Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for ‘Ghosts’ Season 4.It finally happened. After a century of open hatred for the Irish,Hetty Woodstone (Rebecca Wisocky)has discovered that her own “blood runs green.” In the latest episode ofGhosts, Season 4’s “The Not-So-Silent Partner,” Hetty suggests to Sam (Rose McIver) that their family is rumored to be descended from the royal family. After a clever reference to McIver’sA Christmas Princemovies, Sam tells Hetty that she can actually use an ancestry site to look up whether the rumors are true, and much to her own comeuppance, Hetty readily agrees. However, rather than finding a secret princess smuggled out of the monarchy,Hetty and Sam discover that they’re descended from a young woman born in Cork, Ireland.
From the beginning ofGhosts,there have been a handful ofconstants in each character— with Hetty, you can always count on her thirst for power, her love of cocaine, and her grudge against the Irish. In the first episode, Hetty lumps the Irish in with “murderers and perverts” in her list of the worst hands her proud home might fall into after its previous owner dies.Hetty’s disdain for the Irish has been a consistent through-line ever since, with one of the reasons behind her hatred appearing inSeason 2 whenGhostsrevealed her husband’s mistress(a veritable carbon copy of a younger Hetty) to be Irish. However, with that personal conflict resolved within the same episode that it’s introduced, Hetty doesn’t give up her prejudice against the country, continuing to make jokes about tramps, dockworkers, and other people she deems well below her station. While to the audience it may have always been fairly clear that Hetty has some distinctly Irish traits, her “flaming red hair and alabaster skin” asTrevor (Asher Grodman) points out, but for her, this revelation up-ends her entire worldview.
‘Ghosts’ Teaches Hetty That the Irish Are People Too
To make matters worse, just before the discovery, Hetty makes sure to laythe possibility of her being royaltyon so thick that the truth quite literally knocks her down a peg. When Hetty learns the truth about the Woodstones, it naturallysends her into a personal identity crisis. Sprawling across a chaise and throwing a genuine temper tantrum at the news, Hetty mourns her previously held “holier than thou” worldview. When Trevor gives her hope that the website might be wrong, suggesting that the only way to really know is to have Sam send in a DNA test, Hetty is in for yet another rude awakening. Before she can bring her new plan to Sam, Thor — the property’s eldest ghost — confesses that he’s known this entire time that her ancestors were Irish, having watched them decide to hide their heritage before Hetty was born.
Because time is, unfortunately, a flat circle, the19th-century hatred for Irish immigrantsand refugees sadly shouldn’t sound unfamiliarto modern-day Americans. When the Irish fled the famine, a crisis made worse by the neglect of the British government, they sought sanctuary in the then-burgeoning country of America. And while some welcomed newcomers with open arms, others dismissed the sick and malnourished as a disease-ridden threat, causing unnecessary prejudice to run rampant during Hetty’s lifetime. In the latest episode ofGhosts,Thor reveals that Hetty’s ancestors decided to hide that part of their identity as a shameful secret at the time.
“I Can’t Choose Favorites”: Rebecca Wisocky on Hetty’s Power, Relationship Surprises, and What’s Ahead in ‘Ghosts’ Season 4
Plus what to expect with Hetty’s power, her surprising background, the return of Elias, and her relationship with Trevor.
Hetty Goes Through Some Much-Needed Personal Development
Not only is this an excellent way to gently knock Hetty off her high horse for some lighthearted comedy, but it also highlights one of the show’s most underrated strengths. Half of the ghosts at the mansion have been there for more than a century, givingtheir relationshipsdeep roots beyond what we’ve seen on screen. While laughing at Hetty having to learn a real lesson for once, we also get a beautiful emotional beat between her and Thor that calls back to Season 1, as well. When Hetty was a child, she was able to see Thor and believed him to be some kind of imaginary friend who would sing her to sleep. While part of Hetty’s embarrassment in this episode is rooted in the idea that Thor has been secretly mocking her this whole time, her social wounds are somewhat salved by the revelation that he only kept the secret to protect her. We then get one ofGhosts’ sweetest emotional beats all season as Thor tells Hetty he loves her, and she says it back in a surprisingly genuine moment from both of them.
We also get the episode’s all-too-apt social message wrapped in some sage wisdom from Thor. Having been on the planet for over a thousand years, witnessing countless conflicts between groups of people who deem others “different” for silly reasons, Thor tells Hetty that we’re all just human at the end of the day — except for Danes, of course. In a fun button to end the episode, Trevor, Thor, and Pete (Richie Moriarty) give Hetty a crash course onthe joys of being Irish, featuring the talents ofOscar Wilde,Enya, and the extremely her-typeColin Farrell. After this episode, it’ll be exciting to see if Hetty’s Irish jokes continue now in a complimentary sense, or if this revelation may even lead to herlong-dormant ghost power.
Ghostsairs every Thursday on CBS at 8:30 pm ET. You can watch previous episodes on Paramount+ in the U.S.
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Ghosts (US)
When a cash-strapped couple inherits a crumbling country estate, they soon discover it is inhabited by an eclectic group of spirits, leading to comedic encounters as they navigate cohabitation with their supernatural roommates.
