This article contains spoilers for the Season 1 finale of “School Spirits,” as well as the first three episodes of Season 2.
If you were taken by surprise by that Season 1 finale twist in “School Spirits,” so was star Peyton List. In fact, she only learned that her character Maddie Nears wasn’t actually dead when she got the script with the last-minute reveal.
Maddie is missing and presumed dead for most of the first season of the Paramount+ series, but in the finale, is revealed to be very much alive — just possessed by someone else: Janet Hamilton, a dead student from the ’50s who we learned earlier had recently “crossed over.”
Season 2, which premiered its first three episodes on Thursday, finds Maddie’s own spirit still stuck at Split River High, while her body, as occupied by Janet, is on the run.
TheWrap spoke with List about the intricacies of playing both Maddie and Janet-as-Maddie, some of the new characters and one of her favorite storylines this season.
TheWrap: You didn’t learn about the Janet twist until the end of last season, is that right?
Peyton List: Yeah. I was absolutely shocked, because they kept telling me I would never guess it, and I really didn’t. I was really shocked and a little upset to know that I would have to play two characters. I was like, how am I going to do this? I only signed up for one character and didn’t sign up for this girl. So there was a part of me that was processing, but now I’m just so happy that that’s the way it went after doing Season 2. It was a really cool experience.
There are several scenes where we see Maddie’s body but know it’s really Janet, and then we’ll see Janet (Jess Gabor) herself in the same spot. How did you approach those scenes?
We had a meeting with our creators and our director, Hannah Macpherson, and she went over how we were going to make this happen. She went over her strategy and plan for the shots, and establishing me in the sequence, and then bringing Janet in so it’s obvious to the audience this is the same girl.
We would work on the weekends, or whenever we had time off and on set, on the mannerisms and the physicality and the thoughts that Janet would be having.
We started it where I was going first in the scenes, but then I asked if she could go first, because I would like Janet to establish herself first and then copy her, since I am her.
Of course, most of her living friends don’t realize that’s Janet out there instead of her. And Simon begins to thinks he’s just imagined her all this time.
Yeah, Maddie has a lot of frustration because her memory just came back to her, and now she knows the truth, which is that her body — her physical body — is out there, and Janet is out there in it. And Simon (Kristian Ventura) no longer believes that his Maddie is real because there’s pictures of her out there in the world. So he thinks he’s slowly going insane and that he’s just imagined Maddie as a coping mechanism for missing her and mourning her.
Maddie and Janet are from totally different eras, so it’s a huge adjustment for Janet to navigate the 2020s.
Janet is definitely much more oppressed in the ’50s than anyone else. She wants to explore science and she wants to be a scientist, and her father is religious and he’s like, “That’s not a position for you. That’s a position maybe your brother can pursue it, but not you.”
And in the meantime, they’ve found Janet’s journals, so Maddie is actually somewhat sympathetic to Janet, even though she’s hijacked Maddie’s body.
Exactly, she never had the freedom to explore any of these things. And as much as I want to hate her, she’s also a victim. So it’s frustrating because I can’t even hate her.
Back among the living, there are some schisms about who believes that Maddie would purposefully hit Xavier with her car. And after his near-death experience, Xavier is fully convinced that ghosts are real.
Yeah, I thought that was a fun storyline, Xavier (Spencer MacPherson) trusting Simon and coming more on board, which is like a domino effect and everyone else ends up being a little more trusting. I love these sort of unlikely matchups, with people you wouldn’t necessarily think would be working together.
And there are some new ghost characters, Yuri and Quinn.
Yes, Yuri is a Russian ghost who’s been looping at the pottery wheel, and we think he doesn’t speak any English, but then we find out that he’s been lying to everyone, for decades. He just doesn’t want any part of the group. He’s a hippie from the ’70s, and he just cares about making his pottery and his art, and that’s about it. Miles Elliot plays him, and he’s such a fun addition and he’s a fun new romantic interest for Charley (Nick Pugliese), because Mr. Figueroa is obviously not an option.
And Quinn, who was in the marching band, is one of the loopers from the 2004 bus crash who shows up and is suddenly calling Maddie “Chief.” And it’s like a whole case now.
What else can we expect to happen this season?
We meet characters from Janet’s past. A couple of the living kids go to a retirement home with someone who went to school with her. That’s one of my favorite storylines, seeing someone who was her age. And there’s a reunion for Charley’s year, so he gets to see all the kids he went to high school with. And maybe some flashbacks to what happened back then.
The first three episodes of “School Spirits” Season 2 are now streaming on Paramount+, with new episodes premiering each Thursday through March 6.
