Ghosts Season 3 Finale: Creators & Star on Isaac Losing His Husband

Whether it’s his odor or his sneezes, Ghosts’ Isaac Higgintoot is all about the nose. Brandon Scott Jones’ Revolutionary War ghost on the CBS comedy died of dysentery. The smell followed him into the afterlife and serves as the special “power” he can inflict upon others who dwell at the show’s central estate, Woodstone Manor. It’s one of many things Isaac’s love interest Nigel Chessum (John Hartman) was able to overlook about him. 

Another is that Nigel is dead because Isaac accidentally shot the British soldier when he sneezed whilst holding a rifle. And then there’s Isaac’s most recent offense of leaving Nigel on their wedding day during the show’s third season finale, “Isaac’s Wedding.” But apparently the Brit was cool with this, even if he did call Isaac a “yankee” a lot. Or at least this is the story that Isaac told everyone, as the official breakup happened off screen.

“I imagine that it was much, much, much, much worse,” Jones laughs in a recent interview with Primetimer. “I hope that he got reamed out a little bit.”

But not all ghosts can be so forgiving. As was teased earlier in the season, Isaac has a habit of sneezing at inopportune times. Way back in the 19th century, a sudden bout of sniffles caused him to drop the hand of a Puritan ghost named Patience. She became stranded in the ground of the property as she struggled to make her way back inside the manor. 

She finally succeeded in the finale. But all that time by herself allowed her to plot sweet revenge against Isaac — something she seemed to enact in the finale when she briefly appeared and then dragged him back into the dirt with her. Ironically, getting stuck in the ground is the scariest place for a dead person to be.

“He probably hates being in there,” Jones says, noting that earlier in the series “he’s talked about how terrifying and infinite and dark and scary it was.”

But what could Patience do to harm Isaac? Series co-creator Joe Port promises that “she definitely has some ax to grind with Isaac. She's got some beef.” Although neither he nor co-creator Joe Wiseman think fans should worry about anything as gruesome as Kathy Bates in the movie Misery. They also say that Isaac won’t be gone for most of the season, as hippie Flower (Sheila Carrasco) was this year.

“I wonder who the first person would be to notice that he wasn't there,” Jones contemplates. “Or the worst part is, what if all the ghosts noticed that he's gone and they're like, ‘oh, this is kind of pleasant.’”

This episode also continues the show’s — albeit accidental, according to the creators — tradition of ending its seasons with a Nigel-Isaac storyline. The two men admitted their feelings for each other at the end of the first season and got engaged at the end of the second. This will-they/won’t-they, coupled with the fact that one even had a dalliance with someone else while they “were on a respite,” seems like the writers are shaping the two up to be this show’s iconic couple.

“They’re the closest thing we have to Ross and Rachel [from Friends] right now,” Port admits. 

Isaac, like Friends’ Ross, even has an interest in dinosaurs and Jones likes the idea that he and Patience might stumble upon some fossils during their underground adventure. Mostly, he says he hopes that the breakup might allow Isaac, who was closeted for all of his life and most of his afterlife, some “self discovery.”

“Hopefully, he'll start to figure out some more things about him and what he really needs to deal with,” Jones says.

He adds that he has no idea how the Patience storyline will factor into this, but that he feels like Isaac “really has to deal with some sh*t. He's essentially getting called out and he's gonna have to start this atoning process.”

“I don't know what they were like together when she was not feral and in the ground, but now that she is feral and in the ground, I can't imagine it's going to be a very rational relationship,” he says. “I think anytime you can put Isaac up against something irrational, I think it'll feel good. Or at least funny. Maybe not good for him.”

It’s also possible the Patience from the past isn’t the Patience we’ll know now, given her time in solitude. The ghosts of cholera victims from the 1800s, who are relegated to live in the basement of Woodstone, could have known Patience before she went missing but didn’t seem to recognize her now.

“I don't know how much the basement ghosts were interacting with the upstairs ghosts at that point in time,” Port says of the upstairs-downstairs hierarchy of the ghosts of Woodstone prior to the start of the show. “That's sort of been a development that's been happening."

Isaac’s whereabouts weren’t the only questions left unanswered in the Ghosts season 3 finale. The episode also tracked Pete, Richie Moriarty’s goody-two-shoes travel agent who recently learned he, unlike most of the other ghosts he knows, can leave the property. In this episode, Pete learns that straying too far from home means he’ll slowly disappear.

“When we came up with power for Pete, it seemed like a really fun idea but it seemed almost too powerful,” Wiseman of setting ground rules for Pete’s adventures, adding that “distance-wise, we're still learning about the power. Maybe if he goes further, there's less time. We don't know. We have to test that.”

There’s also the question of who plays Patience. The actor’s name isn’t listed in the credits. Also, audiences don’t see the character’s face and only barely hear her voice.

“We specifically didn't want to show her or hear too much of her because it's hard to cast someone for a big guest role between seasons because you don't know the schedule,” Wiseman says. “Also, leaning into the horror trope, it's fun not to see her and have it be a little bit more mysterious.”

Fans, like Isaac, will have to wait until the dust settles and Season 4 begins.

Ghosts Season 3 is now streaming on Paramount+. 

Whitney Friedlander is an entertainment journalist with, what some may argue, an unhealthy love affair with her TV. A former staff writer at both Los Angeles Times and Variety, her writing has also appeared in Cosmopolitan, Vulture, The Washington Post and others. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, daughter, and two spoiled cats.