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This Hero was proposed and approved by Heroes Wiki's Pure Good Proposals Thread. Any act of removing this hero from the category without a Removal Proposal shall be considered vandalism (or a "villainous" attempt to demonize said character) and the user will have a high chance of being | ||
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| “ | Principles aren't principles when you pick and choose when you're gonna follow them! | „ |
| ~ Chidi to Eleanor |
Chidi Anagonye is one of the two deuteragonists (along with Michael) of The Good Place. While he was alive, he was a professor of moral philosophy at St. John's University in Sydney, Australia.
His worst flaw is his crippling indecisiveness that ends up driving everyone crazy. Despite this, he is the only one of the protagonists that already had genuine motivations for being good. However, his indecisiveness would end up killing him and placing him in the Bad Place. He was one of the four humans who was chosen by Michael for an experimental neighborhood in the Bad Place to fools its victims into thinking that they are the Good Place despite all the torturous stress that the neighborhood puts them through. He was placed with Eleanor Shellstrop as his soulmate, who was supposedly a death row lawyer. However, Eleanor quickly reveals to Chidi that she is actually selfish jerk and con salesperson working for a shady pharmaceutical company in Arizona. Chidi is forced to help Eleanor learn to be a better person so she doesn't get caught and sent to the Bad Place.
Eleanor eventually realizes that they are actually in the Bad Place. Michael then resets the experiment 800 times. In almost every attempt, Eleanor always seeks out someone to teach her how to become a better person and it's always Chidi that helps. At the end of each attempt, someone, usually Eleanor, always finds out that they are in the Bad Place. Michael eventually gives up and has the humans help him trick Shawn into thinking that the experiment is working. After that, Michael and the humans, including Chidi, go on a quest to get the humans into the actual Good Place, and eventually, trying to change the system used to determine whether or not a human gets to go to the Good Place to make it more fair to humans.
He was portrayed by William Jackson Harper.
Personality[]
Chidi Anagonye was a man who wanted to seek out the answers to all the questions of the universe; he became a moral philosophy professor in order to achieve this goal. He believed every single question had a one clear answer, which would end developing his worse flaw: his indecisiveness. His indecisiveness reached a point to where he would frequently get stressed and wouldn't even be able to pick a bar to order from. His indecisiveness and his insistence that every question had an answer would estrange him from his peers and colleagues. Despite this, he would still hold on to his belief up until his death, even if it meant losing his friends in the process.
He would pick up various beliefs related to ethics. He became quite skilled in the field of ethics and philosophy. He would gather his knowledge in a manuscript, though because of his indecisiveness, the manuscript ended up convoluted and incomprehensible. He was undeniably nice and kind to most people, and also hated lying. Whenever he did tell a lie, he would disproportionately stress over it until he told the truth. Despite his knowledge on ethics, he was slightly arrogant and hypocritical, viewing jerks as irredeemable, only being nice to them out of ethical duty, and yet doing nothing to amend his own behavior. This would all change after his death, when his personality would tested in the face of his selected "soulmate", Eleanor Shellstrop
Because Eleanor was a selfish jerk who was mistaken for death row lawyer and put in the Good Place (the show's equivalent to heaven), Chidi initially saw Eleanor as incapable of change, especially after she shirked off garbage duty to fly. However, after Eleanor cleaned up the garbage overnight, Chidi started to view Eleanor as capable of change and agreed to teach Eleanor how to be a good person. During his time teaching Eleanor, he would constantly be conflicted on Eleanor, partly because he wanted to abandon her but felt ethically inclined to keep teaching her, and partly because he was disappointed that he would never have a true love interest. However, after Eleanor admitted to being a mistake to the architect, Michael, Chidi became convinced that Eleanor had improved and convinces Michael not to send Eleanor to the Bad Place.
Despite his decision to defend Eleanor in front of Michael, he still retains his indecisiveness. When it was revealed that Eleanor had been mistakenly swapped with an actual death row lawyer, Chidi was not able to decide between Eleanor and "Real" Eleanor, despite Michael's pressuring. Eventually, it would be revealed that his indecisiveness was a quality that literally damned him. The "Good Place" neighborhood that he, Eleanor, and two other humans (Tahani Al-Jamil and Jason Mendoza) were in was actually an experimental Bad Place neighborhood run by Michael to innovate torture.
However, following the plot twist, and 800 experiment and memory resets by Michael leading to him allying with the humans to trick his boss Shawn into thinking the experiment worked, Chidi started to make improvement on his flaws. He started to teach the human cast and Michael to be genuinely good people, and successfully redeemed Michael. In the alternate timeline, created by Michael and Judge Gen to give the humans another chance, where the humans' deaths were avoided, Chidi sets up a joint-study group to study effects on moral decision after near-death experiences and taught the members ethics. By the time the humans come back to the afterlife, Chidi has come to the conclusion that humans can improve. After an experiment that proves this (where four other deceased humans are put in a neighborhood designed after the experimental neighborhood and live there over the course of a year), Chidi helps create an afterlife system that takes this into account which gets approved and implemented by Gen.
He also improves on his indecisiveness. After his death was avoided, he realizes that he has to get rid of his indecisiveness and recieves help from a fellow professor, Simone Garnett. Though an incident where Henry broke his arms as a result of being influenced by Chidi's improvement sets him back, Chidi would eventually recover to set up the joint-study group. During the experiment, after finding out Simone is a subject, he erases his memories of her (which has the consequence of his memories of the main cast being removed) to not threaten the experiment, and eventually becomes a subject himself. By the time he regains his memories following the experiment, he is completely rid of indecisiveness, and is able to create the new afterlife system.
Chidi becomes quite a hero over the course of the show. Even before he improves, he helps Eleanor become a better person and eventually the main cast in general. In the alternate timeline, after finding out about the afterlife by accident and gets damned as a result, he breaks up from Simone in order to not doom her to damnation, and does it with clear remorse. When he erases his memory to not threaten the experiment, he is clearly remorseful as it means he won't have any memories of his friends. When he created the new afterlife system, he saved the human race from damnation, as before that point, no human had ever been to the Good Place since 1497. Eons later, when he is ready to end his existence, he stays to make Eleanor happy, only choosing to go after Eleanor accepts Chidi's decision to end his existance.
Appearance[]
Chidi is an African man who wears black glasses. He is of average height, though has a slightly muscular body type. He has brown eyes and combed short black hair. He mostly wears semi-professional clothes. Promotional material of season 4 often features Chidi wearing beige shirt with white sleeves along with dark blue jeans.
Skills and Abilities[]
Because of his background of being a university professor, Chidi is very intelligent. He isn't as intuitive as Eleanor, but he is intelligent nonetheless. He has a high knowledge of ethics, which he uses to teach others about ethics. Despite his high knowledge, he still learns more about ethics throughout his journey. He eventually applies what he learns to his devising of a new afterlife system.
External Links[]
- Chidi Anagonye from the Good Place wiki
- Chidi Anagonye from the Pure Good wiki
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