The Surprising Reason These Fans Feel Grateful For The Good Place's Tahani
In the finale of NBC's afterlife sitcom The Good Place, the members of the Soul Squad get everything they've ever wanted. They're reformed the entire afterlife. They've not just made it to the Good Place, they've made the Good Place better. Eleanor (Kristen Bell) has Chidi (William Jackson Harper). Jason (Manny Jacinto) has Janet (D'Arcy Carden).
But the fourth human member of Team Cockroach finds her fulfillment in a different way. Tahani (Jameela Jamil) has trained for a position as a Good Place architect, designing the tests by which the newly departed progress through the afterlife, and some fans are glad that her happy forever after looked a little different from those of her friends.
"As an aromantic person, I'm so grateful for a character like Tahani. We don't need partners to make us complete," wrote Redditor u/FriendlyChance.
Like many similar labels, aromanticism is not really the kind of thing that has a cut-and-dry set of rules, where people who identify that way always feel X but never Y. Yes, they are capable of having close friendships. Yes, it is different from being asexual; people who are aromantic can still feel sexual attraction to someone, though not all do. Instead, broadly, someone who is aromantic doesn't develop what they consider to be romantic attachments, be that a longing for a certain level of intimacy with a person or that butterflies in the stomach feeling or whatever it is that flips a switch in a relationship from "someone special" to "that special someone."
The relationships that are important to Tahani in The Good Place
That is not to say that Tahani's happiness, or that anyone who might identify as aromantic, is something that requires her to be completely cut off from other people (or demons or extra-dimensional beings or all-knowing not-a-girls). Not only do her friends — not to mention Nick Offerman — remain an important aspect of Tahani's afterlife, but many users also pointed out that she is also able to reconcile with both her always-disappointed parents (Ajay Mehta and Anna Khaja) and her prodigiously talented but indifferent younger sister, Kamilah (Rebecca Hazlewood). "I cried my eyes out when their parents arrived and just cried and apologized and Tahani got to spend all that time with her family being genuinely happy and full of love," wrote u/dogsonclouds.
In fact, some commenters even speculated that the bond the sisters eventually found they shared thanks to their harsh treatment at the hands of their parents made them each other's soulmate. "Her and her sister went thru [sic] the same loneliness but experienced it in very different ways," wrote u/Fuzzy_Muscle.
"When we see Kamilah in the good place, she seems to be living with Tahani," said u/funandgeeky. "The two of them, having reconciled, have more than made of up for lost time. I would agree that if anyone was her soul-mate, it was her sister."
Tahani finding contentment in herself is the end of her arc
Some commenters expressed doubts that Tahani would even identify as aromantic. She has relationships with both Jason and the fourth Hemsworth brother Larry (Ben Lawson), the handsome philanthropic pediatric surgeon/perpetual disappointment, not to mention any number of celebrity flings she alludes to. But others responded that it's unclear whether these romances were edifying for Tahani or just what she thought she should be doing. She had been told Jason was her soulmate. She is the type of person who thinks she ought to be with a Hemsworth brother, even if it has to be Larry.
Whether Tahani technically qualifies is beside the original poster's point. What matters is that she didn't need a romantic partner to find fulfillment, that her story reached a satisfying conclusion without one. That it was her story makes it all the better. As u/Cymric814 wrote, "I also love that Tahani didn't need to find a soulmate. She spent her life begging for the attention and love she never received. Finding happiness in herself was the ultimate resolution. She was able to give herself what she needed."
And who wouldn't want that?