The first three episodes of School Spirits season 2 are now available to stream on Paramount+. In this article, we provide a detailed recap of the season 2 premiere, titled "Whatever Happened to Maddie Nears?"
Spoilers ahead from the School Spirits season 2 premiere!
Maddie wants answers and Mr. Martin seems to hold the key to the truth
The season 2 premiere picks up right where the season 1 finale left off. Maddie now knows what really happened to her. She's not dead after all. Maddie learns that a ghost named Janet, believed to have crossed over just before she entered the afterlife at the high school, never actually moved on. Instead, she took over Maddie’s body, and Mr. Martin was there when it happened. As Maddie hears her ghost friends (Rhonda, Wally, and Charley) banging on the door of the fallout shelter, she’s about to open it when she notices Mr. Martin standing nearby.
She questions him about his involvement in her possession, but he just stands there in hesitation, his eyes betraying a flicker of guilt. A flashback then unfolds, showing the moment Janet took control of Maddie's body. In this flashback, we see that after Janet collided with Maddie and possessed her, Maddie was knocked back and struck a pipe in the boiler room. The blood on the pipe was hers. Now inhabiting Maddie's body, Janet separates herself from the unconscious Maddie on the floor. Mr. Martin approaches Janet, attempting to reason with her, but she flees before he can get through to her. The flashback ends, and the episode cuts back to the present.
Realizing he's gotten himself into a tricky situation, Mr. Martin spins around and dashes through the door, fleeing from Maddie. Maddie, desperate for answers, immediately follows him. Meanwhile, the teen ghosts trapped in the fallout shelter find a way to escape through a secret passageway. However, since the secret passageway leads to outside off school grounds, Rhonda, Wally, and Charley are all thrown back to the exact spots in the school where they met their deaths. After reappearing, they quickly get up and race to find Maddie.
Maddie chases Mr. Martin all the way outside the school, but just as she’s about to catch up, he vanishes while running past the band spirits who are practicing. As Maddie looks around for Mr. Martin, Rhonda, Wally, and Charley come running towards her. Meanwhile, Simon struggles to accept the possibility that the Maddie he's been speaking to might only be a figment of his imagination. Fuming with anger, he begins ripping the posters off his bedroom wall.
In Maddie's body, Janet is on a bus traveling to Detroit. The episode then shifts back to the flashback of the day Janet possessed Maddie’s body. After fleeing from Mr. Martin, Janet took the secret passageway that led outside the school grounds. Mr. Martin tried to stop her, but as a spirit, he was thrown back to the location where he died. The flashback then ends.
At the hospital, Nicole and Claire chat outside Xavier's room as he lies in a bed in a coma. While Claire wants to go straight to the police and tell them that Maddie is responsible for what happened to Xavier, Nicole convinces her to wait until Xavier wakes up. Being one of Maddie's closest friends, Nicole refuses to believe that Maddie would hurt Xavier. She believes there's more to it. If only she knew...
Back at Split River High School, Maddie explains to Rhonda, Wally, and Charley that Janet took over her body. Charley then reveals to the group that he had taken some of Mr. Martin's secret documents before leaving the fallout shelter. These documents contain notes Mr. Martin had been keeping on all the teen ghosts at the school. Charley hands over the documents to Maddie.
Rhonda asks Maddie where Mr. Martin is now, and Maddie explains that he disappeared after he ran outside. Rhonda then tells Maddie that Mr. Martin had been keeping belongings of theirs that they had when they died in the fallout shelter. After looking over the documents Charly gave her, Maddie tells the rest of the group that they need to split up. While she and Rhonda continue looking for Mr. Martin, Wally and Charley will retrieve the rest of Mr. Martin's documents in the fallout shelter.
Back on the bus heading to Detroit, it makes a brief stop at a corner store. Janet chooses to remain on the bus while the other passengers get off. However, she quickly exits after noticing a security guard aboard. After buying some items in the store, she decides to ditch the bus and hitchhike.
With the fallout shelter door locked, Maddie and the teen ghost gang can’t get inside. To make matters worse, the only other entrance is through the secret passageway, but the spirits can't use it without being sent back to the locations where they died. Charley suggests that Maddie get Simon to help, but she and him aren't on good terms. However, she tries her best to convince Simon. It takes a lot, though.
Elsewhere, Claire and Nicole find out where Maddie aka Janet might be. After calling the bus station, Claire learns that a passenger was unaccounted for on a bus that recently left town. They believe it's Maddie. Claire tells Nicole that she and Simon should go check it out the next day.
Back at Split River High School, Wally rummages through Mr. Martin's belongings and finds a map marked with the locations in the school where students died. One of the marked spots is the school’s greenhouse. Knowing that Simon has been eating his lunch there to avoid her, Maddie decides to head there first.
Desperate to get him to help her open the fallout shelter door, Maddie tries to appeal to Simon's emotions by telling him an old story from their childhood. However, Simon gives her the cold shoulder. In a last-ditch effort, Maddie tells Simon to look up Janet Hamilton on the internet. But he ignores her and heads for the door. As he's about to leave the greenhouse, he runs into Nicole. Nicole shares what she and Claire learned about Maddie, but Simon isn’t open to it. In fact, he tells her that they should report Maddie to the police before leaving.
Elsewhere, Janet arrives at her old, now abandoned house. As she walks through the empty home, she recalls a memory from the past with her grandmother. After the memory ends, Janet heads outside to visit the gravesite where her grandmother and father are buried. As she looks around, she notices a tombstone with her name and starts digging it up.
Back at Split River High School, Simon finishes his exam and hands it in to Mr. Figueroa. Before he can leave, Mr. Figueroa thanks him for passing along the note that Charly had written for him. This is what it takes for Simon to snap out of his frustration regarding Maddie. While sitting in his car, Simon looks up Janet on the internet and realizes that Maddie wasn't lying. He then heads to the school cafeteria, where Maddie and the teen ghost gang are gathered. After a brief heart-to-heart, Simon finally agrees to help Maddie.
After opening the door to the fallout shelter, Maddie, Simon, and the teen spirits walk into the room and discover a bunch of markings on the wall. As they examine them, they come to the shocking realization that Mr. Martin had been keeping Janet confined there. The episode then cuts to Janet, lying in her grave, tears streaming down her face.
The final scene of the first episode shows Xavier appearing to wake up from his coma. As he walks through the hospital, it becomes evident that most people don’t acknowledge his presence. Gradually, it’s revealed that those who do recognize him are actually deceased. Is Xavier a spirit, having passed away? The answer remains unclear, as the episode concludes with the medical team attempting to revive him while his heart flatlines. Just when it seems like Xavier might be lost for good, his eyes suddenly snap open.
Dun dun duuun! I guess we'll figure out Xavier's fate in the next episode of School Spirits season 2. Now, it's time to move on to our episode 2 recap!