'Ghosts' Season 6's Cozy Halloween Special Brings Back a Fan-Favorite | Review
Tania Hussain is an Executive Editor at Collider responsible for creative, editorial, and managerial duties. In addition to leading content ideation and development, she works to generate innovative and compelling ideas for feature articles and reviews with her editorial team across Features, Lists, Reviews, and Interviews. She also serves as the primary editor overseeing Collider’s Signature Series profiles, spotlighting some of the most influential voices in film and television. Tania has helped cover and ideate content for major events for Collider, including the Toronto International Film Festival. She has also conducted more than 100 interviews since her start in the business more than 15 years ago. Some favorites include Joel McHale, Charlie Cox, Jennifer Garner, Tina Fey, Kate Winslet, Bob Odenkirk, Andy Richter, Jordan Schlansky, Jamie Dornan, Yeardley Smith, Rafe Spall, Esther Smith, and a reasonable toss-up between Cookie Monster and Kermit the Frog. She has covered set visits, in-person junkets, and red carpets for several films and TV shows, including most recently, The Sheep Detectives, Masterchef, and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
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Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for the two-part ‘Ghosts’ Season 6 premiere, “Halloween 6: The Mirror.”After five seasons of supernatural mishaps, oddball friendships, and enough unfinished business to last a lifetime, CBS’s Ghosts has settled into pretty familiar territory. It’s become the kind of comfort show you can turn on after a long day, knowing you’ll get a few laughs with characters you’ve grown to love. That might sound like faint praise for Season 6, but a sitcom that offers this kind of escape has real value. Not everything needs to be groundbreaking to be worth watching.
That familiarity is felt in its two-part premiere, “Halloween 6: The Mirror,” which picks up a few months after Pete’s (Richie Moriarty) mysterious disappearance following his trip to London with Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar) and Kyle (Ben Feldman) to track down a portrait of the cholera ghost, Nancy (Betsy Sodoro). While his absence hangs over Woodstone, the annual Halloween special has another supernatural problem, this time involving Hetty’s (Rebecca Wisocky) troubled family history. It’s an enjoyable hour of television with some solid jokes and a surprisingly sweet story about two sisters who never understood each other. And with Moriarty returning before the credits roll in its second episode, the premiere wisely avoids dragging out a disappearance that could have easily worn out its welcome.
What Is ‘Ghosts’ Season 6’s 2-Episode Premiere About?
With Sam (Rose McIver) away working on the film adaptation of her screenplay, “Polar Opposites,” in sunny Australia, Kyle has stepped in to help Jay look after the ghostly residents. But the gang has bigger fish to fry, like bringing Pete back home to Woodstone, prompting Alberta (Danielle Pinnock) to revive him with a séance, even after Sass (Román Zaragoza) claims Pete specifically requested a DNS (“do not séance”) policy. Naturally, nobody is ever good at leaving things alone. But their path to Pete’s return is briefly interrupted when Kyle accidentally breaks a mirror during basketball in the house, sending Jay scrambling to replace it before his wife finds out. With Mark’s (Tristan D. Lalla) help, they find a similar-looking replacement, but unfortunately, this one comes with a rather unwelcome guest: Hetty’s estranged sister, Margaret (Maria Thayer), who has been trapped inside the mirror since first catching sight of her own reflection shortly after her death nearly a century ago. Their reunion is anything but pleasant, especially when Margaret tricks Hetty into taking her place in the mirror.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What Fantasy World Do You Belong To? Middle-earth · Grand Line · The Continent · Camp Half-Blood
Pick your magic, your crew, where you want to wake up and who you would rather be fighting, and we will tell you which world you actually belong in. Four are open to you: an ancient kingdom living through its last good age, an endless sea full of pirates, a continent that pays people to kill monsters, and a summer camp where the Greek gods are extremely real and mostly a nuisance.
💍Middle-earth(Rings of Power)
👒Grand Line(One Piece)
🐺The Continent(The Witcher)
🔱Camp Half-Blood(Percy Jackson)
01
What kind of power do you want? Every one of these worlds runs on a completely different sort of magic.
02
Who is travelling with you? Nobody gets through any of these stories entirely on their own.
03
Where do you want to wake up tomorrow? The best fantasy is usually just somewhere you would genuinely like to live.
