Nancy Drew and her crew returned last night with a premiere scary enough to chase away our sleep. “The Search for the Midnight Wraith” picked up right where we left off in the season one finale.
Nancy is still reeling from the plethora of plot twists that happened in her life in an incredibly short amount of time. She found out that Dead Lucy is actually her biological mother, and that she was born minutes before Lucy Sables fell to her death in the cliffs.
That means that Ryan Hudson – a guy she pretty much despises – is her biological father. And not only that, the Drews lied to her about everything her entire life.
As if that wasn’t enough to send anyone spinning out, her boyfriend Owen was murdered, and I will never forgive the writers for pulling that stunt on us. More about that in a moment.
And then, just to top it all off, the ritual that they performed to banish the Aglaeca backfired, and now the pissed off sea spirit is just thirsty for revenge against Nancy and her friends. The Aglaeca even went as far as giving them all a preview of how she plans to kill them. Talk about a spiteful, vengeful evil spirit, right?
The Midnight Wraith and the Haunted Woods
Because this is Nancy Drew and nothing is ever easy, our crew couldn’t even get five minutes to process the fact that the Aglaeca wants them all to die a very painful death. Just as they’re all scrambling to find a solution to their vengeful spirit problem, Detective Tamura shows up at The Claw to bring Nancy in.
Apparently, a girl was found in the woods, and right before she passed out, she said Nancy’s name. Because of course she did. Our Nancy can’t catch a break.
So that obviously makes Tamura go after Nancy – as if he needed an excuse, right? Guy has had it in for her since the moment he set foot in Horseshoe Bay – but she doesn’t recognize the unconscious girl when they get to the hospital. She does see, however, that there’s a code that has been very recently written on the girl’s palm. So Nancy expertly squeezes her hand, transferring the code to her own palm, so she could send it to Ace.
When she leaves the hospital and meets up with her friends again, Ace has already broken the encryption on that code and found a message from someone offering a mirror that would supposedly help them defeat the Aglaeca. That’s when we find out that Bess – bless her sweet Hufflepuff heart – posted on social media that the Nancy Drew Crew needed help defeating the sea spirit and offered a cash reward.
The message is setting up a meeting at the old hatchery barn outside the Gorham Woods at 1 am. Gorham Woods is also famous for being haunted by the Midnight Wraith – a creature that feeds off of people’s fears when they get lost in the woods in the full moon. And guess what, there’s a big, bright full moon out that night. Just their luck.
But they don’t want to suffer a painful death at the hands of a vengeful spirit, so they decide to go, anyway. It’s their only lead against the Aglaeca. When they get to the barn, however, no one is there. They only find a phone, a sealed vial that looks like some kind of medicine and a lighter.
Ace quickly unlocks the phone, and they find a video of a guy and a girl showing off the mirror. That served as an introduction to the Bobbsey Twins – Amanda being the unconscious girl – as they claimed that they had the mirror and were looking forward to the reward Bess had promised. Then a second video shows Amanda alone in the barn, showing the vial the crew found, saying Gil had an hour to return and get it.
And then she gets attacked by the Wraith.
The crew comes to the conclusion that Gil must have gone to an old hunting lodge at the northern edge of the woods. And surprise, surprise – it belongs to the Hudson family. When they get there, the group splits up. George and Nick go off in search of tracks Gil may have left behind, and Nancy, Ace and Bess go into the house.
Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy, because when they get there, Papa Hudson is having a shady meeting with a bunch of shady people, and catch them breaking entering into his property. But Ryan Hudson shows up and saves the day, making up a bogus story about how he’d asked Nancy to meet him there to pay her for her services – because that doesn’t sound suspicious at all.
Regardless, Papa Hudson lets them off the hook and they go back outside to meet up with Nick and George, who have found Gil’s tracks, and they lead right into the haunted woods. But Nancy is nothing if not persistent, so she pushes on, and into the haunted woods they go. The number of times I said “this is a terrible idea, you guys” while watching this episode last night was sky-high.
Obviously, the wraith finds them and attacks them, so they run deeper into the woods until they find an abandoned bus. And guess who’s there – Gil Bobbsey himself, slowly going into shock because he couldn’t meet up with his sister to get his insulin pump.
Because the Wraith can track their fear, it quickly finds them and starts attacking the bus. Everyone runs off, but Nancy stays, resolute in sacrificing herself so her friends can get to safety.
In the end, she realizes that the Wraith is terrified of fire, so she manages to set the bus on fire, effectively killing the Wraith with it. When it all seems that it’s going to end well, Tamura shows up and brings both Nancy and Gil into custody.
But once again, Ryan saves the day. He didn’t press charges about the stolen mirror and even gave the mirror to Nancy since it technically belongs to her too now.
Nancy Drew and her loss of self
Now let’s talk about what this episode was really about. Nancy is feeling completely and utterly lost. Her entire life has been a lie. Everything she thought she knew about herself and her family isn’t true anymore.
Her biological family – and that’s all they are for now; Carson Drew is her father in all the ways that count, even if she can’t see that yet – is made up of a group of people that she completely despises, including her biological father. Her biological uncle tried to kill her; and in doing so, killed her boyfriend Owen, who was just trying to protect her.
Not to mention the endless comparisons between herself and the Hudson family that her friends keep unwittingly making. She hates the Hudsons – wants absolutely nothing to do with them – and yet, she finds herself noticing the similarities, which just makes her feel even worse, even more lost and terrified. Her life is literally spinning out of control, and she has no idea what to do or how to stop it.
To make matters worse, she got her friends in a huge supernatural mess, and now an evil sea spirit wants them all dead. No wonder she thought she could let all her fears overwhelm her so the Midnight Wraith could find her, giving her friends a chance to escape.
That’s probably all she feels right now – an all-encompassing fear. It’s like all these bad things keep happening to her, and when she tries to fix them, all it does is make everything even worse. I just wanted to give her a hug the entire time.
That being said, I am very excited to see where this season leads, especially knowing that season one, episode 18 was not supposed to be the season finale. Even though I will never forgive them for killing Owen Marvin – talk about a wasted potential of a character, storyline and relationship – I am completely hooked on this amazing gem of a show.
Other highlights of Nancy Drew
- George and Nick are so worried about Nancy finding out about them being together. While part of me feels that they’re worrying for nothing, I have a feeling that Nancy will say it doesn’t bother her, but then this is going to come back and blow up in the worst possible moment.
- Am I getting some weird shippy vibes between Ace and Nancy? I’m not sure how I feel about that.
- But then again, I also got some weird shippy vibes between Nancy and Detective Tamura, so maybe this is just Kennedy McMann having insane chemistry with everyone she works with.
- I can’t wait to see what is going to come out of the “two dads” drama between Nancy, Ryan and Carson.
Nancy Drew airs on Wednesdays at 9/8C on The CW.