I will say one thing for Nancy Drew. The ghosts are more than just jump scares at this point. They matter. They affect the story. That’s what I was hoping for, now I just want them to be scarier. That’s less of a problem for this episode, which contains a whole lot of ghost action. Last week’s episode focused more on the sleuthing aspects of the show, so we get more of the supernatural side this week. Those ancient coins linking the Hudson family to a sunken cruise ship? Turns out they’re also magnets for ghosts and evil spirits. We get a few fun jump scares out of that.
Despite the supernatural stuff, this week’s episode feels a little slower than the past few. We eventually get to a seance, but the episode takes its sweet time getting there. The bright side is slow doesn’t necessarily mean bad. At least one new suspect gets added to the Tiffany case, and we learn some interesting new details about Lucy Sable’s death. Laura Tandy’s the new suspect in Tiffany’s murder. Turns out if Tiffany’s death is ruled a murder, she gets all the money. So she has motive.
Kennedy McMann as Nancy and Leah Lewis as George. (Photo Credit: Colin Bentley / The CW)
As for Lucy, the gang needs to track down more information about they day she was murdered. To perform a seance, they need something she touched the day she died. Nancy and George dig for information from the runner-up the year Lucy won Sea Queen. An old video shows her whispering something the moment Lucy wins that seems to ruin her day. They want to know what that is. The woman is clearly still holding onto that particular high school grudge. When Nancy asks what she told Lucy 20 years ago, she’s almost proud to say she calls her a slut. That gets her on George’s bad side real quick. George has some of the best lines in this scene, and I think she’s quickly becoming my favorite character.
That questioning leads them to the newspaper archives, where they find more pictures from the ceremony that day. It seems Lucy had a fight with the runner up that wasn’t mentioned. Lucy also wore a charm on her wrist earlier in the day that disappeared before the ceremony. This discovery is cut short when Nick drops the container he’s holding the old coins in. The evil spirits come out of the shadows, reaching for the coins. It’s a fun little horror scene that breaks up the investigation for a bit.
Leah Lewis as George, Maddison Jaizani as Bess, Liza Lapira as Victoria Fan, and Kennedy McMann as Nancy. (Photo Credit: Colin Bentley / The CW)
That charm turns out to be important because Nancy’s forensic scientist buddy has misplaced the box with Lucy’s DNA samples in it. Strange that it would go missing so suddenly. She and Nick find Lucy’s brother, who’s been hanging onto her wrist charm since her death. They borrow it for the seance which, when we finally get to it, makes for a fun ghost story. The show drags out the path to the seance for as long as it can. There’s a whole subplot of everyone trying to keep George’s mom happy and distracted while she’s trying to run away from the evil spirits. In the end, she runs off and is nowhere to be found, making all those scenes pointless. Yeah, that was kind of a letdown. An entire episode of schtick that goes nowhere.
Once we do get to the seance though, some interesting things happen. They use George’s sister’s electronic dragon toy to ask yes or no questions. When they’re sure they have Lucy, they start asking questions about who killed her. When asked if the Hudsons did it, the mask starts flashing green and red. Yes and no. Remember last week, when Ryan Hudson said his family “handled” Lucy the way they handled everything back then? Well, Nancy also learned this episode that after Lucy died, the Hudsons gave Carson Drew $50,000. With all that suspicion, Nancy still can’t bring herself to ask Lucy if her father killed her. It makes sense, but the effort to drag this out for multiple episodes is clear. It just feels a little cheap when the main character can’t bring herself to move the plot forward.
Tunji Kasim as Nick, Maddison Jaizani as Bess, Leah Lewis as George, and Kennedy McMann as Nancy. (Photo Credit: Colin Bentley / The CW)
The intrusions by the evil spirits become too much and Lucy’s connection is severed. At least Nancy learns that Lucy is haunting her because of that bloody dress she found. So that’s something. Unfortunately, the seance melted the coins. With them, Nick’s hopes of fulfilling Tiffany’s wish to bring down the Hudsons are dashed. He’s not happy. He breaks up with Nancy for refusing to keep him into the loop. It doesn’t land emotionally the way the show wants it to. Nancy and Nick’s relationship has been in flux since episode one. First she suspected him, then they were OK for like a week, then they went on their different paths. The show hasn’t done enough to make this relationship matter to us. So when it clearly wants this breakup to be a sad moment, the only reaction it elicits is, “yeah, makes sense.”
The show does end on a pretty good cliffhanger. As Nancy gets home, she sees that her father’s been monitoring all her texts. He knows everything she’s been up to, meaning he would have known about Lucy’s DNA sample. She checks his GPS history, and yep. He made a detour to the forensic scientist and, in all likelihood, stole the sample. As they sit down to dinner, she asks him point blank if he killed Lucy Sable. Yeah, that’ll keep us coming back in two weeks.
Alex Saxon as Ace. (Photo Credit: Colin Bentley / The CW)
This episode of Nancy Drew had its ups and downs. The ghost stuff was a lot of fun, and Carson becoming super suspicious is an interesting story development. It also wasted a ton of time on stuff that didn’t really matter. Not only the George’s mom stuff, but the scene with Police Chief McGinnis. When the show premiered, I was looking forward to seeing what they’d do with him. A police chief who’s privately annoyed that a teenage detective keeps showing him up? You can have a lot of fun with that premise. It’s so disappointing that the show has done absolutely nothing with it. Nancy has one brief interaction with the guy, their first since the pilot. It goes nowhere. It only serves to have Nancy figure out that Ace has been spying for him. Even that confrontation is downplayed and goes nowhere. Those two moments had so much potential, and the show squandered it. Neither problem is unfixable, but I hope they lead to something soon.
Nancy Drew airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on The CW.
Previously on Nancy Drew:
- Nancy Drew Season 1 Episode 6 Recap
- Nancy Drew Season 1 Episode 5 Recap
- Nancy Drew Season 1 Episode 4 Recap
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