History Recap / TheHardyBoys2020Season2

** Olivia Kowalsky turns out to be the main villain of Fenton's story arc; while she is also trying to bring down the last remnants of the Circle like he is, her methods are much more violent. She kills Paul [=McFarlane=] and ends up trying to frame Fenton for other murders that she committed, after lying to him about having information about Laura's death to set a trap for him.

** Fenton Hardy and Olivia Kowalsky are both working to take down the remnants of the Circle, but are very much ''not'' on the same side, since Olivia is actively killing these people and briefly abducts Fenton, while he wants to bring them to justice the proper way.

* WorkingTheSameCase: Unusually for the Hardy Boys, this is averted. Frank, Joe, and Fenton assume their investigations are connected, but it turns out that the boys are chasing two ''[[BigBadEnsemble different]]'' culprits--the Shadow Man (who's behind the bombing at Wilt's, the theft at Gloria's, and everything that happens with Dennis) and Stratemeyer Global (including rogue agents who want to steal the Eye and sell it)--and ''neither'' of them are directly related to Fenton's case, where Olivia Kowalsky is the BigBad who's trying to bring down the rest of the Circle [[MurderIsTheBestSolution in the most murder-y way possible]].

** Stratemeyer Global is actually a group run by Gloria even from prison, but some agents have gone rogue and decided to steal the Eye for themselves [[OnlyInItForTheMoney to sell to the highest bidder]], targeting Frank and Joe after figuring out that they still have it. This group is led by Angela Todd, with Mack Malone acting as her partner until she betrays and kills him.

* CharacterDeath: Four major ones: Paul [=McFarlane=], Dr. Vivian Burelli, Mack Malone, and Gloria Estabrook.

** Rogue agents from Stratemeyer are trying to find the Eye and sell it to the highest bidder, and resort to kidnapping and threats of violence (including against [[WouldHurtAChild the teenage Hardy Boys]]) to get it. Notably, they're so menacing and violent, and clearly up to ''something'' in the middle of the woods, that the TrueCompanions spend a good chunk of time believing that Stratemeyer is behind ''everything'', and don't discover until later that someone else is responsible for the bombing at Wilt's and all that happens with Dennis.

** However, played entirely straight for the main cast as a whole, especially since the most competent member of the police force, Jessie Hooper, is hospitalized and out of commission for the whole second half of the season. Deputy Riley does help a little, but she and the rest of the force [[PoliceAreUseless are mainly there to do the cleanup work]] of arresting the bad guys after the Hardys and friends have already stopped them.

** Frank assigns Joe the task of keeping him in check with his use of the Eye, and even as he becomes progressively more compromised by it and stops listening to him as much as he should, his BigBrotherInstinct for Joe remains very intact. When Frank and Joe have a massive fight that results in a KickTheMoralityPet moment, Frank is [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone so shaken and horrified by it]] (see below) that he immediately steps back from the brink of madness that the Eye has brought him to and finally agrees to return the Eye to the relic.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Bucketloads, as appropriate for a mystery series, including a decent amount of FiveSecondForeshadowing as well. There's enough of this throughout the series for [[Foreshadowing/TheHardyBoys2020 its own separate page]].

* KnightOfCerebus: Angela and Mack may get a few mildly humorous moments, but considering the latter is ObviouslyEvil and quick to pull out his knife for any reason while the former is genuinely TheSociopath and a SoftSpokenSadist, it's little wonder they're this. Much of their screentime consists of them capturing JB and/or the Hardys; holding them prisoner, interrogating them, and threatening to hurt, maim, or kill them for the Eye; or threatening ''other'' characters with hurting one or both of the Hardys. Angela also murders Mack as soon as he [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness outlives his usefulness to her]], and in one of the Eye's visions, is quick to murder Joe when Frank struggles to give up its power.

** One that is only fully understood after watching Season 3: once Olivia has kidnapped Fenton and briefly leaves him alone in the car, she comes back with some kind of gold tube-shaped capsule before they have to flee the scene. This was her stealing the first of George's four codexes, which Gloria uses her video will to secretly tell viewers the locations of. More specifically, this is the one from George's "first apartment in Dixon City," while the codex that Olivia finds in the season finale before Fenton confronts her and confiscates both of them is the one from George's shipping warehouse.

