhile, Tahani decides to do some real good by becoming the first human Good Place architect, while Janet remains in the Good Place (and essentially stays with her friends because she technically lives in every moment she's ever experienced). As for Michael? Thanks to Eleanor's genius, he gets to live life as a human, experiencing all the small joys and sorrows he always dreamed of. Fittingly, it's Michael who closes the entire series by accomplishing a long-held human goal: telling someone to "take it sleazy."