Supernatural teen dramas may not be new to the television frontier, but one Paramount+ series has pushed the boundaries to new heights.School Spirits, created by sibling duoMegan TrinrudandNate Trinrud, was met with critical acclaim when it debuted in 2023. A little over a year later, the Trinruds and cast hit the stage ofNew York Comic Conto celebrate their upcoming Season 2. In addition to moderating the panel, Collider’sPerri Nemiroffalso had the opportunity to chat with this crewbeforetaking the stage.
Set in the fictional town of Split River, Wisconsin,School Spiritsfollows Maddie Nears (Peyton List), a teen stuck in the afterlife investigating her own mysterious disappearance. In the new season, Maddie knows how she ended up in the afterlife, but now she has to continue to forge forward in order to return to the living. The cast also includesSpencer MacPherson,Milo Manheim,Rainbow Wedell, andKiara Pichardo.
With a brand-new teaser out andSchool SpiritsSeason 2 set to release in 2025, the cast and creatives sat down with Nemiroff to discuss the deeply personal nature of the show, character developments, and what to expect for Season 2. Check out the whole conversation in the video above, or you can read the transcript below.
The Origins of ‘School Spirits’ Came From a “Dark Place”
“They always want to move toward the light.”
PERRI NEMIROFF:Because I didn’t get the chance to cover Season 1, I’d love to hear about the show’s origins to start. Can you tell me what story idea #1 was, the thing that started it all, but then also, did you have a breakthrough story moment, something that made you say to yourselves, “This idea can sustain a series?”
MEGAN TRINRUD: That’s such a good question.
NATE TRINRUD: The genesis for the story is maybe a little bit of a downer. Megan and I are the children of an alcoholic. We were in a very dark place, where we had to move home. We were in our mid-twenties. It was a very millennial experience of just going out into the world and doing something and winding up right back where we started. So, we had this moment where we were living at home, and we thought, “Oh, gosh,it kind of feels like we’ve started watching our lives from the outside.We’ve sort of been removed from it.“It was then that we started really re-binging a lot of the shows we grew up on, and we had this idea that was like, “Well, it feels a little bit like we are dead.”
MEGAN TRINRUD: Ghosts in our own life.
NATE TRINRUD: We were having to figure out how to become part of our lives again and get back into our own bodies and our own story. So, for us,the story ofSchool Spiritsstarted from this weird feeling in our own lives that we turned into a show.I think the big moment was probably just when we got out of that slump, we found a way through all that, and so that’s when we went, “This is a show, this is a journey, and this would be a really fun thing to do for young people."
MEGAN TRINRUD: I think it was also a matter of, we’re siblings, obviously, and we’ve always been really close. I think from a larger perspective, it was the moment we said, “We should take this seriously.” We’ve always liked working together and writing together, but we never thought of it as, “Oh, we could do this professionally someday.” I think being home together, living with our parents, finding ourselves again, it was like, “You know, this could be a job.” We did it for a long time, just as a hobby, and now, here we are. That was kind of a breakthrough, not of story but of taking it seriously.
How do you think School Spirits is going to resolve Maddie’s “death”?
So, at the end of Season 1 we learned that Maddie isn’t actually dead, but her body has been possessed by Janet… which was quite shocking, considering the whole season was about solving her murder! Now that they’ve started filming the second season of School Spirits, I’m curious to hear what folks think might happen with that plot line. If Maddie stays alive once her spirit is reunited with her body, what’s going to happen with her and her fledgling romance with Wally?? I need them to have a happy ending and that can’t happen if one of them is alive and the other is dead!
It’s a beautiful thing to be able to explore via a series. I always say one of the reasons why I gravitate towards genre storytelling most is because I feel like it’s often a more effective way to explore really difficult human truths that we might not be able to process the same way in a traditional drama.
MEGAN TRINRUD: I couldn’t agree more. That’s definitely helped us.
OLIVER GOLDSTICK: It coincided with COVID. The story, when I read it, was about isolation, and these two were going through that in a different way, as they just told you. I had two teenage sons living in their bedrooms, and one of them had just gone back to school wearing a mask. It was like a different world where you couldn’t see people’s faces. You didn’t know who to trust. Something had changed. I think their story, the narrative that these guys wanted to tell, first of all, they should also mentionthey start with a dark place, but they always told me—and it’s true — they always want to move toward the light.That was an important part of this show. Nate and Megan, that’s part of who they are, and it’s really beautiful. Also, I think the show was a perfect metaphor for a lot of kids who were completely isolated, who didn’t know who they could trust. You had Maddie waking up in a world where nothing made sense. In 2022, when we started this — or 2021, almost — that’s where we were.
‘School Spirits’ Season 2 Is Getting a More Supernatural Evolution
Speaking about paving the way to more stories in the future, we were laying the groundwork for the mystery in Season 1. What can you tease about Season 2 in terms of how it might have its own unique identity? Is there any kind of variation in style or tone or themes that might differentiate it from what we’ve already seen?
MEGAN TRINRUD: That’s such a good question. My brain is figuring out how to answer this without totally spoiling it, because everyone knows I am the accidental spoiler.
Soyou’regonna get all of my questions! [Laughs]
MEGAN TRINRUD: [Laughs] Truly! Everyone’s just watching me, waiting for me, to be like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” I think that there’s an evolution to the style of the show that is taking us into a place wherewe’re dealing with more supernatural issues, obviously, in this season. I think what was so much fun for us as creators in Season 1 was it was a supernatural premise very rooted in reality, and we really retain that in Season 2, but we have a little more fun with the supernatural elements of it. We get to know the ghost world and how it operates on a new level. I think people are gonna be really excited by that because we get to do some really beautiful, stylistic, exciting things. That’s maybe the biggest way.
