Paramount+’s School Spirits season two episode five opens with Maddie (Peyton List) in a rage, smashing lunch trays out of the livings’ hands. She’s pissed Janet’s in her body and living in her house with her mom.
Speaking of Maddie’s mom, she’s concerned because Maddie doesn’t want to talk to her friends. Not even Simon. Sandra suggests a psychiatrist, and Janet’s instantly on the defensive. Janet decides the best option is to appease Maddie’s mom and ask Maddie’s friends over for dinner.
Over at the school, Quinn’s hoping to enter her scar/hellscape by holding her horn. It doesn’t work, and Rhonda (Sarah Yarkin) assures her she’s lucky it didn’t happen. Their scars are terrifying. As they’re talking, Rhonda finds Mr. Martin’s watch on the ground by the bus stop. The ghost gang, minus Maddie, gather and are now pretty sure Mr. Martin left by possessing someone’s body.
Simon (Kristian Ventura) shows Maddie a text from Sandra inviting them over for dinner. Maddie wonders whose idea it was, but Simon’s sidetracked by the idea that dead chem teacher Mr. Martin is walking around in someone’s body, and they don’t know whose. Simon’s forced to break the bad news that Sandra will not let Janet/Maddie come back to school anytime soon.
Maddie insists that Simon needs to go to dinner at her house, but they need to come up with a plan first. However, that means the ghosties and Maddie’s living BFFs will have to put their brains together to figure out what to do.
Simon sets up seats with photos of Rhonda, Wally, and Charley on the school’s stage, along with chairs for himself, Claire, Xavier, and Nicole. Maddie confirms the ghosts are seated, and the living invade the ghosts’ spaces while examining their school photos. Nicole (Kiara Pichardo) thinks she’d be friends with Charley, and Charley (Nick Pugliese) reacts by declaring he loves her.
Xavier (Spencer MacPherson) stares Rhonda straight in the eyes instead of looking at her photo!
They exchange awkward hellos, and Claire (Rainbow Wedell) confesses she can’t wait to graduate from this creepy school. The ghosts react as you’d expect to that comment, and Maddie has Simon remind them they can see and hear the living.
Simon tells everyone that they need to devise a plan to get Janet back to the school so Maddie and her ghosties can do the body swap. Maddie and the ghosties provide the deets on Janet. Wally (Milo Manheim) suggests they need to treat this as a hostage situation, with Janet being the terrorist. He’s pretty sure they need a bazooka, and Maddie shoots that down since that would definitely injure her body.
Xavier thinks they should pour salt on Janet since ghosts hate that. The ghosts laugh and think that would be great for doing body shots but not much else. Claire suggests they make Janet think the school isn’t scary anymore. They won’t mention Mr. Martin, and they’ll gently let her know they know she’s a ghost. Claire shocks herself by coming up with that suggestion.
Score one for the cheerleader! Even the ghosts agree that’s a fantastic idea. Maddie tells Simon they need to let Janet know that Dawn crossed over. Janet should know how that happened, and it would mean she won’t be stuck at school forever.
Meanwhile, Janet pours through Maddie’s photos and possessions, absorbing as much about her group of friends as possible. She also practices smiling and laughing like Maddie.
After the meeting of Maddie’s friends breaks up, Nicole tells those who are still breathing that she found a photo of Janet in the yearbook. She’s posing with a guy named Eugene who’s still alive and in a nursing home. Maybe they should visit him to get more info on Janet. Or maybe they could even use him as bait. Xavier, Simon, and Claire are worried Janet might not like Eugene and last time she didn’t like someone, she backed over them.
Maddie believes she can take Mr. Martin’s watch down to the boiler room and open up Janet’s scar. It’s the hellhole where Mr. Martin, Janet, and Maddie collided, so it might be where she needs to try to get answers. Maddie offers to go there by herself while Charley and Wally continue to focus on looking for info in Mr. Martin’s notebooks about the body swap.
And now we get a little more of Rhonda’s backstory when she fetches Quinn from the band room. Rhonda hates being in this room because it brings up memories of Margery. Quinn’s stunned to learn Rhonda was friends with Margery, an alum who became a one-hit wonder. Rhonda and Margery wrote songs together, but only Margery was credited.
Later, Rhonda finds Quinn listening to Margery’s only hit. Rhonda admits she’s never made it past the second verse because her best friend wrote it about her. Even Margery blamed her for her own murder and wrote the song mocking her for trusting that teacher. That’s how all her classmates remember her.
Wally’s brain hurts from thinking so much, so it’s a good thing that Yuri (Miles Elliot) shows up to help out. (Yuri never ever leaves the pottery studio!)
Maddie walks around the boiler room holding Mr. Martin’s watch, and suddenly a red glow appears. She opens a door and steps back into a classroom engulfed in flames. She finds a lab coat that says Janet Hamilton PhD on the floor. Trophies and articles on Janet show she was an aspiring chemist who could have gone far had she not died. Snippets of new reports fill the air, revealing Janet could have graduated at the top of her class at MIT and won the Nobel Prize.
Janet, face half-destroyed by fire, whispers, “I was robbed,” in Maddie’s ear.
Back at the library, Yuri grabs a physiology book, which gives Charley a moment to panic about whether Yuri’s into him. Wally is sure he is. Why else would he be helping them? Yuri returns and he’s figured out Mr. Martin was writing about dopamine and serotonin. If Mr. Martin had manipulated those, he could have opened access points.
