Pete finally has a power on Ghosts, and it’s a pretty cool one: He can leave the Woodstone premises!
Pete’s first trip out with Jay to a big box store, where Pete got left behind and encountered some lethal ghosts, was a scary one. But after making his way back to the B&B, the former travel agent who never ventured anywhere was convinced by his friends to take advantage of his second chance to live and travel the world. As the episode ended, Pete boarded a plane to visit his daughter and grandson in St. Lucia.
Naturally, Pete’s ability to venture anywhere garnered a big reaction from the cast
“Oh, they were so jealous,” Richie Moriarty, who plays Pete, tells TVLine with a laugh. “We have such a friendly competition around ghost powers… We found out early in the season that Sas has this awesome power where he can go into people’s dreams, and he can actually interact with Utkarsh [Ambudkar], with all these different crazy sets. So we were super jealous about that. We were like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s so awesome!’”
Then when Pete’s power was revealed, “everyone was like, ‘What?! You’re kidding me! You get to go wherever you want?!’” Moriarty continues with another laugh. His co-star Devan Chandler Long (aka Thorfinn) had a particularly memorable and funny response: “He’s like, ‘You get to go wherever you want, and I make lights flicker? Like, where is the justice here?’”
Below, Moriarty reveals that his character almost had a different special ability, talks about the story possibilities Pete’s power opens up and teases what’s ahead in the May 2 season finale.
TVLINE | When and how did you first find out what Pete’s power would be?
It’s so funny how we get information on this show, because sometimes it comes from the least likely sources. I think the first place I heard that this was going to be Pete’s power was in the hair and makeup trailer, because what often happens is that hair and makeup and our set designers will get early versions of the script so that they know what they need to plan for, if there’s new characters that they need to provide wigs for or new sets they need to build. So very often, we will get little leaks from the people in hair and makeup or with set design, like, “Hey, I heard Pete’s able to leave the mansion,” and I’m like, “Wait, what?!”
The reason [showrunners Joe Port and Joe Wiseman] often don’t tell us that early is because things change all the time, and they don’t want to get us excited about something and then have to be like, “Oh, never mind. We rewrote that draft, and that’s not happening anymore.” Eventually, I did hear from the Joes and from Trent O’Donnell, our producing director [who’s] directed, I think, the most episodes of Ghosts at this point. Trent has become a really good friend, so he and I had a really early conversation when it became clear that, yeah, this is the direction it was going. I was so excited to hear that this was going to be Pete’s power and just, like, immediately thought about all the exciting opportunities this opens up for the character.
Ghosts Season 3 Episode 9
TVLINE | Of all the ghost powers on the show, I think this is one of the coolest in terms of it opens up a world of story possibilities for him.
Totally. And not just for him, either, but for the whole cast, because there is a world in which he can now become almost like a messenger of sorts for the other ghosts to either go and communicate with ghosts in other areas of the country, the world, or go on errands for them. There are a lot of possibilities it opens up for this show as a whole, which I’m really excited about, and I think the Joes are going to find a very smart way to use this power and use it effectively. I think it’ll be a challenge for them, kind of figuring out exactly how to use this power, but I’m really excited about the possibilities it opens up for the show, narratively, as a whole.
