The Good Place is a show that likes to keep viewers on their toes. Since the big reveal of the first season finale, fans have been trying to guess what’s coming next for our recently deceased protagonists by analyzing every visual gag and oblique reference the show has to offer. But whether any of these fan theories are correct remains a mystery because the one man who could tell us refuses to read them. In a recent interview with The Wrap, series creator Michael Schur admitted that he purposefully stays away from fan theories, but not for the reason you might think.
“[It’s] not because I don’t find it interesting, quite the opposite,” Schur says. “I’m worried that I’ll find it too interesting and be like, ‘Oh, that’s a better idea than what we have,’ and I’ll be tempted to use it.” That’s probably a good policy to have. As much as these fans love picking apart the show and theorizing about where it’s going, the last thing they would want is for Michael Schur to stop coming up with his own, brilliant ideas and just use theirs instead. Having worked previously on hit shows like The Office and Parks And Recreation, Schur knows that it’s not his job to simply validate fans’ love for the characters and world he’s created, but rather do his best to make something that’s worthy of that love.
“Your job [as a showrunner] is to make the best show you can,” he tells The Wrap. “Try to make the twists and the left-turns as unexpected as you can, but whether or not anyone guesses them is sort of out of your hands.”
As much as no one wants to believe it, there will come a day when The Good Place is over, at which point Schur says he’d be more than happy to go back and read all the various theories Reddit has to offer. “I will not enjoy reading all of the fan theories that turned out to be better than what we’ve written,” he says. “I’ll curse the name of those Redditors.”
You can read the full interview here.