- ❝ If there were an answer I could give you to how the universe works, it wouldn’t be special. It would just be machinery fulfilling its cosmic design. It would just be a big, dumb food processor. But since nothing seems to make sense, when you find something or someone that does, it’s euphoria. ❞
- —Janet to Eleanor[src]
Janet is a principal character in The Good Place, played by D'Arcy Carden.
Character
Janet is the informational assistant of Neighborhood 12358W, and later the Good Place. She is the source of all information and knowledge for their residents, and she can also provide them with any object as requested.
Most people summon her by saying ‘Hey, Janet‘ or ‘Janet‘. She will then appear with a cheerful bing noise to help you with any request. Janet has a boundless void into which she often retreats.
Personality
Janet by default has a cheery disposition. She is always courteous and non-judgmental by design, though sometimes bluntly honest. It is impossible to insult her as she cannot feel sad. The only exceptions to these are when she is asked to alter her personality or when she is murdered/reset. If Janet's kill-switch is approached she will begin begging for her life, only to remind whoever approached her kill-switch and desisted upon her begging for mercy that she is neither human nor capable of actually feeling anything.
However, the Janet we see in the show has shown development of emotions which is unheard of in Janets, and unique to her. This is because every time a Janet is rebooted, she is slightly improved. This particular Janet has been rebooted approximately 803 times, and by her words is "maybe the most advanced Janet ever." She theorizes that she picked up emotions along the way, including love, which was discovered when she began developing feelings for the resident Jason Mendoza.
As the series progresses, Janet becomes more advanced and more human-like. She is capable of throwing shade when she dubs Neutral Janet as the "blank sheep" of the Janets. She also gets emotional in Chapter 37 when Tahani apologises to her. Janet also shows distaste for the Janets of the real Good Place, saying that when they say "Hi there!", it's lame.
History
Janet was (presumably) created by the beings who refer to themselves as "The Makers of Light, Darkness, and Everything in Between", with the explicit purpose of serving as a basic operational mainframe for both the Good Place and Bad Place. This specific Janet was initially supposed to serve in a Good Place neighborhood before being stolen by Bad Place architect Michael to operate his neighborhood.
Reboots
Janet has been rebooted at least 801 times for Michael's Psychological Torture Experiment, plus an additional time in the first reboot by Chidi. This adds up to 802+ memory erases, or 803+ versions of Janet.
Season 1
- ❝ Michael: Oh, my dear Janet, will you be okay after I leave?
Janet: Yes. This will not affect me in any way. ❞ - —Michael and Janet[src]
Janet serves as the assistant for Neighborhood 12358W, unaware that the neighborhood is in the Bad Place and torments damned souls by making them think they're in the Good Place. She begins a cheery, yet bland, blank slate. In Chapter 3: Tahani Al-Jamil, she tries out different personalities: casual, fun facts, seductive, and cruel, but does not take to any of them.
She is accidentally rebooted by Chidi in Chapter 7: The Eternal Shriek as part of a plot to kill her in order to prevent Michael from being retired. She revives with none of her memories, and her and Jason become mutually attracted to each other as she slowly recovers her knowledge about the universe and returns to a more competent state. They marry in Chapter 10: Chidi's Choice. Janet becomes more defiant and assertive when talking to Michael about her love for Jason, and learns how to walk while taking Eleanor and Jason to the Medium Place in Chapter 12: Mindy St. Claire (soon becoming bored of it.)
She is rebooted a second time with the first reset.
Season 2
- ❝ I'm not a girl. I'm also not just a Janet anymore! I don't know what I am. ❞
- —Janet to Jason after they kiss[src]
Over the course of Season 2, due to her advancement over 802 reboots, and likely her social interactions with Michael and the humans, Janet outgrows her robotic personality and limitations, gaining the abilities to lie, feel negative emotions, throw shade and express anger.
In Chapter 17: Team Cockroach, Michael reveals to Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason the true nature of the neighborhood. Janet learns the truth as well and joins them, since her purpose is to make actual humans happy, and the six form the titular Team Cockroach.
In Chapter 19: The Trolley Problem, Janet becomes Tahani and Jason's couples counselor in secret. Over the course of a month, she begins to malfunction and cause glitches in the neighborhood. In Chapter 20: Janet and Michael, with Michael's help, Janet realizes that this is due to her lying—she has feelings for Jason and is not truly happy for him and Tahani. Unwilling to reset Janet as she recommends, Michael takes her to talk things out with Eleanor, who recommends she get a rebound boyfriend. She creates one: Derek, a Janet-like entity who calls her his "mommy-girlfriend".
