Paramount+’s teen series ‘School Spirits’ revolves around the death of Maddie Nears, who wakes up as a spirit in the boiler room of Split River High School. Maddie enters into the world of the dead and adapts to her new reality with the help of her fellow spirits. Other spirits such as Wally, Charley, and Rhonda let her know that she can witness the world of the alive but cannot interact with them, only to end up talking to her best friend Simon. While every living being at the school fails to see the spirits, Simon alone sees Maddie after her death. If you are intrigued about the reason behind the same, here’s what we can share! SPOILERS AHEAD.
Why Can Simon See Maddie?
After Maddie’s death, she roams around her school since she is stuck at the place where she died. She sees Simon, Nicole, Xavier, Claire, etc., and follows them to find out how she died. Believing that the living cannot see her, Maddie stands beside Simon a short while after her death, only for him to see her. Simon not only sees her but also talks to her as well. Although he is not able to see any other spirits residing at the school, he can see and talk to Maddie at any part of the school where someone died.
Although the first season finale explains several unanswered questions concerning Maddie’s death, the episode doesn’t reveal how Simon can see her. While going through Mr. Martin’s records of the spirits, Wally comes across a section in which the former chemistry teacher wrote that reliving the final trauma to the greatest extent possible may increase the “thinning” between two realms and open an access point, possibly for a spirit to cross over to the Beyond. The same theory must be working in favor of Simon, who loves and cares for Maddie the most in the world, even more than the latter’s mother Sandra.
Maddie’s unconfirmed death and the blood splatters found in the boiler room must have caused immense distress in Simon. He must have thought about Maddie’s death over and over, making it a traumatic matter for him. Simon’s grief must have been so intense and immense to increase the “thinning” between the worlds of the alive and the dead. That can be how he manages to see his best friend even after her death. Simon has always dreamt of his future with Maddie in it. Her unexpected death must have pushed him to unimaginable despair, which makes him an exception among the living.
Since Simon’s attachment is limited to Maddie, it isn’t a surprise that he is not able to see any other spirits such as Charley or Wally, with whom Maddie spends her time the most when she is not around Simon. Another factor influencing Simon’s ability to see Maddie can be the fact that she isn’t completely dead. Maddie becomes a spirit not because she is dead in a conventional sense but because she lost her body to Janet, who possessed the same while passing through her to escape from Mr. Martin. Both Simon’s attachment and Maddie’s unconventional death must have been helping Simon to see his best friend even after the tragedy that changes both of their lives.
In the eighth and final episode of the show’s first season, Nicole sends Simon a video of Janet, who is in Maddie’s body, driving off in Claire’s truck. Simon and Nicole start to believe that Maddie is alive, which makes the former think that the spirit who has been talking to him is a creation of his imagination, conceived to cope with his grief of losing his soulmate. If Paramount+ renews the show for a second season, Maddie may need to convince Simon that the person he saw in the video is another spirit using her body rather than herself.
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