SPOILER ALERT: The following article discusses plot points of School Spirits Season 3 and, especially, the season finale, “Dawn of the Deb,” which debuted today. SPOILERS ARE EVERYWHERE! If you’d rather experience School Spirits on your own, then stop reading now, and start watching. All episodes of School Spirits Season 3 are now streaming on Paramount+. (All episodes of Season 1 and Season 2 are streaming on Paramount+, too.)
School Spirits, the compulsively watchable Paramount+ original drama series, has officially concluded its third season. But just because we’ve spent eight episodes with our noses pressed against our streaming devices doesn’t mean we’ve solved all of the show’s mysteries. Far from it! The season’s final moments left us with our jaws on the floor, wondering how on Earth (or the afterlife) Maddie and her pals will solve all the new predicaments they’ve found themselves in. It’s a cliffhanger to remember, one that answers a handful of our burning questions, and leaves us with a whole mess of unanswered ones. And isn’t that the mark of a great season finale?
But with all those spooky plot threads intertwining, do you worry you missed something crucial leading up to that final reveal? Totally understandable. We’ve put together a School Spirits Season 3 rundown that includes a recap of the finale, a look at the epic cliffhanger, an accounting of the big questions answered – and not answered, plus an overview of the entire season.
What happens in the School Spirits Season 3 finale?
In the School Spirits Season 3 finale, Maddie (Peyton List) enters a liminal forest realm from the glowing door of her scar (aka, the hellish version of the real-world location where a person – and future ghost – died a traumatic death). In the forest, she encounters Dawn (RaeAnne Boon), the first ghost of Mr. Martin’s support group to cross over. The two find Wally (Milo Manheim), who has become trapped in a memory of his high-school past. Just as Milo is about to forget all about Maddie, his ghost friends, and everything he’s gone through in the last 40 years of ghosthood, Maddie and Dawn shout at him from the other side, jarring him back to reality. Dawn explains that the forest is full of mirrors that entrap you within a happy memory; the mirror memories make you feel good, while blotting out any recognition of who you are now, or what you’re pursuing.
Next, Maddie, Dawn, and Wally find Janet (Jess Gabor), who tries to communicate with a blank-faced Simon (Kristian Flores). Simon’s eyes are fixated on his mother – the mother who died while giving birth to him. In Maddie’s attempt to break through to her friend, Maddie gets stuck in her own memory, this one involving a movie night with Simon. Though she wants to stay in the cozy scene, she yanks herself out, and pulls Simon from his fugue state as well. Janet and Dawn explain that they haven’t been able to relocate the doors they entered through, so they don’t know how to get Simon and Maddie home.
Meanwhile, in the living world, Maddie’s body operates on autopilot, wandering out of her bedroom, and down the local roads. Livia (Erika Swayze), daughter of school superintendent Dr. Hunter-Price (Jennifer Tilly), drops Maddie off at the hospital, where she is met by Xavier (Spencer MacPherson). Xavier can communicate with the hospital ghosts, and therefore joins forces with Maddie’s deceased father, Dave (Danny Mac), to keep Maddie’s body up, moving, and uninhabited by hospital spirits. Maddie’s mom, Sandra (Maria Dizzia), shows up, and communicates with Dave through Xavier. Dave realizes it’s up to him to get Maddie back to her friends and her mother.
Back at Split River High, Claire (Rainbow Wedell), Nicole (Kiara Pichardo), and Xavier scheme with the school’s principal, Mr. Hartman (Alex Zahara), about a surefire way to save the school. What they don’t count on is Dr. Hunter-Price being inhabited by the vengeful spirit of Van Heidt. The newly possessed superintendent beelines to the library, where she declares to a large crowd of suits and protesters alike her intention to destroy the building. Claire stands, brandishing her evidence of Hunter-Price’s corruption, but the superintendent merely pivots back out the door. Yuri (Miles Elliot) and Charley (Nick Pugliese) soon smell something. Is that gas? Even more horrifying, did the superintendent look them directly in the eyes?
