‘School Spirits’ Bosses Unravel Shocking Season 3 Twists & Tease Season 4 Plans

It wouldn’t be a School Spirits finale if it didn’t leave you on a major cliffhanger. Star Kristian Ventura was right to warn us that fans would feel the urge to throw their TV remotes when they saw Season 3’s “‘get the f**k out of here'” — his words — ending.

With all the twists that were introduced in Episode 8, “Dawn of the Deb,” we guessed that executive producers Oliver Goldstick, Megan Trinrud, and Nate Trinrud have already started thinking about what’s next. Though School Spirits hasn’t yet been greenlit for a fourth season, they assured us that their gears have already started turning.

“Luckily, we bake these things in the writers’ room with the idea and where it could go,” Nate told TV Insider. “Like, we’re never trying to kind of write ourselves into a corner. We can’t tell you the secrets — you’d have to join the Split River afterlife — but we are very excited for what could possibly be ahead if we are so lucky to get renewed.”

The trio answered some of our most burning questions after the Season 3 finale and teased what they mean for the Split River crew going forward. (Warning: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers about School Spirits Season 3 Episode 8, “Dawn of the Deb.”)

There are two major bombshells in a row right at the end, the first one being that the school’s boundary comes down. I was curious if you could say anything about that. Are there limits to the boundaries?

Nate Trinrud: Look, we can’t tell you. What I think we can tell you is, certainly, if you watch the show, we love conditions. Nothing’s ever quite as easy as freedom.

Megan Trinrud: Then they could all just leave or do whatever they want.

Oliver Goldstick: We had talked this season about interactions with people they had not seen, with family members and loved ones, and we had talked about how that ever could even be possible. So the finale at least gives us an opportunity to think about, what does it mean to encounter people you haven’t seen in 40 years? Not everybody comes back to that school for obvious reasons, right? So these ghosts have been deprived of loved ones and unresolved relationships that we’ll be able to explore.

Megan Trinrud: I think even just the town of Split River also is going to feel like such a massive world to them after being trapped in one building for so long, that I think even the idea of being able to get out and about in town is going to feel overwhelming. We’re all so excited to explore what that experience would be for people who’ve been kind of in prison for 40 plus years are suddenly released back into their lives.

Oliver Goldstick: Imagine trying to return something to a department store. It’s not even open anymore.

Megan Trinrud: Yeah, everything’s different. Everything’s different.

Nate Trinrud: Those library book dues are going to be crazy.

Megan Trinrud: The world has changed.

Oliver Goldstick: There’s no more Macy’s. What happened to Macy’s? Where was I?

This might make the ghosts wonder if they should move on anymore. If I were a ghost and I could go multiple places, I might feel the urge to stay.

Megan Trinrud: Yeah, I think some of the ghosts started asking themselves that question this season, like Wally [Milo Manheim]. Wally talking to Rhonda [Sarah Yarkin] in Episode 7, he was very honest that, for him, it’s like, “I don’t hate this, I don’t hate being here.” And I think we haven’t gotten to explore how each ghost feels about that. I think we assume that what they would choose is to move on. But maybe that’s not true. And I think like you’re saying, now that they have a broader world to explore, maybe that changes things.

Ed Araquel / Paramount+.

And then the second big twist was Van Heidt body-snatching Maddie’s mom. Where did her spirit go? 

Megan Trinrud: I think that that is a question they will have to figure out as well at the start of a hopeful Season 4.

Nate Trinrud: We have a very intentional time passage in there of a few days at the end of the episode. So who knows what could happen in there?

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Can you say if Van Heidt is the ultimate big bad of the series, or are there any more villains to come?

Nate Trinrud: Well, who’s to say, you know? But I do think we all believe that trauma runs deep. That a lot of this stuff has been happening, and there have been people like Van Heidt in our world for a very long time. There are a lot of options to explore, but I think for us, Van Heidt definitely caused a deep amount of pain to this town, in this community. And for Split River, he’s certainly one of the biggest agitators of what is going on here.

And then also, we only got a tease of the woods… I don’t know if there’s a name for it yet.

Nate Trinrud: We kind of like refer to it as the ley lines or the ghost roads. For us, it’s just sort of these new paths that are beyond the doors.

And how is it different from the afterlife we’ve become accustomed to?

Oliver Goldstick: It’s the unknown. It really is. I think we’ve tried really hard to make the audience come on the journey with us. So we surprise ourselves, too. By the way, these things are not all… Everyone thinks everything’s calculated, [that] everyone knows everything when we start. We make discoveries in the writers’ room, too. And there are moments where you go, what if? It’s always what ifs, but I think we felt that Maddie [Peyton List] had straddled two worlds this season, and we wanted to open up to a third world.

That was the most important to us, that we know these two worlds pretty intimately. If you do follow the show, and I think you sort of have to if you’re watching in sequence, you know, “OK, I understood the living world very well. I know the rules. I believe I know the rules of the school’s ghost world.” And then those rules start to change. And as we know in the third season, we kind of blew it open. And now that we can talk about the finale without worrying about spoilers, clearly, we know even more about this. I think that the idea is that ley lines/new world is an unknown world. We’re gonna have to figure out those mirrors and what this means.

Megan Trinrud: And it’s an escalation, too. I think it’s what we all kind of thought, once you go through the door in the school, you’ve moved on to eternal peace, whatever that means for you. But what we found is, no… Nate put it really well earlier that solving one problem doesn’t just solve all of your problems. Sometimes an answer leads to more questions. And I think that’s what we’re seeing is, OK, well, you’ve done the work. You’ve started to heal, so now you have to go to the next piece and see what is that process, what is that journey? And it’s a completely different world to explore.

Did you know from the beginning that you didn’t want the doors to lead to the pearly gates, more or less?

Nate Trinrud: I think one of the things we love is that the show really does talk about what it means to heal and face your own trauma and move forward in life. And we just know it’s not that easy. Dawn doesn’t just learn she has the ability to have friends and is completely fixed, but she might be ready for the next level. She might be ready to face the unknown now, knowing that about herself. And so I think that’s kind of our metaphor, as far as, like, “Ah, yes, that is what is ahead of us is just more learning and growing.”

Can you say why Janet and Dawn haven’t crossed the river? Do Janet and Dawn know something we don’t about that process?

Oliver Goldstick: That harkens back to what Nate just said, that just because you’ve healed one thing, doesn’t mean the whole package is done. You may have things that are unresolved and things you have to work through. So those characters, too, may not be ready to cross that river yet.

Nate Trinrud: If we know anything about Janet, you know she’s gonna want to try and figure this place out. There’s no doubt that she’s trying to solve what’s going on. Dawn may have just gotten distracted, hard to say, but I do think that the pastor has been waiting to be reunited with those kids, and if those kids were there, he’d be there in a heartbeat. I think there are a lot of mysteries to unpack about what the river means and what’s beyond. But the other thing we talk about, too, is that this show has taken place in like a month. So even Dawn, she’s only been there a couple of weeks. She’s got some time to figure it out and make her choices.

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Can Maddie get back through her door? Would she risk going back if she could?

Nate Trinrud: I mean, I think we’re all really excited to see what that would mean, to be honest with you. We spent all season showing Maddie that she does have a way back. That through her grief and through what she’s been through, she can still access this place. I think it’s a great question. Would she want to? Is that healthy? And can she even get back the things she’s lost?

School Spirits, Season 3, Streaming Now, Paramount+

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