The Answer at the Mystery’s End: A Goodbye to the CW’s Nancy Drew
NANCY DREW. Kennedy McMann as Nancy Drew, Alex Saxon as Ace, Tunji Kasim as Ned ‘Nick’ Nickerson, Maddison Jaizani as Bess Marvin, and Leah Lewis as George Fan in NANCY DREW (2019). Courtesy of The CW © 2023.
Trigger Warning: The following article makes reference to sensitive topics such as depression, anxiety, death, and grief.
The following article also contains spoilers for various storylines throughout the 4 seasons of the CW’s Nancy Drew (2019). If you have not watched the show, you should! But tread carefully, as there are spoilers below.
Goodbyes are never easy. Especially when it feels they come too soon.
This year has been a rough one for those of us that love TV, with so many shows being canceled or airing their (sometimes unexpected) final season, and even a beloved network, one that allowed the beginning of many writer’s careers, is on its last legs.
One of the shows that reached its premature end this year was the small but mighty CW’s Nancy Drew, a series that never quite got the same level of marketing or traction in the public eye that a fair amount of other shows on the network did. Based on the classic Nancy Drew books by Carolyn Keene (a pseudonym consisting of multiple authors over the years), this adaptation takes a bit of a departure from the more wholesome and modest girl detective described in the books and comics, instead opting to ramp up the darkness - both in the mysteries solved, and also within Nancy herself.
In this depiction, we follow an aged-up and more mature version of the Drew Crew where things are messier, sexier, and oh yeah, scarier.
Did I mention that the supernatural is real in this one?
Instead of monsters being men in masks, the masks tend to be the monsters.
And rather than being set in the idyllic midwest town of River Heights, the show embraces the new depth and darkness that’s been brought to the surface, running with the concept of externalizing the internal worlds of the characters, and instead takes place somewhere that Stephen King already knew was filled with ghosts - Maine. Horseshoe Bay, Maine to be exact.
It’s a charming, fog-swept maritime town ripe with festivals and celebrations steeped in supernatural lore (long live blood bucket summer!) The folklore and history of Horseshoe Bay comprise the backbone of the show, serving as foundational threads woven into the tapestry of the mysteries and people of the town, and together with the physical setting create the perfect grounds for a supernatural horror, especially with the unique monsters and magic conjured up by the writers.
Throw in intriguing and complex characters, poignant writing, affecting acting, and gorgeous creature designs that made those on Twitter unfamiliar with the show ask, “What the fuck IS Nancy Drew about?” on top of that spooky seaside setting, and what you get is hooked.
Line and sinker.
What started with a ghostly whodunnit that our teen sleuth just couldn’t stay away from ended up loosening the dirt on long-buried secrets and entwining puzzles, uncovering a bigger and more surprising mystery - herself. Curiosity isn’t just reserved for finding the truth that’s out there, but also, and sometimes more importantly, for figuring out the truths within ourselves.
The handling of that theme, amongst many others, is just one of the reasons why I can easily say that Nancy Drew is one of my favorite television shows, which makes it all the harder to say goodbye to.
The storylines in this modern-day Buffy the Vampire Slayer are heartbreaking and heavy but balanced out by hijinks and humor, sometimes all in the span of 42 minutes! Some of my favorite episodes have included catharsis via an off-kilter dreamscape (let the record show I love me a good dreamscape), multiple memory erasures as a means to fight off an ancient deity, a curse caused by a bridal gown full of lust dust (you read that right), the hunt for a serial killer at a detective convention, a haunted 80’s board game, and mysterious happenings on the set of a horror movie remake. Mysteries of the week intertwined with season-long arcs in surprising ways, encouraging the extremely engaged fandom on social media to join in with theories and Easter egg spotting every week, and the docks certainly weren't the only place to find ships in Horseshoe Bay.
An extension of the show itself, this fandom, whose members are lovingly known as the Drewds, has been one of the most fun I’ve ever been a part of and interacted with. Despite my grumblings about it not getting the promo and numbers it deserves above, the smaller fan base has allowed for a truly interactive and communal experience, with even the cast and crew interacting almost daily with our chaotic tweets and incessant questions.
Kennedy McMann, who plays the titular Nancy Drew, is a fan right alongside the rest of us and has a penchant for stirring the already turbulent waters with behind-the-scenes pictures and ominous hints. Multiple writers share BTS content as well, live-tweeting with us every night an episode airs, and one of them even told me that they have a group chat where they regularly share tweets and memes from us. “It’s Wednesday, my Drewds!” has greeted us on the timeline every week during a season’s run for years, a posted screengrab from the show acts as a signal to wish fellow fans a “Happy Birthday,” Kennedy and the writers gladly joining in, we all became #Kegstans in honor of our favorite zombie cat, and in one of the latest episodes, it was revealed that a song featured in a scene made its way there because one of the writers heard it in a fan edit and liked it so much they rallied for it to appear in the show! (They watch our fan edits! I mean, what other writers’ room even does that?)