04
How are you making a living out there? Even in fantasy somebody has to pay for the horse.
05
There is something in the woods. What do you do about it? All four of these worlds keep something unpleasant out there in the dark.
06
Who is the villain of your story? The enemy tells you far more about a world than the hero ever does.
07
What do you actually believe in out there? Every world hands its heroes one rule and asks them to hold onto it.
08
A thousand years from now, how are you remembered? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your world.
The Map Is Drawn Your World Is…
Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in return.
Middle-earth
You belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime.
- This is the only world on the list where doing good is understood as a very long defeat, fought anyway, by people who will never see how it ends.
- You are drawn to grandeur, to white cities and deep forges and the sense that almost everything you touch is older than your entire family line.
- The Rings of Power is set in the last good age before it all goes wrong, which gives every quiet scene in it a slightly unbearable weight.
- You would take the hard road, and you would take it on foot.
The Grand Line
You want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is finding out what is over there.
- One Piece has run for decades on one very simple engine, which is a group of people who each want something impossible and have decided to go and get it together.
- You collect people. Your ideal crew is a set of misfits who were each written off somewhere else before you turned up and offered them a better idea.
- The world is enormous and deliberately ridiculous, and the emotional gut punches land harder because of that rather than in spite of it.
- You would set sail knowing the map runs out, which is more or less the entire point of it.
The Continent
You would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the people are where it all gets complicated.
- Witchers get paid to do what nobody else will and resented for existing at all, which is a trade most people would refuse and you would probably accept.
- You have no real illusions about which side is the good one, largely because on the Continent that question tends to have a disappointing answer.
- The best of these stories are not about the fighting. They are about somebody with a rigid code being repeatedly cornered into caring about people.
- You would take the coin, finish the job properly, and be out of town before the story got told wrong.
Camp Half-Blood
You want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as everybody kept telling you.
- Percy Jackson takes the oldest stories we have and drops them into car parks and diners, which makes the gods considerably funnier and a great deal worse.
- You would be the kid every school gave up on, who turns out to have been built for something nobody thought to test for.
- The series is genuinely about friendship rather than destiny, and it says so out loud every time a prophecy tries to get in the way.
- Camp Half-Blood is the real fantasy here: a place where the thing that made you difficult everywhere else is the thing that makes you belong.
It’s a fun Halloween setup, with the mirror introducing another strange rule about the afterlife. But when Jay and Mark accidentally shatter the mirror now holding Hetty, her fate gives audiences a bit of a rude awakening as to what that feeling might look like when you lose another character. We’ve seen this before with Isaac (Brandon Scott Jones) and Flower's (Sheila Carrasco) episodes, though the latter lasted seven episodes in Season 3, stretching it out longer than it needed to be. Thankfully, the writers don’t repeat that here, and Hetty’s situation is resolved by the end of the second episode, while Pete returns as his friends gather to remember him on the anniversary of his death on the Woodstone grounds. There’s just one problem: he has no memory of who they are, leaving everyone to solve a whole new mystery.
It’s an interesting way to kick off Season 6, particularly because Pete’s return raises questions about what happens when a ghost seemingly moves on, only to end up right back where he started. The memory loss also gives the writers a chance to explore a different side of Pete, whose adventures outside Woodstone have already changed what we know about the afterlife. Whether this latest twist pays off remains to be seen, but it’s encouraging that Ghosts isn’t dragging out his disappearance just to keep viewers guessing. There is still plenty to explore within the show’s spiritual lore, and Pete’s return could be one of its more interesting stories yet.
‘Ghosts’ Season 6 Finds Its Strength in the Smaller, More Personal Stories
Almost six years later and Ghosts isn’t quite the laugh-out-loud comedy it used to be, but that doesn’t mean it’s lost its charm. The jokes are still there, although the first episode's new direction takes a bit more time to warm up than the second. Of course, some of the humor feels rather familiar, like Bela (Punam Patel) once again struggling to find love, which seems like a storyline that could use something new after all this time. But the show still knows how to land a good joke when it wants to, as Alberta’s horrified declaration that Hetty has “sharded” herself followed by Isaac’s even more dramatic claim that “she’s sharded all over the Hudson Valley” after a piece from the mirror finds itself traveling through a Halloween party guest. But it’s this exact kind of ridiculous humor that makes Ghosts so reliably comforting. And while there aren’t exactly as many laugh-a-minute jokes that power the show’s style and tone, the comedy works well enough without needing every scene to end with a punchline.
