Nancy Drew Review: The Burning of the Sorrows (Season 3 Episode 8)

All season, Temperance has existed in a moral grey area and been foreshadowed as a likely villain. Nancy Drew Season 3 Episode 8, “The Burning of the Sorrows,” does its best to get us to fully empathize with her– at least until the final minutes.

In attempting to capture the second Frozen Hearts Killer, now known as the Copperhead, Nancy and Bess inadvertently capture some kind of beast seemingly made of lighting. Temperance pushes Nancy away and is struck, then forced to “feed” her heartbreaks to the monster.

Joined by Agent Park, who is entirely too casual about accepting everything the Drew Crew presents to him, they attempt to dissuade the light monster with their sorrows instead, including his own story of a young child killed in a school shooting.

The monster only wants Temperance’s story of her daughter, Charity, who abandoned her mother for the women who betrayed her, fell in love with one of their sons, got killed, and then had her soul split four ways to prevent Temperance ever saving her.

It’s an effective and brutal way of gaining our sympathizes, told in rapid flash cuts and images of ghosts come to life. It’s enough to work on Nancy, who early in the episode demands accountability from Temperance after Trott dies from the stroke she likely gave him.

Only in the very end do we see Temperance, in reaching out to Charity, reveal that she endured everything with the specific purpose of manipulating the one person who both mistrusted her most and had the smarts to see through her—Nancy Drew.

There’s still a balance here. Because Temperance is here to get her daughter back as the Copperhead kills the people Charity’s souls was bound to, we can assume that all the heartbreaks we witness are real too, and that Temperance genuinely is a grieving mother.

Yet she’s also willing to use her own pain as a tool, readily using those around her to get what she wants and doing so with the air of calm cunning we’ve seen from her all season. These are the behaviors of someone we might reluctantly admire but are also right to fear.

The other big issue here is Bess’s devotion to Temperance. I’ve been iffy about suggestions she could turn on the rest of the Drew Crew, but the prophesies loom. A showdown in part devoted to pulling her back to her friends from Temperance’s influence could be an emotionally effective one.

Elsewhere, George anxiously tries to track down Nick’s whereabouts and is drawn to a girl from his past named Eve. We learn she’s the one he upended his life for, having killed someone to protect her and been sent to juvie for it.

George is understandably dubious toward Eve for much of the episode, but the tentative bond they end up forming is encouraging. We’ve been delving into George’s past recently, and talks of not holding back remind us just how much of Nick’s background there is to unpack, too.

Nick is completely fine, by the way, off to work through his feeling after his talk with Addy. It’s just a touch anticlimactic (and it sure would be nice if he’d answer his phone) but I’m happy to accept a lack of life-or-death climaxes here given how many we’re probably in for already.

Nick also gets a few cautious but hopeful moments to reconnect with his old friend. He’s never really gotten closure for everything that followed his prison sentence, and Eve could help. Or at least, she might after we deal with her saying she thinks she might have killed someone. (Uh-oh.)

Finally, Ace and Ryan head to the Historical Society on the grounds of helping George, and instead wind up locked inside it, pestered by a ghost that uses knocking code to send them after footage from inside the historical society, plagued my moving objects and mysterious glitches.

This is clearly the beginning of its own mystery, but in the context of this episode, it’s largely just a way for Ryan and Ace to connect as future father- and son-in-law. I kid, but we are basically told that Ryan knows exactly how Ace feels and is fully on board the Nace train.

So, just what will Temperance do to our heroes to get what she wants? What can Nick and George do for Eve? What does the archive ghost want us to know? Where is a now potentially evil Hannah? And, of course, when do we move past these romantic hints with Park and get Nancy and Ace together?

All these questions hint at the start to a sort of second half to this season. With it being shortened, we only have about half a dozen more episodes before we start getting answers both to them and to the prophesies. I am not at all sure everything is going to be fine.

 

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Nancy Drew airs Fridays at 9/8c on The CW.

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