I loved the community aspect so much that I briefly co-hosted a podcast covering the show, and while it was short-lived, as life became busier and messier than expected, starting it really helped me get out of the depressive and creative funk I had been feeling for so long. Plus, I was able to meet some cool friends who I get to watch go after their dreams and thrive, and for that I am grateful.
I even created a No Context Nancy Drew Twitter account to celebrate the writers’ brilliant words and the hilarity of the show, and in the hopes of spreading some joy on the timeline, especially when production (and the world) was halted in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Many of us, myself included, turned toward our TV’s to find solace in something in a time that felt so isolating. Like the lighthouse that stands outside of The Claw, cutting through the dark, shrouding mist of the sea and pointing the way toward home, this show acted as a refuge for many of us during difficult days.
In a Stranger Things piece I wrote last year, I said that I fully believe that art has the ability to shift societal narratives and aid in healing. I still believe that, and I also believe that Nancy Drew is one of those pieces of art you come across where you instantly feel a connection, and that actively engages in the process of your healing. This has especially been the case for me.
Between the airing of the first and second seasons, when lockdown was just beginning, my mom unexpectedly passed. It was sudden and jarring, and at a time when I wasn’t sure if I would even be allowed into the hospital to see her. And even when I was, because of the situation, I never truly got to say goodbye.
I couldn’t feel a damn thing for a few months afterward. I didn’t know how to anymore. I spent my days slogging through remote work, not sure how I was even getting anything done and spent my nights laying awake in a dark room with the pale light of the TV in my face. Eventually, I decided to rewatch season 1 of Nancy Drew as a refresher before the second season was set to air in January 2021.
I made it to episode four before I completely broke down.
In the show, Nancy loses her mother, Kate Drew (Sara Canning) before the story begins, and there’s a scene where she visits her grave. Nancy never believed in ghosts, never believed in anything outside of her perceived experience and logic, but when the goings-on with the murder mystery she’s been trying to solve leave her questioning, she sits alone in front of her mother’s headstone asking her why, if ghosts really do exist, hasn’t she come to her yet? Why hasn’t she let her know if she’s okay?
I lost it. I realized how much I had shut myself from everything and everyone, and I let myself cry to that headstone right along with Nancy.
NANCY DREW. Kennedy McMann as Nancy Drew in NANCY DREW (2019). Courtesy of The CW © 2019.
And then I got to Season 1, Episode 13, “The Whisper Box,” and broke down even more. Remember the catharsis via an off-kilter dreamscape from above? That’s this one and in it, Nancy was able to finally say goodbye to her mother, a goodbye she had been holding onto and had originally never gotten to give. In reality, we can’t actually tell our lost loved ones the things we wish we had, but through art, we can process and give tribute to what lingers within us. In the end, Nancy was only able to find her way back to reality by facing what she had been denying, the good memories she had shared with her mom the answer to finding her way back home.
My all-time favorite episode, however, is the Season 2 finale, “The Echo of Lost Tears.” In it, Nancy has unknowingly been playing host to a parasitic entity called the Wraith that’s been slowly killing her, and she’s thrown into another dreamscape (I told you I love them) to get rid of it. She meets and talks to past versions of herself along the way, realizing that her memories are leading her through prominent moments of trauma that she’s ignored and buried.
“You always went looking for the truth, we’re part of that truth,” one of them says to her. And when she finally learns how to sever the Wraith’s connection to her, she discovers it would mean destroying those memories, those parts of her, as it’s been feeding off of those traumas. However, when she does cut the ties, she binds them to herself, choosing to take the traumas with her as friends and guides instead of as anchors weighing her down, no longer shoving those aspects of herself into the dark. She knows that you can’t save yourself by denying yourself.
“The trauma is still there, but I’m strong enough to hold it now.”
It’s an allegory for grief and depression presented in such a different way than I had seen before, but in such a helpful way. Of a force that latches on to you, slowly draining you of life and of who you are. It portrays it in all its mess, all its ugly, but in all its hope as well. The ability to choose to heal, to face and name the parts of ourselves we neglect and keep locked away, but instead know are just parts of ourselves that need a warm embrace and need to be healed too.
