Janet snacks on decades-old food as Paramount+’s School Spirits season two episode two begins. A flashback shows her dad questioning her about a college acceptance letter, adamant that women don’t belong in college. They should be pregnant and in the kitchen.
She earned a slap for her forward-thinking ways, and her abusive dad (a reverend) burned her acceptance letter. Decades later, she stares at the outline of a cross on her grandmother’s wall and stabs a knife into the floor in anger. (Reminder: this is a recap, so spoilers ahead!)
Meanwhile, the ghost gang’s busy attempting to wrap their heads around Mr. Martin’s years of deception. They’ve had the time to read Mr. Martin’s journals, and Charley (Nick Pugliese) is still pissed that Rhonda (Sarah Yarkin) didn’t tell them she was investigating Mr. Martin. Everyone’s on edge and short-tempered since they’re no closer to finding either Maddie’s body or Mr. Martin.
Strangely, it’s Wally (Milo Manheim) who’s the voice of reason. He draws a play on the chalkboard, outlining how they’ll track down Mr. Martin. Charley’s convinced Mr. Martin left the school grounds. Just then, a band member wanders in!
Over at the hospital, it turns out Xavier (Spencer Macpherson) decided not to sit among the ghosts in the waiting room and returned to his body. Claire (Rainbow Wedell), Nicole (Kiara Pichardo), and Simon (Kristian Ventura) are with him when he learns he’s about to be discharged. Nicole’s still upset Claire and Simon want to turn Maddie in, and Xavier’s confused. They explain that Maddie stole his truck and then backed into him, and Simon decides now’s the time to tell everyone what’s really going on.
He sounds crazy when he tries to convince his friends that a ghost who’s been dead for decades stole Maddie’s body, and Maddie’s soul is trapped in the school with other ghosts. She can’t leave the campus. Claire and Nicole don’t believe him and leave, but Xavier is willing to listen.
As his dad’s checking him out, Xavier wanders through the waiting room looking for the people he saw last night. The television is different, and he learns that smoking hasn’t been allowed in the waiting room in decades.
Back at the library, it turns out Quinn (Ci Hang Ma), the band member who woke up when Rhonda screamed at them, is a friend of Janet’s and can’t believe she was trapped in the fallout shelter for months. Quinn seems kind of out of it, and the gang doesn’t want her around because they’re busy and she’s not helpful. They return to the map and try and figure out who the dead person is that begins with a Y and passed away in the greenhouse.
It suddenly dawns on Charley that Yuri, the dead Russian kid on a loop at the pottery wheel, is the Y. He doesn’t speak English, so Rhonda yells and speaks slowly … because that always works, right? Maddie tries to question him, but Yuri (Miles Elliot) remains silent. She gets frustrated by the lack of answers and that even if Yuri knew something, they wouldn’t know what to do if they ever got Maddie’s body back.
Charley hangs back when they leave and is shocked when Yuri speaks to him in English and mentions Janet. It turns out Janet would occasionally hang out in the art class with him. It also turns out his mom’s from Virginia and lying that he didn’t speak English kept him out of Mr. Martin’s group sessions. He believes Mr. Martin’s full of sh*t, and he’s happy he has immortal youth. Charley picks up a wooden box and Yuri confirms Janet made it. That piques Charley’s interest, and he examines it closer and finds a secret compartment that contains Mr. Martin’s journal on Janet.
Charley shares the journal with the others and its first pages are all chemistry equations, which they don’t understand. Maybe these equations explain why the notebooks still exist, why Janet could enter Maddie’s body, and how Mr. Martin locked the fallout shelter door. Simon arrives with the news that he’s heading to Rockton to look for Janet in Maddie’s body. But he wonders why Maddie could hear Janet’s cry for help. How did a living Maddie ever hear the dead Janet? Maddie believes she was open to the experience because she was in pain, just like Simon can see her now because he’s also in pain.
Simon and Nicole hang out and wait for Claire to finish up with cheer practice. Simon’s busy calling hotels to see if Maddie checked in somewhere, including sleazy hotels. Nicole knows Maddie would never have stayed in crappy places, but Simon believes Janet Hamilton would. Nicole thinks Simon needs to speak to a professional and that they both should be worried that Claire still wants to go to the cops.
Later, Claire’s surprised to see Xavier, who’s busy searching online for info on ghost sightings at the local hospital, back at school. Xavier confesses he died for a few minutes but doesn’t elaborate. He asks Claire if she realizes that their relationship will have to change if Maddie’s alive. Claire claims she understands.
Xavier’s dad convinced Principal Hartman that he can stay home from school for a week, but Xavier would be at school. He can study in the library since it has a couch.
Janet’s still hanging out at her old house when she hears someone walking around. She watches from a hiding place as a man walks up and down the stairs, breathing a sigh of relief when he leaves.
Nicole and Simon are hot on Maddie’s body’s trail and learn Maddie bought a map at a grocery store. Simon’s convinced that’s another sign that Janet’s in Maddie’s body. No teenager now would buy a map since everyone has a phone, but a teen from 1958 would buy one. Nicole refuses even to consider it, and Simon finally asks the key question: how can she believe in the Holy Ghost and not actual ghosts? They’re both Catholic and believe in purgatory, so why isn’t it possible that Maddie’s waiting at Split River High?
Nicole refuses to believe that Maddie’s dead. She drives off and leaves Simon behind but reconsiders and picks him up if he doesn’t ask more questions.
Back at school, Rhonda and Quinn rejoin the gang in the library to examine Janet’s journal. By some strange coincidence, Xavier sits at their table and is unaware that he’s staring right at Maddie. Quinn points out the journal entries are shorthand, and it just so happens she can read it.
