Last night’s Nancy Drew was a one-two emotional sucker punch. I am still reeling from all the emotional whiplash that “The Drowned Woman” made us go through. Picking up pretty much immediately where we left off last week, Nancy and her crew have renewed hope on defeating the Aglaeca.
With only 24 hours left to live, they decide to divide and conquer to find any leftover sand from the portent they had suffered through a few days before.
Not going down without a fight
That goes for both Nancy and her friends, as well as the Aglaeca. The vengeful sea spirit is out to get them, and she’s supremely pissed off at our favorite heroes. Once they realize that the sand from the portents can hurt — and potentially kill — the Aglaeca, they decide to split up and go find as much sand as they can, and meet up again in a couple of hours.
But of course, it’s just their luck that every single grain of sand is gone. So when they meet up again at The Claw, they are all scared, nervous, and at each other’s throats. It’s human nature to try to find someone to blame when things take a turn for the worse, so when they realize they don’t have any moves left against the Aglaeca, they start fighting, and all fingers suddenly point at Nancy.
After all, she was the one who enlisted everyone to help with the Lucy Sable saga, right? But it all seems so unfair because no one held a gun to their head and made them do this. They helped Nancy because they’re her friends and they were in this together. But in desperation, they all turn against her, and she vows that she will find a way to make things right.
So she heads to the Historical Society and begs Hannah to help her find anything Aglaeca and sand related. While Hannah is off in the archives, Nancy takes a look at the ledger her friend left open, and discovers that the Historical Society has all sorts of cursed objects stored there. Hannah sees her and immediately closes the ledger, admonishing Nancy that this is for the Keeper’s eyes only. Those objects are dangerous and no one should ever even think about taking them out.
Nancy leaves feeling hopeless. But a struck of luck hits her and she sees Ryan’s car just outside the Historical Society building. It turns out that Ryan and Carson have teamed up to check on Nancy because they know something is going on with her. Nancy remembers that she had portent vision in Ryan’s car, and immediately approaches them and asks about the sand. Ryan luckily had the vacuum he used to clean his car in the trunk, and voilá! Aglaeca crisis almost averted.
Knowing her friends are super pissed at her, Nancy just leaves little baggies of sand for each of them to defend themselves when the Aglaeca comes. And then there’s nothing left to do but wait. Each of them go to their designated death spot holding that little bit of sand as if their lives depended on it. Which, you know, it literally did.
But they have become a family, so while they’re waiting, they all call each other and talk about their regrets. Ace reveals that he hacked into a federal database to find someone’s phone number in the Witness Protection Program. Nick says that he regrets not following through with Tiffany’s request to take the Hudson’s down. Before Nancy can say anything, the Aglaeca decides that’s enough sharing and attacks them.
Bess is attacked by fire; Nancy loses her balance and falls from a cliff, but manages to hold on by her fingers; Ace gets locked in the freezes with a wildly swinging hook; and George and Nick start drowning inside Nick’s car. But the Aglaeca only appears to Nick and George and he does manage to hit her with the sand. That interrupts the vengeful sea spirit’s murder process, and they all seem to escape unscathed, albeit a bit (a lot) shaken.
They all convene at The Claw and are just starting to celebrate defeating the Aglaeca when the sea spirit decides to surprise them with a vision of their upcoming deaths. The sand did not kill her — it only pissed her off even more. So now they know they are all going to die together at The Claw by midnight.
Now all hope is lost. Ace decides to call that number that he got from the Witness Protection Program, and it turns out it belongs to his long lost brother. Nick decides to fulfill Tiffany’s last wish, and seeks out Ryan Hudson to give him the drive that had all the dirt on the Hudsons, counting on his new found affection for Nancy to make things right. George and Bess stick together because they’re family now.
A father-daughter reunion
And Nancy finally goes to Carson. She arrives with a pizza box in hand, begging him to recreate a perfect night they had when she was 12 years old and it was just the two of them. If she only has a couple of hours to live, she wants it to spend with someone she loves, pretending everything is okay. What follows next is the much needed and long awaited heart to heart about everything that happened.
When Nancy asks how can she believe that his love for her is real when everything else in her life has been a lie, it felt like a punch to the gut. With everything that has happened in the past week alone for her, I doubt Nancy even had time to process everything. But now, as she’s about to face certain death, all she wants is her daddy to hold her and tell her everything is going to be okay.
Carson reassures her that his love for her is forever, and that no matter what happens between them from now on, nothing will ever change how he feels about her. And that was the lightbulb moment Nancy needed. Because what if instead of trying to kill the Aglaeca, they appealed to her human side, Odette Lamar?
Nancy knows it’s a long shot, so when she tells her father she loves him, I was already in tears. Kennedy McMann and Scott Wolf played that scene so incredibly well that the emotion jumped off my screen. With a little bit of renewed hope, she gathers all the love letters from Odette she found and takes them to The Claw. Her friends are a little skeptical, but they each grab a letter and start reading.
But the Aglaeca is not out to play games, so when she comes, it’s with a vengence. They try to read the letters out loud, but sea spirit strikes them one by one. With the last shred of hope she still has, Nancy recites a passage of one of the letters that stuck with her, and that seems to have an effect on the Aglaeca. Then they all recite the passages that they kept in their hearts, and that horrible evil spirit becomes a woman. Odette is finally revealed.
That moment was so emotional, as they all reassure her that she was never forgotten, that she was so loved. It feels like they’re finally winning. They are going to make it through this. Everything starts shaking, but suddenly Odette is gone. It’s after midnight, and they survived.
But their relief is short-lived, because George is gasping for air after being impaled by part of the decoration of The Claw. The sheer desperation in that moment and the shock of what has just happened is overwhelming. George dies quickly, and Nancy vows that she will not let that happen. She remembers seeing in Hannah’s ledger that one of the items in the archive is a shroud to revive the dead, so she rushes off to the Historical Society to get it.
When she gets to the archives, she tries to pick the lock, she tries to use a crowbar, but nothing works. In a moment of desperation, she destroys the fuse box, which causes all of the boxes in the archives to open. She grabs the shroud and runs back to The Claw, throwing on George’s body the moment she gets there.
But it doesn’t seem to work, and Nancy breaks down completely, hugging her friend close. The moment George gasps for air and says, “okay, personal space, Drew!” I think every fan let out a sigh of relief.
They all celebrate George’s return from the dead and relish in the fact that, for once, they don’t have any supernatural problem to worry about. But of course, nothing is that easy on this show. George seems to be (kind of) possessed by Odette, and Nancy accidentally unleashed all cursed items from the archives.
So buckle up, Drewds. Things are about to get even wilder.
Nancy Drew airs on Wednesdays at 9/8C on The CW.