WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Fear Street Part 3: 1666, now streaming on Netflix.
Netflix's Fear Street: Part Three - 1666 sees the Shadyside teens overcoming a centuries-spanning curse. However, their ultimate win against the forces of evil -- and, let's be real, the patriarchy -- wouldn't have been possible without one essential character: Nurse Lane.
In Part Two - 1978, audiences meet Nurse Lane through Ziggy Berman. Known as Ziggy's only friend at Camp Nightwing, Ziggy is shown to us as someone who is either always hurt at camp while looking for trouble or, more likely, looks for an excuse to spend more time with Lane. Months before the infamous massacre at camp, Nurse Lane lost her daughter. While most people are convinced that her daughter Ruby Lane went insane, killed her closest friends and herself, the grieving mother deeply believes that something far more sinister was at play.
Since Ruby's death, Lane has taken to compiling research on Shadyside's long list of serial killers and murders. Later, while Ziggy is alone in Lane's office, she discovers her journal. However, Ziggy doesn't get the chance to ask her friend about her discoveries as she's already tasked herself with murdering the next Shadyside killer -- Cindy's boyfriend, Tommy.
Taking place in Part Two - 1978, it's not clear why Nurse Lane is seemingly attacking Tommy out-of-the-blue. However, we later learn that she discovered the cursed rock that lists out who is next to be possessed in Shadyside. She knew Tommy would be lost to a curse and her attempt at killing him was to save Camp Nightwing from its massacre. The camp and its counselors, though, send her to a hospital, claiming she went "mental" like her late daughter.
Lane's research leads Cindy and Ziggy to see that the town is actually cursed by demonic forces. While they're ultimately unsuccessful in breaking the curse, Ziggy keeps Lane's research. In 1994, Ziggy gives the journal to Deena and Josh who use it to reunite Sarah Fier's hand with her body. Although this doesn't have the result they expect -- sending Deena on a 1666-style flashback through Fier's life -- it shows her the truth behind Shadyside's curse.
At the end of the trilogy, Ziggy returns Lane's journal. This act symbolizes that the curse is finally over and that her time and energy weren't for naught. In truth, Lane was never delusional, she was the most motherly force of Shadyside. In Part One - 1994, she's the next-door neighbor who takes in and protects the kids that Kate was babysitting when the Ghostface-like killer emerges. In Part Two - 1978, she's the only person who willingly spends time with Ziggy -- whose alcoholic mother is too depressed to be present for her daughter -- to nurture her through bullying and teen angst. While she's not in Part Three - 1666 until its end, it's her work that paves the way for Shadyside to be saved. Without her research, the town would be doomed to reside in the Goode family's controlling men for future centuries.
Unlike other teen-slasher films that paint grieving mothers as prime material for a murder spree, a la Friday the 13th: Part Two, Netflix's Fear Street trilogy showcases the power of maternal love to overcome the hardest experiences of loss. Nurse Lane is Shadyside's hero.