GOLDSTICK: What happens to Maddie forces those who are dead in the ghost world to start reexamining their own deaths. Obviously, the person who they trusted the most may have been quite devious — Mr. Martin — so I think everyone knows by the end of Season 1, somebody who they felt had their best interests and wanted to help them cross over, find peace, may have had a whole other agenda. The idea of being lab rats, even if it’s nicer accommodations, is never fun, right?
Class Is in Session for ‘School Spirits’ Season 2
My poor cast members are gonna have a tough time answering this question because of spoilers! There’s one particular thing in theteaser trailerthat I latched onto. It is the Maddie voice-over when you say, “When it comes to facing your fears in life or death, facing yourself can be the hardest part.” For each of you, can you tease what they have to face about themselves in Season 2 that is different from Season 1?
PETYON LIST: I feel like it’s taking the themes from Season 1 and just going even deeper into that and exploring even more of that in a way that turns it all on its head from what we’ve seen. It’s like these characters are who they are, and they have to face it.
KRISTIAN VENTURA: I feel like Simon is always in action, and he’s taking so many risks, but this season, he really has to face and confront that if you keep giving someone your arm and your leg, eventually, you’re gonna run out of body parts. He’s a bit of a shadow. He’s a little bit of a sacrificial love.I think he helps Maddie without realizing that the more he helps her, the less time he has with her. We have no idea what happens when you find your body. It’s bittersweet. “I’m gonna help you remove yourself from my life.” He has to confront what he wants to do for himself.
SARAH YARKIN: Oh, that was so sad. This show is sad!
GOLDSTICK: Be funny now.
YARKIN: My character is just so fun. Nothing bad happened to her! Rhonda’s all light. [Laughs] No, seriously, I think a lot of Season 1, for the last 60 years, Rhonda is just keeping to herself, not trusting people, which is what led to her death. So, I think the challenge for Season 2 for her is to learn andtryto learn how to let people in.
NICK PUGLIESE: For all of the ghosts in the first season, we don’t think that we’re affected by what happened to Maddie at all, and then by the end, of course, we learn that we are very much affected by this, and this really touches the person that we trusted the most. This has happened to you before when you were alive. I think it’s finding out just how much it affects us. How deep does it go? How farbackdoes it go? How far does it reach?
YARKIN: Wow. That was beautiful!
Very well said. I’m very impressed.I’m gonna follow up these very thoughtful answers with something a little sillier. For my three spirits, I am curious, because I got to see Season 2, Episode 1 …
PUGLIESE:What? We haven’t even seen it!
YARKIN: Tell us what it looks like! Do you like it?!
‘School Spirits’: Our Biggest Unanswered Questions After Season 1
The cliffhangers in the Season 1 finale change everything.
I’ll tell you about what one particular thing looks like because it happened a couple of times in this episode. What is it like doing the scenes where they return to the place of their death?
PUGLIESE: They’re like stunts.
YARKIN: It was.
LIST: They are!
PUGLIESE: You have to have knee pads or something because they tell you, “Don’t hurt yourself,” but you know the shot’s gonna have to look cool, and you’re gonna have to run into it and hurt yourself. I, like, broke my back when I did this. [Laughs] I guess they’re short, little, not super-choreographed stunts, but you fall into it.
YARKIN: Rhonda crashes into the desks, and they kept being, like, “Faster, faster — don’t hurt yourself — faster.” I was like, “You want me to go faster?” I was like, “I want to go faster!” And they were like, “Are you sure?” Then they rigged all the desks together so that when I fell into them, I didn’t actually push them all — I’m not that strong. They pulled them all back as I fell into them. Sometimes, that’s the hardest acting. Like, “How do Iactlike I got hurt?” Why is that the hardest thing for me? “Now I’m upset,” and it all happened in, like, 0.5 seconds.
LIST: Exactly. I feel like I have to start jumping up and down, running in place. I even had a stunt double for the crash a few times. But the crash is different every time. Wherever you come from at the boundary, whatever position you’re in, it’s different every time.
Simon Has an Impossible Choice to Make in Season 2
Kristian, I wanted to tease a little bit about what I saw in that first episode of the new season. You have a lot on your shoulders when conveying the fact that he can’t trust himself because he doesn’t know what that photo of Maddie really means. This feels like an impossible question to answer, but what is it like shouldering that weight and making sure that the audience feels the internal struggle that he’s going through in that episode?
VENTURA: I think the most important thing for him is that he has to be inclined to choose sanity. He needs to say, “I have physical proof that she was in a car. Anything that she tries to persuade me to connect is me trying to choose my heart over my cognition.” I think the whole time, I’m just hoping. What is gonna make Simon believe that she’s a ghost?I think the answer is their friendship. It’s their love. That’s what ties them together. It’s soul versus mind.In order for him to believe that [Maddie’s] a ghost, he has to forsake his own intelligence. It’s classic. It’s actually like in the trial of Socrates in Athens; he had to choose when he was pleading for his life, his mind or his heart. They told him that he can’t teach, and then he actually defended his principles and said, “I accept my death. I’m not gonna try to plead for my life." So, he chose his heart over his own mind. That’s what I hope Simon gets to do, is connect with her again.
School SpiritsSeason 1is available to stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.
School Spirits
Maddie, a teen stuck in the afterlife investigating her own disappearance, goes on a crime-solving mission as she adjusts to high-school purgatory.
