School Spirits Cast Reveal Secrets Behind Season 2 At New York Comic Con
In School Spirits, Peyton List plays Maddie, a teen girl stuck in the afterlife investigating her own mysterious disappearance. Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado spoke with the cast and creatives of the show about season 2 at New York Comic Con.
The mystery behind what happened to Maddie was a driving force in the first season, but the upcoming second season will allow the team to go deeper into the lives and afterlives of the ghosts trapped at this school. “In the first season, we had a lot of these ghosts looking at their lives, looking at the things that brought them to the afterlife. There's a lot of looking back and trying to understand. Season 2 is very much about facing all those things, not just for Maddie, but for all of our ghosts and our living characters,” co-creator Nate Trinrud told me. “This year it's going to be a little bit more confrontational with their own ghosts.”
“Now that we know what happened to Maddie or whodunnit, we have to figure out sort of why and how,” said co-creator Megan Trinrud, with actor Kristian Ventura adding: “One of my favorite parts of even just watching season one is each episode is a new suspect […] and now we're locked in to a single face. Who is Janet? Why is she doing this? You could expect very much see season 2 that now that we have someone to track down. We're on the chase.”
The ensemble of ghosts will get to dive deeper into both their own mysteries and Maddie’s. “The characters, the spirits are much more raw in the second season because they're emotionally impacted by Maddie’s plight. In the first season because they are trapped in the school, it’s not that they're impotent, but they can't do a great deal. It's not as easy to investigate when you're stuck inside a building. In the second season, they're looking into their own mysteries because their mysteries are also plumed while we investigate Maddie and Janet,” said showrunner Oliver Goldstick. “These guys play a big role in trying to find a way to lure Janet back to the school and help this body swap, if it can take place. They've got to investigate that. How did it happen? This is new to them. Believe me, they would have left a long time ago probably if it was easy to jump into some crushed spirit. There's a lot of depressed kids in high school.”
“I think in both worlds — living and dead — the characters are much closer. They're much more bonded than they were in the first season. […] They're all exposed in ways and I think the audience is going to come along for the journey and I think be more invested than ever in these people,” Goldstick continued. “Every one of these actors in season 2, including our new ghosts, have a reel. […] They just have really raw vulnerable moments and funny moments and romance. Who says you can't have romance after you die? We got something to look forward to now. If it didn’t happen in this life, it's happening in the next one.”
The stakes are on another level as we get into School Spirits season 2. “It is important that we lean on each other because the stakes are a lot higher this season. The first season […] we don't feel affected by what's happened to Maddie because we're dead and this is just how it goes. Then we learn by the end of the first season that that's not the case,” shared Nick Pugliese. “Now the second season, we start off right where we left and everything is different. Everything we thought we knew is not true and so really trying to lean on each other, while we try to also find out what's going on.”
Even characters who didn’t get along in the first season will form tighter bonds in season two. “One of my favorite scenes in season 2 is actually when Xavier and Simon are in the car together. They had just failed big on a mission and they developed a bit of a brotherhood because they go on so many adventures,” revealed Ventura. “So for the first time, rather than hate the guy or have tension, we kind of say, ‘Man, that was hard. I got your back.’ I liked being able to like Xavier for once.”
This season will also see Peyton List playing double duty as Maddie and Janet. “It was incredible to watch her work with some of our other actors and develop this character. It was really fun to see her interact with Simon because, in season one, really it was a lot of Maddie and Simon, but it was Ghost Maddie. Now to see him react to this person who looks just like Maddie, who sounds just like Maddie, but isn't Maddie? It was so much fun and Peyton did such a beautiful job really separating the characters so you can tell she's different,” said Megan Trinrud. “She's so different when she's playing this Janet inside Maddie's form. It was a blast to watch and she really knocked it out of the park.”
Season one introduced more dark and sinister ghostly lore around Mr. Martin, who is the leader of the Split River High Afterlife Support Group and has encouraged the ghostly group not to look into their pasts. “I was told,” said Sarah Yarkin, who’s character Rhonda was suspicious of him. “I gave Nate and Meg, our wonderful creators some alcohol at dinner. We were shooting episode 5 and Rhonda's starting to be weird. I was like, ‘Why is she sucking up to Mr. Martin?’ They were like, ‘Just play it.’ I said, ‘No, I don't… I was so pissed. What's going on?’ I was like, ‘Why would she? She would never. She's not doing this.’ They said, ‘No, she would.’ So we have dinner, they have some alcohol, Meg’s like, ‘We should just tell her.’ I was like, ‘What?!’ So I was the only cast member who was told in season one what happened — but I had to ‘cause […] Rhonda knew something.”
Goldstick teased that there is something deeper going on in this world. “There's something devious going on. That's all we can say. There's something devious and he alludes to something larger than what he's up to. So there's some mythology to this school, which was also kind of alluded to in the first season,” he revealed. “There may be something going on here that's beyond what we see.”
The first season of School Spirits is streaming on Paramount+, with season two coming in 2025.