*** Joe has a crush on Lucy Wayne, Dennis Gilroy's girlfriend; once she reveals in "A Clue on Film" that she and Dennis actually broke up, she begins to reciprocate Joe's feelings, and they kiss at the school dance.

* LoveInterestTraitor: Subverted. It looks like Angela is being set up as this for Brian, but it's later revealed that not only were they never actually dating in the first place, as this was a cover story that he gave Belinda and Chet when they saw them together, but he's well aware that she's the bad guy. In fact, he's her ''boss'' at Stratemeyer Global, though he's actually a MoleInCharge who's working to bring her down.

* NoHonorAmongThieves: One of the major reasons Stratemeyer Global agents' plans fail is that more and more major players go rogue and/or turn against each other. Once Angela and Mack discover that Frank has the power of the Eye in him, Mack wants to report it to their boss, but Angela promptly betrays him and knocks him out to make a play for herself, keeps Mack prisoner in her motel bathroom, and later murders him. And then it turns out that said boss, Brian Conrad, has been a MoleInCharge at Stratemeyer all along, working as a whistleblower to bring the whole organization down, and pulls a FramingTheGuiltyParty on Angela to get her arrested at the end of the season.

*** And then there's Brian Conrad, who is Angela's and Mack's boss, but also secretly a DoubleAgent trying to bring all of Stratemeyer down.

* HelpfulHallucination: Frank receives many of these throughout the season, courtesy of the Eye. Notably, though, while they ''are'' helpful, they're in the form of a code that the boys must decipher (such as showing Dennis being inside a "trunk" (chest) to indicate that he had been abducted by the bad guys and put in the "trunk" of a ''car'', or showing Frank's brother Joe strapped into a chair and Frank protesting to indicate that the BigBad of the season, who was likewise trying to save the ''real'' kid in the chair, is said kid's brother). The finale reveals that the Eye had a specific agenda for providing these visions: setting Frank up so George could steal his body to resurrect himself.

* CharacterDeath: Four major ones in this season: Paul [=McFarlane=], Dr. Vivian Burelli, Mack Malone, and Gloria Estabrook.

*** Joe has a crush on Lucy Wayne, Dennis Gilroy's girlfriend; once she reveals in "A Clue on Film" that she and Dennis have actually broken up, she begins to reciprocate Joe's feelings, and they kiss at the school dance.

** Frank briefly considered using the Eye in the previous season to see and talk to Laura again, but Joe eventually got him to see that they were better off without it and he, too, decided to destroy it. As the season goes on and Frank falls deeper and deeper into its power to get "the thing he wants the most", said thing is revealed to be getting their mom back. To be fair, it's made pretty clear that its power is TheCorruptor, so Frank having it inside him brought him back to a mindset he probably otherwise would have avoided.

** Frank briefly considered using the Eye in the previous season to see and talk to Laura again, but Joe eventually got him to see that they were better off without it and he, too, decided to destroy it. As the season goes on and Frank falls deeper and deeper into its power to get "the thing he wants the most", said thing is revealed to be getting their mom back. Though, to be fair, it's made pretty clear that said power is TheCorruptor, so having it inside of him brought him back to a mindset he probably otherwise would have avoided.

* GambitPileup: There are numerous different groups on their own sides who all clash with the Hardy Boys and friends, and sometimes with each other as well, throughout the season: JB, Stratemeyer Global, and the Shadow Man. And that's not even getting into everything happening with Fenton's case.

** Said someone else--whom they nickname "the Shadow Man" based on how his appearance in Frank's visions--pays two high school kids to kidnap Dennis for him and to plant a bomb at Wilt's so it will damage the security shop next door and deactivate the alarm at Gloria's house, allowing him to break in. His goal in doing so is to steal the Crystal from her chandelier, which he believes houses the soul of his twin brother, and he hopes to bring said brother back by transferring his mind into another body.

