This was so good. So, so good.

Apparently the show was never actually interested in imagining "the good place." It was always going to be a lame metaphor. The end-your-existence door is just a stand-in for the uncertainty of death IRL. This would be fine (albeit still disappointing), except it doesn't make sense as a metaphor either. The message is what—embrace the mystery and off yourself when you're ready to go? What a mess.

The characters choose annihilation only because the writers couldn't conceive of a good place that works. I can think of a number of different good place concepts off the top of my head that wouldn't lead to a mass-suicide.

The problem is that a good place that works would probably be far enough beyond human understanding that it would require too much abstraction to describe on screen. In the end, this show has limited aesthetic parameters. It feels like the writers were never prepared to do anything imaginative with the real good place. We could've had something truly bonkers and original, but instead what we get is some kind of self-sabotaging jokey thing.

The "souls" as they move into the good place should presumably transcend their human form in some way. But no, everyone who gets to the good place is still locked in a human body with a biological human brain and all of its limitations. They're limited humans in a supernatural space that should be unlimited. How is this a "good place" at all? The good place is boring to an extent that strains credulity—how do none of the characters have the imagination to create anything beyond facsimiles of earth? And why are they still obsessed with tiny dumb earth things when they have access to higher-dimensional knowledge and power? They should be out there or something.

Arriving at the actual good place should come with some baseline level of transcendence or consciousness expansion, but there's really none of that. In this show's worldbuilding, the version of you that's on earth, in the bad place, in limbo, and in the good place are all pretty much the same. That strange choice—deciding that a soul has the limitations of human consciousness—prevents them from depicting a good place that makes any sense.

In fact, I was hoping for a reveal that this was actually another bad place. That's the only way I can make sense of the characters drinking the Flavor Aid and obliterating their souls.

This reddit comment sums it up well:

QuoteThe Soul Squad arrives and fixes the Bad Place by turning it into a rehabilitation center to get people ready for the Good Place where they will learn how to become incredibly bored. To solve that problem they fix the Good Place by adding a door that ends people's existence.

They turned the afterlife into a suicide machine.

And you can't convince me that the soul obliteration door represents enlightenment. All they've done in the good place is run simulations and narrow-mindedly fixate on their relationship with their parents or whatever. Because they're still somehow just dumb humans with flawed motivations and bad priorities.

All in all, cowardly creative choices were made, and it landed with a thud. I could not be more disappointed.