S04.E13: The Light Between Lives

[jewel21]

Quote

Nancy and the Drew Crew’s mission to save Horseshoe Bay from sins of its past comes to an epic conclusion as they must contend with Nancy’s most shocking discovery yet, one that will determine the fate of her star-crossed love with Ace.

Airdate: 08/23/2023

Series Finale

[bettername2come]

Jade's great. They really roll with these supernatural punches far better than I would. Wouldn't make a bad addition to the cast if there were going to be a season 5. I mean, I still ship Nick and George

Ace looked just completely done when Bess squeed at the possibility of Nancy and Tristan being soulmates. Can't even depend on his platanchor. 

"How'd you find me?" "Oh, just followed our death curse." Hee.

Nancy's past life being buried at Dead Man's Bluff where she was born feels very on the nose. 

Nick's "These people are my family. I will protect them. I will protect this town" hit a little harder than it should have. He's such a great character. I love how much he's grown since season 1. Or maybe just how much I've grown to like him. I'm so happy they stopped him from running in. 

When Bess told Nancy this was her last life, I was like eh, whatever, she didn't know she had a past life till now, this being the last isn't a big deal, but when they said Ace's was damaged too, I was like "No!!"

I'm glad they all are doing well and taking on some good career choices. Good kiss for Ace and Nancy. Glad they broke the curse. I like that the girls were all wearing their uniform colors in the last scene. 

Ace's initial's are AH. Is that the closest we're going to get to calling him a Hardy Boy?

[thuganomics85]

Well, it could have been worse, but I definitely found it anti-climatic because you could still tell that they just didn't have enough time to give it the send off it really needed.  The majority of the episode was focused on ending the season arc/issues, leaving only about fifteen minutes at best to give the series itself a farewell.  Not unexpected, but still disappointing.

At least the death curse is now been broken, and Nancy and Ace are able to pursue a romantic relationship again.  Of course, we will have no idea if that will ever be a thing again since Nancy is currently going to leave Horseshoe Bay to find and save other Sin Eaters, while Ace goes to school to be a full-fledge coroner (I think?), but I guess there is a chance they could rekindle the flame somewhere down the line.  The hope is there, even if we'll never see it.  Again though, Kennedy McMann and Alex Saxon did great work about making me care about this and be happy about the small chance.  I hope they get to take that air balloon ride someday.

Meanwhile, George got accepted to law school and will be leaving as well, while Nick will be actually working for Tom Swift's organization as well.  Show doesn't even attempt to tease any kind of reconciliation there since it seems like Nick and Jade are going strong.  I wonder if that was ever in the cards, or if the show always attended for them to not work out again.  That leaves poor Bess as the only one of the Drew Crew to stick around in Horseshoe Bay, but at least the show remembered that Addy still exists!

Wrapping things up, Carson seems to be prepared to be a father once more, while Ryan is off to "chase" Red.  Fitting enough, I guess, although I wish we had more time to see Ryan and Red develop.

Despite my isseus with the romantic stuff, I'm glad Tristan survived and will move on to a better life.  The actor did good with what he was given.

Was surprised how sad I got over the loss of the Historical Society.  The folks of Horseshoe Bay have no idea just how many times that place saved their asses!

Loved getting one final Connor appearance.  And the sin curse making Carson go extreme with the fathering was a fun bit.

Farewell, Nancy Drew.  I'll admit that the last two seasons got bogged down thanks to unnecessary character drama and angst, underdeveloped villains, and a sense of a lot of scrambling due to unforeseen circumstances happening in real life, but when it worked, then this could really be one of the best shows on the CW and probably even one of my favorites out of all network television.  Despite the bad points, it won't be enough to make me forget about all the good ones.  And the ensemble!  Really one of the best out there, IMO.  Gold stars to Kennedy, Alex, Leah Lewis, Tunji Kasim, Maddison Jaizani, and, of course, Riley Smith and Scott Wolf as the best two dads ever!  Hopefully everyone will go on to other things soon and will have even bigger careers.  But I will miss spending time with the Drew Crew and Nancy's Two Dads!!

[Noneofyourbusiness]

1 hour ago, thuganomics85 said:

while Ace goes to school to be a full-fledge coroner (I think?), but I guess there is a chance they could rekindle the flame somewhere down the line.

No, he said Medical Examiner.

