Strange Horizons
Nancy Drew continues the CW’s recent assault upon my childhood. Much like the reboots
Riverdale (2017–present),
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018–present, moving from the CW to Netflix), and
Katy Keene (2020–present), the show shares very little with its original texts. While names are retained and the overall focus remains that of a female detective solving mysteries in her fictional home town, by and large it’s actually helpful if the viewer knows nothing about the original series or any of its various reboots through the years. While the show has a variety of Easter egg references with examples including the local high school being named Keene High (for Carolyn Keene), an episode titled “Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase” intended to hearken a nostalgic viewer to the second Nancy Drew book written in the 1930s, and a contemporary visual reference to the book cover for “The Secret in the Old Attic” the characters are largely unreco