** Rogue agents from Stratemeyer are trying to find the Eye and sell it to the highest bidder, and resort to kidnapping and threats of violence (including against [[WouldHurtAChild the teenage Hardy Boys]]) to get it. Notably, they're so menacing and violent, and clearly up to ''something'' in the middle of the woods, that the TrueCompanions spend a good chunk of time believing that Stratemeyer is behind ''everything'', and don't discover until the midpoint that someone else is responsible for the bombing at Wilt's and all that happens with Dennis.

* StableTimeLoop: The Eye creates one by giving Frank a vision that causes him to physically appear in the past to George (when he was still old, but before he tried to leave the Circle), [[IntangibleTimeTravel who can actually see him]] ([[PensieveFlashback unlike his other visions]]) and thus learn of Frank's future existence before he's even born at that point in the timeline. Because George knows this, when he seemingly left Gloria and the Circle behind, he really downloaded his consciousness into the Crystal (and thus didn't truly die) to wait for the Eye to bring Frank into it as well someday so he can steal his body for himself.

* TrashTheSet: Subverted with Wilt's Deli. A large portionwall
son 3--which starts only a couple of weeks later in-universe--it's repaired and pretty much back to normal.

* AdaptationalNiceGuy: Brian Conrad in the ''Hardy Boys: Undercover Brothers'' books is Belinda's juvenile delinquent older brother, who is TheBully in school and has a particular hatred for Frank because of Belinda's crush on him. In this series, Brian is instead Belinda's father, and while he has some BoyfriendBlockingDad moments in regards to Chet (who is her LoveInterest here instead of Frank), he's a far better and kinder person who is certainly not a bully. He has been involved in criminal activity for a while, but by accident, and turned whistleblower because his conscience got the better of him, and in the penultimate episode, he brings Chet with him to pull a BigDamnHeroes moment for the Hardys and JB.

** Previously, Joe was one of the first people who wanted to destroy/get rid of the Eye, insisting that they didn't need it and could solve the case without it. But when he learns here that Frank has the entire Eye inside of him, Joe's initial response is to consider this to be awesome and encourage him to try to figure out what his "superpowers" are, while Frank is far more cautious about using a power he doesn't understand. This is a bit mitigated, though, by that fact that their roles pretty quickly swap and Joe remembers exactly why he wanted to get rid of the Eye in the first place, and once again returns steadfastly to this viewpoint when he sees how much danger the Eye is putting Frank in. Though he does secretly keep the Eye at the end of the season, for as-yet-unexplained reasons....
** Similarly, Frank noted to Callie during his PartingWordsRegret after Joe and Biff went missing in "No Getting Out" that Joe tends to do stupid things when Frank doesn't listen to him properly. Indeed, this once again happens several times in this season where Frank is too dismissive of Joe's concerns and feelings, Joe reacts impulsively in response, and Frank doesn't seem to see this coming and only finds out and gets involved after Joe is already in trouble or doing something dangerous.

* ArtifactOfPower: This season reveals that many more of them besides the Eye exist in this world:
** The Crystal, which was created when lightning struck the sand on the beach near the Estabrook mansion; George found it, and later had it sent after his faked death to Gloria, who hung it on the chandelier outside the library. It's stolen by the Shadow Man halfway through the season, and is eventually revealed to have been used in the Project Midnight tests on Rosegrave students; namely, by attempting to use it to store and transfer consciousness into different bodies. The Shadow Man wants it because he believes it contains the mind of his twin brother, one of the test subjects of Project Midnight who was rendered catatonic when the tests failed, but the big twist of the season reveals that there is no sign of said brother in the realm of the Crystal, which instead contains the consciousness of '''George Estabrook''' himself, who manages to transfer his mind into Frank's body while leaving him trapped there instead.