1 hour ago, thuganomics85 said:

Was surprised how sad I got over the loss of the Historical Society.  The folks of Horseshoe Bay have no idea just how many times that place saved their asses!

The whole "let it go" message was undermined by the fact that they should have been trying to put the fire out so it wouldn't spread.

1 hour ago, thuganomics85 said:

but I guess there is a chance they could rekindle the flame somewhere down the line.  The hope is there, even if we'll never see it.  Again though, Kennedy McMann and Alex Saxon did great work about making me care about this and be happy about the small chance.  I hope they get to take that air balloon ride someday.

It was implied they'll keep up a relationship. Also, the director confirmed it: https://tvline.com/interviews/nancy-drew-finale-ending-explained-ace-last-name-hardy-1235032330/

[quarks]

Awww.

Well, as expected, this episode didn't address everything I wanted it to - like, nobody told me if that poor ferret was found a second time and brought back to its family, and, more importantly, it doesn't seem like anyone told Bess about what happened to Alice. I knew the episode probably wouldn't have time to do this, but that failure to address the "The Supernatural is great and trying to ban it is like burning books!" versus "The Supernatural got someone killed!" really bugged me - especially in an episode that ended up burning down the Historical Society and, apparently, quite a lot of books.

While I'm on that subject, why didn't the Historical Society keep several fire extinguishers on hand?

And also while I'm on that subject - uh, didn't Nick and Bess and George's sisters just remove things from the Historical Society to set up their own underground historical society in Nick's building, suggesting that the fire shouldn't/wouldn't have destroyed everything? This all felt very muddled, to put it mildly: I suspect that all of this was going elsewhere - specifically to a season 5 plot - that got changed at the last minute into an Everyone Is Leaving Town plot so forget about this counter-Historical Society.

Speaking of Everyone Leaving Town, I love - genuinely love - that Nick is going to get to explore engineering stuff after four seasons of creating weird gadgets on this show, but, taking off for this right after an episode that pointed out that he's willing to sacrifice his life for this town and after several seasons showing Nick investing considerable funds into this town was....uh. Something. Again, love the engineering stuff. Not sure why he has to leave town except, well, everyone seems to be leaving town, kinda.

I stress kinda because even as the show was doing this "We're all leaving town" thing, it seemed very clear that Nancy will be returning frequently to see her two dads and the baby (and probably end up using Icarus Hall as some sort of base for this Sin-Eater tracking); Bess will be returning frequently for Addy; George's sisters aren't leaving town (I guess the second sister is taking over childcare duties?); and Ace will presumably be coming back for Nancy and his parents - leaving me with the impression that no one except Nick would be gone all that long, and given Nick's ties to the town, I suspect he'll be back eventually.

On that note, though, how is everyone paying for this? I get that George is probably living off the money she got for the restaurant - but some of that must be going to her sisters; Bess, when we started the show, was living in a van, and until very recently, working as a combined waitress/leader at the Historical Society which was very short on donations; Nancy supposedly gave up the Hudson money and at the start of the season was having difficulties paying bills; Ace - ok, Ace can probably get student loans and whatever and continue to work part time at the morgue, but still. Did the town pay Nancy for, uh....stopping the Sin-Eater curse stuff this episode and restoring everyone to their right minds, or is she using the Hudson money after all?

This was all stuff that I think would have worked much better if a) the show didn't have this ridiculous timeline (like, it's been a little more than one year; how on earth has George managed to earn an associate's degree which is usually a two year program? Lots of AP classes?) b) we'd had one more season (allowing everyone to either take more classes (George, Ace, arguably Nancy, arguably Bess or earn more money). 

And also, after all that work of Sin-Eater hiding stuff and going to council meetings and courthouses Callie just....drives off? That definitely felt shortchanged.

Also shortchanged: Tristan. I mean, ok, he ended up not being evil, so I was wrong there - but I still don't think we ever got much of a sense of him as a character, and his casual "ok, just drifting off now," given that his parents are in jail did not exactly give him any more sense as a character. One of the better alternative love interests, granted, but....at least arguably the least defined.

And given what happened with Ryan and Red, and the complete absence of Cameron and Jean in this episode, I am sticking with my original theory: Cameron, Jean, and Red were all scheduled to play some sort of plot stuff, roles that were hastily rewritten after the cancellation notice. 

