The ghosts of Split River High School are spiraling over a surprise — and heartbreaking — exit in a first look at the School Spirits season 3 finale.
In Us Weekly’s exclusive sneak peek of the Wednesday, March 4, episode, the teen spirits are left facing the fallout after Wally (Milo Manheim) secretly left the group behind in hopes of finding girlfriend Maddie’s (Peyton List) best friend, Simon (Kristian Ventura), amid his mysterious disappearance.
There’s also the looming threat of the School Board meeting, which will decide if Split River High will remain open — or get obliterated forever, taking the spirits along with it.
“It all feels so wrong,” Rhonda (Sarah Yarkin) says as the ghosts sit around the library awaiting their fate. “Even more so than usual.”
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Charlie (Nick Pugliese), however, is more focused on Wally taking his door — which leads to an unspecified place no ghost has ever returned from — without saying any goodbyes.
“Yeah, that’s the sign of betrayal,” he quips, before Mr. Martin (Josh Zuckerman) reminds him that Wally “didn’t have a choice” as it’s the group’s “best lead for finding Simon.”
“OK, maybe he didn’t feel like he had a choice to take his door, but he had a choice to keep it from us,” Charlie argues, but Rhonda points out that she thinks Wally “was trying his best to say goodbye.”
When Yuri (Miles Elliot) asks how they’ll “know if it worked,” Mr. Martin admits, “We don’t, maybe we can’t.”
As they continue to worry about Wally and their impending doom, Mr. Martin tries to remind them that things could still work out in the end.
“All may not be lost yet,” he says. “There’s still a chance for this place and for us. Today’s meeting could go our way.”
Season 3, episode 7 of the Paramount+ series saw Simon — existing between the plane of the living and dead — still missing after he was pulled into the mysterious pool underneath the school’s church only to seemingly disappear from existence. (While the pool typically spits out ghosts into various points around the Split River High, Simon’s tie to the living world sent him elsewhere.)
With Maddie struggling to remain anchored on the living plane while being haunted by her time on the other side, Wally ultimately chose to cross over in hopes of finding Simon on the other side and ending Maddie’s growing distress.
While Wally didn’t say goodbye to anyone before he steps through into the light, his passage caused the school’s lights to flicker — signaling to the ghosts that someone had moved on. The loss of Wally leaves everyone ultimately devastated, most of all Maddie, who ends the episode by coming clean to her just-home-from-rehab mom Sandra (Maria Dizzia) about her experience as a spirit.
“Having to go into that energy, it takes over everything,” List, 27, told Collider in an interview earlier this month about the emotional scene between Maddie and her mother. “But it just felt like such an important moment. So much is coming up and there’s so much honesty with a character that Maddie really hasn’t been very honest with, and so to go there, the stakes felt so high,”
When asked if things will finally take a turn for the better in the finale, however, List confessed that won’t exactly be the case.
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“Oh, you’re going to be so heartbroken,” she teased, adding, “It’s just, right when things get better …”
School Spirits’ season 3 finale airs on Paramount+ Wednesday, March 4.
