Who Really Created The Janets In The Good Place?
NBC's philosophically-driven sitcom "The Good Place" introduced an arsenal of angels, demons, and other supernatural characters during its hilarious four-season run. Audiences get to know Michael and Sean, demons who oversee eternal punishment in the Bad Place, and occasionally meet other seemingly immortal beings like Judge Gen, the Good Place Committee, Jeff the Doorman, and the neutral zone accountants who tally up humans' life points.
Assisting these supernatural beings are Janets, portrayed flawlessly by D'Arcy Carden throughout the series. Janets are a sort of artificial intelligence who help operate aspects of the afterlife, from creating entire Good Place neighborhoods to serving as a personal assistant for residents. They are a source of infinite knowledge and exist (with appropriate personality differences) across the Good Place, the Bad Place, and within neutral zones like the afterlife's accounting office.
While demons like Michael and Sean are tasked with working with Janets to create afterlife neighborhoods for humans to exist in, it's made clear in the series that they did not create the Janet as a product. Even the series' main Janet — who, according to the show's Wiki, is the most advanced Janet ever — does not appear to know who exactly created her or how she was made.
Does "The Good Place" ever reveal to its audience where Janets come from or who created them? The answer lies in a funny throwaway line from Season 2.
Unseen celestial beings more powerful than Michael or the Judge created the Janets
The best evidence "The Good Place" fans have for where Janets come from stems from Season 2 Episode 7, "Janet and Michael." The episode's cold open shows Michael stealing a Good Place Janet to use for his revolutionary fake Good Place neighborhood seen throughout Season 1 and 2 — die-hard fans will recall that the Good Janet warehouse is next to accounting.
In the same episode, Michael and Janet troubleshoot the artificial intelligence's errors before they destroy the neighborhood. When they acquire Janet's user manual through her nose, Michael reads a line in the manual's introduction that stakes a claim as to who created Janet. "Hello, and welcome to your new Janet," Michael reads from the manual (via Netflix). "Janets are brought to you by the Makers of Light, Darkness, and Everything."
Michael quickly skips ahead in the manual and audiences never hear more about the Makers of Light, Darkness, and Everything. While the line largely comes across as a throwaway joke, Michael does not seem familiar with these entities — meaning they must be above his or even Sean's pay grade in the grand scale of celestial powers.
It's unclear if any of the characters audiences meet in "The Good Place" are Makers of Light, Darkness, and Everything or whether they might know them. Arguably, the show's most powerful otherworldly character is Maya Rudolph's Judge Gen, who claims to be born at the beginning of time (via The Good Place Wiki), but she never elaborates on whether higher powers than herself do exist.