All that said, I'll admit that the show got me in the last ten minutes or so - between the Ace/Nancy stuff (the impression I got, even before the director clarified that point, was that Ace was more or less proposing marriage to Nancy, and this was a permanent thing, even if for right now he'll be heading to college while Nancy looks for Sin-Eaters) and the finding four soulmates, and the very strong hint that Ace is indeed a Hardy boy.

And in terms of the future - well, I suspect that Nancy will find herself doing much of her research on Sin-Eaters on the internet, in Horseshoe Bay, with the help of Bess and Ace, and the occasional help from George on legal issues once she graduates law school, and that when it comes time to defeat those Sin-Eaters, she'll call in the entire Drew Crew (and, uh, I guess Jade, Addy and Cameron) for help.

Or I'm just indulging in wistful thinking.

[Noneofyourbusiness]

3 hours ago, quarks said:

And also while I'm on that subject - uh, didn't Nick and Bess and George's sisters just remove things from the Historical Society to set up their own underground historical society in Nick's building, suggesting that the fire shouldn't/wouldn't have destroyed everything?

Well, yeah, and they didn't act like it had. They said everything that had survived the fire went to the Underground Historical Society. Plus everything that was already there, of course. But enough was burned that Bess needs to replace those things.

3 hours ago, quarks said:

And also, after all that work of Sin-Eater hiding stuff and going to council meetings and courthouses Callie just....drives off? That definitely felt shortchanged.

Perhaps she'll be an antagonist to Nancy's attempts to undo the other Sin Eaters? What's odd is that we know Callie is a parent, and there was nothing about what happened to her kid.

3 hours ago, quarks said:

And in terms of the future - well, I suspect that Nancy will find herself doing much of her research on Sin-Eaters on the internet, in Horseshoe Bay, with the help of Bess and Ace, and the occasional help from George on legal issues once she graduates law school, and that when it comes time to defeat those Sin-Eaters, she'll call in the entire Drew Crew (and, uh, I guess Jade, Addy and Cameron) for help.

Or I'm just indulging in wistful thinking.

No, I'd say that's likely based on how the episode ended. Also "Mysteries are everywhere. And who knows? Sooner or later, I'm sure one of them will lead me back here." But I imagine Nancy will be spending time with Ace in whatever town he lives in for college, not just Horseshoe Bay.

[quarks]

4 hours ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

Well, yeah, and they didn't act like it had. They said everything that had survived the fire went to the Underground Historical Society. Plus everything that was already there, of course. But enough was burned that Bess needs to replace those things.

 

Ah, ok. I didn't have the captions turned on last night so it's not surprising that I missed things.

And one more theory: Bess and the various supernatural folks have been wrong before, so my guess is that, badly damaged as Ace and Nancy's souls are right now, after a lifetime of love/medical examining/destroying Sin-Eaters, their souls will be healed - and it won't be their last lifetime after all. 

[Quark]

The first few seasons were definitely better than this one, but it's that the crew pretty much had happy endings. 

[tennisgurl]

I'm not going to lie, when they started talking about Tristan and Nancy being soulmates, I actually googled a series finale recap to make sure that Ace and Nancy ended up together, I just couldn't handle the stress after everything! 

So we finally leave Horseshoe Bay, and its a bittersweet ending. I have had my issues with the last few season with the overuse of relationship angst and some convoluted story lines, but overall this has been a great show, definitely one of the CW's best and maybe one of my favorite shows on network tv. Even at its worst I always had a lot to enjoy, like the excellent cast that I will absolute follow to whatever they do next, and it always had a wonderful creative energy to it that enjoyed playing with tropes and genre that was always a blast. This finale wasn't perfect, you could tell that there was a rush to the finish line with the cancelation, but I felt very satisfied by the ending. 

"Will you solve this next mystery with me?" SQUEEE! The Nace of it all! Thank god death curses can be followed and broken! I really wish that Nancy and Ace could have gotten together much earlier this season so we could enjoy them as a couple, but I'm happy with my big damn kiss and promise that they will be together going forward no matter how weird things get. Poor Ace looked so stressed when they thought that Nancy and Tristan were soulmates, but of course it turns out to be a totally different thing. I did feel for Tristan, he was really excited to be Nancy's soulmate but of course that as never going to work out. At least he gets to finally move on with his life post sin eating.

