Paramount+’s School Spirits is a unique TV show that feels like an experimental dish that uses traditional ingredients to cook up something contemporary. Of course, the ghost logic is a little flawed, but it’s a teen show that’s meant to be fun and not exactly focused on the ghost stuff as much as it is on human stuff. The show focuses on Maddie, a young girl who goes missing from school out of the blue, only to learn that she’s actually a ghost. Maddie discovers that there’s a whole group of ghosts in the school, all of whom died there. Why are they still here? What is keeping them from leaving this world? That’s what we’re waiting to find out. The first season focused on Maddie’s situation, what led to her going “missing,” and how she may possibly be able to come back to the real world. On the other hand, in season 2, we get more intel on the other characters; everybody is more fleshed out, and we get to watch a typical teen drama with the veneer of a ghost story. Don’t get me wrong, this was never meant to be a horror; these are friendly ghosts like “Casper.” No, I mean literally, Maddie’s in love with a ghost, but with that said, let’s jump straight into our recap of the supernatural teen drama before the return of season 3.
Spoiler Alert
Who Are The “School Spirits”?
To begin with, let’s get into all the important characters of this show, basically, the spirits. To begin with, there’s Wally, Maddie’s love interest and a jock, though he didn’t want to be a jock. Then there’s Rhonda, the resident side-eyed girl who warms up to Maddie after some time. Then there’s Charlie, the gay kid from the 90s. Mr. Martin is the ringleader, but we’ll get to why he might be the bad guy of this story in a bit. Dawn is from the 70s and hence the weirdest of the lot. There is, of course, Janet, Mr. Martin’s student who happens to be missing initially, but as we later find out, she body-snatched Maddie’s body. In season 2, we’re also introduced to Quinn and Yuri. Then there’s Simon, who can see Maddie and talk to her, though she’s a spirit and he’s human. This mystery doesn’t seem to be solved yet. Maybe he had an near-death experience in school at some point, too? But why only Maddie? Nobody knows.
Did Xavier Have Anything To Do With Maddie’s Disappearance?
Short answer, no. Xavier and Maddie were in a happy relationship before Maddie disappeared. Or at least that’s what everyone thought. But it turns out he was cheating on her with Claire, an old friend of Maddie’s. The mystery is that there’s blood in the school’s boiler room, where Maddie was apparently last seen. While this blood is actually Maddie’s, it wasn’t Xavier’s doing. Rumors spread rapidly that Xavier killed Maddie and chopped her up (possibly). It’s high school, you know? So everyone’s eager to pin it as a murder and make Xavier out to be a delinquent. But Xavier’s an ordinary guy, even with daddy issues. His dad is in the police and expects him to be a certain way. Anyway, it turns out he had her phone because he wanted to delete a message he meant to send to Claire instead of Maddie. I don’t think that if she had the phone, it would’ve made a difference.
What’s Happening With Mr. Anderson?
The big suspect in Maddie’s disappearance in season 1 is her teacher, Mr. Anderson. There’s something very suspicious about him ever since she’s been gone. But we know that Maddie was close to him because he grew up with an alcoholic parent, too. Mr. Anderson had helped Maddie a little before her disappearance, because he’s the only one she’s confessed to about her mom having been drunk enough to crash the car. Maddie convinces him to lie about her having driven the car. This is also why Claire and Maddie had a falling out back when they were kids. They were besties, but then one day, when Claire’s mom and stepdad mistreated her, and she needed a place to stay, Maddie didn’t let her in because of her drunk mom. But she never told her this, so Claire had no idea why Maddie shut the door in her face.
On the other hand, Mr. Anderson had debts to clear, thanks to his drunk dad, so he was embezzling money from school. Claire and Nicole both blackmail Mr. Anderson, but in different ways. Claire’s the first, because she knows about the uniform money, but Nicole then sees the two of them together and takes pictures to blackmail them both! Claire was doing it to get As in his class without actually putting in the work, and Nicole was doing it because her two best friends, Simon and Maddie, were going to “run away” to another city to study without her, and she couldn’t afford it, so she wanted the money. Additionally, during an anti-seance suggested by Dawn, she remembers what happened in her past, which essentially helps her cross over. Dawn becomes the first of the kids to cross over, but we don’t actually understand how.
What Happened To Maddie?
Turns out the person Maddie was with in the boiler room was none other than her mother, and Maddie was upset because Sandra had used her college fund, left behind by her dad, to buy a cabin instead. Maddie even throws the necklace her dad gave her on the floor, telling Sandra that she doesn’t want anything to do with her. Sandra kept the necklace safe. At the same time, the living kids, Nicole, Claire, and Xavier, who have now become pretty close, go to an empty house they’re led to by Maddie’s things. They’re trying to find evidence there, and a shocking truth is revealed. Xavier comes out of the house and gets run over, all while Nicole takes a video. But who ran him over? It’s none other than Maddie herself.