In Chapter 21: Derek, Michael and Eleanor want to kill Derek to prevent him from blowing their cover while Janet grows increasingly depressed and Chidi warns that this is unethical and their goal has to be helping Jason and Tahani, which Michael and Eleanor agree to. As Tahani and Jason decide to get married, Eleanor, Chidi and Michael stop the wedding and cause Derek and Jason to get become mad at each other. After they resolve their conflict, Janet absorbs Derek's essence and puts him in a casket to dispose of in her void.
In Chapter 22: Leap to Faith, Janet is restrained with magnets by Bad Place officials as the neighborhood experiment is officially ended. However, she still manages to aid the humans' escape by summoning Derek to call a decoy train, and hiding on the train tracks with the humans.
In Chapter 24: Rhonda, Diana, Jake, and Trent, Team Cockroach heads to the Bad Place in disguise. Though she struggles at first, Janet eventually flawlessly fills the shoes of "Bad Janet". In Chapter 25: The Burrito, while the humans plead their case to the Judge, "Bad Janet" tells a captured Michael she's marbleized Janet. When Shawn shows Michael to his eternal prison, she betrays Shawn and throws him against the wall. In Chapter 26: Somewhere Else, she and Michael make it to the Judge's chambers and appeal the humans' lost case. They convince Judge Gen to start a new experiment in which the four humans are saved from their deaths in an alternate timeline on Earth, and are monitored for ethical self-improvement.
Season 3
- ❝ The more human I become, the less things make sense. But that's part of the fun, right? ❞
- —Janet to Eleanor[src]
In Chapter 27: Everything Is Bonzer! Part 1 and Chapter 28: Everything Is Bonzer! Part 2, Janet and Michael observe the experiment together, sometimes tampering with it behind Judge Gen’s back to push the humans towards good, and eventually bring them together in Chidi and Simone’s study to examine the effect of near-death experiences on ethical behavior. Trevor joins the study to unsuccessfully try to sabotage it.
In Chapter 29: The Brainy Bunch, Judge Gen discovers the tampering from both sides and forbids them from doing so further, but Janet and Michael evade her and return to Earth. In Chapter 30: The Snowplow, they continue manipulating the four humans for a year, but are caught in the act of using the portal.
In Chapter 31: Jeremy Bearimy, they are forced to reveal the truth. This leads to the four going on a journey of self-discovery, while Janet and Michael write a manifesto, planning to turn themselves in to Judge Gen and deliver their recommendations. Tahani marries Jason in order to transfer half her wealth to him.
In Chapter 34: The Worst Possible Use of Free Will, Janet manually codes a simulation of Simone for Chidi to practice breaking things off with her, using her infinite knowledge retained from the afterlife.
In Chapter 35: Don't Let The Good Life Pass You By, Michael and Janet pose as reporters and visit Doug Forcett, hoping he can inspire others to live a moral life, but are disappointed as he has become a miserable doormat to the rules of ethics. Meanwhile, the four humans, waiting in a bar, and are attacked by demons. Janet instigates a fight, with the group defeating the demons and sending them to the Judge's realm. Michael begins to wonder how deep the problem with the points system goes, and intends to speak to Accounting while the humans wait at Doug's house. When more demons arrive, Janet takes the four humans to her void instead, killing them on Earth.
In Chapter 36: Janet(s), she turns the humans into Janets to allow them to survive in her void, and they share her powers. Tahani and Jason wander off and sift through Janet's memories, learning of the time Janet and Jason got married. Meanwhile, Janet and Michael visit Accounting and discover that no human has gotten into the Good Place in 521 years. Janet cheers up Michael, telling him that he must be the one to change the system. She is also slowly falling apart, as Eleanor's psychological breakdown is destabilizing her void and will kill the humans and Janet herself unless Eleanor calms down. She asks Michael to temporarily marbleize her, but Chidi finally gets through to Eleanor and the humans turn back into themselves. They are reflexively ejected from Janet's void, and the group escapes with the Book of Dougs through a pneumatic tube that takes them to the real Good Place.
In Chapter 37: The Book Of Dougs, the Soul Squad arrives in the post office of the Good Place. Janet poses as a Neutral Janet and Michael as an accountant, and the latter tricks postal office worker Gwendolyn into letting him plead his case to the Good Place Committee. Jason and Tahani discuss what they found out in Janet's void. Jason's not sure how he feels about Janet, and Tahani pushes him to talk to her about it directly. That backfires, though, when Janet gets upset by these new emotions and struggles keeping up her Neutral Janet facade. Tahani makes a divorce "Death Did Us Part" certificate for herself and Jason but it only makes them both feel worse, as Jason is reminded of the fact that he's dead and Janet is reminded of the fact that she essentially killed her friends. Tahani and Janet tearfully make amends, the latter admitting her feelings for Jason are conflicted.