* BaitAndSwitch:
** Frank and Callie find evidence that the Shadow Man is Mr. Munder, and Joe, Phil, and Lucy go to his house to confront him, only to find him catatonic, apparently a victim of the Shadow Man instead. But then this turns out to be subverted when Phil, Belinda, Callie, and Biff discover that they were right all along about it being Munder, who pulled a TwinSwitch with his catatonic brother to throw them off his trail.
** In "Captured!", Frank, Joe, and JB reach the final stages of the latter's plan to steal the relic, only to find that they've been LuredIntoATrap by Angela, who holds them at gunpoint to try to force Frank to give up the power and shoots Joe for motivation when he's unable to do so. After seeing this, which is what will happen if they continue down their current path, when JB arrives to continue the plan, Frank warns them that it's a trap. Though, unfortunately for them, they still get caught anyway, but avoid the outcome of the vision thanks to Chet's and Brian's BigDamnHeroes moment.
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: When Joe first learns about Frank having the Eye in him, he regards it the way you'd expect from a tween boy learning that his older brother just got superpowers: eagerly encouraging him to experiment and figure out what he can do, seeming excited to hear about his visions, and just generally regarding the whole thing as cool. It doesn't take Joe too long to become very wary of it, though, thanks to numerous different factors--seeing how much the Eye is corrupting Frank and changing his personality, how he's becoming over-reliant on it and dismissive of Joe's attempts to keep him in check, how the visions are causing him increasing amounts of physical pain, and how he becomes a LivingMacGuffin for the various bad guys of the season because of it--and starts actively plotting behind Frank's back to get the Eye out of him for his own safety.
* BigBadEnsemble: It eventually turns out that, like last season, multiple different parties are at play and responsible for different things that happen throughout the season. Of the three major murders that occur this season, each one is committed by a different member of the ensemble.
** Stratemeyer Global is actually a group run by Gloria, but some agents have gone rogue and decided to steal the Eye for themselves, targeting Frank and Joe after figuring out that they still have it. This group is led by Angela Todd, with Mack Malone acting as her [[TheDragon dragon]] until she betrays and kills him.
** Everything that happens to Dennis, as well as the bombing at Wilt's and the death of Dr. Vivian Burelli, is done by the Shadow Man, someone who was wronged by Stratemeyer's and Burelli's failed tests on Rosegrave students. Namely, his twin brother was a failed test subject who was rendered catatonic, and his ultimate goal is to try to transfer his brother's mind--which he believes is trapped inside the Crystal--into another body.
** Olivia Kowalsky turns out to be the main villain of Fenton's story arc; while she is also trying to bring down the last remnants of the Circle like he is, her methods are much more violent. She kills Paul [=McFarlane=] and ends up trying to frame Fenton for murders that she committed, after lying to him about having information about Laura's death to set a trap for him.
* CallBack: Likewise, Biff brought up to Joe last season that she was adopted and that she learned things about her biological parents that she didn't like, but didn't elaborate on it any more since they had bigger issues to worry about. This is her main arc for the season, starting off with Joe trying to get her to tell him what she knows in his desperation for some kind of mystery to solve. It's soon revealed that her birth father is dead, while she continues to search for her birth mother.
* CassandraTruth: As the season goes on and Joe sees what a ToxicFriendInfluence the Eye is becoming to Frank, he repeatedly tries to dissuade him from continuing to use it, warning him that it's dangerous and pointing out that they didn't need the Eye to solve the case in Season 1. Frank doesn't listen well enough and keeps falling back on the Eye, and it ends up completely screwing him over, setting him up to get [[GrandTheftMe body-snatched]] by George and trapped inside the Crystal forever.

* TheCorruptor: The Eye to Frank, now that its energy has transferred into him. At first, he recognizes that there are problems with relying on it too much, and tasks Joe with keeping him in check to make sure he doesn't do so. Gradually, though, he becomes more and more dependent on the Eye, feeling like he's completely lost without it (not unlike its original founders), and stops listening to Joe when the latter tries to check him. The visions gradually become more and more painful and cause Frank to act paranoid towards his TrueCompanions, to the point that everyone ''does'' start conspiring to remove the Eye from him, but not out of a lust for power as it suggests, but rather to save him from it.

