Ghosts Season 5 Promises To End Jay’s Season 4 Stolen Soul Story Fast
While Ghosts season 4’s cliffhanger ending seemingly came out of nowhere, the CBS sitcom has thankfully promised that this plot will be short-lived in season 5. While the ghosts of CBS’s Ghosts earn the majority of the show’s screen time, the sitcom’s human characters often play a pivotal role in the story of the series, too.
Sam and Jay are the ones who help Thor, Sass, Isaac, Hetty, Alberta, Flower, Pete, and Trevor get things done in the world of the living, facilitating the ghosts achieving their goals, since most of them can’t do much except talk to Sam. That said, Ghosts season 5’s more independent human character, Bela, will be a fun addition.
If there’s an overarching problem with Sam and Jay’s storylines in the series, it is that they are too reliant on the ghosts. The characters spend most of their time cleaning up after the spirits, who are more chaotic than the comparatively cautious couple. As such, Bela’s presence in season 5 should add a more rebellious living character.
Ghosts Season 4 Ended With Jay Inadvertently Selling His Soul to the Devil
Jay and Sam talking to someone, off-camera, in an episode of Ghosts
To be fair to Ghosts, season 4’s finale did see both Sam and Jay branch out with plans of their own. Sure, Sam’s historical vampire novel was based entirely on Isaac’s stories from the Revolutionary War, but Jay’s restaurant, Mahesh, was a real labor of love for Utkarsh Ambudkar’s character and a testament to his motivation and ambition.
As such, it was pretty brutal when the Ghosts season 4 finale revealed that at least some of Mahesh’s success was actually owed to one of the ghosts. To make matters worse, it wasn’t a comparatively heroic, sympathetic ghost like one of the many spirits residing in the Woodstone mansion.
Instead, season 4, episode 22, “The Devil Went Down to Woodstone,” revealed that Hetty’s ex-husband, Elias, had taken the form of a human publicist and tricked Jay into signing a contract with him. Unfortunately for Jay, Elias is no longer an ordinary ghost. He went to Hell in season 2 and, since then, has become a demon.
Elias’s powers apparently include the ability to appear in human form, something the other ghosts cannot do, so Jay had no way of knowing he was signing over his soul when he gained a publicist. While Pete and Alberta’s Ghosts romance will also be an important season 5 storyline, the good news is that this plot will be the show’s highest priority.
In TVInsider’s Fall TV preview, co-showrunner Joe Wiseman asked, “How will they get Jay out of this deal, and at what cost? That’s something that we’re going to have to deal with very early on.” Wiseman went on to clarify just how early on this would be explained, noting that the season premiere titled “Soul Custody” would tackle this plot.
The Sooner Ghosts Season 5 Resolves Jay’s Story, The Better
Jay’s Predicament Felt Forced In Season 4’s Ending
Custom image by Milica Djordjevic
This is superb news for the future of the series, since the entire season 4 twist ending never really made much sense. Viewers were given a little foreshadowing of Jay’s fate back in the lowest rated episode of Ghosts, season 4, episode 14, “Alexander Hamilton and the Ruffle Kerfuffle.”
The brief mid-credits scene of that episode saw Jay almost sign a contract with Elias, disguised as a human publicist at a lunch meeting, but he thought better of it in the end. Thus, viewers did technically know that Elias could take human form and talk to living people undetected, but the plot twist was still not well established.
The whole revelation that Elias had appeared as a human off-screen and gotten Jay to sign a contract without telling Sam was under-explained. Meanwhile, Patience’s apparent awareness of Elias’s presence was completely written off as a joke, even though it effectively justified her paranoia about Satan throughout the rest of season 4.
Basically, the entire plot was sped through in the last minutes of the finale, meaning viewers got a big, shocking twist but no clear explanation of how it had happened. Thus, Wiseman and company are right to prioritize wrapping up this storyline before focusing on the rest of the show’s lingering plots.
Although the human characters of Ghosts aren’t perfect, they are a necessary part of the show’s lineup. As such, viewers already know that Jay won’t die and become a ghost, and that he isn’t heading to Hell anytime soon. Thus, the stakes of the season 4 finale felt cynically inflated, and the storyline seemed destined to inevitably end with a whimper.
Ghosts Season 5’s Premiere Title Is Promising
“Soul Custody” Will Seemingly Wrap Up The Entire Storyline
Although the premiere’s plot may indeed be a dispiriting ending for this storyline, its title is good news for fans of the show. “Soul Custody” directly addresses Jay’s fate, and it isn’t the first half of a two-part special like season 4’s Christmas episode, meaning the rest of the season can explore new plots and other characters.
While it might be interesting to find out how demons work in the world of the series, cramming Elias’s entire villain reveal into the last few minutes of season 4 was a misfire. Ghosts isn’t What We Do In The Shadows, despite the similarities between the two shows, and it doesn’t necessarily need more new supernatural beings to succeed.
As such, season 5 is better off wrapping up Jay’s story neatly and quickly instead of devoting more screen time to his contract with Elias. This riff on “The Devil and Daniel Webster” is one that viewers have seen plenty of times before, so Ghosts season 5’s premiere should get it over with fast.
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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
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