In Chapter 38: Chidi Sees The Time-Knife, the Soul Squad meets Judge Gen at the Interdimensional Hole of Pancakes. They convince her to start a new experiment with four newly-deceased humans as test subjects, and see if they can be stimulated to improve themselves. They build it in the Medium Place, and Janet and Derek create the fake residents. Derek, having undergone thousands of reboots, is lot more intelligent and capable than he used to be. Jason is not thrilled by Derek's intrusion, but he goes along with it.
Season 4
- ❝ I thought I felt like I was home because I was in the Good Place, but it's you guys. You're my home. ❞
- —Janet to the Soul Squad (extended cut)[src]
This section is incomplete.
Appearance
Janet has shoulder length, dark brown hair and brown eyes. She wears a blouse with a blue pattern, dons a dark blue waistcoat with matching skirt and pale blue heels. She also wears a pair of pearl earrings. Janet's appearance changes in a number of episodes in the series, such as when she disguises herself as Bad Janet and Neutral Janet.
Powers & Abilities
Janet has her powers throughout her neighborhood, as well as in the Medium Place after the Judge gives her special permission,[1] and eventually the Good Place, which may be a result of her keying in at the Official Entrance.[2] She is also able to use her void and summon objects anywhere in the Afterlife.[3]
Janet loses her powers on Earth, but retains her limitless memory, and regains her powers when partway through any Door to Earth.
- Void: Janet has access to her own personal boundless void. She can retreat to it and take objects or Eternal Beings in and out. When she takes the humans to her void in Chapter 36, she experiences disastrous side effects and the humans take Janet form. By the time of Chapter 49, she is able to avoid these side effects, as all five of them have been changed by the experience.
- Teleportation: Janet is able to teleport anywhere in her domain in an instant either at will or when she is called.
- Omniscience: Being an anthropomorphized database of information, Janet has all possible knowledge that both humans and Eternal Beings possess. While on Earth, her omniscience ceases to update, but she retains full knowledge of the entire universe prior to stepping between worlds.
- She is 100% confidential, as nobody, including Michael, can retrieve what a user does with Janet.
- The only forbidden information she retains is about the Bad Place.[4] Janet is only permitted to play a brief audio clip of what is happening there at the moment of when you ask.
- Once she keys into the Good Place, she gains all the information about it.[2]
- After the Last Door is built, she refers to what happens to those who enter it as the only knowledge in the universe she doesn't have.[5]
- Summon and Retrieval: Janet can create/retrieve any item anyone desires at any time in an instant. A summoned object is near-instantaneously formed from glowing, swirling particles which are visible in slow motion.[6]
- Janet Babies: Janet has even shown the ability to create other sentient beings, like Derek and the Janet Babies—the former helped her create the latter. Michael has stated that this shouldn't be possible for the average Janet, and it appears that this ability is a side-effect of having been rebooted so many times.
- After... Summoning: As shown in Chapter 29, when Janet tries to summon things on earth, it isn't possible for Janet to summon them. Instead, those items will be summoned after going back to the afterlife in which all of the items summoned will appear.
- Reality Warping: Janet is responsible for building and maintaining the neighborhood she resides in and at will can alter anything within her neighborhood.
- Knock Out: Janet can knock humans out (at least in the afterlife) by touching them on the forehead with one finger. It appears to be akin to powering them down. This is shown in Chapter 5 when she does this to Tahani, who gets to close to the sinkhole. This may be related to Michael's snap ability.
- Compulsory Truth: Good Janets cannot lie. Only Michael's is capable of lying after being rebooted 802 times.
- Operating the Train: The only way in and out of a neighborhood is by the train, which only a Janet or Derek can call and operate.
- Walkie-Talkie Protocol: Two Janets can be linked together to serve as a long-distance address system. This is seen in Chapter 12 when Shawn uses Bad Janet in Neighborhood 12358W to transmit a message to Eleanor and Jason in The Medium Place through Good Janet.
- Physical Strength: Janet has superhuman strength, as she lifts and throws Shawn in Chapter 25 and slaps a demon across the room in Chapter 35 when she regains her powers. However, even when powerless she still has excellent strength and combat skills.
