Exclusive Interview
‘School Spirits’ Bosses Talk Future of Maddie & Wally’s Love Story in Possible Season 4
What To Know
- Maddie and ghost Wally are still in a relationship in School Spirits Season 3.
- Executive producers Megan Trinrud and Oliver Goldstick break down Maddie and Wally’s choice to continue their romance, despite their circumstances.
- They hint at unresolved challenges and possible future developments if the show is renewed for Season 4.
Maddie (Peyton List) and her ghostly boyfriend, Wally (Milo Manheim), haven’t had an easy go of it in School Spirits. The first hurdle they face in Season 3 is that they can’t touch each other anymore, but their relationship only grows stronger. They even go as far as to confess their love in Episode 7 — only to be separated in the finale.
When Swooon spoke to School Spirits executive producers Megan Trinrud, Nate Trinrud, and Oliver Goldstick, they explained their thought process behind continuing Maddie and Wally’s romance in Season 3, despite their complicated circumstances and possible expiration date on their relationship. (Warning: Major spoilers for the School Spirits Season 3 finale ahead.)
“This isn’t to necessarily say this is the exact path we would take with Maddie and Wally, but I do think that relationships that can be very deep and very real and very important and aren’t always linear,” Megan said. “It’s not always like, we’re together [and] we stay together forever, or we’re together, and we break up… We change, and we grow, and it doesn’t necessarily mean things end.”
The cocreator thinks Maddie and Wally are an interesting opportunity to “explore the limits of what love means and what love can do.” She continued, “But I think in this moment [when they say ‘I love you’], they are feeling something so pure and real and strong that they do both feel like, beyond time and space, beyond the limits of everything, they’ll find each other.”
The executive producers hadn’t yet received a Season 4 renewal when we spoke, but they were already thinking about Maddie and Wally’s future. They kept the details under wraps, but teased the obstacles the couple would continue to face.
“It’s going to be interesting to see what the challenges are that they would have to overcome, if they can overcome them, or if it is a thing where, sometimes, you don’t get to say a proper goodbye and say, ‘This is it. It was beautiful, and I love you, but it’s over,'” Megan said. “Sometimes things just happen, and you can’t control them. And I think that that’s just real. I think that’s just a very real thing that happens in love stories and familial stories and friendships.
Goldstick added that when Megan and Nate started Season 1, School Spirits was about Maddie and her mom, and how their relationship made Maddie unable to trust and let people in. “Wally’s a stepping stone as well into this relationship of her own growing up, her own self-realization,” he said.
The EP explained the value that Wally has brought to Maddie’s life, whether their relationship is or isn’t finite. “Whether it continues or not, Wally is someone she never would have given the time of day to,” Goldstick said. “In the real world, she would have sat across the table from him, or across the lunch room and looked at him probably with some derision, and now it’s like this person actually opened up her heart and has changed her life.”
School Spirits, Season 3, Streaming Now, Paramount+
