Why D'Arcy Carden Was Never The Same After The Good Place's Finale - Exclusive
Unless you're a Bad Janet, it's pretty difficult to get through the series finale of "The Good Place" without a good sob session at the very least and a complete existential crisis at the worst. Giving fans one of the best endings TV has to offer, the series finale isn't the sugary closure that fans hoped for — but it was the one we needed. Shaking up the idea of paradise, the Soul Squad realizes that The Good Place can't be pure bliss if it spans on for eternity. The unpredictably fragile nature of human life is what makes life worth living, no matter how many milkshakes and monkey go-kart races you have.
While we want to think that Eleanor (Kristen Bell) and Chidi (William Jackson Harper) will be together forever, or that Jason will goof off with Pillboy indefinitely, forever is a really long time. That alone is enough to make anyone just a bit robotic after a few thousand Bearimys. So that's why Janet (D'Arcy Carden) places an escape hatch door for humans who have had their fill of The Good Place and want to move onto the next thing — whether that be something like reincarnation or a wave crashing to shore as a returned piece of the Earth. Of course, with the conclusion left so open-ended, everyone has their own theory on what exactly happens when someone walks through Janet's woodland-looking door — but we wanted to hear it from Janet herself. During an exclusive interview with D'Arcy Carden for her new Jake Johnson film, "Ride the Eagle," she dished on the bittersweet conclusion of "The Good Place" and how the ending impacted the cast.
Goodbye forever (maybe)
Looper asked if D'Arcy Carden thinks the characters' journeys really ended when they walked out that door or if she had a theory about the door, but she'd rather fans come up with their own interpretations. "Oh my God, you know what? Here's the truth, I don't want to answer that, only because it feels so personal to everybody, and I don't know the answer. I don't know what it was, and I would hate to influence anybody who had a theory on where or what someone goes through when they walk through that door," she said. "But I agree with you. I love that finale. It moves me. It's sort of changed the way I think about the world and what we're doing here." Raise your hand if you pull up the clip of Chidi saying bye to Eleanor when you need to feel something — anything.
"I'm a Mike Schur fan in every sense of the word, and I think he created something so stunning, and the actors, we all felt that way," Carden added. "I know Manny [Jacinto] says that right after he read that episode, he had to call his parents and just be like, 'I love you guys.' I know Ted [Danson] and his wife, Mary, really thought that was a beautiful ending, and it sort of influenced their love for each other. It did that for all of us, it really ... I just think Mike Schur is such a brilliant writer, and I love him."
Fans can check out "Ride the Eagle" in select theaters, on demand, and digital now.