In October of 2019, months before COVID would render every inch of the world a deserted wasteland, a different ghost town appeared. The fictional town of Horseshoe Bay, Maine, in the CW’s Nancy Drew is ominous yet welcoming, fun yet doomy, and as cozy as a haunted, on-brand #spookyseason seaside town could be. As a veteran of finding guilty pleasure in shows about people younger than me, portrayed by actors older than me, I fell all the way in.
This may not be surprising; I love teen TV, and it’s no secret that girls love Nancy Drew. But before the CW’s reboot, I was never a certified member of the Clue Crew. I read a couple of books in my youth—of which I have no recollection—and did have a fondness for the 2007 Nancy Drew film starring Emma Roberts. Though there’s been heavy speculation about why the IP endures, the rules just simply don’t apply here. For one—and maybe the biggest one—my life was nothing like Nancy’s: I grew up in a city, not a small town; I was smart, but not adventurous; I certainly don’t look like her. I loved solving puzzles, but I did it to pass the time, not to learn things about myself or the world around me. For that, I turned to art.
And yet, despite all of the above, the new Nancy Drew had me hooked. It was just the world I wanted to get lost in while the real one was falling apart, and it still is—both because I love the show and because, in my (and Nancy’s) most cynical moments, I believe the world is still, and might always be, falling apart. Even more importantly, I finally saw myself in it. I, a Black woman in my mid-20s, finally saw myself in the world (and the girl) the literary canon had been forcing upon me since I was old enough to realize fiction can look a lot like the world you live in.
But this is by design. For starters, the world of this Nancy Drew is incredibly diverse. In the show, Ned Nickerson (Tunji Kasim) is a young Black man who arrives in town for reasons that involve an undeservedly troubled past with law enforcement—a story not too unfamiliar to many Black men of today.* George Fayne becomes George Fan (Leah Lewis), a young Asian woman who is the manager of the Bayside Claw, the restaurant that employs the Drew Crew and their functional sleuthing headquarters; she’s also the caretaker of her three younger siblings while her alcoholic mother seems to come and go as she pleases. Bess Marvin becomes Bess Turani, a rich girl with a hidden past, portrayed by the British-Iranian actress Maddison Jaizani. It is revealed a few episodes into the first season that Bess is a lesbian, but she is not presented as a token ideal—she’s just as bad at relationships as every other member of the Drew Crew. There’s a deaf character, South Asian characters, and the list goes on.
What’s even more powerful than the simple display of diversity is the way the show weaves in supernatural fanfare and sleuthing with real stakes. Though mostly episodic, the first season also posits multiple long-game mysteries, the biggest one being the truth behind the death of local legend Lucy Sable. Without spoiling the conclusion, it’s safe to say that the realities of Lucy’s death are wrapped in real-life issues of the rich demeaning the poor and the common dismissal of teenage trauma and mental health. Another large mystery ends up a classic story of a man who built his wealth in no small part through the subjugation and ultimate demise of other human beings—leaving victims of his selfishness and greed everywhere he went. The ghosts, spirits, and witches of Horseshoe Bay are violent, yes, but often out of residual frustration from the wrongdoings inflicted upon them while alive. In a recent episode, Nancy solves a mystery that stems from the dangers of being in an interracial relationship years before Loving v. Virginia rendered laws barring interracial marriage unconstitutional. Almost every serial killer, almost every paranormal foe, is a way for Nancy to learn that the world is complicated, and nothing is as simple as good and evil. Nancy is the glue that keeps the group together, their moral compass when everything else fails, not because she’s simply good all by herself, but because she sees the good in the people around her and she tries to be more like them. It’s the Drew Crew and Horseshoe Bay that make Nancy Drew who she is, and not the other way around.
The driving force of the show isn’t the satisfaction of solving a whodunit, but the virtue of empathy, which the show extends to all of its characters. Take, for instance, George’s alcoholic and mostly absent mother—she drinks because she’s a psychic medium who can only drown out the voices in her head with alcohol. Nancy, played by Kennedy McMann, gets an upgrade from her countless previous iterations. In the 2007 film, Nancy is resourceful and charismatic, but somewhat juvenile and anachronistic. In the 1995 TV series, Nancy gets a makeover (she’s a short-haired brunette!) and is a little more grown-up, but she’s bland and robotic. The Nancy Drew of the 2002 TV movie is a blond, overly capable college student, charismatic for sure, but a bit basic and too mature. (Also, is it that unique to be “smart” in college?) The Nancy of today is troubled from the start: A recent graduate, Nancy missed her college applications because she spent the previous year reeling from the untimely death of her mother. In Season 2, the series dives deep into an exploration of mental health: Nancy wrestles with depression, PTSD, and generational trauma, all while experiencing an emotionally abusive relationship. The series dealt so closely with these things that McMann wrote a personal letter about how much Nancy’s exploration of mental health related to her own.
Notwithstanding those smart and serious underpinnings, it’s worth stressing that the show is also fun. The comedic timing of Ace (Alex Saxon), Nancy’s slow-burn love interest and fan-theorized Hardy Boy, is a successful counterpart to Nancy’s doom and gloom. The show’s got whimsical witches, quirky townies, and the heavy perfume of young love. There’s no lack of bumbling as Carson Drew (Scott Wolf) tries to parent a fiercely independent girl who enjoys going after murderers. Jokes abound, because the show is deeply aware of just how ridiculous it can be. Would any of us see a ghost and think, Hmm … let’s investigate that? No! Would we volunteer to go down into the creepy basement or be bait for the local serial killer? Hell no! (If you would, then maybe consider a move to Horseshoe Bay.)
Nancy Drew has all of the supernatural action of the CW’s The Vampire Diaries without the heavily laden soap opera qualities (at least yet). It most certainly nails the darker-toned-twist-on-childhood-IP trend without the truly chaotic plots of Riverdale, although it does dip an occasional toe into the unhinged; in one plotline, George is possessed by the ghost of a 19th century French heiress, who uses her control of George’s body to have an affair with Bess. The show is sexy, not only because everyone is as hot as you would imagine—the CW will never let that trend go—but also because there’s, well, sex and sex positivity. There’s even a hilariously corny, yet still earnest, episode where a lust spell makes Nancy unquenchably horny.
The CW’s Nancy Drew turns a series aimed at bookish white girls into a fun, diverse, and sexy story landscape that doesn’t shy away from dealing with real-world harm. And it’s great not because of its source material, but because it’s a lot of things its source is not. Nancy Drew may endure, but Nancy Drew hasn’t always been for everyone, at least until now.
Correction, Nov. 4, 2021: This piece originally misspelled Tunji Kasim’s last name.
