Executive producers Melinda Hsu Taylor and Noga Landau break down Friday's season closer.
Spoiler alert! Proceed with caution if you have not watched Friday's season 3 finale of Nancy Drew.
Nancy Drew has turned a new page, but everything has changed.
In the season 3 finale, which aired Friday, Nancy (Kennedy McMann) and the Drew Crew stop Temperance for good, ceasing all destruction. But not before Temperance puts a curse on Ace's life that forces Nancy to flee following their intimate evening together. If they ever were to explore their romantic feelings in any way, well, it would be disastrous for Ace. With the Drew Crew set on their separate paths (i.e. Nancy going all-in with her one-woman detective-ing as she's confronted with a new case), there are a lot of unanswered questions as the fate of Nancy Drew remains up in the air.
"Season 3 was pretty epic. It was about Nancy averting a supernatural apocalypse that her 200-year-old ancestor witch was trying to do. And I think what we're most excited about for season 4 is that we're returning to our roots," executive producer Melinda Hsu Taylor told ET, "and we're returning to the story of a detective in her beanie and with her flashlight in a creepy graveyard at the beginning of a whole new mystery that might be Earth-bound. It might be supernatural. It might be a little bit of both. We're really excited to go back to that kind of storytelling as a bit of a palette cleanser for our audience. We're really excited to tell the story of how Nancy and Ace move forward now."
Especially since Ace isn't aware of the curse looming over him, which adds a layer of tension for Nancy as she moves forward -- or attempts to.
"But his question is, 'Why did she run away from my apartment instead of kissing me? Is she in trouble? I bet she's in trouble. I need to find out what's going on so I can protect her,'" executive producer Noga Landau explained. "And naturally, that will lead him down some story paths himself."
Having the two address their feelings in the finale was a conscious choice by the writers, amplified by the fact that their union is quite short-lived.
"I wanted to have a star-crossed feeling to their romance because I think those are the biggest heartbreaks, but also the ones that drive story," Landau said. "I also am excited that we were able to see a glimpse of what it would've been like and how awesome it would be before we crush dreams and break people's hearts, which we were excited to do because our own hearts got broken in the process. I think that's part of the fun of storytelling, when you go on the ride emotionally with your characters. If you're not going on the ride emotionally with them in the writers' room, then you need to dig deeper. We got there in a way that got everybody excited in the writers' room, and also very intentional about what could happen in the potential season 4."
Though the Drew Crew were forging their own new chapters at the end of the season, Hsu Taylor and Landau promised the group will remain intact -- but older and perhaps with shifting group dynamics.
"They'll definitely still be a crew. We want them to interact and have stories together and find a new team dynamic, now that they've all got their own life pursuits," Landau confirmed. "And with George and Nick broken up, they can develop more as individuals as George kept promising. But that is our intention also. We want them to have their own storylines and their own lives, and not have to bounce off of each other in stories, even though we loved it when they were a couple. But I think it'll be really fun to see them grow and have the familiarity that their shared experiences have given them already. But their friendships are not out of nostalgia. They're out of becoming friends as their newer selves."
"What's so cool about being able to make a show like this over a number of years is that our audience is growing up with the characters," Hsu Taylor added. "So people who started watching the show when they were 17, they're now 20. And they've been through a lot in the past four years. We've all been through a lot with the pandemic and with all of the social movements that we've been a part of and that we've been witnessing. That has all informed how we tell our stories on the show and how we do representation on the show. It's amazing that our audience, many of them have lived through similar experiences over that time that our characters have gone through, and so they're able to tune in every week and see themselves in these characters in a way that's really awesome and important. And we want to always be there for them."
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