SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the season finale of “Ghosts,” which aired Thursday night on CBS.
Oh hell no. “Ghosts” just ended its fourth season with a hell of a cliffhanger: Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar) has signed a new publicist to help drum up interest in his restaurant — and it appears to be working! But there’s a catch: That contract he signed wasn’t actually to hire a P.R. team. It was to sell his soul to the devil, and that’s not a publicist — that’s Elias Woodstone (Matt Walsh), who can now make physical appearances on earth as the devil’s emissary.
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And here’s one more catch: The devil doesn’t want to wait for Jay’s soul. So Elias will now try to bring about Jay’s death, sooner rather than later.
This all went down at the end of the Season 4 finale, “The Devil Went Down to Woodstone,” at a party that Sam (Rose McIver) and Jay are hosting for the launch of Sam’s book about Isaac (Brandon Scott Jones) as a vampire. Early in the episode, Puritan ghost Patience (Mary Holland) also returns, as she senses evil in the air. Turns out, she was right — given Elias’ ultimate appearance.
In other season-ending cliffhanger news, it appears we have a new ghost couple in our midst: After years of Pete (Richie Moriarty) crushing on Alberta (Danielle Pinnock), the feeling is now mutual.
Variety spoke with “Ghosts” exec producers Joe Port and Joe Wiseman to get a sense of what’s next, as they prepare to open the writers’ room for Season 5 next week.
This a whole new wrinkle, there are real stakes here. We’re talking about Jay’s life. How did you decide to introducing this twist?
Joe Wiseman: We always like to end on a cliffhanger. And this seemed like a very big one. His life and afterlife are at stake. We introduced this new Elias ability, where he can assume human form and interact with people around episode 14, where we saw him talking to Jay. But Jay didn’t seem if he was into it.
How dark is this going to get? What’s the long term plan of how this story might unfold?
Joe Port: We like to center Jay in the stories, because he can’t talk to a lot of the cast. And so if the story is about Jay, it makes it easier to incorporate them into the goings on. Obviously, this is very significant stakes for him. Utkarsh is very good at pulling off this kind of annoyance at his predicament. He does nothing but try to help the ghosts and love his wife, and it always seems to boomerang against him. This time, it’s gone further than it has before. He’s got every right to be very angry with the ghosts. He and Sam have put up with a lot from this crew, and we’ll see how that affects the beginning of the season and their attitudes. I think they’re going to also rely on some of the ghosts who have landed them in this predicament to help extricate Jay from it.
How in danger is Jay? Elias is trying to kill him!
Port: We thought that was important, because the idea of selling your soul, while scary, felt a little not urgent. We wanted to add some urgency to it. The idea that Elias is trying to hasten Jay’s entry to the underworld was, I think, a good one that we landed on.
How much are we going to see of Matt Walsh next season? Does this bring him into a more recurring, regular role?
Wiseman: We love Matt Walsh. He portrays Elias so well, and he’s so funny. He plays a character that is ostensibly very hate-able, but everyone likes to hate him. It’s such a rare talent to be able to play characters like that and still have people enjoy and like. We would take as much of him as we can get. As far as, how big of an arc is this going to be? We haven’t really mapped that out yet, but I think whether it’s resolved quickly or not, there’s going to be repercussions just from the fact that he’s been in this situation. I think it’s going to affect his relationship with the ghosts going forward in profound ways.
I’m sure his relationship with Sam will be impacted as well. He puts up with a lot. As we saw in the episode with Kyle (Ben Feldman), a living who also sees ghosts, it’s hard to be Jay. We got to see how quiet it is for him when the ghosts are talking.
Port: There was a couple of scenes that you’re referring to where we saw things really from Jay’s perspective. And we’ve done that in small doses before. There’s demand online for Jay POV, entire episodes, which we think would be very boring. But it’s fun to get a taste of that.
Wiseman: He was so funny at playing being left out. Where Jay was trying to jump in and be like, ‘Oh, I know, I know about the basement ghosts!’ It’s just such a funny thing coming for him.
But now that Jay’s life is on the line, suddenly it’s a little less amusing, right?
Wiseman: Like Joe said, this is could affect his relationship with the ghosts and also affect Sam’s relationship with them as well. In the finale, they were like, ‘Oh, I guess we should have mentioned that Elias has this power.’ And she’s like, ‘Yeah, you think?” The ghosts messed up by not giving Sam an alert. I don’t think any of the ghosts thought that this would happen, but it seems like they probably should have reported back. Any sort of Elias development would have been good to hear.
Kyle, played by Ben Feldman, has also added a new wrinkle to things. Is there a chance we might see him again and or any other livings who can see the ghosts?
Wiseman: We love Ben Feldman, and we really like the Kyle character. It seems like someone that would be natural to bring back. We don’t have any sort of concrete plans, but that is something that we would definitely love to have.
Port: He seems like a really interesting character. You can go a lot of different places with someone who has this power. I like that he and Pete are developing a little bit of a friendship, where they seem to go on roaming adventures together. And it was important to us to get somebody really good for that role, because we did envision it as something that could be more down the line.
Speaking of Pete, of course, the other big development in the finale is Pete and Alberta. What made it time to push that relationship to a new level?
Port: Pete’s been into Alberta since early on in the show, and they’ve had their moments where they seem to come close to something. I think finally Pete was in a spot where he was happy with somebody else, and that can often be an attractive quality. Alberta is figuring that out in this moment, where she’s realizing that she might have missed the boat on something that could be pretty great. So they’re now in the same head space, and we’ll see where that goes. But I think there’s a lot to explore.
As for the relationship between ghosts, Sass (Román Zaragoza) has finally experienced love as well. There’s still a question of, how does ghost sex work?
Wiseman: I don’t think we want to get too explicit on TV or here exactly. But it works much the same way it does with people as far as clothing and stuff. As long as the clothes remain in contact with the person, they can be in any sort of state of undress. It’s when you let go of an article, then it reforms back to where it was.
What else excited you about the finale and looking ahead to next season?
Port: It was fun to see Patience again, it was a nice book end of the season. She’s obviously a natural kind of counterweight to the devil. So she could be involved, we’re talking this all out, but she’s gone from a foil to hopefully a bit of an ally.
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