I love how after Nancy was all "You said what I did was unforgivable!" Ace was just like "Whatever, I say lots of stuff, I changed my mind." Never change buddy.

I wish that George and Nick had ended up together, but I like where they both ended up, Nick off to use his gadgeteer know-how with at one of Tom's companies and George going to law school. In general I am happy with where everyone is even if I wish that they had stayed in Horseshoe Bay. They did all of that to save their delightfully weird creepy ass town and then left? But they'll all presumably be back and they can always stage a magically reunion via Bess, so we all know that the adventures aren't over yet. I also think that Carson and Ryan got pretty good exits, even if they didn't get a whole tone to do I'll always be happy to have a bit more time with Nancy's Two Dads.

We spent most of the episode tying up the seasons main season plots, but I do like that we got some call backs, most notably so much action happening on the cliffs where Nancy was born and Lucy died, I'm a sucker for those kinds of call backs. Also all of the girls wearing the same colors as their uniforms from the first episode, the bulletin board of memories, including what I think was a big picture of Lucy, the names at the end, it gave me those full circle happy feels mixed with a bloody bucket of sea salt.

Ace is a Hardy Boy! Confirmed! I'm going to miss this show so much.

[Shorty186]

I wish I would have liked it more than I did. It basically got the job done but only having 10 minutes of Nace happiness is always going to leave me salty.

A lot did not make sense to me in this episode. Specifically why the 200 years of released sins turned the townspeople into looters and an angry mob. I know there was an offhand, "they must be possessed by the angry mob who killed a witch," but what? It didn't jive with what we saw happen to a singular person when they drank the tainted water. 

They handwaved Callie right off the screen, which makes sense because how was she supposed to be a bigger BAD than Temperance? The tsunami from last season was much more end of days-ish than a bunch of looney townspeople. Carson and Red didn't seem that bad, just a couple of kleptos.

I really did not get why Nick seemed the most distraught over the Historical Society burning down. Aside from the fact that many of the artifacts had already been removed, it was kind of funny to see Bess be the one to comfort him. I get why so many people thought something must have happened to Jade in the episode preview because his reaction seemed a little too OTT. If The Claw or his apartment building burnt down, it would have made more sense.

But with how quickly they managed to wrap up everything this episode, I feel like they could have wrapped it up one episode sooner and we could have gotten more happy Nace, but they clearly decided to end the show with them getting together/new beginnings for everyone. Like someone else said, the writers clearly decided this was not going to be a domestic Nace season, but why they couldn't have given us a little more, I don't know.

Of course the show is about more than just Nace, but S3 & 4 really turned them into the focal point, so it's really hard to keep my feelings about Nace separate from my feelings about the show as a whole. Also, I really don't think Ryan needed a love interest. He had a lot of good dad moments this season, but to have him and Nancy say goodbye that way was pretty lackluster. 

Not gonna lie, the A.H. reveal probably increased my enjoyment of the episode by 50%. But if he is a Hardy, which one is he?

[Chaser]

Just posting to say I’m sorry this was the last season. It deserved more than a last minute notice but I appreciate that they did the best they could. 

This is the only show I can I think of that I loved all the characters. A rare gem to have such fantastic chemistry in the group. 

[TiffanyNichelle]

I guess they kind of pulled it together in the end even though a lot was rushed but everyone kind of got happy endings. So I guess that's ok.

When they revealed the whole Nancy/Tristan soulmate I was just so done that I was actually happy that it wasn't soulmates in a positive romantic way. I don't know if the cancellation meant they couldn't have dragged that out for another season but after the big death curse thing I didn't understand why they trying to turn Nancy/Tristan into some epic thing. I barely brought them as a temporary couple.

Also really annoyed that Callie basically got away scot-free.

[Noneofyourbusiness]

On 8/24/2023 at 10:18 AM, quarks said:

And one more theory: Bess and the various supernatural folks have been wrong before, so my guess is that, badly damaged as Ace and Nancy's souls are right now, after a lifetime of love/medical examining/destroying Sin-Eaters, their souls will be healed - and it won't be their last lifetime after all. 

I wouldn't be surprised. They've had many of these reversals and discoveries.

17 hours ago, Shorty186 said:

A lot did not make sense to me in this episode. Specifically why the 200 years of released sins turned the townspeople into looters and an angry mob. I know there was an offhand, "they must be possessed by the angry mob who killed a witch," but what? It didn't jive with what we saw happen to a singular person when they drank the tainted water.