Heidt-as-Hunter-Price ignites a bonfire in the cafeteria. The ghosts look on in horror as she chains shut the doors of the library. How can they, a bunch of ghosts, save the living from a very real fire? Charley and Yuri decide that they’ll try to extinguish the flames as best they can, while Mr. Martin (Josh Zuckerman) ushers the other ghosts back into the secret realm. Mr. Martin asks Ralph how to get back to the library, the way Wally did when he scared the janitor. Ralph directs them toward a pool, and the ghosts prepare to jump. But all of a sudden, the church begins to collapse. The milky-eyed pastor pushes Mr. Martin out of the way of a falling altar, and dies under its weight. As smoke and dust envelop the pastor, Mr. Martin, and Ralph, Quinn (Ci Hang Ma) and Rhonda (Sarah Yarkin) dive into the pool.
Quinn and Rhonda appear in the library, where they’re temporarily visible to the meeting-goers. They tell the group that Hunter-Price has set the building on fire, and urge them to flee ASAP. Charley and Yuri realize that they’re able to help in putting out the fire because the flames are breaching the veil and scorching through the spirit world, too. At the moment of this realization, firefighters burst into the school to save the trapped humans and what remains of the building.
From the forest realm, Maddie hears her mother’s voice, but cannot find a door back to her. Suddenly, Dave walks out of his own door; he had been hesitant to cross over, but knew that his door could lead Maddie and Simon back to the hospital. Before Simon leaves the realm, he spots a man he vaguely recognizes. It’s the pastor, now looking healthy, happy, and at peace. Around him stands a small children’s choir.
Back in reality, Maddie and Xavier rush to the school, where they confront Heidt-as-Hunter-Price. The power-hungry villain threatens violence to all – until Simon takes a fire extinguisher to the woman’s head. He’s alive! As EMTs clear the superintendent’s body from the premises, the three friends wander outside to join the other survivors of the catastrophe. Most of the building remains unscathed; for now, the ghosts have a place to stay. Maddie checks on her friends, both the living and the deceased variety, and tries to remember what normalcy feels like. But a new, decidedly not-normal twist lies ahead …
What is the School Spirits Season 3 cliffhanger?
The School Spirits Season 3 cliffhanger finds Maddie’s mom, Sandra, looking into a mirror, and revealing that she’s become the host body of … Van Heidt.
Where does the School Spirits Season 3 ending mean?
We see in the final moments of School Spirits Season 3 finale that Van Heidt has found a brand-new home for his curdled spirit: Sandra Nears. But why? Because Maddie has thwarted his plans for Split River domination, and presumably he’s found a very personal method of revenge. Only time will tell how he uses this body to his dastardly advantage.
School Spirits Season 3: Big questions answered
What happens to Simon’s spirit?
When Maddie awakens in the hospital and discovers that her spirit has reentered her body, her immediate request is to see her best friend, Simon. The problem? Simon’s become trapped in the spirit realm of Split River High. Because he can bleed, he knows he’s still alive, but he can’t be perceived by the living or leave school premises. The ghosts vow to help Simon leave this purgatorial state. Maddie soon discovers, to her relief, that she can see Simon, as well as her ghost friends, in the rooms of the school where students have died. She, too, promises to do all she can to help Simon escape his bizarre circumstances.
One of the ghosts, Janet, believes that if she passes through the glowing door that has appeared within her scar, Simon might gain his freedom. Though her exit doesn’t release Simon, it spurs Simon to persuade the others to release Mr. Martin from imprisonment in his own scar. After all, with Janet gone, Mr. Martin has the most knowledge of the school’s secrets. Simon feels he cannot escape limbo without him.
What’s the Secret Realm under Split River High School?
Initially, Mr. Martin feels helpless to aid Simon, as he is filled with guilt for his past mistakes. He relays a story about a boyhood event in which he left his wounded playmate, Ralph, alone in a field. When the young Mr. Martin returned to the scene, Ralph had disappeared, never to be seen again. Decades after Mr. Martin died, he heard Ralph’s voice in the distance, and followed its echoes into a strange realm – a place that operates like a scar beyond the other scars. Here, there exist darker spirits, one of whom dragged Mr. Martin into a pit. When the teacher emerged back into the sunlight, he found himself positioned directly in front of a Split River High bus, which swerved hard to avoid him. At that moment, Mr. Martin understood that he was visible to the bus driver. His presence in the road resulted in the deaths of an entire busload of band students, including Quinn – a disaster for which he continues to reproach himself. The other ghosts, however, perk up: If there’s a spot in this realm where the barrier between the living and dead is particularly thin, then that’s how Simon entered his purgatorial state, and that’s how he can get out of it.
What questions does School Spirits Season 3 leave unanswered?
