SPOILER ALERT: Do not read ahead if you have not watched the Season 3 premiere of “Ghosts,” titled “The Owl,” which aired Feb. 15 on CBS.
Flower, hopefully you’re finally getting to cuddle a few bears up there in the sky. Yes, you read that right: There’s one less ghost on “Ghosts,” as the characters said farewell to Flower on the Season 3 premiere of CBS’ hit comedy.
The series finally returned on Thursday (after a long strikes-induced delay), and we learned which spirit had been finally sent to the afterlife. After a few fakeouts, the ghosts discovered that it was Flower (Sheila Carrasco) who was “sucked off” in the Season 2 finale, as witnessed by Sam (Rose McIver) and Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar).
Flower is the 1960s-era hippie who died trying to hug a bear while high on acid, and remained a bit forgetful and drugged-out while living in the purgatory that is Woodstone Mansion.
“We wanted it to be somebody very consequential,” executive producer Joe Port told Variety. “We wanted to be someone who’d have an impact on the other ghosts and obviously on Sam and Jay to some degree.”
Fellow exec producer Joe Wiseman said that the writers didn’t necessarily know which ghost would be “sucked off” (yes, that’s the term used on the show to describe the moment the ghosts living in purgatory on the estate are finally sent to heaven or hell) when they wrote the Season 2 finale. But they chose Flower because of how her disappearance might disrupt the order of things inside the house — and particularly impact Viking Thor (Devan Chandler Long), who had just developed a relationship with the hippie.
“That was a lengthy conversation,” Wiseman said. “We had definitely talked about candidates and what would be the pros and cons about various people and whatnot. Flower came out of a long conversation we had in the writers’ room. We wanted someone who was going to be impactful, and who would lead to a lot of stories.”
That includes jealousy and intrigue among the remaining ghosts, who still wonder why they’re stuck in limbo. “Obviously, Thor has a very specific attitude about her disappearing,” Wiseman added. “But in our world, getting ‘sucked off,’ it’s a little different than a death. This is the stated goal of all the ghosts. They all want to. Thor’s upset because that’s the person he loves. But there’s a lot of jealousy involved with some of the other ghosts who have been there longer. There’s a lot of curiosity about like, what was it? We hint at the fact they think getting sucked off has to do with breakthroughs or growth, but they don’t know that. It is still a very mysterious process that seems to happen randomly.”
He added: “I once very unpopularly compared it to ‘Gilligan’s Island’ in the room where, if one of the people on ‘Gilligan’s Island’ made it off the island, you’d be happy for them. But you’d also be jealous. And you’d also be sad that they were gone. All our characters already dead. So someone getting sucked off is a is a complicated thing on the show.”
Sheila Carrasco as Flower (Bertrand Calmeau/CBS)
CBS
Does this mean we’ve seen the last of Sheila Carrasco, who has played Flower since the show’s launch? Not necessarily. The producers play it coy when asked if Flower will ever appear again.
“I think it takes some interesting turns,” Port said. “In terms of seeing ghosts going forward or not, this is the kind of show where you could see a ghost anywhere. We’ve hinted that ghosts are in heaven. They’re in hell, they’re on Earth, so I think there’s different ways to see people too.”
“Ghosts” had been in the writers room for three weeks when things shut down last year due to the Hollywood strikes. As a result there will only be 10 episodes during this truncated season. But the producers said they didn’t change much of the trajectory of this season’s story arcs — they just hit those story milestones a bit faster.
Among the stories that “Ghosts” will follow this season, Jay is set on building a restaurant for the bed and breakfast. There’s a Pete (Richie Moriarty) storyline the producers are excited about but are keeping a secret for now. And then there’s the engagement of Isaac (Brandon Scott Jones) and Nigel (John Hartman).
“We’re building toward a wedding this season,” Port said. “And as far as the restaurant arc goes, it’s been really helpful in terms of centering Utkarsh’s character [who can’t see the ghosts], because that’s one of our challenges always is how does this guy who can’t talk to 80% of the cast, get involved in stories?”
Meanwhile, the show promises to introduce more ghosts this year, and also share more of the ghosts’ powers. And we’ll learn about how another one of the ghosts died. (That means either Hetty, played by Rebecca Wisocky, or Sasappis, played by Román Zaragoza.) Also, we’ll see more of Betsy Sodaro as Nancy, the leader of the basement cholera victims, as she spends more time upstairs.
“Part of the fun is also thinking of creative ways to get ghosts,” Wiseman said. “Last season we had the car ghost. We try to think of creative, fun ways to get ghosts from the outside to come in as well. Another another way we did that in the past was the seance with the maid. So this year, we have another fun creative way of getting your ghosts to visit Woodstone.”
And despite premiering in the spring, “Ghosts” will still work Halloween into this season. “We didn’t want to rob ourselves of a very good Halloween episode idea that we had going into the season,” Port said. “Halloween is such a fun episode, a yearly thing that we get to do on ‘Ghosts’ and we didn’t want to take the year off.”
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