The Secret Surprise Ending to the Good Place: They Accept Jesus as Their Savior

Critical for this fourth and final season of the Good Place has been the discovery at the end of last season that no one has managed to get into the Good Place for hundreds of years. As society has grown more complex, it has become impossible for humans to calculate the full consequences of their actions, inevitably leading to mistakes. While the show has avoided directly talking about Christianity, this revelation fits well into a Christian critique of the Pharisaic model of reward and punishment in which one attempts to perform good deeds and avoid sins in the hope that, in the afterlife, one will have earned enough points that God would owe them an eternity in heaven. Once we admit that all of us are sinners and can never earn our way into heaven, it becomes pointless to talk about being righteous. Critical for Christianity is that it is impossible to be a good Christian. There was one good Christian in all of history and he was crucified on Calvery. If another such good Christian existed, Christianity would be refuted as Jesus' death could no longer be justified. All of humanity would have to be told that, in theory, they could have been perfect like this one human and must be damned for failing to live up to this livable standard.

With this in mind, it would be fantastic if the show could end with a Christian twist. The attempt to rewrite the rules of the afterlife fails and the Bad Place people convince the judge to let them have control over humanity with the promise that if some human managed to achieve some impossibly high score then they would agree to renounce their right to torture all the humans in their clutches.

Eleanor: If only there could be a perfectly righteous man (or woman), who would lead a totally perfect life and save all of us.

Chidi: That is impossible. No human could possibly be so perfectly righteous. Someone that righteous could no longer be considered a person. He would be God.

Jason: Oh, I know. God should totally knock up some chick. That boy would then also kinda be God and a dude at the same time. So he could then do stuff like be perfect for all of us. I mean, I tried once to be good one time back in Jacksonville. It was hard.

Tahani: Don't be ridiculous. That would be like the time my friend Harry married some American and moved to Canada. "Look at me, I am just a common millionaire like the rest of you."

Michael: How much love would God need to possess in order to give over his only Son so the world could have forgiveness?

Janet: I know everything and not even I know the answer. It is clearly a lot.

Sean: I would just love to see God try. We will make his Son live in a Middle Eastern country for thirty-three years among lepers and tax collectors. Then we will have the humans betray him and hammer nails into him. By the end, he will be calling out "my God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?" Let's see him love those humans torturing him and pray for their forgiveness.

Eleanor: I love you. But if someone were to be tortured to death and go to the Bad Place for my sins, I would totally accept them as my savior.

Chidi: You know, I actually agree with you.

Not that I expect any of this to happen but it would certainly surprise people.