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Again and again throughout its four seasons,The Good Placepulled the rug out from under you.
They wererebooted!Many times!
Meanwhile, the shows bigger question about how we should live remained shielded within a layer of unknowing.
It was the mystery of existence packaged inside the mystery of No, seriously,whatis really going on?
That sense of twist surprise waned in the final season.
However lovely and endearing its characters were, the seams of the shows inner structure began showing more clearly.
The things meant to disguise them mostlyEleanor and Chidis continually doomed love looked and felt like distractions.
What happens after you die?
That answer ended up being false, but not quite in the way that the show initially suggested.
People need the option to choose to leave, a way to no longer exist.
He, too, will end.
It feels cheap to say that the final twist ofThe Good Placeis there is no twist.
But theres something lovely and right about the shows decision to abandon its twisting mechanisms and accept the obvious.
Why are we here?
What happens after we die?
What is the nature of goodness?
Theres no answer to What is the nature of goodness?
that could be surprising, and theres no answer to What happens after we die?
that could ever be truly satisfying.
Instead,The Good Placechose to embrace those things.
The answer to What happens after we die?
The answer to What is the nature of goodness?
There is no closing hairpin turn, no last moment where the show reboots everything all over again.
The final twist is that everything ends, we dont know exactly what that looks like, andthats okay.
After you walk through the door and the show is done, there will be an absence.
A thing used to exist and now it doesnt, which is unbearably sad.
But to have had meaning in the first place,The Good Placeneeded to have an ending.
When everyones at peace, its time to say good-bye.
