The new season of School Spirits is here, and instead of giving us answers to the questions we already had, it jumps straight into whole new things we didn’t even imagine. For one, the whole Simon being stuck in school thing doesn’t make any sense, even in this world’s logic, so we get introduced to something new. There’s a sweet moment with Quinn’s character, which cements the show as something that’s come out in the 2020s. School Spirits is a good spirit show, which has unique ghost logic, so we definitely shouldn’t force it into a box and get stuck in the whys of something happening. I think what’s important really is what comes next in this story. Finn Wolfhard is still here, and I had said I thought the 3rd season might be the last season when I was writing the explainer for the ending of season 2, but now it looks like there are new avenues to expand on in this story. So, with that said, let’s jump straight into episodes 1 and 2 of season 3.
Spoiler Alert
What Happens to Janet?
Episode 1 of School Spirits season 3 begins with Simon and Maddie essentially switching places after Maddie wakes up in the hospital with a bad head injury, and Simon is just missing. Now, considering he’s suspended, nobody’s worried about him just yet except the gang. But on the other hand, Xavier is able to see exactly one ghost in the hospital, and Maddie is struggling to figure out how to deal with being back in the real world. Interestingly, she hasn’t forgotten anything, which would be what would normally happen in such situations. Instead, she can still see the ghosts as well, but only in places where kids have actually died. I don’t know who makes the rules, but this seems to be an unnecessary new problem. But, at least she can still see Simon, and now they need to figure out how to get him out.
Janet is immediately eager to help Simon, because he was so nice to all of them and tried to help them, too. Now, there’s an invisible boundary around the school that stops the kids who died there from getting out. When the big scar event happened, Maddie was able to get out and reenter her body. But now Janet doesn’t want the whole gang to try to orchestrate one of those terrifying situations again, so instead, she decides to sacrifice herself because she thinks it’ll get Simon out. It’s a noble thing to do, but she’s also the smartest of all of them there, and it would’ve been nice to have her around for longer. Instead, she just disappears, and the only thing left behind is a letter she leaves with Simon. Everybody reads this letter, where she describes how she appreciates all of them and that if she disappears, she’s where she’s meant to be, amongst the stars. Maybe we can imagine Janet will be reborn as a young and free person. This does leave everybody a little bit sad, but now, if they really need any extra help, they have no choice but to go to Mr. Martin. Also, it’s interesting to note that when Simon tried to jump through the barricade, it hurt, but it didn’t hurt for anyone else. He also bleeds like a human, which is very odd. But this means if he dies in this state, he’ll be gone forever, no?
Who Is Hunter-Price?
Every new season calls for a new villain/almost villain; in this case, it’s the district superintendent, Hunter-Price. Now, she’s around to tell the school that there has been too much funny business, so they’re shutting down Split River High, which leaves everyone freaked out before she says they’re going to build a new school on the site. It looks like Mr. Martin might be right about some bigger forces in this school that the kids don’t know about (I know he was referring to something else, but still). This woman is also Lyvia’s mother. Lyvia is one of the kids’ classmates, another new cast member, who is like the queen bee. She and Claire have something of a rivalry, and Claire suspects her every time something goes wrong.
Why Does Simon Need Mr. Martin?
As I said earlier, Mr. Martin really is the only one who can truly help Simon, not because nobody is being helpful, but because the problem is that only Mr. Martin has had enough years in the spirit world to be able to remotely figure out what’s going on. Simon goes to find Mr. Martin, but he surprisingly sees snow. On the other hand, Maddie is also there at the same time, after having a really rough day in school. Not only is she unable to connect with her mother at all, because her mother thinks she’s the Janet version of herself, but she’s also struggling to deal with the whole Simon thing. However, Maddie does have the excuse of a head injury, so there’s that at least. Maddie is trying to spend time with Wally in the middle of all of this, too, and she gets caught on video basically talking to herself on the school bench, ruining her reputation further. No matter how much Nicole and Claire try to defend her, Maddie will be stuck, because none of what has happened to her is really explainable. But Maddie has bigger fish to fry; she’s busy wondering about her dad, whom Xavier saw in the hospital. Now, Xavier’s in cahoots with a dude named Kyle to find Maddie’s dad. At the same time, Maddie asks her mom about her dad out of the blue, freaking her out a little more. But she’s trying to be as supportive as she can, and we really see an improvement in her now.
