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‘Ghosts’ Showrunners Confirm Season 6 Time Jump After Shocking Finale Cliffhanger [Exclusive]
Editor’s Note: This article contains spoilers for the Season 6 finale of Ghosts.
Just like that, the first hour-long finale for Ghosts has officially come and gone. While Sam (Rose McIver) and Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar) landed some pretty major wins in the thrilling and chaotic climax of the two episodes, Season 5 also leaves us on one of the most emotional cliffhangers we’ve ever had. When complications keep Pete (Richie Moriarty), Jay, and Kyle (Ben Feldman) overseas longer than they intended, Pete’s heroism in the fight to save Woodstone leads to him completely disappearing before the trio can make it home. Where he’s gone, and what that disappearance means, is something we’ll have to ponder all summer until the series returns in October.
To unpack the wildly eventful pair of episodes — and get a taste of what’s to come — I sat down with showrunners Joe Port and Joe Wiseman. During our conversation, we spoke about why they chose to solve some of Sam and Jay’s more expected cliffhangers with Sam’s movie script and saving the mansion, making that bonkers lore drop with “Fancy Nancy,” and what to expect from Season 6’s opening holiday specials. The pair also confirmed that there will be a time jump, breaking tradition from previous season finales.
After a few weeks of financial and commercial struggles for Sam and Jay as they dealt with the domino effect of benefiting from Trevor’s job without actually paying taxes on his income, the finale hands each half of our favorite living couple a huge win. In “Across the Pond,” Jay, with a little help from Kyle, Pete, and Halloween’s mummy ghost, Amenhotep (Farhang Ghajar), gets the proof they need to declare Woodstone a historic landmark and prevent Evercreek from tearing it down and building a data center. Meanwhile, Sam stands up for herself after a rousing and heartfelt pep talk from the ghosts — and in doing so, manages to not only sell her movie script but also guarantee that she gets to be the one writing it.
“We wanted to give them a win,” said Joe Wiseman when asked about delivering these two high-stakes moments for our heroes. “We spend a lot of time putting them in situations where they have financial difficulty or other types of difficulty, and that’s because that makes compelling stories, and those issues often don’t go away immediately,” he explained. “But by the end of the season, we wanted to end it on a mostly positive note. We were obviously heading toward a very heavy cliffhanger, so we thought that would be set up well by having a moment of joy and victory before we see Pete disappear.”
‘Ghosts’ Showrunners Unpack Pete’s Disappearance and “Fancy Nancy”
As far as the cliffhanger Season 5 does end on, Ghosts has officially entered uncharted territory. Ending a season with the implication that we might lose a beloved character is not entirely new for the series — Season 2 sees someone get sucked off, Isaac gets yanked into the dirt in Season 3, and by the end of Season 4, Jay has accidentally signed up for a one-way ticket to hell. While Ghosts will certainly find a way to bring Pete back (Moriarty has made no moves to leave the series), this is the first time we actually see one of our ghosts disappear.
When asked about finally going there with Pete, Joe Port explained that this possibility was set up from the inception of his ghost power. “This is something that we’ve touched upon, is Pete’s jeopardy when he’s gone from the property for too long and starts to disappear,” he told Collider. “The few other times that he’s been worried about making it back, he’s made it back just in time. So, we were waiting for a moment to have him not safely make it back, and then, obviously, the end of the season felt like the right time to do that, especially coupled with Pete, in a very Pete fashion, stepping up and sacrificing to help save Woodstone and Sam and Jay.”
While it leaves the season on a somber note, Port and Wiseman are not treating this moment like the end of a fan-favorite character. Instead, the writer duo is excited to dig into the mystery of what’s actually happened to Pete and the possibilities that finally pulling the trigger on this Chekhov’s gun opens up for the show. “So, now we’re left in an interesting position, which is figuring out what that means and where did Pete go, and what will happen to him? So, it’s left us with a lot of fun questions,” said Port.
Pete’s disappearance is far from the only major plot twist of the episodes. When it comes down to declaring the house a historical landmark, the missing piece of the puzzle arrives in the form of Woodstone’s most iconic basement ghost, Nancy (Betsy Sodaro). When asked what they look for in terms of story wiggle room for adding a lore drop like the reveal that our beloved dirt troll was once a princess, Wiseman revealed that her “Fancy Nancy” backstory was an idea they’d been wanting to deploy for multiple seasons. “So the idea of Nancy — we called it ‘Fancy Nancy’ — came up probably a few seasons ago as we were talking about, like, ‘Okay, what was her backstory?’ And I’m glad we waited because it feels more impactful,” said Wiseman. “I’m glad we waited for a story where it could have a huge consequence for Sam, Jay, and the house. We thought it’d be a surprising ghost, whose stature was substantial enough that it would designate the property as a historical property.”