** JB starts off being forced to spy on the brothers by Stratemeyer, but later escapes and works on other thefts for the rest of the season, sometimes working with the boys and sometimes against them. His new job and buyer become important in the following season.
** Rogue agents from Stratemeyer are trying to find the Eye and sell it to the highest bidder, and resort to kidnapping and threats of violence (including against the teenage Hardy Boys) to get it. And then within their group, there's also Brian Conrad, who is seemingly the boss, but actually a MoleInCharge trying to bring them down. Notably, they're so menacing and violent, and clearly up to ''something'' in the middle of the woods, that the TrueCompanions spend the whole first half of the season believing that Stratemeyer is behind ''everything'', and don't discover until the midpoint that someone else is responsible for the bombing at Wilt's and all that happens with Dennis.
** Said someone else, whom they nickname the "Shadow Man", pays two high school kids to kidnap Dennis for him and to plant a bomb at Wilt's so it will damage the security shop next door and deactivate the alarm at Gloria's house, allowing him to break in. His goal in doing so is to steal the Crystal from her chandelier, which he believes houses the soul of his twin brother, and he hopes to bring said brother back by transferring his mind into another body.

** JB remains a primarily-self-motivated thief who's still willing to steal from the boys if they have something he's being paid to get, bugs their house for Stratemeyer Global, and gives the latter information about them, but he makes it clear that this is not personal; he only works for Stratemeyer for a time because they threaten his life, and immediately dissuades them from targeting the Hardys directly for the Eye and warns the brothers of the threat multiple times. He also has a ThouShaltNotKill rule, honors the deal he made with [[MoralityPet Joe]], and insists that, whatever else he may be, he would never harm Joe.

* TheManBehindTheMan:
** Gloria Estabrook herself is revealed to be the real lead of Stratemeyer Global, using it to control the Circle from prison. However, the members who are targeting Frank and Joe are a group who've betrayed the organization and gone rogue, as Gloria would never order anyone to harm them.
** Subverted. Fenton tells his sons that Stefan wasn't acting alone when he killed Laura (despite the previous season implying that he was) and was following orders from someone else, because Olivia told him she has information about who ordered Laura's death. However, he eventually finds out [[ILied she lied about this]], making it ambiguous if this was the case or not, which isn't answered definitively until Season 3.

* NoHonorAmongThieves: One of the major reasons the rogue Stratemeyer Global agents' plans fail is that more and more of the top members turn against each other. Once BigBad Angela Todd and TheDragon Mack Malone discover that Frank has the power of the Eye in him, Malone wants to report it to their boss, but Angela promptly betrays him and knocks him out so it'll stay a secret, and keeps Mack prisoner in her motel bathroom and later murders him. And then it turns out that said boss, Brian Conrad, has been a MoleInCharge all along, works to bring the whole group down, and pulls a FramingTheGuiltyParty on Angela to get her arrested at the end of the season.
* OfficialCouple: Chet and Belinda are implied to get a RelationshipUpgrade midway through the season (which is confirmed by the end of it) to become the show's BetaCouple.

** Throughout the season, Frank has many visions from the Eye, some of which are legitimately {{Helpful Hallucination}}s while others are much more cryptic, confusing, or downright misleading. The nature of which ones are which become clearer after the CruelTwistEnding of the season: some of the hallucinations related to Dennis and the Shadow Man are helpful because they allow the boys to progress in solving the mystery, but the misleading ones are meant to keep them from finding out information they're not supposed to know or lure them somewhere. Most notably, the vision of the Shadow Man at the school dance abducting someone who appears to be Lucy, which Frank sees right as he's about to give up the Eye's power and return it to the relic, prevents him from doing so and brings Frank, Joe, and Chet to the dance, so the former can be kidnapped by Munder to kick off George's and the Eye's plan of letting George steal Frank's body. However, the visions about the rogue Stratemeyer operatives' attempts to hurt or capture him and Joe are all helpful, because they want to steal the Eye from Frank to use for their own purposes, which would ruin George's plan if they succeed, so the Eye is actively trying to help Frank avoid this.

* SheKnowsTooMuch: Munder admits that this is the reason he killed Dr. Burelli: not out of revenge specifically, but because she knew who he (the Shadow Man) really was and would have ruined his plan to save Aaron, so from his perspective, she had to die.

** Belinda and Chet get huge amounts of it pretty much from the moment they meet, culminating in a RelationshipUpgrade halfway through the season.
** Very notably ''averted'' for Joe and Biff, who, in addition to being inseparable best friends, had quite a bit of this in the first season. This time around, though, Joe and Biff actually share relatively little screentime together and have next-to-no teasing; in fact, each of them receives ship tease with someone ''else'' instead:
*** Joe has a crush on Lucy Wayne, Dennis Gilroy's girlfriend; once she reveals partway through the season that she and Dennis have actually broken up, she begins to reciprocate Joe's feelings, and they kiss at the school dance.