Nicole visits the Red Pine nursing home alone, and Eugene confirms he and Janet were close friends. A flashback shows Mr. Martin in a rotten mood after learning he was told to leave his teaching position in two weeks. The memories are painful, and Eugene refuses to talk about the fire. However, he says that neither Mr. Martin nor Janet would have made an accidental mistake that caused it.
Maddie joins Yuri, Rhonda, Wally, and Charley in the library to listen in on the dinner. (Simon called the phone before he left and kept the line open.) Sandra greets Simon and the gang at the door and warns them Maddie may seem a little off. They should keep the conversation light.
Janet apologizes to everyone for what she put them through. It’s super awkward, and finally, Xavier asks for the salt. (He’s dead set on testing his theory.)
The audio on the phone in the library is horrible and they can barely make out what’s being said. But it doesn’t matter, Maddie’s heard enough. It’s too painful to hear her friends at her house talking to the ghost who possessed her body.
Simon and Claire lie about a new telescope that’s just been mounted on the school’s roof, preloaded with 40,000 celestial objects. A wealthy alumnus donated money to the science department, and now they’re offering AP Astronomy.
They catch Janet knowing something about the history of telescopes that Maddie would never have known, confirming that Janet’s in Maddie’s body once and for all. Xavier continues to play with salt, as Claire suggests Maddie should sneak into school and check it out. Simon says she could take the class, and Sandra breaks the news that Maddie’s finishing school online.
Wally joins Maddie at the school’s pool, and Maddie reveals she got into Janet’s scar. Since visiting Janet’s hellscape, Maddie thinks Janet deserves to live. Janet will have a much brighter future than Maddie would ever have. Maddie now knows Janet wanted to make a difference and was brilliant. “She’ll live a bigger life than me, Wally,” says Maddie.
Wally agrees that might be true, but the rest of us carry small gifts that are just as important to those whose lives they touch. Although he’d love it if Maddie were stuck there with him, he believes she deserves to live. They stare into each other’s eyes and kiss, falling into the pool in the process. The kissing continues in the water.
Back at Maddie’s house, Xavier “accidentally” spills salt on Janet as Simon and Claire keep talking up the telescope. Nothing works, and suddenly Nicole says, “Eugene Berkstrom misses you.” Janet is speechless and then looks around the table, realizing the friends are onto her. She rushes into the kitchen and Sandra follows, asking about Eugene. Janet claims he’s just a boy at school and that she’s tired and wants to send her friends home.
Claire and Simon insist Nicole screwed up by mentioning Eugene. Nicole points out their telescope plan wasn’t getting anywhere, and everyone tells Xavier that staring at Janet without blinking wasn’t helping. Nicole finally confesses she saw Eugene and that Mr. Martin probably set the fire that killed him and Janet.
Simon speaks to Janet alone in the kitchen, insisting she can trust them not to blow her cover. He tells her that Mr. Martin’s gone and Dawn crossed over, which means she can, too. Unfortunately, the custodian starts vacuuming the school library and Janet hears the noise coming from the phone in Simon’s pocket. She grabs it and places it in boiling water.
Janet warns Simon it’s time for him to leave, holding a knife to get her point clearly across.
Since Janet hung up, the ghosts can’t listen anymore. Quinn convinces Rhonda to go with her to the band room; she has something to share. After Quinn and Rhonda leave, Yuri thanks Charley for finding him and making him leave the pottery studio.
Wally and Maddie have fun in the pool, discussing the afterlife and how Wally imagines the great beyond. He doesn’t think it will ever get better than this.
Over at Maddie’s, Simon and Claire are still upset that Nicole visited Eugene. Before leaving, Xavier asks Sandra about a framed photo and realizes the fisherman he saw when he was dying in the hospital is Maddie’s dead dad! He posts a message on the Weird Wisconsin board to his friend and Nicole reads it, suddenly realizing she’s been talking to Xavier this whole time.
Quinn has Rhonda listen to the next verse of Margery’s song. Quinn’s written down the lyrics, and it’s obvious that Margery was calling herself, not Rhonda, a fool. Margery blamed herself for not helping Rhonda when she needed her. Margery’s song is about how much she misses Rhonda and the place that she held in her heart.
“Maybe we’ve all been looping on the wrong things,” says Quinn. Rhonda asks to keep the paper with the lyrics and smiles with tears in her eyes as she thanks Quinn.
Yuri and Charley keep thinking about ways to get Janet to give up Maddie’s body. Yuri’s sure Janet’s freaking out but not showing it. Charley makes his move, sort of, and asks Yuri to go with him to Wally’s class reunion. Charley makes it clear it’s a party not a date and Yuri replies, “Why can’t it be?” and then smiles.
Wally and Maddie are walking through the hallway when they hear Mr. Anderson. He’s not sure what’s going on but is happy to see Maddie. He hugs her and Wally, and then wonders who Wally is. Mr. Anderson says he took a box to his car and came up to get the other one, but it keeps unpacking itself. Mr. Martin must have taken Mr. Anderson’s body!
Nicole, Xavier, Simon, and Claire are still parked outside Maddie’s house when Mr. Anderson pulls up. They’re shocked and do not know why he’d show up there. Mr. Anderson hands Sandra a novel to give to Maddie, happy to hear she’s back home. He promises to come back by tomorrow.
Janet takes the trash out, including Fahrenheit 451, the book Mr. Anderson just dropped off. She’s beside the trashcan when a hooded figure puts a pillowcase over her head from behind.
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