With the two-part episode written by Guy Endore-Kaiser and Rupinder Gill, the hour is a particularly wholesome one too. One of the things Ghosts thrives on is its heart, and Hetty and Margaret’s complicated relationship benefits from this more in-depth block for Halloween. Through memories revealed by the mirror, Hetty finally learns that her sister never meant to betray her and that much of their falling-out came from her own failure to listen (and see her sister past the hairy mustache). It’s a simple misunderstanding, but one that feels believable given Hetty’s upbringing and personality.
Of course, their reconciliation is genuinely touching too, as the Woodstone matriarch admits she wasn’t the sister Margaret needed. And while the moment builds up to some evident emotions and possibly tears for the audience, it’s abruptly undercut by Flower’s entrance, which acts as a glaring stop sign to prevent the show from being overly sappy and, quite oddly, undercuts some strong writing. But it still works for the moment, letting their reunion feel earned. It’s also a good example of how Ghosts still finds meaningful stories within characters we’ve known for years, without rushing to wrap everything up in a single episode.
Rebecca Wisocky and Brandon Scott Jones Remain ‘Ghosts’ Biggest Scene-Stealers
With such a large ensemble and one that has grown since its premiere in 2021, Ghosts doesn’t always have enough room to give everyone something worthwhile to do, but Season 6 reinforces the show’s best characters in Wisocky’s Hetty and Jones’ Isaac. The Halloween special makes good use of Wisocky, who has a real gift for making her character’s snobbery hilarious with little more than a look or change in her voice. But the best part is, she knows when to pull back, and her scenes with Thayer are especially good. Thayer, best known for 30 Rock and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, is a welcome addition — though her appearance is a short-lived one as she’s ultimately sent off to live in her dream city, Paris, with Trevor’s (Asher Grodman) daughter Abby (Gideon Adlon) through the mirror. But the moments they share are especially heartwarming, as the sisters’ history feels convincing enough even when they’re arguing over things that happened a century ago.
Meanwhile, Jones remains one of the funniest people on Ghosts, often making every scene better just by simply being in it. His exaggerated reactions, sharp timing, and ability to deliver the most absurd dialogue with a completely straight face continue to make the show what it is, and a real highlight. Carrasco is equally dependable as Flower, whose carefree attitude and strange observations can turn an otherwise ordinary exchange into something amusing. While the rest of the cast doesn’t have quite as many standout moments in the premiere, there’s a natural rhythm that makes Woodstone feel like a place audiences can call their own all these years later. And perhaps that’s why Ghosts remains such an easy watch. It might not surprise us every week, but after six seasons, this cast is still a pretty good reason to tune in.
Ghosts will return for its one-hour holiday episode on December 10 at 9:00 p.m. EST on CBS, and stream the next day on Paramount+.
- Release Date
- October 7, 2021
- Network
- CBS
- Directors
- Christine Gernon, Jaime Eliezer Karas, Katie Locke O'Brien, Nick Wong, Jude Weng, Pete Chatmon, Richie Keen, Alex Hardcastle, Kimmy Gatewood, Matthew A. Cherry, Cortney Carrillo
- Writers
- Emily Schmidt, John Timothy, Lauren Bridges, Sophia Lear, Guy Endore-Kaiser, Rishi Chitkara, Julia Harter, Skander Halim, Zora Bikangaga
-
Rose McIver
Samantha Arondekar
-
Utkarsh Ambudkar
Jay Arondekar
- Creator(s)
- Joe Port, Joe Wiseman
Pros & Cons
- Rebecca Wisocky, Brandon Scott Jones, and Sheila Carrasco deliver standout performances, with sharp comic timing and great chemistry.
- The two-part premiere gives Hetty and Margaret's emotional storyline enough time to develop without feeling rushed.
- Pete's return avoids another drawn-out disappearance and sets up an interesting new direction for Season 6.
- The humor isn't quite as consistent as in earlier seasons, with the first episode taking longer to find its footing.
- Familiar subplots, particularly Bela's ongoing romantic troubles, offer little that's new.
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