[Warning: The following contains spoilers from Wednesday’s episode of Nancy Drew. Read at your own risk!]
Nancy Drew just dropped the mother of all bombs on us (pun totally intended), and it changes everything we thought we knew about the Lucy Sable investigation. Not to mention, it finally explained why Dead Lucy has been haunting Nancy (Kennedy McMann) all year long.
In an effort to clear Carson’s (Scott Wolf ) name in the Lucy Sable case, Nancy went to Lucy’s old house with Ryan Hudson (Riley Smith), where she dug up Lucy’s old diary. It even had an entry from the day she died, where she confessed she’d stolen a knife from the Drew residence and planned to go to the bluffs to end her own life. The suicide note seemed to clear the whole situation up — until, that is, Nancy got the results from the DNA test of the additional female hair on Nancy’s crown.
Nancy had originally thought to test the mysterious female hair against her own DNA to see if her mom was the culprit in Lucy’s murder. It turned out, the mother-daughter DNA wasn’t a match between Nancy and Katherine Drew (Sara Canning), it was a match between Nancy and Lucy. Nancy Drew isn’t a Drew at all, she’s a Sable, and she was born on the same night Nancy allegedly killed herself after handing her newborn off to her guidance counselor, Katherine.
TV Guide spoke to executive producers Noga Landau and Melinda Hsu Taylor to break down all those crazy twists and how they’ll play out for the rest of Season 1.
Kennedy McMann, Nancy Drew
How long have you known that you were going to reveal Nancy was Lucy’s daughter?
Noga Landau: Literally from the day that I pitched this to the network. I always knew that this was going to be in the DNA of the show, and I always knew that this was going to be the real reason why Dead Lucy was haunting. Nancy.
And how can you expect Nancy to cope with this life-altering revelation moving forward?
Melinda Hsu Taylor: Episode 17 is all about that — and the ripple-effect going forward into the series is going to always be there — but [Episode] 17 it’s front and center. What does she do with this information? It’s a direct pickup, and we see all of the fallout from the big reveal.
Can we expect it to have a shifting effect on her relationship with her father, which has already been very tenuous?
Taylor: Yeah, Nancy doesn’t deal well with betrayal. It’s going to be a big problem.
Landau: You’re gonna be many shades of them coming to terms with each other in the coming episodes.
Can we assume that Ryan is her biological father?
Landau: I imagine that that’s what Nancy is assuming at the end of Episode 16, and that is going to be explored in Episode 17.
Taylor: One thing that I enjoyed about how we broke that story in the room is we leaned into her having to tell him, but we also embrace the notion that she would not want to tell him. So how do you force her into a corner where the only thing she can say next is the truth.
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Have we finally solved the mystery of Lucy Sable or is there more that we still don’t know?
Landau: Well, we have finally solved the supernatural mystery of Lucy Sable. I think that Nancy has now become literally like the walking, living continuation of that mystery in the sense that now she has to start unpacking her identity because she is what Lucy left behind.
How nervous should we still be about the Agleaca and the fact that Nancy still hasn’t paid its toll?
Taylor: You should be six episodes worth of worried.
Should we be more worried for Owen or Nancy in this situation?
Landau: Well, they’re both in a pretty bad spot because all six of them, they all call for the Agleaca.
Maddison Jaizani, Alex Saxon, Miles Gaston Villanueva, Kennedy McMann, Tunji Kasim, and Leah Lewis, Nancy Drew
Is there still sort of a love triangle forming between Nancy, Owen (Miles Gaston Villanueva), and Nick (Tunji Kasim)?
Landau: There’s going to be a lot of love triangles in the show, especially around Nancy. So the answer is, yes. We don’t think that Nancy’s feelings for Nick have completely gone away, but now we have George (Leah Lewis) and Nick heating up. And Nancy is the kind of person where she’s going to respect the sisterhood and still loves George while also probably inside being a little heartbroken that George is sort of moving into the direction of being with Nick.
What’s been your favorite part about sort of building the slow burn between Nick and George?
Taylor: We enjoy the reality of it, you know, when people notice each other in a friend group and don’t act on it for a long time and then realize that maybe it’s mutual… Personally, I have loved working with Leah and Tunji on set because they’ll really talk about the themes and they’ll be very thoughtful in their approach. Like, “Why would I say that because I just did this other thing?” And then we work it out, and sometimes the lines adjust. But they’re always going for the emotional reality of what two characters are feeling together, which is really exciting creatively.
And I have to ask as a scaredy-cat I am, was there ever a moment where you guys were worried about making this series too scary?
Landau: No.
Taylor: No, we love scary.
Landau: We’ve leaned completely into the reality of what it would feel like to realize you live in a world that is haunted, that does have ghosts along with the mysteries. The mysteries often come with a side of ghosts, and we just leaned completely and fully into the fun of that.
Since you guys do have a Season 2 renewal, what can you tell us about where we’re headed as the season draws to a close and how that will push us into Season 2?
Taylor: Well, the threat from the Agleaca is not just existential, it’s very real. And we’re going to have to deal with that in the next six episodes, and the way that they attempt to defeat the Agleaca is going to result in story engines that launch us into Season 2.
Nancy Drew airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on The CW.
Riley Smith and Kennedy McMann, Nancy Drew