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The Good Place season 3: Everything you need to know

Photo credit: Colleen Hayes - NBC Universal
Photo credit: Colleen Hayes - NBC Universal

From Digital Spy

Warning: contains spoilers for seasons one and two of The Good Place.

Who predicted a network sitcom about moral philosophy would be so funny? If that weren't enough to mark The Good Place out as unique, it was also rare in that its first season was planned entirely in advance, built around a plot twist in the final episode that shed new light on everything that went before.

We're going to go ahead and assume you know what happens: it turned out that self-centred Eleanor (Kristen Bell), overachieving Tahani (Jameela Jamil from T4!), indecisive Chidi (William Jackson Harper) and sweet, brainless Jason (Manny Jacinto) weren't in the Good Place after all, but in a hell of Michael's (Ted Danson) creation.

Season two had the unenviable task of moving the story on and it did it in style, despite it taking a little bit of time to find its feet, delivering a season full of surprises and ending on another game changing twist. So what do we know about season three so far?

The Good Place season 3 release date: When will it be on?

NBC renewed the comedy for a third season during its season two midseason break and it will again run for 13 episodes.

Season one and two landed on September 19, 2016 and September 20, 2017, respectively, and NBC is following suit for season three which will premiere with an hour-long episode on September 27, 2018.

Photo credit: NBC Universal
Photo credit: NBC Universal

Netflix airs the show in the UK and continue to premiere new episodes the day after their US airing, so the season three premiere will arrive on September 28.

The Good Place season 3 cast: Who's coming back?

Something will have gone very wrong with the world if the full cast of Kristen Bell, Ted Danson, Jameela Jamil, William Jackson Harper, Manny Jacinto and D'Arcy Carden (Janet) aren't all back.

We'd also hope to see Marc Evan Jackson back as Michael's boss Shawn, along with possible returns for Maribeth Monroe (Mindy St Claire), Jason Mantzoukas (Derek) and Maya Rudolph as Eternal Judge Jen (short for Hydrogen).

Two new faces are joining the cast for season three in the form of Mike O'Malley, who plays The Guard that is protecting the door connecting the afterlife to Earth, and Killing Eve star Kirby Howell-Baptiste, who plays Simone.

Photo credit: Walter McBride/Tommaso Boddi/WireImage
Photo credit: Walter McBride/Tommaso Boddi/WireImage

Simone works at the university in Australia where Eleanor found Chidi in the season two finale and Chidi seeks her help to "figure out if there's something wrong with his brain" (via EW).

"He's in a discipline where people mull over the divine secrets of the universe and try to tease out incredibly indistinct meaning from various pure thoughts, and she is a person who scans things with machines, determines results, and draws conclusions," creator Mike Schur outlined.

"She has science and math on her side. She is a very different kind of academic from Chidi."

The Good Place season 3 plot: How does season 2 set it up?

Jameela Jamil had promised that the premise of season three was "bloody brilliant and so exciting" as she hyped up the second season finale and so it proved.

After Michael pleads the gang's case to the judge, it initially seems like they'll all be sent to their own separate Medium Place while Michael tries to work out how to get them into the actual Good Place.

Photo credit: Colleen Hayes - NBC Universal
Photo credit: Colleen Hayes - NBC Universal

Eleanor isn't happy with this (potentially because Chidi has just kissed her), so Michael comes up with a bold plan that they have no idea about. The judge clicks her fingers and everyone is back on Earth, alive again!

Throughout the rest of the finale, we only see Eleanor's struggles to be good after her near-death experience, while Michael and Janet keep an eye on everyone's deeds back on Earth. Just when it looks like Eleanor has slipped back into her bad ways, Michael shows up as a bartender (hello Cheers reference!) to offer her safe advice that, eventually, leads to Eleanor hopping on a flight to Australia to meet Chidi.

Photo credit: NBC Universal
Photo credit: NBC Universal

Speaking to Rolling Stone, Schur was asked if Eleanor (Kristen Bell) and company were really brought back to life, or whether it was just another simulation.

Related: How to make The Good Place season 3 as forking amazing as season 1

"Normally I don't like to just flatly state what's going on," he said, "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.

"It seemed like a natural move to send them back to a time before they made that progress, and to use the idea of nearly dying to test their ability to improve."

Schur was also asked about time moving differently in the afterlife compared to Earth, and his reply was to "enjoy episode five". What a tease!

Photo credit: NBC Universal
Photo credit: NBC Universal

Kristen Bell has also hinted that "metaphorically, this next season is about how you can play chess with people who don't know you're playing with them and doing so in a way that doesn't affect the greater universe."

"Our characters don't know there's a greater mission," she revealed. "We're meandering on Earth... all left on Earth separately. And what we learned from the first two seasons is that our strengths come when we're together."

At Comic-Con, the first two minutes of season three was shown and, according to IndieWire, it shows Michael visiting The Guard to head down to earth.

"I have the ruling from the judge to head down to earth and reverse the deaths of these four people," he tells The Guard, adding that he knows it may "cause ripple effects in the timeline" but it's the only way to find out if bad people can become good after their deaths.

The Good Place season 3 trailer: When's it landing?

Now that we have a release date, we can hope for a teaser soon, especially as we got our first look at season two in late June 2017, a few months before its premiere.


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