* SlaveToPR: The Hardy Boys are excited when, after successfully finding and rescuing Dennis, the mayor of the town wants to take a picture with them at Wilt's. Once they actually get there, they find that Mayor Krassner pretty much has no respect for them, their friends, or their mystery solving skills, using the entire affair as a chance to plug his political values to the witnessing cameraman and reporter to put in the paper, and even plans to crop Chet and Phil out of the photo altogether. Later, Krassner proves to be uncooperative in the investigation of Vivian Burelli's murder because of how it may reflect poorly on the town and his leadership.

* StableTimeLoop: The Eye creates one by giving Frank a vision that causes him to physically appear in the past to George (when he was still an old man, but before he tried to leave the Circle), who can actually see him (unlike Frank's other visions) and thus learn of Frank's future existence before he's even born at that point in the timeline. Because he knows this, when he seemingly leaves Gloria and the Circle behind, George really loads his consciousness into the Crystal (and thus doesn't truly die) to wait for the Eye to bring Frank into it as well someday so he can steal his body for himself.

* TouchedByVorlons: After Frank touched the Eye while it was reforging in the Season 1 finale, this season reveals that the Eye's energy transferred from the stone that was the original artifact (and is now an ordinary carved stone) into Frank himself, giving him visions when trying to communicate with him, which Frank is not able to control. Once the villains of the season realize this, he becomes a LivingMacGuffin.

* TrashTheSet: Subverted with Wilt's Deli. A large portion of it gets badly damaged from the bombing in "Heading for Destruction" and the gang's hangouts there temporarily cease, but by Season 3--which starts only a couple of weeks later in-universe--it's repaired and pretty much back to normal.
* WorkingTheSameCase: Unusually for the Hardy Boys, this is averted. Frank, Joe, and Fenton assume their investigations are connected, but it turns out that the boys are chasing two ''[[BigBadEnsemble different]]'' culprits--the Shadow Man (who's behind the bombing at Wilt's, the theft at Gloria's, and everything that happens with Dennis) and Stratemeyer Global (or rather, rogue agents, who want to steal the Eye and sell it)--and ''neither'' of them are directly related to Fenton's case, where Olivia Kowalsky is the BigBad who's trying to bring down the rest of the Circle [[MurderIsTheBestSolution in the most murder-y way possible]].
* WouldHurtAChild: Stratemeyer Global has no problem with kidnapping, hurting, torturing, or killing teenagers, as seen with Frank, Joe, and their friends.

* ActorAllusion: George's consciousness meets Frank's within the Crystal, and he asks how old Frank is and suggests, "22? 23?" before Frank corrects him that he's 16. Rohan Campbell himself was 22-23 while filming the season.

* BatmanGambit: When "Frank" (or rather, George in Frank's body) regains consciousness in the climax of the season and sees that the former's friends are still unconscious and Munder is the first person to wake up, he pretends that the attempted mind transfer worked, faking that he is Munder's twin brother Aaron for long enough to get Munder to set him free before revealing that it failed.

* BigDamnHeroes: Joe, Callie, Chet, and Belinda attempt to pull this in the finale when Frank has been kidnapped by the Shadow Man. By the time they get there, though, it's already too late; Frank's consciousness has already been pulled out of his body by then and put into the Crystal, and while they seemingly do manage to bring him back, the ending reveals that it was ''George's'' mind that got put back into the body instead, and Frank's own mind is still stuck in the Crystal, unbeknownst to everyone else.

* CaughtOnTape: Chet and Belinda confront Angela in the season finale and get her to admit to killing Mack, then reveal they have Brian and the cops listening in. Though they admit that this is a just a bonus on top of all the other evidence they have on her.

