‘Good Place’ Creator on Premiere’s Surprise Return: ‘He’s on a Singular Mission to Blow Everything Up’

Guess who’s back next week to call Michael a “dingus” some more?

The Good Place - Season 3
THE GOOD PLACE — "Everything is Bronzer! Pt. 2" Episode 302 — Pictured: (l-r) Ted Danson as Michael, D'Arcy Carden as Janet — (Photo by: Justin Lubin/NBC)

(Warning: This post contains spoilers for “The Good Place” Season 3 premiere, “Everything is Bonzer!”)

Everything was bonzer come the close of the first episode of Season 3 of “The Good Place,” with the premiere ending with the surprise return of the worst demon in the Bad Place: Trevor (Adam Scott.)

Creator Mike Schur explained why it was time for that jerk to return, just as Michael (Ted Danson) had orchestrated a way to get all of the former residents of the Bad Place who are once again alive and back on Earth — Eleanor (Kristen Bell), Chidi (William Jackson Harper), Tahani (Jameela Jamil) and Jason (Manny Jacinto)  — together in Australia.

“Brick by brick, laying this careful groundwork, and then simultaneously the Bad Place would figure out that’s what he was doing and just send a saboteur to blow it up all — that seemed like a really juicy way to launch into the season,” Schur told Entertainment Weekly in an interview published Thursday after the premiere.

And, yes, next week’s episode will see Trevor — under Shawn’s (Mark Evan Jackson) orders — do whatever it takes to get the crew to quit Chidi’s study and get the heck out of Australia, thus ruining Michael’s plan to help them prove to the Judge (Maya Rudolph) they can be better people — they just need each other.

“He’s on a singular mission to blow everything up,” Schur said. “His goal is to just get them to quit. Michael believes that they’re only safe if they’re together, and so all Trevor really needs to do is get one of them to leave, or to head home, to ruin it. He spends much of the next episode working on that plan.”

Of course that is going be a fun plan, albeit an evil one.

“He calls Michael a ‘dingus,’” Schur said. “He’s used that word before, and Michael has used that word before, and it really started making us laugh. ‘Dingus’ appears to be the official insult of the Bad Place. It’s so childish and silly. He has a couple lines that I won’t spoil. Adam Scott is very facile with language, and we wrote him some real rollercoaster insults that he lays out. We also love that he always just hung out in bathrooms. And when they ask him why, he shrugs his shoulders and goes, ‘I like the smells.’ It’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s my thing.’”

Read TheWrap’s interview with Schur about Season 3 here.

“The Good Place” airs Thursdays at 8/7c on NBC.

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