Morality versus Mortality: The Meaning of (After)Life in The Good Place

The series finale of The Good Place seemed to present the invention of “the door” as offering a choice that gave meaning to the existences of the eternal souls in the Good Place, and as a decision appropriate, fitting, or beautiful for the characters who made it. In this chapter, I argue against that interpretation of the finale, which I will call the standard interpretation. I instead advance a view that going through the door is problematic. According to my interpretation, only when the characters lost sight of the show’s true message of “what we owe to each other” did non-existence look like an attractive option. That is, only when they devoted their lives to an inwardly directed, hedonist goal did they conclude existence had lost meaning. Thus, the show does not endorse the characters’ actions, and if it did, doing so would be a potentially problematic treatment of themes associated with suicide. In advancing this argument, I defend a virtue ethicist interpretation of the point system leading to the good place. I also conclude that this interpretation of the finale and not the standard interpretation best situates The Good Place within the ethos of the prestige TV era.