In Nancy Drew season 4, episode 6, Nancy and Tristan do some bonding while the rest of the crew tries to save them from a ghost-web. Just another Wednesday in Horseshoe Bay.

Go to the school, they said. Inspire young minds. Then you meet a ghost-spider and all hell breaks loose. As a person with a very strong, very real case of arachnophobia, this episode was insanely hard to watch at times, but not because it wasn’t stellar.

Something is definitely fishy with Tristan besides the lobstering. This episode, he was pretty much a delight through the whole thing, and anyone that kind and positive definitely has something hiding up their sleeve. Especially on Nancy Drew. 

But, getting away from Tristan’s secrets, this episode gave us a departure from our usual pairings. As much as we love watching Ace and Nancy, Nick and George, and Bess and Ryan working things out together, it’s fun to shake things up.

Nancy and Tristan

We knew that things were going to get worse for Nancy and Ace before they got better. That’s just OTP 101, right? So, seeing Tristan be Nancy’s right-hand man through this ghost-web mystery might not have been stellar, but it was interesting. Especially because there is definitely something up with Tristan. One of the first things that Nancy says once they find themselves in 1972, “Time travel isn’t real,” has this fangirl paying attention. It’s not unheard of for Nancy to declare something not real, only to find out it definitely is. I’m looking forward to seeing how that statement might come back to bite her in the future.

But we’ll leave the theories about who/what Tristan is for another day. Today, we just want to look at the man spending time with our Nancy. This was more of an accident than a choice, but this pair spending time together gave us a look at their dynamic and a chance to guess what role this interloper is going to play in the big picture.

I do like that, upon getting out of the ghost-web, Tristan knew to go to her friends immediately for help getting Nancy out, too. He didn’t hem or haw about it, he just went to them, laid out the problem, and then helped find a solution. I don’t think Tristan is a bad guy, I just think he’s a wrinkle in this season’s story that needs to be ironed out. Honestly, I would be fine with this season ending with him being added to the fold as another friend of the Drew Crew. He is a good guy, and it’s not his fault he’s interfering with Nancy at a bad time.

For now though, we learned that Tristan wants to be the hero. Wants to be Nancy’s hero. He jumps at the chance to save her, and she apologizes (in jest) for saving herself in the ghost-web. He ultimately does play a role in saving her, but not without a little help from Ace. These three have some stuff to figure out, that’s for sure.

Bess and George and Carson

Now that George is minus one judge-mentor, she has found herself embraced by Carson, even after she makes a pretty significant mistake in Nancy Drew season 4, episode 6.

This was a great way to keep things moving right along for George, and complicates the Bess/Historical Society plot line, too. I am looking forward to seeing this trio work together to solve this case, and getting the supernatural-phobes to back the hell off.

That is one question that’s been really poking at me all season: Where did all these supernatural-phobes come from? I mean, the Drew Crew has come up against naysayers a few times, and that’s to be expected; they were all naysayers at one point or another in the beginning. But now, it seems that everyone with any sort of power in town is against even acknowledging the presence of the supernatural in Horseshoe Bay, whether it’s in the present or the past.

Hopefully, this season (and series… tear) will end with the entire town finding peace with acknowledging the supernatural. They don’t have to be straight-up believers, but not fighting against those looking to protect the innocent would be enough for me.

Nick and Ace

Ace usually gets paired with Nancy or Bess when it comes to mystery-solving, but it was nice to see him and Nick get some quality time. Also encouraging, seeing someone else worrying about Ace other than Bess these days. Just knowing that Nick has been making sure that Ace talks to someone outside of the morgue and eats real food at least once a day goes a long way to fixing what felt so wrong a couple episodes ago with Ace on the outside of things, and even last week as he joined the group and still seemed a bit on the outside.

That doesn’t even touch the surface of them chasing Chunky Velez together. Ace is a damn good investigator all his own, and is successful where Nancy hasn’t been so far this season. Part of me wonders if this isn’t a metaphor for their predicament. Nancy is trying to solve all the problems at once, figuring out the not-so-dead corpses mystery, finding Chunky, figuring out how to un-curse herself and Ace, etc, etc. Maybe, if she could take a step back like Ace has, and focus on one problem, she could solve it. I think she needs to take a step back from the over-arching mystery and everything else to see the solution to her and Ace’s dilemma.

I think his releasing Chunky Velez at the end of Nancy Drew season 4, episode 6 was more of just him admitting to himself that he can’t keep doing everything for Nancy with them in this current emotional purgatory. He decides to let her manage her own issues. I would expect to see him spreading his wings a bit in the next episode, and maybe even having a true personal life again.

The whole Drew Crew

I love it when the crew comes together. The fact that it required George to use her crowbar again was just a bonus. Did I love that they were fighting a pretty nasty-looking giant spider? No. No, I did not. But, in true Bess fashion, they were able to find what they needed to save Nancy… twice.

I think I favor the second time they saved her, this one from the spider-sac that had implanted in her abdomen. While the first save seemed to solve the problem, which was getting Nancy out of 1972, the second is almost bigger. Seeing the trust Nancy has in Bess, even as she is terrified, was so wonderful, and watching as each of the Drew Crew played their parts to a tee made me smile. Bess handled the hard part, Nick read the manual, George held Nancy’s hand and was encouraging, and Ace was anticipating the next part of the disaster.

Ace brought the kryptonite to the party, even if he wasn’t exactly the one to administer the fatal dose. I loved the moment between Ace and Nancy. He interprets it to mean one thing, and I think we’re gonna find out that she thinks it was something very different, but we’ll have to watch Nancy Drew season 4, episode 7 to find out.

Check out all our other great Nancy Drew-related coverage here, and if you’re just a massive Kennedy McMann fan (like us), you won’t want to miss this great article about her next new project.

You can find all the official Nancy Drew Season 4 info, as well as catch the latest episode, on the CW’s website.