The gang’s shocked when Quinn suggests two different people wrote the entries. The back section might have been written by Janet since it refers to Mr. Martin in the third person. Also, Janet wrote “our” a lot, and Quinn believes Janet and Mr. Martin were working together on an experiment. They both planned on getting out of there together.
Xavier continues to stare right at Maddie, freaking her out.
A flashback shows Mr. Martin driving Janet to her grandmother’s home. He’s incredibly supportive of her dreams and knows that when she gets to college, she’ll really excel. They’re joking around in pig Latin when Reverend Hamilton orders Janet inside so he can speak with Mr. Martin. Hamilton insinuates that Mr. Martin is acting inappropriately and assures him that Janet won’t be attending college. Reverend Martin sends Mr. Martin on his way, but not before threatening to report his behavior.
The gang can’t figure out what happened between Janet and Mr. Martin that made them stop working together as a team. Why was Janet screaming to get away from him when she jumped into Maddie? Charley points out there are pages torn out of Janet’s journal, and Wally decides that’s enough. He demands answers from Yuri, angry that for 40 years, Yuri refused to talk to him when he tried to make conversation.
Wally and Yuri get into it, and Wally’s upset that Maddie was in the wrong place at the wrong time and isn’t really dead. Wally’s sure Yuri knows something and is just refusing to get involved. After Wally breaks Janet’s pot, Maddie pulls him aside for a talk. Wally’s furious that he followed Mr. Martin like a little sheep, and now he doesn’t know what to believe about his existence.
Wally’s frustrated he can’t leave the school and help retrieve Maddie’s body. “What am I supposed to do? I can’t compete with Simon!” says Wally. Maddie doesn’t understand why Wally needs to compete with Simon since they’re on the same team. Wally confesses he wants their relationship to get deeper but feels like he’s getting benched. He wants to be more than a “mushy shoulder to cry on.”
Maddie assures him he doesn’t need to score the winning point for her. The mood relaxes when they realize they had their first fight.
Maddie, Charley, Yuri, and Wally pick up the pieces of Janet’s broken pot. They don’t understand why it’s not resetting since a ghost made it. Charley and Yuri are really connecting, and their conversation makes Wally remember that Janet wrote a goofy poem in a yearbook that mentioned Bingham. That’s where Janet got off the bus in Maddie’s body!
Maddie calls Wally a genius. He just provided a huge lead to finding Janet. She pulls Wally in for a kiss.
Xavier and Simon research Hamilton farmhouses while Nicole remains skeptical about the Hamilton connection. Xavier is on board with this ghost thing now and agrees to go with Simon to the farmhouse after school.
Charley visits Yuri, certain Yuri’s holding something back. Yuri makes a pot that resets every day, but Janet’s never did. Her pot remained a pot and then broke and didn’t fix itself. Charley flirts and then gets embarrassed, rushing off after Yuri offers to teach him how to make something.
That night, Nicole surfs the net looking for any info on whether a ghost can take over a body. She stumbles on the same “Weird Wisconsin” forum Xavier found and even finds his anonymous question about whether anyone’s ever spoken to a ghost. She asks why he/she is asking, and Xavier replies he thinks he has.
Claire had a fight with her parents and shows up wanting to crash at Nicole’s. She insists she never wanted to hurt Maddie and knows she owes her an apology. Nicole lets her spend the night.
Wally’s wandering the hallways at night when he spots Mr. Martin. He chases him into Mr. Anderson’s classroom, but Mr. Martin disappears.
The group continues reading Janet’s journal and can’t understand why she’s written that she hopes they’ll forgive her for what she’s taken from them. Maddie keeps reading, and it turns out Janet is the one who took the items they had with them when they died. Charley now believes Janet stopped following Mr. Martin’s orders and learned how to do much more than just make a pot that doesn’t reset. That would have threatened Mr. Martin.
Rhonda thinks Mr. Martin learned from Janet, and that’s how he locked her in the fallout shelter.
Wally informs the group that he saw Mr. Martin, and a red light was behind him. He disappeared, but it seemed like he was terrified. Quinn suggests Mr. Martin locked Janet up to protect all of them.
Janet sets her grandmother’s house on fire and doesn’t try to escape the flames.
Season two episode two wraps up with Simon and Xavier being stopped by a cop as they drive up to the fully engulfed house. The cop says a firetruck’s on its way but doesn’t confirm if there’s anyone inside the home.
- School Spirits Season 1 Episode 1 “My So-Called Death” Recap
- School Spirits Season 1 Episode 2 “The Fault in Our Scars” Recap
- School Spirits Season 1 Episode 3 “Dead and Confused” Recap
- School Spirits Season 1 Episode 4 “Ghoul Intentions” Recap
- Season 1 Episode 5 “The Twilight End Zone” Recap
- Season 1 Episode 6 “Grave the Last Dance” Recap
- Season 1 Episode 7 “Séance Anything” Recap
- Season 1 Episode 8 “Maddie’s Body” Finale Recap
- Season 2 Episode 1 “Whatever Happened to Maddie Nears” Recap
- Season 2 Episode 3 “Can’t Hauntly Wait” Recap
- Season 2 Episode 4 “A Walk-In to Remember” Recap
- Season 2 Episode 5 “Ghost Who’s Coming to Dinner” Recap
- School Spirits Season 2 Episode 6 “Ghosts Pointe Blank” Recap
- School Spirits Season 2 Episode 7 “Anatomy of a Fallout Shelter
- School Spirits Season 2 Episode 8 “Fire, Talk to Me” Recap
This post was last modified on March 6, 2025 11:32 am