My love for Nancy Drew started in middle school when I read the book series. My Mom gave me her copies of the stories in their glorious butter yellow hardback. The original series of Nancy Drew books, consists of 175 volumes published from 1930 to 2003! Amazing!
This post isn’t about the Nancy Drew book series though, it’s about the TV series on the CW. The Nancy Drew stories have everything a girl could want. Nancy is a smart, sophisticated, independent, fashionable, fearless woman who plays an amateur sleuth. In the books, her best friends are Bess and George. In the TV series, she has Bess, George, Nick and Ace as her counterparts.
The CW Nancy Drew Series
The CW series premiered on October 9, 2019, and is currently in its fourth season. Kennedy McMann stars as Nancy Drew. Other main cast members include Leah Lewis (George), Maddison Jaizani (Bess), Tunji Kasim (Nick), Alex Saxon (Ace), and Riley Smith (Ryan) and Scott Wolf (Carson). Yes, you heard that right, Scott Wolf from Party of Five in the late 90s, plays Carson Drew, Nancy’s lawyer Dad.
I’ve written about the series before on scrink.com, but as you know, I lost all 7,000 plus articles. That post had been back in 2021 during season three. I remember being impressed by their social justice storylines. I appreciate the storylines about how crimes against black women are under-reported and under-investigated. I appreciate that they have multiple LGBTQ characters. It means something to me when I see that writers are inclusive. And it has been this way since the beginning of the series.
“The fact that Nick is the only one who can see Mac and that he’s the one being targeted is a parallel to the racism Black people endure that their white counterparts can’t necessarily see. But Nick’s friends are true allies because they believe him and try to help.”@missandreart
— Nancy Drew Writers (@DrewCrewWriters) January 28, 2021
Fast forward to summer 2023, and I feel compelled to write about the series again because I love it so freaking much!
Season Four
Nancy and her friends solve mysteries in and around their hometown of Horseshoe Bay. Every storyline has a supernatural twist. So we have a strong female lead, a great group of friends, paranormal entities and mysteries all rolled into one fantastic show.
Season 4 of Nancy Drew premiered on May 31, 2023, and will conclude on August 23, 2023. The CW says this will be the final season of the series. **sad face**
The season picks up shortly after Temperance’s curse forces Nancy to let go of her future with Ace. Their love story gives me so much anxiety. I love Nancy and Ace together, and it makes me angry that it doesn’t look like that will happen. Ace is SUCH a great guy, I mean he is an awesome friend to Nick, Bess, George and Nancy. Nancy is just so defeated now, and I don’t like seeing her that way. I JUST WANT THEM TO BE HAPPY!
I do not want to see Nancy with Tristan, a new character, this season, but it feels like that might happen. **sad face**
Episode Five
I just finished watching The Oracle of the Whispering Remains which added even more new layers to the current “town cover-up” mystery. The teeth of the missing bodies, from earlier this season had occult symbols on them. The coroner says they were not etched on but grew that way. Well, it turns out that there are three 500-year-old skulls kept locked away at a local university that also have these occult symbols.
Ryan buys an expensive old relic that turns into a compass. It leads the crew to the forest, where they had followed the eight corpses earlier this season. The episode ends with a creepy supernatural entity with a crazy set of teeth contorting itself so that it crawls away like a spider. Yikes!
My thoughts on season four so far, it very much feels like the literal sins of the dead are returning to haunt the living. I’m sad to hear this season will lead to the series finale. I really love the writing and the character development, I can’t say that about many other television series these days.
Maybe I’ll go back and read the 175 book series again.
