Get Your Ethics Textbooks Ready, The Good Place Is Back for a Third Season

First, a brief recap. As fans may recall, Michael convinced Judge Jen to give his friends a second chance on Earth in last season's finale of The Good Place. Eleanor had a brief stint with doing good, quitting her job where she sold fake medicine to the elderly and enlisting to be an environmental canvasser. But after getting sued, she returned to her vain and selfish lifestyle. Michael, who pretended to be her bartender (yup, this is a Cheers reference), gave her a talk that led her to meeting up with Chidi. So what's going to happen in the third season? We have some mild spoilers ahead.

The showrunners revealed the first two minutes of The Good Place's third season during a panel at Comic-Con. The scene begins with Michael walking down a bridge and meeting up with "The Guard," who's played by Mike O'Malley. The former Bad Place architect, armed with paperwork, explains, "I have the ruling from the judge to head down to Earth and reverse the deaths of these four people." He then says that this may "cause ripple effects in the timeline," but it's his only way to discover if bad people can become good after dying. The Guard gives his stamp of approval and warns Michael that he won't have any of his powers on Earth. Michael then pushes Eleanor away from her fatal shopping cart fate and returns to The Guard's station.

We should expect to see how Chidi, Jason, and Tahani, in addition to Eleanor, hold up with their do-overs on Earth. There's a good chance that all four humans will reconvene once more.

The Good Place is known for its wild plot twists, but we can expect that the third season will begin where the second season left off. This deal isn't another trick or simulation — the original four humans are really back on Earth. In an interview with Rolling Stone, executive producer Michael Schur commented, "Normally I don't like to just flatly state what's going on, but here I don't see the benefit of people experiencing ambiguity: The four of them are straight-up back on Earth, in a new timeline where they didn't die."

No worries, though. According to Schur, we'll still see quirky after-life magic on the show.

We can more or less expect the whole gang to return to the show. Jameela Jamil (Tahani), Manny Jacinto (Jason), Kristen Bell (Eleanor), and William Jackson Harper (Chidi) will reprise their roles as the lovably flawed humans, this time back on Earth. Ted Danson, fresh from his Emmy nomination for best actor in a comedy series, will return as Michael, a Bad Place architect with a reformed heart. He'll be overseeing his friends with Janet, who's played by D'arcy Carden.

As for guest roles, we may see more of Marc Evan Jackson as Michael's soulless boss Shawn and Maya Rudolph as Judge Jen; the latter recently received an Emmy nomination for best guest actress for her performance on The Good Place. Other possible returning guest stars include Jason Mantzoukas as Janet's ex-boyfriend Derek and Adam Scott as Bad Place resident Trevor.

The third season, like the first two, will have 13 episodes. Over the last two seasons, executive producer and creator Michael Schur has written and directed the finale episodes, so it's likely that he will do so for the third installation of the series.

After what felt like a period of eternal torture without The Good Place, we're finally getting a taste of the third season very soon. Season three of the series will premiere on Thursday, Sept. 27, with a special one-hour episode at 8 p.m. on NBC. The show will then return to its regular slot the following Thursday at 8:30 p.m.