After four seasons, Hetty finally has a power… at least for one day a year.
On this week’s Ghosts, the Woodstone robber baroness discovered that she can be seen by livings, but only on St. Patrick’s Day. The other spirits reasoned that the timing of Hetty’s power has to do with her learning that she’s Irish and embracing her heritage. Now that she sees the Irish as real people, she can also be seen, thus unlocking her special ability.
Just as with her fellow ghosts, Hetty’s power, fittingly, connects to an aspect of her character and her experience being overlooked and sold into marriage in life.
The reveal of Hetty’s ability “only happens after she truly accepts who she is, and that seems pretty resonant to me,” her portrayer Rebecca Wisocky tells TVLine.
While Hetty was visible, Jay’s heartbroken cousin Sunil, who was visiting Woodstone B&B, saw the baroness and was taken with her refinement. The two went on a date, during which Hetty hilariously convinced Sunil that she ate a lamb chop, bone and all, while he wasn’t looking. But their romance was short-lived: Sunil, eventually, discovered that Hetty is ghost when he tried to take her hand and freaked out. Despite the unusual situation, Jay said Hetty gave Sunil — “A wonderful man never goes out of style,” she told Sunil — the confidence not to settle, while Hetty felt seen for the first time in her life, thanks to Sunil.
Then, as the clock struck midnight and St. Patrick’s Day came to an end, so, too, did Hetty’s special power.
“Maybe if Hetty continues to do good deeds and reforms her outdated opinions, perhaps she can get more than one day,” Wisocky suggests with a laugh. “I can imagine her trying to shoot for that.”
But the actress wasn’t always so keen for her character to have a power, she reveals in the below Q&A.
How did you first find out what Hetty’s power was going to be? And what was your reaction?
I feel like I found out about it when everyone else did when we read the script, so pretty last minute. But it’s really funny. They chose a wonderful guest star. Asif Ali came on to play Sunil, who is Jay’s cousin, and we had so much fun together. He was so lovely, such a funny character, and also so sweet and gentle, and so genuinely enamored of Hetty, which really knocked her socks off. I love the theme of being seen that carries throughout the episode in both storylines. And it’s a fun ghost power that we will have, I’m sure, a lot of fun with every year.
Before this episode, did you have any theories or any wishes for Hetty’s power?
If I’m completely honest with you, I kind of loved that she didn’t have one maybe, because she’s so superior. She holds herself in such high regard that the idea that she maybe was lacking in power in some way, I thought, was really juicy. But the ghosts have made fun of her for that for last 150 years, so now she can lord her power over them. [Laughs]
Hetty and the other ghosts just kind of assume that she only has this power on St. Patrick’s Day. Does she accept that going forward? Is that a definite rule of this power, that it only lasts one day?
Well, you’ll have to see. We won’t revisit it for a little while, but I think that very question is probably up for discussion.
Would you have liked her to stay visible? Or do you like that the power has this one-day limitation on it?
I always like it when characters have impediments, and complications, and disappointments, and when they don’t get what they want. It’s just more interesting to play, and it’s more interesting for an audience, and it makes for better comedy. So I always love when there’s a fly in the ointment for Hetty Woodstone.
She also has this really interesting experience with Sunil in this episode. Do you think she had genuine feelings for him? Or was it more about filling a sort of emptiness within herself?
I, personally, think that she had genuine feelings for Sunil. The way he’s such a gentleman and appreciates all the things of refinement about Hetty and really is smitten with her, I think she finds just shocking and delightful. She says it in the episode: She was married because she was part of a lands deal. She did have this painter paramour, which I’d love to know more about him, that I believe was an actual real relationship. So I’m curious in what ways that painter didn’t actually see her.
Does the experience with Sunil get her thinking about love and romance? Is that something she’s yearning for more now?
She’s very fickle. I think her mind changes on any given day. And of course, there’s this complicated relationship with Trevor at the same time, which is not necessarily a love relationship, but it’s an electric partnership of like-minded enemies. [Laughs] So I’m sure he’ll have some sort of commentary about Sunil.
Ghosts fans, what did you think of Hetty’s power? Hit the comments!