This is the kind of stuff I ache to create as a writer and filmmaker, and it is heartening knowing that there are others out there that are aching to write it too.
Writing is, after all, our way of trying to understand ourselves and the human experience because of, and in spite of, our traumas and broken pieces.
This past year, I had the opportunity to attend and photograph a panel by the acclaimed American history documentation Ken Burns in Gettysburg, PA, something I know Kate Drew would have loved, as it was held just steps away from where the figure and the speech that influenced Nancy’s namesake was delivered.
During the Q&A portion of the session, someone in the audience asked Burns why he had become a filmmaker and why history was his main subject of choice. I am paraphrasing a bit here, but he began with a story about how his mother had had cancer throughout his childhood and had ultimately passed when he was still young. Afterward, he had seen the emotional safe harbor that watching films had brought his father and family at that time and decided that that’s what he wanted to do, make films that would act as safe harbors. His intention was initially to make narrative films, but he found himself drawn to stories about history and the drama in what is and what was, the rhymes and rhythms of real life events, while he was in college.
Years later, when trying to figure out his way through a crisis, Burns consulted with his father-in-law, a psychologist. He offhandedly said to him, “I can’t seem to stay present for the anniversary of my mother’s death. I’m always thinking it’s approaching, or it’s passed and I missed it.”
His father-in-law responded, “Look at what you do for a living. You wake the dead. You make Jackie Robinson and Abraham Lincoln come alive, who do you really think you’re trying to wake up?”
Nancy Drew is a show that wakes the dead.
Sometimes literally, as the Crew has dealt with multiple hauntings, corpses walking out of their graves, and a whole assortment of deities, but at its core the show is about the things that haunt us as humans. The memories and grief that linger like an icy touch around us, questions that keep us up in the dead of night, calling to us from the dark, and the relentless need to find the truth in the shadows no matter the cost.
Nancy solves mysteries not just because of her endless curiosity and ability to notice things others miss, but because deep down, she too is trying to wake the dead. Just like Ken Burns, just like me.
These characters, along with the writers, cast, and crew, know the importance of saying, “I see you and I believe you,” to people and stories that have been cast aside or forgotten. They believe in the humanity of monsters, monsters that were created at the hands of abuse and lies, their sense of identities twisted until they no longer were able to recognize themselves. They believe that we can remind each other of who we are through the pieces of ourselves we’ve left behind, in the love that still lives on.
They believe in looking for the things locked away in dark corners and dusty houses, listening to the lost shouts in the wind and rain of a coming nor’easter, begging for anyone to hear and help them out of the storm.
They believe in making sure that memories once lost won’t be forgotten, that the things left in the shadows find their way to the light, that the voices clawing their way through the dark aren’t ignored, and that the stories that need justice find it.
They believe in the importance of the perseveration of history, with all its good, bad, and ugly truths, and the knowledge that we must understand and feel it in order to move forward.
The show doesn't shy away from the hard stuff, and it isn’t afraid to tackle big topics surrounding social injustices and systemic issues, with some of the true monsters of the series being the humans that seek to keep their abuse and crimes a secret, or they don’t even care and revel in their sordid public affairs, seeking to control the supernatural as a means to an end.
And not only do the characters try to create a better and more just world by leading by example, but so do the creators behind the show. In May 2023, the WGA went on strike against the AMPTP over ongoing labor disputes involving fair pay, protections against AI, minimum staffing requirements, safer working conditions, and more, with SAG-AFTRA joining the picket line in July 2023 with similar demands. It’s a fight for basic human rights, respect, and a sustainable lifestyle in an industry (and let’s be honest, whole society) that continues to abuse those that comprise it for the sake of a bottom dollar.
Since the final season of Nancy Drew has been airing during the strike, there have been some necessary sacrifices and restrictions in terms of promotion and cast interactivity, which, I will admit has been sad, but it’s all for a cause worth fighting for - exposing hard truths and bringing them into the light so that powerful pieces of art can continue to be created and shared in the hopes of healing together.
Many of the Nancy Drew writers, cast, and crew have been supporting the strike in various forms on and off the picket line, and I had the privilege of meeting a few when I spent a few days on the line myself (thanks Jen and Leilani!) The film industry is my industry too, and I want to make sure that I - and it - have a future. They were as accommodating in person as they have been on Twitter, talking shop with me and explaining more of the nuances of the strike and the unions. I can truly say that all of you are making history, fighting for something you and so many others care so deeply about, and you won’t let the voices that need to be heard be lost to the dark.