Like any good season finale with a cliffhanger, School Spirits Season 3 leaves several questions unanswered. One big one: What’s the fate of Wally, Dawn, Janet, and Dave? They’re still stuck in the liminal space. And then there’s Mr. Martin: He’s found himself who-knows-where.
The remaining Split River High ghosts, meanwhile, discover, post-fire, that they can move past the boundary of the schoolgrounds. How far past the boundary, and for how long?
And then there’s Maddie and Madde’s possessed mom: Where is that going? Our guess, nowhere good …
Recap: What happens in School Spirits Season 3?
The ghosts visit the secret realm, a dark and water-damaged space. Like Mr. Martin all those years ago, Wally gets snatched up by mysterious hands and dropped into the eyeline of a Split River High janitor, who falls off a stepladder in shock. So, then, it is true: This realm thins the wall between worlds. But how can Simon use it to return to the living world for good?
Simon relays to Maddie – who, in turn, tells living pals Claire, Nicole, and Xavier – that the secret realm resembles an old chapel. The crew researches the town and discovers that a church flood occurred in 1912 on the very grounds where Split River High School now stands. Mr. Martin suddenly recalls a story his mother told him about the tragedy: Heavy rains, plus the recent splitting of the local river, had caused the church to fill with water, drowning the eight children and one adult inside.
This one adult manifests as a tall, milky-eyed figure who lurks in dark corners of the secret realm. When Simon approaches the figure for answers, he clutches Simon’s face and imparts visions of eight children singing. Simon’s ghost buddies worry that figure might be dangerous; they’ve promised Maddie they’ll help Simon – not send him into the clutches of a demon. Plus, time is of the essence: They and their living friends have learned that school-district superintendent Dr. Deborah Hunter-Price intends to demolish the school and build a new one in its place. What will this mean for the ghosts? For Simon? With this place bulldozed, they might be stuck in limbo forever.
Nicole, Maddie, and Claire dig up info about Alfred Van Heidt, a major political player in the area during the early 1900s, and the fellow who decided to split the river. It was he who locked the eight children within the church, and ultimately died there himself. Though this confirms the ghosts’ suspicion that the milky-eyed man is a baddie – it must be Van Heidt! – Simon is positive that this figure, malevolent or not, is the key to Simon’s freedom. Sure enough, the figure reveals that he is not Van Heidt but the church’s pastor, a benevolent man who tried to save the children during the flood. He also reveals that he, like Simon, can bleed.
If all eight of the children are accounted for in this realm, and their adult companion is not Van Heidt … then where is Van Heidt? Mr. Martin surmises that Van Heidt came across the prone body of little Ralph and used the boy as a vessel to hightail it out of church-scar purgatory. Years later, Van Heidt had jumped into another body: that of Kyle (Ari Dalbert), a teen involved in the bus crash that killed Quinn. Though Kyle had survived the trip to the hospital, he later flatlined – the perfect moment for a 20th-century statesman to enter his frame and began living as KC Jensen. Jensen, a prominent figure in Split River, rubs noses with powerful players like Dr. Hunter-Price. It’s he who is funding the demolition of the high school.
Discovering this, Maddie and Xavier confront Jensen at his home, calling him by his true name. Caught, Heidt-as-Jensen flees the scene, gun in hand. When Maddie catches up with him, he’s unconscious and covered in blood. She and Xavier rush him to the hospital, where Kyle takes the opportunity to reenter his rightful body and force Heidt’s spirit to exit. Dr. Hunter-Price arrives, pushing Jensen for payment for her part in the school’s destruction She also urges him to name Maddie and Xavier as his attackers. Kyle-as-Jensen pleads ignorance about the money, and lauds Maddie and Xavier for their bravery in finding and bringing him to the ER. The superintendent leaves in a rage.
Maddie returns to the school, hoping for good news from the ghosts, but she hears only that Simon has vanished. Now her best friend is missing from both the living world and the spirit world. Wally sees the woman he loves in pain, and struggles with what to do. He watches Mr. Martin make contact with Ralph, who shows the ghosts’ the doors through which the eight choir children ultimately crossed over. Wally, too, has a door available to him. The only way he’ll know if Simon is on the other side is to go through.
Wally passes through his door. But he’s not the only one to walk through a door on that day – Maddie, too, sees a glowing passageway appear before her …
School Spirits
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