The Season 2 premiere of CW's Nancy Drew set the tone for a lot of changes in the series. Not only were new characters introduced in the form of the beloved Bobbsey twins, but the episode also established an overarching goal along with the latest monster of the week. Despite being written and filmed long before the trend took off, the episode also strangely seemed to tackle the hot new TikTok trend of sea shanties.
The first season of Nancy Drew followed the titular teen detective as she tried to solve two murders in her hometown of Horseshoe Bay. In the course of her investigation, she unearthed corruption and murder, and eventually her own secret identity. To help her and her friends in their quest, Nancy and her team called upon the ancient sea spirit known as the Aglaeca to grant them a wish. The spirit demanded the death of one of Nancy's friends, which the group refused to pay. The season ends with each member who summoned the Aglaeca cursed, seeing their own imminent deaths.
The curse of the Aglaeca seems to be the primary narrative for the second season. Episode 1 follows Nancy and her friends as they try to find any way to break this curse and stay alive. They get a lead on a mirror that was used in a previous summoning of the Aglaeca that may help them. When Nancy breaks the mirror, she reveals a poem that reads, "From sailor's lips, sweet songs were spun, but for the Aglaeca only lies were spun. Dark spirit you seek, keeper of the deep. Her truth lies hidden in their sea shanty." The secret to breaking the Aglaeca's curse seems to lie in an 1800s sea shanty.
Unwittingly, Nancy has stumbled into a type of music that is currently making headlines: sea shanties. These rhythmic, often morose songs have been passed down from the days when they helped to while away the time and mark the beat for manual labor aboard a ship. Thanks to TikTok's inscrutable algorithm, performances of some of these shanties have been making the rounds on the internet, with users adding on harmonies to create robust and collaborative musical sensations.
While Nancy Drew could never have guessed that sea shanties would be so popular when the season premiere was released, the show fits perfectly into what some have called the ShantyTok trend. Both find young people engaging with a form of history that provides good entertainment but lacks context — the sugar, tea and rum referenced in ShantyTok's famous "Wellerman" song has some colonialist roots that need examination, especially when sung by white British performers, just as Nancy Drew's casual invoking of Native American curses might warrant some further investigation.
The sea shanty referenced in Nancy Drew has yet to be disclosed, and it's possible the show never even intended to set it to real music, instead revealing only lyrics. But the perfect timing of Nancy's shanty clue set against the backdrop of the exploding sea shanty TikTok trend makes this the perfect opportunity for Nancy Drew to capitalize on the zeitgeis.