‘School Spirits’ Season 3 Scares Up a Non-Binary Ghost

I am so delighted to be here talking about School Spirits, a fun little show on Paramount+ about teenage ghosts, trauma, identity, and the mysteries of the afterlife.

If you’re reading this review of School Spirits‘ third season, you probably have already heard of it at least, but if not let me give you a quick rundown of the general premise: Maddie is a teenager who got bonked real hard on the head in the boiler room of her high school and became a ghost, and discovered there’s a whole community of ghosts. Turns out, when you die at the high school, you get stuck at the high school. Maddie’s best friend Simon is still alive and for some reason can see and hear Maddie, so Maddie becomes the bridge between the worlds of the living and the dead to solve the mystery of what happened to her and why her ghost friends are stuck in the high school. It’s a really fun ensemble show that balances the dark nature of the genre and the humor of the situation with ease.

The ghosts that inhabit the school come from all walks of life and all time periods, like a hippie from the 70s, a football player from the 80s, and so on. There are some queer friends among them too including Charley, a nerdy type who was closeted in life but out in the afterlife as he starts up a romance with Yuri, a quiet pottery guy from the 70s. And also Rhonda, a 60s beatnik who gave me queer vibes from the SECOND she was on my screen scowling. (She is generally pessimistic and grumpy and I love her.) Plus, Quinn, who died in 2004 in a bus crash and who was in a trance with the rest of the band members until Rhonda snapped Quinn out of it.

There was a subtle plot last season that I personally interpreted as queer. Rhonda had a friend named Marjorie in life who became famous after she graduated and wrote a song about Rhonda called Foolish Girl. Ever since she first learned of it, Rhonda had assumed Marjorie was making fun of her in the song, and was furious because they were friends and used to write songs together in life. That is, until Quinn hears the song and tells Rhonda it’s not making fun of her at all. It’s about how Marjorie blames herself, and I personally picked up a little sapphic longing in the last verse:

It’s me who was the foolish girl
You slipped right through my fingers
Oh I miss you to pieces
Time slippеd away
You didn’t know your place
You didn’t know the place you hеld in my heart

Feels like “closeted singer sneaks secretly gay lyrics into her song for her dead crush” to me. Plus, Sarah Yarkin was on the same page as me and has talked about how as she was coming to terms with her own queerness, she felt like Rhonda was queer too, and so it was.

That brings us to this season, whose first three episodes dropped this week, and to Quinn, who has officially been declared LGBTQ+ — and not in the way I anticipated. In the first three episodes of this season, we learn that Quinn is hiding a secret. The ghosts think it’s something dramatic because they realize Quinn isn’t in any of the yearbooks. (Well, the boys do; Rhonda spends the episode defending Quinn every chance she gets.) But it turns out to be less sinister than a secret identity, and more emotional, because Quinn says nobody could find them in a yearbook due to some very purposeful and skilled camera dodging, and because Quinn isn’t the name that would be there.

Quinn had a different name in school but they hated it, and they hated the frilly dresses their mother tried to make them wear, but they died in the crash before they had a chance to be their true selves. So when Rhonda snapped them out of their marching band haze, they saw an opportunity to get a chance to be themselves. They chose Quinn because “Quinn isn’t a he or a she” and that felt right for Quinn. They never meant to deceive anyone, because the truth is, they were actually being the most authentic they’d ever been.

When Quinn is done giving their speech to the gang, they look to Rhonda with a dash of hope and fear in their eyes, but Rhonda has tears in hers and she gives them a reassuring smile.

I knew the actor who plays Quinn, Ci Hang Ma, was non-binary so I was wondering if Quinn would be too, and I’m really glad they’re making it a specific storyline. I love the conversations Quinn and Rhonda are having about it and how accepting their ghost peers have been so far, even the ones who died decades before being non-binary was something everyone knew about. Also they haven’t talked about Quinn’s pronouns yet (no one used a pronoun at all for them after the speech) so maybe Maddie will teach them all about pronoun options or maybe everyone will just start using they/them pronouns for Quinn without fanfare; but as you can see, I’m going with they/them for now because Quinn said they picked their name because it wasn’t he or she and neither are they, so this feels right for now.

When talking to Rhonda about trying to be their authentic self, Rhonda tells the story about how she used to dress quite differently until she stumbled into a place of poetry and music where she finally felt like she could let out her inner beatnik (thanks, in part, to special guest star Lizzy McAlpine), which is why she is so supportive of Quinn during this time of discovery.

It’s also why she maybe went overboard trying to find Quinn an outfit they’d feel comfortable in, just like changing her own clothes helped her feel more at home. When Quinn ultimately decides they like what they were already wearing, that’s just fine by Rhonda, too. During this really sweet scene, there’s a moment where Quinn asks Rhonda if she’s mad. They ask her twice actually, for two different reasons, and both times Rhonda — perpetually grumpy, kind-of-always-a-little-mad Rhonda — softly tells them that no, she’s not mad. Ice queen whose heart is melted by one specific person is one of my all-time favorite character tropes, so I’m really excited to see where this season takes these two.

There’s also an interesting storyline going on with Yuri and Charley this season, with Charley feeling insecure about Yuri being more sexually experienced than him, and it’s manifesting as biphobia toward his boyfriend. These characters have been dead so long and seem so wise, it’s easy to forget that they’re really just teenagers sometimes…until they do something to remind you. Like Charley somehow making Yuri’s emotional trauma about his own insecurities. Hopefully Charley can get out of his own way and see that Yuri being bisexual has nothing to do with their relationship and they have more conversations about it.

School Spirits gets to explore different decades and what the people from those decades might have been like all in one show. They could have used it as an excuse to make everyone horrible to each other, but instead they showed how each of them felt different and out of place in life, and that’s what brought them together in death. It’s a really beautiful way for them to see that even though they come from such different worlds, there’s a thread of sameness that connects them and makes them even better at celebrating their differences.

The first three episodes really set up some exciting things to explore this season. Simon is stuck in the world of the dead despite being alive, Maddie has to deal with her fellow teens seeing her again and keeps getting caught talking to “herself” and is getting bullied about it, Xavier can see ghosts at the hospital the same way Nicole is trying to infiltrate the mean girls who are led by the superintendent’s daughter Livia. Said superintendent wants to demolish the school — and what would that mean for the ghosts who are stuck there. It’s a lot of fun escalation for this show I already enjoy so much. It’s dark and emotional while also being funny and smart. The needle drops are SO good and getting better every year; hell, even the episode titles are great. (Some of my favorite from previous seasons are My So-Called Death, Ghoul Intentions, Madison’s Body, and Can’t Hauntly Wait. This season some eps we have to look forward to are The Bereftest Club and Midsomester. Appropriately, the episode where Nicole had to Cady Heron some fellow teens was called Mean Ghouls.)

I’ve been really enjoying this show for years and I’m glad there’s finally enough canon queer content for me to be here talking about it with you all. I think Peyton List the Younger is really incredible in this show, tackling the absurdities in stride with the heavy-hitting storylines. And I love the depth Sarah Yarkin brings to Rhonda, and that we get to see Ci Hang Ma explore Quinn further. I look forward to what the rest of the season will scare up for these two, and the rest of the gang.