How so? The sin-infected water always had variable effects on people. It restored Judge Abbott, Logan and Brie's memories of the sins they erased, caused Nancy to be possessed by Logan's sin, and caused the film crew to be collectively possessed by Brie's sin.

17 hours ago, Shorty186 said:

Not gonna lie, the A.H. reveal probably increased my enjoyment of the episode by 50%. But if he is a Hardy, which one is he?

Everyone who watched was excited about that. Maybe he's Frank and Joe's cousin?

[fastiller]

I've nothing to add to the conversation other than I FLOVE Bess's purple houndstooth coat.  

[Shorty186]

4 hours ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

How so? The sin-infected water always had variable effects on people. It restored Judge Abbott, Logan and Brie's memories of the sins they erased, caused Nancy to be possessed by Logan's sin, and caused the film crew to be collectively possessed by Brie's sin.

You are so right. I completely blocked out the Bro-ing out of Nancy as well as the possessions. I only remembered people remembering their sins.

I've read Larry Teng's tweets and numerous interviews about how they were told of the cancelation. He has a right to be PO'd but a show getting canceled after they've finished shooting is not unusual. When a show is told in advance, it's really a courtesy. It shouldn't be, you'd think it would be standard to give the writers the ability to wrap things up but networks don't care about a show they've already given up on. See the zero promotion for ND this season aside from the S4 promo and 4x13 preview. So I'm very glad they were able to find out before the end - thank you to Kennedy's agent.

However, I still stand by not being satisfied with the season. It was definitely my least favorite and I don't see myself rewatching it, unless I skip from 4x3 to 4x13. I hate having these negative feelings since I haven't loved a show as much as this in a long time.

[quarks]

1 hour ago, Shorty186 said:

I've read Larry Teng's tweets and numerous interviews about how they were told of the cancelation. He has a right to be PO'd but a show getting canceled after they've finished shooting is not unusual. When a show is told in advance, it's really a courtesy. It shouldn't be, you'd think it would be standard to give the writers the ability to wrap things up but networks don't care about a show they've already given up on.

 

I mean, yeah, It's not at all unusual for a network to wait until close to the end of the season before making a decision about renewing a show - this has been ABC's standard practice for decades now, and of course it's more or less what Netflix does with all of their shows - waiting until the show streams before making renewal decisions.

What is unusual, and what Larry Teng is complaining about here, is for a network to cancel a show but not inform anyone involved with the show.

That's the issue here - that the network apparently knew about this for weeks, if not months, and did not bother to inform CBS Studios about this decision. And they told CBS Studios this after Nancy Drew had already filmed portions of 412 (filmed during 408), which gave the show even less flexibility.

(Though for various reasons I have a feeling that those 412 scenes were originally meant to be in 411, but....still, they didn't have that much flexibility with at least one of those episodes.)

And from Teng's thread, it looks like CBS Studios/the CW had signed Kennedy McMann to a fifth season. It's possible, of course, that she originally signed a five or six year contract, but if she did sign the more standard three year CW contract, than that makes this even worse - since they signed her for two more seasons, and then, before the first year was even up, cancelled her contract without telling her. 

And forced a number of people - McMann's management, everyone involved with scheduling for The Good Doctor, various people on Nancy Drew - to waste time and effort trying to see if they could free up her schedule for The Good Doctor - when the CW knew full well that McMann's schedule would be perfectly free.

It's just a massive amount of disrespect for everyone else's time.

[RedInk]

On 8/24/2023 at 1:46 AM, quarks said:

 This was all stuff that I think would have worked much better if a) the show didn't have this ridiculous timeline (like, it's been a little more than one year; how on earth has George managed to earn an associate's degree which is usually a two year program? Lots of AP classes?) b) we'd had one more season (allowing everyone to either take more classes (George, Ace, arguably Nancy, arguably Bess or earn more money). 

Here I was wondering how George even got into law school with just an Associates degree, but I’m here for the happy ending. I kind of half-watched this season, and I’m not sure if it’s just because it had lost some of its shine or maybe just because I knew it was ending & it seemed like they wouldn’t be able to wrap it up. In the end, I was surprised that I found the goodbyes so touching. They really were all characters to root for.