The penultimate episode of The Good Place‘s third season brought us even closer to exactly how Michael is going to get these four (dead?) humans into, you know, the Good Place. Or at the very least, how to get everyone from the Bad Place to stop chasing the game through space, time and also Canada.
We know the final episode is called ‘Pandemonium,’ a chaotically ominous title that seems to promise the requisite level of shenanigans we’ve come to expect from the NBC comedy. But beyond that, we know very little about what will happen in the season’s final 22 minutes. And the episode description that comes attached to information about the January 24 finale is extremely vague.
As Margaret Lyons noticed and tweeted late Thursday night, ‘Pandemonium’ will contain stuff and things, and probably some words. But The Good Place isn’t taking any chances when it comes to spoiling what’s to come.
https://twitter.com/margeincharge/status/1085944038665146373
“Various events occur, in a certain specific order,” the description simply says.
Huh. Not a whole lot to work with here. Now given how often the concept of time and its machinations are discussed on the show, there’s a good chance that the phrase “certain specific order” means something in hindsight. But right now, out of context, it’s about as vague as humanly (demonly?) possible.
And showrunner Michael Schur wasn’t adding any clues early Friday, though he did acknowledge that the show is being unusually coy by retweeting Lyons and adding absolutely nothing of substance to the description of potential events of season three’s final episode.
What? It's true. https://t.co/btLQTbjwlk
— Ken Tremendous (@KenTremendous) January 18, 2019
This is certainly a departure from the descriptions of The Good Place‘s previous 38 episodes. For a show that’s had an impressive number of twists and turns, none of the provided descriptions of those chapters have been nearly that vague. Take the description of Thursday night’s episode, entitled ‘Chidi Sees the Time-Knife.’ This is what is described according to IMDB:
“Eleanor and the gang meet the judge at the crossroads of all dimensions, time and space to plead their case and Janet makes a reconnection.”
And that is, indeed, a thing that happens! Albeit almost the entirety of that description occurs in the episode’s opening minutes (seen above). Still, it at least describes, you know, a scene in some detail. Even if, like Michael’s presentation to the judge at the IHOP, it is a bit underwhelming.
“Your big revelation is that life is complicated?” the Judge says. “That’s not a revelation. That’s a divorced woman’s throw pillow.”
Still, a description this vague has to be a loving tribute to Matt Weiner’s Mad Men, which truly set the bar for hilariously vague descriptions about an emotionally heavy and increasingly complex narrative. But to Weiner’s credit, at least those maddeningly unspecific descriptions actually included the names of characters that the episode, you know, focused on.
So perhaps something will happen to Chidi and Elanor in the season three finale. Maybe even Tahani or Jason will be involved. You might go as far as to say Michael, or perhaps the specific Janet we’ve frequently spotted on the show, will also appear on screen. Or even say some lines! Will a Doug make an appearance as well? Truly, there is only one way to find out for sure.
