Yahoo News Ghosts EPs on Cliffhanger Resolution: ‘We Didn’t Want an Inconsequential Ghost’ to Move On — Plus, Grade It!
Warning: The following contains spoilers for Ghosts’ Season 3 premiere. Proceed at your own risk!
A Flower has been plucked from the Ghosts ensemble.
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Thursday’s Season 3 premiere revealed that someone was indeed “sucked off,” and as Jay put it, it was one of main eight! As Sam and Jay frantically searched the property to find out who had moved on to the great beyond, one by one, the ghosts showed up — all except for Flower. Naturally, Thor was confronted with uncomfortable feelings after the loss of his girlfriend, while the others planned a memorial service for their friend.
Over the CBS comedy’s long hiatus, fans speculated that it would be a basement ghost or side character that went into the light, but “we didn’t want it to be an inconsequential, so to speak, ghost that had no ramifications for the rest of the house,” co-showrunner Joe Port tells TVLine in the below Q&A.
So when Flower’s portrayer, Sheila Carrasco, welcomed a daughter in November 2023, ahead of the start of production on Season 3, Port and co-showrunner Joe Wiseman “decided that we’d make [the best] out of the situation,” which limited the actress’ availability, Wiseman explains.
But have viewers really seen the last of the hippie? And has Flower really been “sucked off”? Read on as Wiseman and Port answer those burning questions and more.
TVLINE | How did you decide that Flower would be the ghost that got sucked off?
JOE WISEMAN | Well, it was a long discussion. Full disclosure, when we did the cliffhanger at the end of Season 2, we didn’t know [who it’d be]. We had leading candidates, and we had sort of like a favorite, what we thought it was going to be. But we sort of had a situation where someone was not going to be available for a little while, and so, we decided should we use that to our advantage, and does it sort of, like, link up with the story? We began talking about it, we began talking down several paths, but ultimately decided that we’d make [the best] out of the situation.
JOE PORT | We didn’t want it to be an inconsequential, so to speak, ghost that had no ramifications for the rest of the house. Season 1, it wasn’t really leaned into that Jay would develop the power to see ghosts, but some people read into that when, at the end of Season 1, they fell through the floor, and he hit his head. So we did a nod to that at the beginning of Season 2 that, just for a very short time, he thought he could see ghosts. But because we set this up as a true cliffhanger, we wanted to pay it off and have somebody actually get sucked off, and in terms of Flower, it has huge ramifications for the whole house.
TVLINE | What kind of conversations did you have with Sheila about it and the direction of that storyline and that choice?
PORT | We talked to her about it and told her why we thought it was a good idea and what we were planning for down the line. You know, this is a world where we can see people in all different realms, and we’re not saying that this is the last you’ll ever see of Flower. It’s just that she’s the one that we’re losing in this first episode.
TVLINE | We don’t actually see Flower get sucked off. So how certain is it that she actually moved on?
PORT | I think there’s going to be all kinds of twists and turns throughout the season, as there always are, and people just have to stay tuned.
TVLINE | Is there a possibility that she got lost somewhere on the property and can’t find her way back?
WISEMAN | I would say anything is possible.
TVLINE | If she did actually get sucked off and moved on, is there hope of getting her back to this realm? Or is that seen as like a backwards move for a ghost?
PORT | Well, as we saw in the Halloween episode last season, they were able to summon the maid from Hetty’s past and bring her back on Halloween. So there’s a precedent for trying to bring people back. Now, whether that’s a good thing to do or not when someone has achieved what is, ostensibly, all of their stated goals, that’s another discussion that the ghosts may need to have.
WISEMAN | And we can say that we will have a Halloween episode this season, even though, obviously, it won’t air on Halloween.
TVLINE | How is Thor coping with her loss, and how are the other ghosts reacting to it? How is it playing into their storylines as the season moves forward?
WISEMAN | Thor, obviously, is devastated. We spent Season 2 getting them together and ended it with them finally in a relationship. So, to him, it’s a big loss. But like Joe mentioned earlier, the ghosts getting sucked off and moving on, it’s complicated. It’s what they all want. It is their stated goal. So it’s a little complicated for everyone else. Some people are happy, but you’re also a little jealous, and you’re also a little sad. They’re all already dead, so it’s not really a death, but they are gone. So they all deal with it in different ways. Some of them do get jealous, and Thor, obviously, is sort of very sad. So there’s a range of reactions to her being sucked off.
Ghosts fans, what did you think of the premiere twist? Grade the episode below, then hit the comments! And stay tuned to TVLine for more scoop!
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