Nancy Drew showrunners break down the season 2 finale and tease season 3's 'sociopath' villain

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Wednesday's Nancy Drew season 2 finale.

Nancy Drew's family issues are only just getting started.

The season 2 finale ended with a twist that revealed Nancy's (Kennedy McMann) evil ancestor Temperance Hudson (Bo Martynowska) is not only alive, but she also used Nancy's own blood to de-age herself and break through the barrier surrounding Horseshoe Bay, finally reconnecting with the source of her power in town. And Nancy has no idea she just unleashed the worst kind of evil on her own home, because Temperance is going to make Everett Hudson (Andrew Airlie) look about as threatening as a schoolyard bully.

Below, Nancy Drew showrunners Melinda Hsu Taylor and Noga Landau break down what Temperance's return means for the Drew Crew, what fans can expect from the series when season 3 begins, and more.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So, Temperance is alive and back in Horseshoe Bay! What can you tease about what this means for Nancy?

NOGA LANDAU: We always knew that we were going to end the season with a cliffhanger. And probably halfway into the season, we knew for sure that that cliffhanger was going to be Temperance.

MELINDA HSU TAYLOR: She's a sociopath and an unrepentant one, so it's really fun to see her interact with the group. Everybody else that we've ever encountered, aside from supernatural entities, has been a little bit veiled about what they're doing, or maybe seems to be redeemable at some point, or is redeemable but they're just kind of a grounded opponent with flaws and vulnerabilities of their own. Temperance is just like, "I'm a villain. What do you expect from me? I'm a villain. I'm the villain." But in a very delicious way, which I think is going to be a lot of fun.

What does Temperance want? What are her ultimate goals?

LANDAU: They're not good. They definitely run counter to what Nancy is going to be wanting this season, which is what makes Temperance such an awesome villain for Nancy, because she's really the first person that Nancy is going to go up against, versus like Nancy fighting ghosts and Nancy solving crimes. This is a true, real enemy for her for the first time in human form, who also happens to be her 200-year-old great aunt times eight. [Laughs] It's a lot like if Nancy is Luke Skywalker then she finally met her Darth Vader, someone who is so much more powerful than her, connected to her by blood, emotional entanglement. It's just going to be a really, really awesome ride for these two characters.

How long will it take for Nancy to realize that Temperance is not only alive, but back in Horseshoe Bay?

HSU TAYLOR: She is going to realize it very quickly; we want to launch the season with a confrontation that is both exciting but also a little bit ambiguous as to what Temperance really wants. We'll know that she's not to be trusted. But her ultimate agenda will be revealed a little more gradually over the first part of the season. We won't keep the audience in the dark for too long because we definitely want to see specifically what's motivating her and what she's after, and some of that has to do with larger occult mythology, but some of it also has to do something very personal to Temperance, which comes back to family. And I'll leave it at that, but she's going to have an actually very relatable goal at the center of her larger machinations.

Nancy getting feelings for Ace [Alex Saxon] took me by total surprise. Where did that development come from?

HSU TAYLOR: We've always seen the chemistry, and we very slowly leaned more and more into it in season 2 and then decided to go for it in the dream state. We'll continue to feed those viewers out there — and there are many who believe in "Nace" — and we'll also be judicious in how we feed them because we don't want to get ahead of ourselves or deliver things too quickly. But we're definitely aware that there's a following and many of us in the writers' room also love that couple idea, and many of us also love the idea of Nancy and Tamura [Ryan-James Hatanaka], and Gil Bobbsey's [Praneet Akilla] still out there. So there's a lot going on for Nancy as usual.

Ace said he felt like he left something behind on his romantic road trip with Amanda [Aadila Dosani], so is his connection with Nancy on the forefront of his mind like it is with Nancy's?

LANDAU: I don't know if that's on the forefront of his mind. It's in the forefront of Nancy's. We'll find ways for her to explore that, even if it's a somewhat unrequited way because Ace is loyal to Amanda, he's still in a relationship with her, and I feel it's important that Nancy not disrespect another woman.

Onto happier couple news, George [Leah Lewis] proposed to Nick [Tunji Kasim]! What are we going to see from their relationship moving forward?

HSU TAYLOR: Lots of planning. [Laughs] We'll open the season with exactly what Nick's response was/is to the proposal, and how that impacts George and what it says about both of them and how they're processing all of this. We wanted to bring up things for George and her family, with perhaps the long absent father who has not showed up before now but maybe could…

LANDAU: I don't want to spoil anything except to say that there's going to be a lot of drama getting them to the altar, and we'll have to see what happens.

How has the rest of her limited time changed now that Odette [Anja Savcic] has taken a step back?

LANDAU: It's all a metaphor for learning when you're young that you are living with a slowly encroaching terminal illness, and how that changes how you view your life and your time and what it is that's most important to you. George has spent most of her life trying to keep her family together and working hard and not really letting herself dream beyond tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. For the first time, facing this sort of diagnosis, she has to really consider what is important to her, and the fact that it starts with Nick is a really beautiful launch to her character journey this season, but that's not where it ends. She goes on a lot of exploration about who she really is in this coming season.

HSU TAYLOR: It will lead her to take some risks and look for closure that she might not otherwise have done.

And how will Bess [Maddison Jaizani] losing Odette affect her moving forward?

HSU TAYLOR: Bess is going to start a dating app excursion, or more like a series of excursions. [Laughs] But she will not really find fulfillment in those, and so a new love interest will come into the picture for Bess, somebody who takes her a bit by surprise and who will be connected in the end to the larger mythology of the season but in the meantime is a really worthy foil for her. And she'll have really cool things to do this season because she is going to research her own heritage as a descendant of one of the women in white — the Marvins were one of the founding families, so one of those women is a Marvin in those pictures in the flashback.

Now that Nancy has decided to publicly come out as a Hudson, how is she going to be handling that major life change next season?

LANDAU: For someone who never really wanted to be the heir of the billionaire family, she's suddenly thrust into that position, but she's very clear from the beginning that she's going to do what she has to do to dismantle the empire, and not perpetuate what the Hudson family has been about while under Everett and his forebears. She is not about making money, she is not about exploiting people; she is about fixing what's been done by her family in the past and moving on from it.

And now that Ryan [Riley Smith] is living with Nancy and Carson [Scott Wolf], what are we going to be seeing from that new unique family next season?

HSU TAYLOR: [Laughs] Some comedy because it's really an opportunity to do a story line about a chore wheel. The other thing that we want to explore is Ryan's coming into his own as a grown-up in a lot of ways, but also as a parent. With Nancy he can, in a really beautiful way, try to find these deeper parts of himself and connect with her. And Carson might also be starting to move on with his life a little bit more now that all his secrets are out. Maybe he might meet a woman. We had a really interesting DA guest star on the show last year, and she might be back to investigate a case.

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