You already missed the best supernatural murder mystery of the year

The perfect murder mystery is a rare thing to come by these days. Procedurals are a dime a dozen, of course; for FBI agents alone there’s a whole universe. But the art of a murder mystery is something more specific. Plenty of episodic procedurals borrow the idea and contain each investigation to a single episode; others draw it out over the season and stake it all on the landing. But School Spirits on Paramount Plus has managed the impossible, delivering an excellent pulpy murder mystery — with supernatural secrets to boot.

In the beginning, School Spirits’ premise is basic: High school senior Maddie (Peyton List) has been missing for a few days and is presumed dead. The evidence includes blood smears in the boiler room of her high school, and the fact that she’s trapped at the school as a ghost, watching life carry on without her and wondering who it was who killed her. 

But basic, here, should not be seen as an equivalent of “limited.” School Spirits’ first season is a ton of fun, providing supernatural hijinks to explore at the same time it pokes around a murder on this mortal coil. With the fellow ghosts of those who died at high school (of which there are startlingly many, ranging from a football QB who died on the field to a girl murdered by her guidance counselor in the ’60s), Maddie is able to see things that investigators on this side of the spectral veil can’t. Especially once Maddie finds out that she can somehow talk to her best friend, Simon (Kristian Ventura) — and, for some reason, only Simon — the show is able to bounce around suspects and planes of existence with ease, burning through details of the case at the same time we’re bonding with the ghostly cast who are all trying their best to move on.

Given how much of a mystery lives in the reveal, I approached the end of the first season with some ambivalence. I truly had no idea where it was going, which was exciting; maybe Maddy solved it and future seasons moved on to new ghost-related mysteries. Maybe she didn’t and it kept going, but I wasn’t sure I wanted that either. Across the first season, School Spirits buoyantly keeps the mood up, but isn’t afraid to confront the tragedy of its premise: Maddy is stuck watching her mother unravel at the thought of losing her; dark secrets come to light and ruin the lives of those she cared about. Could I handle a second season that pulled me deeper into the tragedy of what did her in? 

But at the end of season 1, School Spirits delivers a perfect twist. The kind of damn good development that feels like a wave finally cresting — the kind of thing that makes you see what the show has been working toward, and what it could continue working to. 

I won’t spoil anything (I want people to go watch it and talk about it with me), but suffice it to say that School Spirits once again did the impossible, with a second season that delivered again. When you thought the story might zig, it zagged, finding new pairings to bring out new facets of characters. All the while, it never stopped making its characters feel fun to watch. It felt like a harmonious balance between its genres — teen show, supernatural exploits, and (of course) murder mystery — that found a way to enhance the effects of each one. Now, with another last-minute twist that left me hanging, I’m eagerly awaiting a third season — and however many more they want to deliver after that. 

School Spirits is streaming on Paramount Plus.