Why Ghosts' Season 3 Finale Surprise Is So Heartbreaking

Contains spoilers for "Ghosts" Season 3, Episode 10 — "Isaac's Wedding"

Loss may be a big theme in "Ghosts," but no one expected yet another of Woodstone Manor's spirits to disappear so soon after recovering Flower (Sheila Carrasco of "Life in Pieces"). Even worse, something may have been lost in the fray — the love between Isaac Higgintoot (Brandon Scott Jones, who has been candid about his inspiration for the character) and his fiance, Nigel Chessum (John Hartman). It's a heartbreaker that not only shreds one of the show's most stable couples but puts Isaac in major danger.

Isaac develops a major case of cold feet in the run-up to the actual wedding, expressing attraction to the stripper who attended his bachelor party and who happens to resurface to D.J. at his reception. Since love is all around him in varying forms, he starts to wonder if his relationship with Nigel is real. It takes a speech from Pete Martino (Richie Moriarty) — who's found new bliss using his new ghost power, having met with a fellow dead-in-the-1980s ghost while in St. Lucia visiting his family — to make Isaac realize that the wedding has been rushed. He calls the marriage off and breaks up with Nigel. 

This heartbreaker may be disappointing to fans who have watched the couple's connection blossom from season to season. But Isaac may be in for a whole new world of hurt as Season 4 dawns — and it has nothing to do with Nigel and everything to do with a mistake he made centuries ago.

As Isaac tries to deal with the aftermath of his failed wedding, he's confronted by the basement ghosts. They tell him they have a wedding surprise for him. That "gift" happens to be a Puritan woman named Patience, whom Isaac accidentally let go of while they were escaping from a hole on the grounds. He did not go to get help, but he did tell the other ghosts about her. Flower even manages to make friends with her while stuck in a hole on the grounds. After Flower's rescue, Patience is understandably on the warpath — she grabs Isaac and hauls him through the wall. Now he's trapped with her in the hole, and she has a plan to use him to get out. It'll apparently be up to the basement ghosts to save the day — that is, if they can't get word to the others upstairs.

According to co-showrunner Joe Port, the plotline was driven by the writers' interest in expanding Patience's character. He told Deadline that the foreshadowing regarding the character in "Holes Are Bad" definitely wasn't misplaced. "She's become sort of a favorite in the writers room as we discussed what she could be like. So we just decided to have that be a turn that happens at the end of the season finale," Port said. And fans shouldn't worry about Isaac lingering forever in the dark — they apparently plan on getting him out of that hole soon.

Just how that will happen remains to be seen. Now, fans are going to have to wait an entire summer to find out how Isaac will be rescued — and if, this time, Patience will join him aboveground.