Ultimately, all of the pieces came together perfectly in the Season 5 finale, allowing Wiseman, Port, and finale writers Akilah Green, Skander Halim, Brian Bahe, and Greg Worswick to find the funniest and most satisfying way to finally pull off the big reveal. Wiseman continued:
“We didn’t always see her as a princess, but it seems, as we were breaking out the story, that that was a funny detail, and it just felt like the right time. It felt like we had this funny idea, and then we had a story that was colliding with it, where it could provide a satisfying solution, and I think that’s why we did it. [Betsy’s] so funny, and flashbacks are always fun to do. Our crew is so good at costumes and sets and props and all that stuff, and it really enriches the series and makes it feel special. It’s fun.”
What To Expect From ‘Ghosts’ Season 6
For the first time since the gap between Seasons 1 and 2, Ghosts will jump forward several months when Season 6 officially premieres in October later this year with a 1-hour Halloween special. While Port did not confirm or deny whether we’d get to see Sam filming her holiday rom-com in Joan’s (Taylor Ortega) old stomping grounds — or even Hollywood North, aka Vancouver, as a nod to Ghosts itself filming in Canada — he did confirm a time jump is on the books. “We’re very familiar with filming in Canada. We shoot Ghosts and now Eternally Yours in Montreal,” he laughed. “So, yeah, we are going to do a time jump because when we come back, we’re starting with a Halloween special that’s, like, an hour-long Halloween special. So, we’re going to pick up several months after the finale and catch up with what’s been going on, and catch up on what’s happening with Sam’s movie and what’s happening with the ghosts, and what has become of Pete, if anything. So, there’s a lot to divine.”
With such a significant jump on the horizon, anything could happen at Woodstone — including some major relationship shifts. When asked about the ever-evolving romances on the show, Wiseman played his cards close to his chest, but revealed that the end of Season 5 sets up some interesting potential conflicts for two of our favorite couples. “It seems like Thor [Devan Chandler Long] and Flower [Sheila Carrasco] have kind of been sort of trucking along. Again, we’re very early in the writing process. We’re on day three. But obviously, it seems like we may want to put a couple of obstacles in their way,” he teased. “Flower has this new position as ghost representative; perhaps that’ll somehow affect them. We hinted at that in one of the latter episodes, where Thor was kind of rattled because he felt like he wasn’t important enough. Perhaps that thread will play through.”
Meanwhile, Pete’s disappearance leaves his relationship with Alberta (Danielle Pinnock) up in the air. “Alberta obviously is going to be very affected by Pete disappearing,” Wiseman told Collider. “We bring up questions of when do you move on? How do you know? What do you do? Etc., etc.” Though updates were sparse on fan-favorite pairings like Hetty (Rebecca Wisocky) and Trevor (Asher Grodman), Nigel (John Hartman) and Isaac (Brandon Scott Jones), or Joan and Sasappis (Román Zaragoza), Wiseman promised plenty of juicy interpersonal drama ahead, saying, “We’re going to continue all those storylines. We agree with you. It feels like ghosts have nothing to do and they’re all trapped in a house together; it seems like they would be coupling up and hooking up.”
Despite Season 6’s unique rollout, Port and Wiseman confirmed that production plans aren’t all that different from years past. They’ve officially opened the writers’ rooms for both Ghosts and Eternally Yours and are planning to film both shows concurrently, with cameras expected to begin rolling at the end of the summer. The season premiere will officially serve as both their first hour-long premiere and first hour-long Halloween special. “We’ve never done that before for Halloween, so that’s going to be very exciting,” said Port. While Wiseman couldn’t reveal any plot details, given the early stages of the writing process, he did confirm that both specials will serve as the beginning of the season rather than separate standalone pieces. He explained:
“They are going to be specials, but they’re not going to be standalone. We are going to be addressing the Pete cliffhanger. We’re going to be addressing everything. It’s just going to be wrapped up into an hour-long Halloween and Christmas episode. These aren’t specials in that they’re freestanding. They’re official canon in respect to the timeline that they’re in. As far as what’s going to happen, obviously, they’re going to be big and fun. They’re always fun. Hour-longs are fun. Like I mentioned, we’re only day three into the writers’ room, but we already have a ton of really interesting ideas flying around.”
Ghosts Season 6 has not set an official release date yet. All previous seasons are available now on Paramount+. Stay tuned at Collider for more updates on all things Ghosts.
- Release Date
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October 7, 2021
- Directors
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Christine Gernon, Jaime Eliezer Karas, Katie Locke O’Brien, Nick Wong, Jude Weng, Pete Chatmon, Richie Keen, Alex Hardcastle, Kimmy Gatewood, Matthew A. Cherry, Cortney Carrillo
- Writers
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Emily Schmidt, John Timothy, Lauren Bridges, Sophia Lear, Guy Endore-Kaiser, Rishi Chitkara, Julia Harter, Skander Halim, Zora Bikangaga
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Rose McIver
Samantha Arondekar
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Utkarsh Ambudkar
Jay Arondekar
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