The Good Place theory: Was Brent the real problem child?
As The Good Place ends its latest episode on a very big cliffhanger, we look back at this final experiment and have a wild and crazy theory.
The Good Place has always loved its cliffhangers. Thankfully for us, this latest episode only makes us wait a week to see the outcome… unless the next episode also ends on a cliffhanger.
In the latest episode, the final experiment ends. But not before all of the Soul Squad’s hard work over the last year falls to ruins in a matter of hours. They try to put Brent in a dangerous situation and have the rest of the crew save him, but Simone and John take off, and Chidi tries to help and falls in himself.
They get Chidi to reveal that this is the Bad Place, and in the last few seconds, it looks as though Brent came to the realization that he truly is a bad person — and that he was about to apologize to his only friend, Chidi. But time ran out in the middle of his sentence.
So let’s get wild and crazy with a theory, and let’s ask the question: Was Brent really the problem child of the experiment? Because, in the end, even at the last second, he made his Eleanor realization that he really was a bad person.
John the gossip blogger grew. Tahani helped him realize that he tore other people down to make himself feel better, so he tried his hardest not to do that over the last year, even holding on to Jason’s secret for months before losing it.
Chidi stayed the same ethical person as he was before, looking out for others due to his ethical responsibility.
Maybe it’s Simone they should have worried about. From the start, she was their problem child, believing this whole thing to be a figment of her imagination while she was dying in a coma on earth.
And since then, she’s been secretly trying to figure out what’s wrong with this place and why Michael and Eleanor spend the most time with the four of them than anyone else. And while doing so, she’s not exactly being the best scientist about it. She started with a belief (that this is not the Good Place) and then worked backwards to justify that answer rather than letting the evidence lead to the conclusions.
Like John tells her in this last episode, she always has to be right. And when she decides that she’s right, she sticks with it and won’t listen to anything else. She won’t consider any alternatives. And in the end, she doesn’t change. She breaks Chidi’s heart and leaves Brent hanging on for dear life.
So did it matter that they focused their experiment on Brent and assumed everyone else would become better people and change? In the end, it only matters if they grew as people for this experiment to work.
Next. The Good Place: Bad Janet and the endless possibilities. dark