** Dr. Vivian Burelli tells the Shadow Man in "The Doctor's Orders" that his plan (to revive his brother with Project Midnight) will fail, and he pursues her by car when she flees. Her car is later found abandoned on a bridge, and her body washes up from the river at the start of "A Midnight Scare". She counts as an AssholeVictim because of her role in experimenting on kids in the past with Project Midnight (despite becoming TheAtoner by the present) and initially agreeing to give Dennis to the Shadow Man until the kids thwart her.
** TheDragon to the rogue Stratemeyer group, Mack Malone, is murdered in "A Midnight Scare" by his own partner and superior Angela Todd, who shoots him in the head in her own motel bathtub where she'd been holding him prisoner after feeling that [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness he's no longer useful to her]]. He's ''definitely'' an AssholeVictim, having menaced the Hardy Boys with a knife while holding them prisoner and acted like nothing but a sleaze for all of his screentime.
** The final shot of the season shows Gloria Estabrook, already in the hospital since having a stroke in "The Doctor's Orders", flatlining after being visited there by her father George in her grandson Frank's body, apparently due to shock. Season 3 opens with her funeral.

* ChekhovsGunman: The true identity of the Shadow Man is recurring character Mr. Munder, the detention and programming teacher at Bridgeport High.

* ContinuityNod:
** In the first season, when the TrueCompanions were talking about school starting soon, Phil encouraged the others to join the AV Club. In this season, his involvement with the AV Club is the impetus of the whole plot, as his fellow member and [[TheRival rival]] in the club, Dennis Gilroy, becomes a DistressedDude while trying to film footage of the Bridgeport Demon. Phil's membership with the Sea Cadets also comes back into play when he uses his nautical maps to pinpoint a set of coordinates that Frank found.
** During Joe's and JB's planning session to steal the (now-Eye-free) relic from the Stratemeyer warehouse, Joe notes how difficult it sounds, and JB points out that the first time he stole the relic was on a plane from an assassin, so comparatively, this is far more simple.

* CruelTwistEnding / {{Cliffhanger}}: Initially, when Frank meets George in the Crystal and the latter tries to hijack his body, Frank appears to fight him off and successfully come back. However, the ending scene where "Frank" visits Gloria reveals that George was in control the whole time thanks to the Eye's power, stopped Frank, and ''succeeded'' in stealing his body, leaving his mind trapped in the Crystal.
* DemotedToExtra: Downplayed, but after Jessie Hooper is injured by the bomb at Wilt's in "Heading for Destruction" and left injured and hospitalized for most of the second half of the season, Biff's screentime becomes reduced, and much of it is spent (understandably) at the hospital with her mom and/or worrying about her condition. She's still present and her AdoptionAngst still gets some focus, but in terms of investigating with the other kids, only gets to be part of one more important adventure--working with Joe, Phil, and Lucy to smuggle Dennis out of the hospital--and despite staying at the Hardy home while waiting for her mom to recover, meaning that Biff's literally living with Joe during this time, she has even ''less'' screentime with him than ever during these episodes.
* DistressedDude: Notably, this season, the only significant female character put in major distress (not counting Biff's brief incident with Joe and Phil below) is Jessie Hooper; otherwise, it's the guys who take the brunt of the abuse:
** Frank, Joe, and JB are briefly captured by Angela and her men, until Chet and Brian show up to save them.
** In the climax of the season, Frank is kidnapped by [[BigBad the Shadow Man]], Mr. Munder, who intends to transfer his twin brother's consciousness into Frank's body.
* EmptyShell: This briefly happens to Frank's body as well when his mind is put in the Crystal too, but unfortunately for him, [[GreaterScopeVillain George Estabrook]] was waiting for this and takes the chance to [[GrandTheftMe hijack it for himself]].

* FauxAffablyEvil: George Estabrook's consciousness seems genuinely glad to meet Frank's in the Crystal, after seeing him on the beach many years before thanks to a time-traveling incident caused by the Eye. This doesn't stop him from planning for many years, since before faking his death, to steal his own great-grandson's body while stealing the Eye from him and trapping his mind inside the Crystal, just seeming rather smugly amused when Frank tries to resist.

