Here's How That HUGE ‘Good Place’ Twist Will Play Out When Season 3 Returns

Spoilers ahead for The Good Place Season 3 midseason finale. The Good Place specializes in tugging at all of our heartstrings while keeping us on our toes, and that’s exactly what it delivered in Thursday night’s midseason finale. After a season of ups and downs, the Good Place Season 3 midseason finale saw the humans finally reach the Good Place — for real this time. That’s something viewers can hang onto over the holiday break even though so much about the group's situation remains up in the air.

After a stint in Janet’s void, in which the gang all took her physical form and actor D’Arcy Carden proved she’s an unstoppable force, Michael smuggles everyone into the real Good Place. He’s pretty sure the Bad Place is tampering with the points system, ensuring they get the bulk of people sent to them — and he’s even more sure after some afterlife accountants tell him that no one has made it into the Good Place in more than 500 years.

According to creator Michael Schur, this isn’t just another trick the show is playing on its audience. "Just in case anyone's wondering, they are really in the Good Place,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “That's not a yank. It's not like the main gate or whatever [laughs], but [Eleanor] is not wrong."

Schur told THR that we’ll actually get to see what happens to Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, Jason, Michael, and Janet when the show returns. "They're in the Good Place, and they meet people who work in the Good Place," he said. "They have a little mini-adventure in the Good Place. But in case anyone wonders whether we're lying to them, we're not. That's real."

Whew. After more than two seasons of twists and turns, it’s hard to know what you can trust when you watch The Good Place, so it’s good to know everyone can rest easy for now.

Their arrival in the Good Place isn’t the only thing that happened in the midseason finale, which packed plenty of developments into a tight half-hour. Chidi and Eleanor finally kissed in this reality, and fans everywhere swooned after a long romantic drought between the two of them came to an end.

Continued fireworks between Eleanor and Chidi can be expected, Schur said in another interview with Variety, and that’s something we can all get excited about. "What happens at the end of this episode is big and it's real, and this wasn't intentional — at least it wasn't one of the original objectives — but for a while we've been trying to think of what would make Chidi get over his internal essential Chidi-ness when it comes to romance," Schur told the outlet. "And when we figured this out, it was like, 'Oh this is the thing.' He's going to worry about a lot of things; he's not going to worry about her or how he feels about her or how she feels like that. This is a sort of watershed for him, so picking up almost immediately in the next episode, it's pretty gooey."

And in other potential courtship news, Jason also learned that he and Janet were married back in those days he can no longer remember. It’s unclear how much of that information he actually processed (as always), but it definitely doesn’t feel like their story together is over.

It's incredible how skillfully The Good Place keeps its plot moving while not overwhelming viewers or turning them off with needless twists. You never know what’s going to happen during any given episode, and the plot never stays stagnant for long. But at the same time, the characters at this point feel like old friends, and they feel like a lifejacket viewers can hang onto throughout this crazy ride. The show will be back to finish the season before you know it, and right now it seems like the journey toward true goodness is only getting started.