Later, Simon makes a brave effort to try to get the other kids to let him bring Mr. Martin out, but nobody agrees. So they decide to create a canon event involving all other people who died in the school. For this, they tell Quinn to talk to the band members, and she ends up disappearing. She refuses, and basically runs away, going missing for almost the rest of the episode, but on the other hand, only Rhonda seems to be on Quinn’s side, and everyone starts to turn against her.
What Does Xavier Find Out?
Turns out, Xavier can see one dead guy named Kyle, who wants him to track down a woman named Tracie to find out if she made it out alive after the bus accident and if she knew that Kyle had feelings for her. Kyle tells Xavier that someone appeared in front of the bus the day the band members died, unlike the story Quinn told them of the bus skidding on ice. This gets the kids even more suspicious of her, but this is all a huge mistake. Anyway, Xavier’s busy trying to find a 40-year-old woman, to no avail, but I wonder if this will be something important later.
Who Is Sabrina?
In the middle of all of this, Maddie has to go fix things up with Simon’s parents, but when she goes there, she finds out something about a girl named Sabrina. Maddie thinks she’s Simon’s girlfriend, because that’s what his dad implies, but it turns out she’s Simon’s older sister, and they were both adopted into different families, so she tracked him down, saying they had the same birth mother. Obviously, with everything that was going on, Simon never got the time to tell Maddie about Sabrina, nor was he able to really figure that relationship out. Anyway, for the time being, they’re going to pretend Simon’s with Sabrina so that his parents don’t think he’s missing, too.
What Happened to Quinn?
Out of desperation, not being able to find Quinn, Simon goes on the bus, but instead of finding her there, he just sees the scariest thing before running out. But alas, going into that scar also doesn’t really make a difference at all. So, finally, Simon goes to Mr. Martin and brings him back out. Everyone protests at first, but then they realize there’s nobody else who can help them find the answers. This is also when Quinn shows up again, and this is because Maddie helped her out a little. During the school picture day, someone threw fake blood at Maddie, but she was so brave that she decided to have her photo taken as is. Quinn saw all of this happen, which makes me wonder if she saw who threw the fake blood on Maddie. But anyway, seeing her bravery, Quinn reveals to the group that they weren’t able to find her anywhere in the yearbooks because her name wasn’t Quinn; it was Jacqueline. Quinn reveals that she didn’t feel that name or like a girl at all. She says her mother didn’t understand her, and she wanted to be a different person, so when Rhonda pulled her out of band, she decided to introduce herself as someone else. Quinn isn’t she or he; they’re just whatever Quinn wants to be. Unfortunately, Quinn was born in the wrong timeline, because with Maddie, they could’ve openly talked about their nonbinary-ness. On the other hand, Yuri is constantly looking at a boy in school, which annoys Charlie, but when he confronts him about it later, thinking Yuri is pining, right in front of him, Yuri reveals that the boy might be his grandson!
What Does Mr. Martin Reveal?
In the ending of School Spirits episode 2, Mr. Martin reveals that there are some crazy, dark forces under the school. He says he grew up in Split River, he didn’t move there, like they believed he did. Turns out, he had two friends named Ralph and Joe. They used to hang out in the open all the time, but one day a storm was approaching, and Ralph suggested they go back to his place through a shortcut. On the way there, he was struck by lightning, and while Joe went to find help, Mr. Martin stayed back, but he freaked out because Ralph didn’t wake up. Mr. Martin ran away, but when everyone came back to help Ralph, he had disappeared without a trace. At this point, nobody knows where he went; they never found him or his body.
But, many years later, after Mr. Martin died, he heard Ralph singing and followed his voice. What he found was that the sound was coming from under the school floor. When he looked under, it was dark, but he still went inside. Suddenly, something pulled at his legs, and he was underwater. When he came out, grasping for air, the most shocking thing happened. He was blinded by headlights, but these were none other than the headlights of Quinn’s bus. Somehow, the bus driver saw Mr. Martin’s ghost in that split second, and 8 people died because of it. This is the evil force he’s been talking about, but nobody knows what it is. The episode ends with Simon wanting to go into this space because he thinks it will help him escape, but what if it traps him forever? Guess we’ll have to wait to find out in the next episode of School Spirits.
