“Ghosts” Season 5 Finale Disappears a Fan-Favorite Spirit: 'Have to Lose Someone to Keep the Stakes'

Brenton BlanchetFri, May 22, 2026 at 4:58 PM UTC

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Richie Moriarty, Betsy Sodaro and Román Zaragoza in 'Ghosts'
Credit: Bertrand Calmeau/CBS

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the season 5 finale of Ghosts, streaming now on Paramount+.

Ghosts ended its fifth season with a shocking disappearing act

CBS aired the season 5 finale of the comedy on Friday, May 22

In it, a fan-favorite spirit goes poof, as the actor behind the character told Variety that he doesn't "know what they’re going to decide to do"

Ghosts has left one character facing a rather spooky fate in its season 5 finale.

The CBS comedy wrapped its fifth season on Thursday, May 21, with a cliffhanger surrounding Richie Moriarty's Pete, the happy-go-lucky '80s scoutmaster who has been a staple on Ghosts since it premiered in 2021.

Much of the two-part finale follows Sam (Rose McIver) and Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar) as they try to save Woodstone Mansion from a giant corporations' scary plans for it, which eventually snowballs into Jay joining Pete and Kyle (Ben Feldman) on a journey to London. The crew is on the hunt for proof that something notable has happened on the property (in an effort to turn it into a historical landmark and prevent any changes).

Richie Moriarty as Pete in 'Ghosts'
Credit: Bertrand Calmeau/CBS

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While they're successful in finding proof that Nancy (Betsy Sodaro) was once a princess before dying on the mansion grounds, Pete begins to disappear. Sure, Pete is already dead — he's a ghost with an arrow through his neck — but the finale finds him turning into just a head before disappearing entirely.

Pete has disappeared while trekking a little too far from home before, but nothing to this magnitude. As Moriarty, 46, told Variety, even he's not certain what lies ahead of Pete after the cliffhanger.

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"We’re five seasons into this show, and we haven’t yet lost any of the main eight ghosts," Moriarty said. "I think at a certain point, as hard as it may be, you do kind of have to lose someone to keep the stakes of the show feeling real. So I don’t know what they’re going to decide to do. I’m anxiously awaiting the news! I hope for my sake that it’s not Pete, but we’ll see.”

As for if he thinks Pete has a chance to come back, the actor told Variety that any show "starts to feel cheap if you" fake-out too many character deaths (or in this case, a disappearance).

"Look, this show has been like the greatest. It’s been so fun," he said. "The fact that we are finished with five seasons, and we’re going to be filming the 100th episode a couple months into Season 6, we feel so damn lucky that we’ve gotten to do this thing at all. Six seasons of anything is so unusual in this industry. So it just feels so grateful for the time I’ve had on the show.”

Showrunners Joe Port and Joe Wiseman also dished on the disappearing act in an interview with Deadline, Port reiterated that while the show has "teased Pete disappearing a couple times now," it'll be "very interesting to figure out where he went and where he is and what he’s like now."

"It’s sort of an existential question that we’ve been wrestling with about what would happen if he disappeared," he said. "So we’re going to answer that question when we come back."

Wiseman added, "...The stakes are real. One of our main characters just disappeared, and who knows, will he be back? Where has he been? It just seems to bring up a lot of enticing questions."

Ghosts was renewed for a fifth and sixth season in February 2025. The show is also getting two one-hour specials for Halloween and Christmas, which Wiseman told Deadline would "deal with the Pete cliffhanger." Ghosts can be streamed on Paramount+.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”