As I said earlier, Janet snatched Maddie’s body that day, when she was in the basement. Though Maddie had a head injury, Janet ran away in her body, trying to escape and restart her life in the modern world. At the same time, Rhonda, Wally, and Charlie learn that it wasn’t Janet who started the fire in 1958, but Mr. Martin. Now they’re convinced he’s been lying to them this whole time, but they get locked in the room where they find the newspaper clippings and call for help. This is when Maddie gets triggered by the memory of what happened that night in the boiler room after her mother left. Turns out, Janet and Martin were arguing about something when Maddie saw Mr. Martin, which is already very strange, but also, Janet then possessed Maddie’s body, leaving her a ghost in the school’s halls.
What Happens With Simon?
After learning that Maddie’s still alive, Simon suddenly thinks he’s been imagining Maddie this whole time, and that he created a version of her in his head because he knew she was going to leave him. Maddie then convinces him this is not true, and that Janet was the one who stole her body, so now Simon, Claire, Xavier, and Nicole have to lure Janet back to the school so they can switch back.
What Are The Scars?
In season 2, we learn about these things called scars. Basically, each spirit has a room in the school where they died. It’s their trauma, and those rooms have turned into “scars,” i.e., their worst memories. All the kids get traumatized when they enter their “scar.” There is an unresolved matter for each of these kids, which is what has bound them to the school. Dawn resolved her matter and crossed over, but not Janet. Mr. Martin had convinced Janet that they’d be able to solve their problems if they conducted experiments with these scars. Janet had then snatched Maddie’s body, and Mr. Martin, in fear, did the same with Mr. Anderson’s body. But in the second season, when Janet returns, she also tries to start a new life with Sandra, experiencing life as a free woman, because when she was a kid, she wasn’t allowed to go to college, and her brother, who didn’t care at all, could live her dreams freely. But Claire, Simon, Nicole, and Xavier make dinner plans at Maddie’s to kidnap Janet and bring her back to the school.
When they’re in school, Janet is bombarded by the other kids, who tell her that they do not appreciate having been treated as experiments and that she never actually cared for them. Mr. Martin and Janet were the first two to die in the school, and they almost made a pact to figure out what to do, so they used the other kids as experiments or stepping stones. Also, the second season sees Charlie getting close to new guy Yuri, and they end up together by the end of the season. On the other hand, Rhonda brings Quinn out of the marching band, breaking her out of the music and bringing her into the “School Spirits” group. Quinn seems to like the new company, but there’s definitely something mysterious about her. It’s great to see the group expanding, though.
How Did Janet Die?
Additionally, it’s revealed that it was Janet who started the fire, and it was Mr. Martin who had lost everything, thanks to Janet’s dad being a pastor and trying to ruin his life for encouraging Janet. He tried to kill himself, but Janet was also in school, doing an experiment with fire, and Mr. Martin turned on the gas valves, leading to an explosion that killed them both. That’s why they have the same scar. On the other hand, after seeing all of this, Maddie suddenly feels bad for leaving the spirits behind, but Simon knocks some sense into her by reminding her that he’s basically risking his whole life to save her.
How Does Maddie Return to Her Body?
Now, when Janet leaves Maddie’s body, the kids call an ambulance, worried because she’s gone unconscious, but she’s also basically soulless at this point. So, in the final moments of season 2, we see Maddie rush towards her body in the last minute after Simon’s talk, and then the screen goes black. Fortunately, she makes it, and the next thing we know, she’s waking up in the hospital and talking to her mom, as the real Maddie this time, not Janet.
What Happens to Xavier?
Now, Xavier wakes up in season 2, being able to see ghosts too, specifically in the hospital, where he sees Maddie’s father. At the same time, he’s also developed a close friendship with Nicole over the season because they have been texting each other anonymously through an app, trying to get over their shared trauma separately (funny). Given that Xavier can also now communicate with spirits, he’s likely going to help Maddie connect with her dead father.
Where is Simon?
But the ending of season 2 gives us the most shocking revelation yet. When Maddie returned to her body safely, Simon went back into the school to try to find her. When he did that, there was a massive red light, and it seemed like something big was happening in the school. What might this be? Well, it seems whatever helped send Maddie back into her body also trapped Simon in Mr. Martin’s scar at the time, so now he’s in a limbo between dead and alive, and though he’s not a ghost, he’s still a spirit walking the halls of the school with no one being able to see him. What I mean by this is we never saw Simon die. So we can’t really tell what’s happened to him yet, but what’s certain is that Simon and Maddie have now basically switched lives.
On the other hand, Janet did open the door to cross over thanks to all the kids going into their scars to create enough of a wave in there to possibly tear apart the boundaries that keep them in the school. Janet’s forgiven Mr. Martin and essentially gotten over her unresolved matters, but she ends up staying back anyway to help the rest of the kids. Mr. Martin also points out how there are so many dead kids in this school, and it’s very odd for one school to have had so many deaths, setting the tone for what might come in the 3rd season. Will Simon return to the real world? Will Maddie and Wally be able to say goodbye? What’s going to come next in School Spirits? Let us know what you think in the comments down below.