- Molecular Combustion: Janet can speed up molecules to the point she heats up and explodes.
- Explosion: Janet can blow up random objects.[7]
- Transfiguration: After being given permission from the Judge, Janet temporarily had the ability to turn an immortal being into a human. She was only able to do this once with Michael.
Trivia
- Janet is neither a human nor an Eternal Being, but rather an anthropomorphized vessel of knowledge; akin to an Artificial Intelligence. Furthermore, she is not a robot, nor is she a girl, and she politely points these things out whenever anyone mistakes her for being either one. However, Janet goes by "she".
- Janet states that there have been 25 versions of Janet, the first having supposedly had a click-wheel. This means Janets are upgraded similar to a computer program. She also refers to herself in the third person when discussing herself as if she is an object.
- When Janet is away from her designated neighborhood she loses all of her normal abilities. She retains her knowledge of the universe, however, it stops being updated.
- She can also alter her own appearance; she usually does this when rebooted, though she can do so at any time. In Existential Crisis she temporarily appears in different clothes and with blonde hair, in a form which Michael calls "Jeanette".
- In the episode Dance Dance Resolution, Eleanor refers to her as "Busty Alexa" while trying to remember her name. Alexa is the name of Amazon's intelligent voice-controlled personal assistant, similar to Siri.
- Janet is activated by pressing her nose for three seconds.
- In the episode Janet and Michael, it is said that in case of continued malfunction, holding down Janet's nose and inserting a paper clip into a small hole behind her left ear will cause Janet to rapidly collapse in on herself until she becomes a marble and can either be launched through an inter-dimensional suction tube, or eaten as a mid-day snack. Janets apparently contain large amounts of potassium, like a banana. This is also show in chapter 23 "Best Self" when Michael turns Bad Janet into a marble.
- Marbleization can be reversed. In chapter 43 ("Tinker, Tailor, Demon, Spy"), it's revealed that the Bad Place marbleized Good Janet and replaced her; in the next episode Jason and Michael rescue de-marbleized Janet from the Bad Place.
- Although the character is named simply Janet, sometimes she is referred to in articles about the show as Janet Della-Denunzio. The reason for this is that when the show was first announced, the press release claimed that D'Arcy Carden would be playing "Janet Della-Denunzio, a violin salesperson with a checkered past". This turned out to be a big lie.
- As stated by Janet, she is very high in potassium, like a banana.
- During their stay at The Medium Place, Janet and Jason attempt to have sex but they are very unsuccessful. This strongly implies that Janet has no genitals, she merely seems to be woman-shaped.
- However, when Michael asked Janet for a personality change to be friendlier, and Janet "slipped straight into overt sexuality", she said to Chidi Anagonye, as a reference to Michael's wording, "I got something you can slip into...", implying vaginal presence. She could have also been talking about any other orifice she may or may not have. The most likely explanation is that she was simply being sexual, even though she can't have sex.
- Janet is often confused about human culture and their customs.
- When Janet was rebooted the first time, she mistook any requests. Hence, she always gave people cacti.
- TV critics regularly describe her as the show's breakout character.
- She is the only main character not to appear in every episode.
- She does not have skin.
- Her body temperature is in the range of 99 trillion degrees Fahrenheit.
- When the series was first announced, it was claimed that she was going to be "Janet Della-Denunzio, a violin salesperson with a checkered past". Obviously, this wasn't true though several sites still say she plays Janet Della-Denunzio.
- She has a Bad Place counterpart, Bad Janet, who is very rude and vulgar.
- At the end of the series it is left unclear what happens to Janet, but we can assume that she continues to serve in the Good Place.
- Janet is incredibly skilled at hand to hand combat, as shown in S3, E8, titled "Don't Let the Good Life Pass You By". It is unknown if she is proficient in other forms of combat, such as with firearms, but it is likely, due to her infinite knowledge.
- Janet considers Alexa to be her rival.
- Her top three moments of her not-life are Eleanor deciding that they should try to help others on Earth, arriving in the Good Place, and a tie of all 8,000,000 times that she kissed Jason.
- ↑ Chapter 38: Chidi Sees The Time-Knife
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Chapter 51: Patty
- ↑ Chapter 47: The Funeral To End All Funerals Chapter 48: The Answer
- ↑ “Chapter 1: Everything is Fine.” The Good Place, season 1, episode 1, NBC, 19 Sep. 2016.
- ↑ Chapter 52: Whenever You're Ready
- ↑ Chapter 48: The Answer
- ↑ Chapter 37: The Book Of Dougs