massive tangent, but the end of The Good Place is kind of genius, and without it the show would have been merely good. the whole show goes on this endless circus ride of silly premises and discussions of good vs evil, but it never did much emotional work with the idea of dying itself, and grief. if you get to the end of season 3 then you’re probably somewhat emotionally invested in the characters, and them being able to reach peace with death itself is one of humanity’s oldest stories. i also like that the series is like 3 dozen different rug-pulls of “you thought they were doing X, but the whole time it was Y” and the final rug-pull is “you thought they were trying to get into The Good Place, but what they really wanted was just the good place (a restful end, non-existence)”
if they were going to touch on immortality / deathism in a real sense, it would have been better to do it earlier. it would have been a big curveball to throw at the end of the series, or at least there would need to be a bit more legwork to prepare it.
massive tangent, but the end of The Good Place is kind of genius, and without it the show would have been merely good. the whole show goes on this endless circus ride of silly premises and discussions of good vs evil, but it never did much emotional work with the idea of dying itself, and grief. if you get to the end of season 3 then you’re probably somewhat emotionally invested in the characters, and them being able to reach peace with death itself is one of humanity’s oldest stories. i also like that the series is like 3 dozen different rug-pulls of “you thought they were doing X, but the whole time it was Y” and the final rug-pull is “you thought they were trying to get into The Good Place, but what they really wanted was just the good place (a restful end, non-existence)”
if they were going to touch on immortality / deathism in a real sense, it would have been better to do it earlier. it would have been a big curveball to throw at the end of the series, or at least there would need to be a bit more legwork to prepare it.