Showrunners Noga Landau and Melinda Hsu Taylor were even generous enough to let me have a part of Nancy Drew history when some mysterious mail arrived a few weeks later that included a card, Season 4 crew hat, and a package-within-a-package that wasn’t to be opened until a certain episode to not spoil myself (Spoiler alert: it was a prop from the episode!)
I truly will not forget the leadership, generosity, and openness I have experienced from the cast and crew. It’s something you just don’t get from other shows, and believe me when I say it is something I will carry with me and remember when someday I may be on a set or in a writers’ room of my own.
There is a Russian term I go back to all the time in my storytelling, “Ostranenie.” It doesn’t have an exact English translation, but refers to the concept of defamiliarization; of presenting something familiar or common in an uncommon or unusual way in order to gain new perspective. It makes the familiar unfamiliar again. Fantasy acts as a playground for this concept, offering us the ability to hold up a mirror to ourselves or society and put names and faces to our problems, allowing the metaphors and allegory inherent within the genre to give us the tools and the space necessary to process and understand our own realities better.
When on location for a film set, I was taught to always leave it better than I found it, and I’ve carried that philosophy into every aspect of my life. Leave whatever space I have occupied better than I had found it. The CW’s Nancy Drew may be just one of the numerous adaptions and continuations of a classic character that’s been kept alive through our society’s hunger for stories about the truth and the mysteries around and within us, but this iteration of Nancy and the Drew Crew is leaving things better than they had found them.
Through it, I have a place to go when I need a new perspective on reality, when I need a reminder to face the demons around me with humanity, a place to believe that grief can get easier to hold, or when I just need a good laugh with old friends.
Friends like Nancy, the detective who found herself and showed us that identity is who we know ourselves to be, not who or what anyone thinks we should be, and that our pain is a part of us.
Like Ace (Alex Saxon), the steady platanchor who learned that purpose isn’t something that necessarily needs to be found, but something created.
Like George (Leah Lewis), the big sister that always took care of everyone else and finally allowed herself to be taken care of, in the process discovering that protecting your heart meant opening it.
Like Bess (Maddison Jaizani), a klepto turned Keeper, who came looking for one family but found another instead, fighting to foster safe spaces where others can do the same.
Like Nick (Tunji Kasim), the guardian that can fix anything but recognizes he himself is a work-in-progress, and finds peace in that, knowing it’s part of building a better tomorrow.
Like Ryan (Riley Smith), a hilltopper who became a devoted townie, demonstrating that not only is change and redemption possible, but so is breaking out of destructive, generational cycles.
And like Carson (Scott Wolf), the wise and just father shepherding the next generation through their mistakes because he’s grappled with his own and has learned from them.
Nancy Drew taught us that hauntings aren’t always bad, sometimes they are there for us to listen to and understand something we didn’t know we needed, following and clinging to us because they matter. They can be remnants remembered, whispering through the veil to keep us anchored to memories that need not be forgotten. Of stories that desperately ache to be told and need others to continue spinning that yarn, continuing to add to that tapestry that was threaded long ago.
If that’s the case, then this version of Nancy Drew will be my haunting; always whispering and beckoning forward into another mystery, another reminder that the truth and the arc towards justice needs continuously fought for.
The sun may now be setting over Horseshoe Bay, and the sign on the door of The Claw may be flipped to ‘Closed’ for the last time on the show, but it will always remain open in our hearts.
And it’s a good thing for us then that goodbyes don’t mean forever.
Especially when it comes to a character like Nancy Drew, whose legacy is one as persistent as her pursuit of the truth. There have been many Nancy’s that have come before and I’m sure there will still be many to come, but I’m thankful that this one got to be mine. She’s there for all of us girls that love mystery, a hint of the supernatural, and who hear that echo from the shadows beckoning them toward the truth.
This messy, found family, the one that didn’t shy away from doing the hard work, took in a few other lost souls along the way and together we chose to believe in ghosts. Because after all that we’ve seen, we don’t doubt anymore.
The series may be coming to an end, but we know that all good things must. Endings are the reason we begin, and finding answers is the natural culmination of any good mystery. What Nancy went looking for at the beginning became the gift she gave at the end.
Because when she felt alone, we were always there, and when we felt alone, she was always there.
Searching in the dark led to finding the light, and we know that will be a light we carry with us, our own lighthouses guiding us through the sea back toward home.
For now we know that goodbye doesn’t mean we’re going to be alone.
And for that I say, thank you, Nancy Drew.
NANCY DREW. Leah Lewis as George Fan, Geraldine Chiu as Jesse Fan in NANCY DREW (2019). Courtesy of The CW © 2023.