Trailer Watch: Riele Downs Throws a Ghost’s Birthday Party in “Darby and the Dead”

“Darby and the Dead” shouldn’t be about your average high schooler. “Are you sitting down for this? I see dead people. I help them pass on to the following realm,” Darby (Riele Downs, “Henry Danger”) expains in a recent trailer for the Hulu comedy.

Written by Becca Greene (“Good Vibes”) and Wenonah Wilms (“Horsehead Girls”), “Darby and the Dead” follows a teen who gained the paranormal ability to see and communicate with the dead following a near-death childhood experience. But to the introverted Darby, counseling lonely spirits continues to be less gruesome than navigating highschool, where she is subjected to constant mistreatment from head cheerleader Capri (Auli’i Cravalho, “Moana”)

Things change when Capri suddenly dies by electrocution in a freak hair straightening accident in school. The cheerleader’s spirit refuses to rest because she has unfinished business: her seventeenth celebration. Capri enlists Darby’s help to persuade her friends to hold on the celebration. “All I need is that this party,” the cheerleader’s spirit implores within the trailer. “Then I’ll move on.”

Naturally, Darby is loath to meet the dying wish of her tormentor. “In what world do you think that I can throw your dream party?” she asks the ghost. “In a world where I make you popular enough to do it,” Capri replies. 

“As a way to appease the wrath of the undead diva, Darby must emerge from her self-imposed exile and reinvent herself — which along the way in which allows her to seek out recent joy back within the land of the living,” the series’ synopsis details.

“Darby and the Dead” launches on Hulu December 2.