Holy shirt! The multi-hyphenated Michael Schur recently announced that NBC’s The Good Place, will officially end after its fourth and final season. The announcement came after a panel discussion in Los Angeles where other creatives talked about the upcoming Emmy’s.
“After The Good Place was picked up for Season 2, the writing staff and I began to map out, as best we could, the trajectory of the show,” Schur said in a statement. “Given the ideas we wanted to explore, and the pace at which we wanted to present those ideas, I began to feel like four seasons — just over 50 episodes — was the right lifespan.”
At times over the past few years we’ve been tempted to go beyond four seasons, but mostly because making this show is a rare, creatively fulfilling joy, and at the end of the day, we don’t want to tread water just because the water is so warm and pleasant. As such, the upcoming fourth season will be our last.
“I will be forever grateful to NBC and Universal TV for letting us make The Good Place, and for letting us end it on our own schedule,” added Schur. “I will also be forever grateful to the creative team, both on-screen and off, for their hard work and dedication to a very weird idea. We ask the question very frequently, on this show, what do we owe to each other? The answer, for me, is: I owe all of you a whole lot. We look forward to a great final season airing this fall.”
NBC’s Co-Presidents of Scripted Programming, Lisa Katz and Tracey Pakosta, also commented on the show’s final season. “Since day one, The Good Place has been a seminal show for us and one that hits all the NBC touch points — incredibly smart, funny, inventive and emotional. We know the audience will love what Mike Schur and his writers have in store for the final season.”
In other good news, The Good Place’s 4th season will see one of its star —Kristen Bell who plays Eleanor— take on directing reigns for one of the series’ episodes, which will be 13 episodes total for the season. Production on the upcoming season is currently underway.
William Jackson Harper (Chidi), Jameela Jamil (Tahani), and Manny Jacinto (Jason) co-star as other residents of “The Good Place”, with D’Arcy Carden as Janet, an artificial being who knows everything about the universe. Ted Danson plays demon and human-handler Michael.
Last January, Schur further admitted that there were repercussions to season 3’s cliffhanger and since then has had difficulties deciding which creative direction to take moving forward. “We just started [working on Season 4] and we’re panicking — white-hot panic… The first two weeks of every year — except for Season 1 — have been all of the writers staring blankly at each other and then quietly getting in our cars and driving home.”
Schur also hinted that the upcoming Season 4 will heavily reflect season 1, save for the idea to “change everything and somehow still do the same show that people have been watching.” That change being the the shocking plot twist at the end of Season 3 involving the loss of Chidi’s memories with Eleanor.