There’s always been something weird about the points system that gets you into the Good Place. But after the last episode “Janet(s),” we know the process is not just strange or unfair—it’s seemingly broken. No human has made it into the Good Place in 521 years, which has Michael convinced the Bad Place has hacked the accountants’ system, making it impossible for anyone to accumulate enough points to get it. But what if Michael’s wrong? What if the Bad Place has nothing to do with mankind’s five-century dry spell? If it’s not the fault of the bad guys, who or what is to blame? Well, here are six possibilities…

The Good Place Is Full

This would be the silliest, but it would also be exactly absurd enough for an absurd system. The afterlife exists in an infinite plane of existence, but just like the Bad Place and the Neutral Place, it is run by supernatural beings. There don’t seem to be an infinite number of them. It’s possible mankind already filled up all of the available spots in the Good Place, and you can’t exactly kick a good person out once they made the grade.

Would this be incredibly unfair? Yes, but life isn’t fair and no one seems to care about that.

The Good Place Had a “Grade Inflation” Problem

If it’s impossible to get a passing grade now, what if it was impossible to fail before? We got a glimpse of how the point system works, with all new human actions getting triple-billion checked so they are consistently applied. But even if the points earned or lost by individual actions haven’t changed, the Good Place might have raised the total of a passing score since it was way, way too low for tens of thousands of years. The original threshold might have been so low that almost everyone got in!

The past 521 years of rejection might have been as simple as a much needed course correction. The Bad Place tortures 30 billion souls. That means there might be as many as 70 billion humans in the Good Place. Mindy St. Claire not withstanding, life is a pass/fail course. If the number of people in the Good Place should be closer to 50 billion so there are an equal number of passing and failing scores, a few thousand years of grade adjustment should fix the problem.

Is it fair to people unlucky enough to live during that era? No, but again, “fair” appears to be a meaningless concept in a world strictly measured by altruism.

“Someone” in the Good Place Doesn’t Want Anyone Else to Get In

What if instead of the Bad Place hacking the system, “someone” in the Good Place did? They could be an evil double agent, or they could have some altruistic reason we don’t yet know about. Or maybe they’re tired of the type of people who get in—good, wholesome, kind, virtuous, boring people. If the Good Place, which bans swearing, is only full of people like Doug Forcett, wonderful but torture to spend time with, that’s a pretty boring eternal party. How many millennia can you play charades before you need to chug tequila?

Maybe just close the door before things inside get even lamer.

Going to the Good Place Isn’t Really a Reward

Eleanor, Tahani, Chidi, and Jason were all sent to the Bad Place, under the control of Michael, who was helped by a totally normal Janet. All six of them are better, more complete people/beings now. All of them have grown and had more meaningful experiences than they ever did before, all because they were sent to the Bad Place.

If suffering in the Bad Place can mean good things, maybe getting everything you want in the Good Place isn’t so great.* If everything is good, nothing is good, because good and bad are relative concepts. “Someone” might have figured out the Good Place isn’t actually a place you want to go to forever, so they rigged the system out of benevolence.

(*Yes, like the Architect’s first perfect, flawed Matrix.)

Mankind “Broke” the System

Did mankind do something in the fifteenth century that made it impossible for anyone alive to get in? It could be anything, but arguably the biggest invention of that era, and one of the biggest ever, was the printing press. It made mass communication possible. It also made it harder for mankind to claim ignorance of other peoples’ ideas and suffering. Was this a case of “ignorance is bliss” before, but once we no longer had that excuse the point total to get in went up?

Whatever it is, there’s a very high chance mankind is to blame for its own predicament, which would actually be very fair in the cruelest way.

The Good Place Doesn’t Exist

How do we know the Good Place exists? Who are we trusting here? Some demons and accountants? A weird judge and a frog-loving doorman? A video of Mindy St. Claire with a supposed Good Place representative? What if they are all wrong? What if the Good Place is a sham? An imaginary carrot, or a cosmic joke, or a well-placed misdirection?

What if the Good Place was actually the friends we made along the way?

Oh, hey, wait! That actually makes perfect sense for once!

Images: NBC