The first season of School Spirits was a surprisingly fun ride, with Peyton List (Cobra Kai) putting in a magnetic lead performance as Maddie Nears, who is doomed to wander the halls of her high school after she mysteriously dies there. But her body was never found, and at the end of the season we found out why. Does that mean that she might not really be dead?
SCHOOL SPIRITS SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Wally Clark (Milo Manheim) pounds on the door of Split River High’s fallout shelter, knowing that Maddie Nears (Peyton List) is inside.
The Gist: Maddie is going back to when her earthly self died in the school’s boiler room, because neither she or her ghostly acquaitances at Split River — Wally, Rhonda (Sarah Yarkin) and Charlie (Nick Pugliese) — have ever been able to find her body. She sees a ghost she never knew about, Janet Hamilton (Jess Gabor) confront the ghosts’ “advisor,” Mr. Martin (Josh Zuckerman). Then Janet runs from him and bashes into Maddie, who hits her head on a pipe. Maddie’s ghost gets up, but so does her body; now Janet is occupying it.
This fact is important, because, in the living world, her former boyfriend, Xavier Baxter (Spencer Macpherson) was put in a coma after being hit by his own truck. Nicole (Kiara Pichardo) and Claire (Rainbow Wedell) got a picture of the driver, and to their surprise, it was Maddie. They have no idea it was someone else using Maddie’s body. They text the picture to Maddie’s best friend, Simon Elroy (Kristian Ventura), who is now convinced that the communication she’s had with Maddie is all in his head.
Still, Maddie needs a living person’s help to get all the ghosts back into the fallout shelter; there, Mr. Martin has been keeping possessions they had when they died and notes on the things they said in their group therapy sessions. She can only communicate with Simon in rooms where people died, and every single time she tries, he does his best to ignore her, even taking lunches in the greenhouse in order to avoid her voice.
No one can seem to find Mr. Martin, who chased Maddie as far as the edge of the campus before bouncing back like all of the ghosts end up doing. Without his guidance, Rhonda and Wally feel especially adrift, even though they both know how he took advantage of them. In the meantime, Janet-as-Maddie makes her way to her hometown; given that she died 65 years ago, she has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to her churchgoing family.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? During the show’s first season, we said School Spirits was like Ghosts, but less funny. We’ll stick with that.
Our Take: We enjoyed the first season of School Spirits because at some point we got a view of each of the main ghosts haunting the school and their frustrations at not being able to move on, something we found weirdly lacking in the series’ first episode. But it was the steady performance of List, who plays Maddie as someone who does not want to accept the fact that she’s dead and doomed to wander the school for an indeterminate period of time, that carried the season.
List is just as steady in the second season, but this time she’s essentially playing two characters: Maddie and Janet-as-Maddie. When she’s playing Janet, her manner changes slightly, mainly because she’s scared, but also because she hasn’t been in the general world since 1958 and has no idea what an app — or even a cell phone — is. There’s a heck of a mystery surrounding Janet and why she was stuck in the fallout shelter for so long, and it’ll be interesting to see Maddie and the gang try to figure it out while trying to hold Mr. Martin to account.
Among the living, Simon will finally realize that he can hear and see Maddie, which should help him be less miserable. We’re also curious to see if Xavier’s viewpoint changes after his coma and his near-death experience seeing ghosts wandering around the ICU.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: After Xavier sees those ghosts in the ICU, we see the doctors and nurses working to revive him. He suddenly opens his eyes.
Sleeper Star: We like Nick Pugliese as Charley, who scoffs at Mr. Martin’s description of him as “a cliche gay best friend lackey.”
Most Pilot-y Line: Claire brings Nicole out to a pay phone so they can anonymously call in what they saw when Xavier got hit by the truck. Claire seemed pretty comfortable using a rotary pay phone, given she’s never likely seen or used one before.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Even though we now know what happened to Maddie’s body, there is still plenty of mysteries to unravel in the second season of School Spirits, and the season is off to a fast start with an action-filled first episode.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘School Spirits’ Season 2 On Paramount+, Where Maddie Wonders If She’s Really Dead As Janet Occupies Her Body appeared first on Decider.