* GrandTheftMe: The finale reveals that this was George Estabrook's master plan all along: fake his death, upload his consciousness into the Crystal, and wait for the Eye to bring Frank there so George can steal his body. Unfortunately, he succeeds.
* GreaterScopeVillain: The end of the season reveals that George Estabrook was this all along, and by extension, the Eye as well, which is ultimately loyal to George as its original holder (or one of them, anyway). The Eye causes a vision of Frank to travel across time and appear to George before he "died", and by thus learning of his great-grandson's existence, George formulates a plan to dodge his enemies and extend his life by faking his death, storing his consciousness in the Crystal, and waiting for Frank to appear there so he can [[GrandTheftMe resurrect himself as a much younger man by stealing his body]]. The DownerEnding of the season reveals that he's succeeded.

* IHaveAFamily: Played for drama. Adrian Munder's motivation for his actions as the Shadow Man is trying to revive his beloved twin brother Aaron by transferring his consciousness from the Crystal into another body. As he prepares to try to do this to Frank, which would leave Frank's mind trapped inside the Crystal instead, Frank desperately tries to appeal to his morals by stating that he, too, has a brother and is a brother himself, begging him not to go through with it, but his pleas fall on deaf ears.
* ILied:
** Combined with IDidWhatIHadToDo: Joe convinces Frank to finally return the Eye's power to the relic by assuring him that they can still continue to use it. After Frank transfers the power, passes out, and wakes up in the hospital, Joe tells him that Brian has the relic and plans to make sure it won't ever see the light of day again. Joe justifies the lie by saying that he had to save Frank from the Eye as well as Munder, and wanted his brother back. Frank accepts this and thanks him....except it's not actually Frank, but George. And then it turns out that the part about giving the Eye to Brian was a lie, too, and Joe actually keeps and hides it.
** Olivia tells Fenton in the season finale that she never actually had information about who ordered Laura's death, and claimed she did only to [[LuredIntoATrap draw him into a trap]] so she could frame him for the murders she committed.

* LoveMakesYouEvil: Adrian Munder is utterly twisted by his grief over his twin brother being rendered catatonic in Project Midnight, and the lengths he's willing to go in trying to revive him are far beyond the pale: abducting and damaging the mind of an innocent student; blowing up an unrelated store (which critically injures the chief of police) so he can break into a house; murdering a doctor previously involved in Project Midnight when she refuses to continue helping him; and kidnapping ''another'' innocent student with the intent of ''permanently removing his soul from his body'' and trapping it inside a crystal forever to replace it with his brother's soul.
* LuredIntoATrap:
** Olivia does this to Fenton by claiming that, if meets her in Dixon City and helps her with her goal to bring down the Circle, she'll give him the information she has about who ordered Laura's death. Once he arrives at the hotel, she knocks him out with knockout gas so she can frame him for murder (of people she actually killed herself). To top it off, once Fenton turns the tables on her, she admits she never had this intel about Laura to begin with.
** Joe finds Mack chained to a bathtub in Angela's motel room, he only agrees to let him go if he tells him where the relic (the now-empty rock that once held the Eye's power) is located...and then, wisely, [[ILied reneges on this afterwards]]. Unfortunately, Mack gives Joe false info that leads him, Frank, and JB right into a trap set by Angela.

* OnceMoreWithClarity: In the climax of the season, the flashback of George's final conversation with Gloria is replayed, but there are some additions to it that change the context. Namely, the first time, it appeared that George was essentially disinheriting Gloria because of her hunger for power while he had turned over a new leaf. Instead, it's revealed that this was part of George's plan all along, to load himself into the Crystal and await Frank's arrival so he could take his body, showing that he was considerably more EvilAllAlong than was previously indicated and never truly did go through a HeelFaceTurn.
* TheReveal:
** The Shadow Man is Adrian Munder, a teacher at Bridgeport; his brother Aaron was part of the failed Project Midnight experiment. His motivation is to essentially bring his brother back by uploading Aaron's consciousness into Frank's body.
** George Estabrook didn't die when his plane crashed into the ocean, because he wasn't on the plane to begin with (though his piece of the Eye was); his consciousness had been loaded into the Crystal, waiting for an opportunity to upload himself into Frank's body as his new host. The final {{Wham Line}}s of the season show that he succeeded.

* SequelHook: Seasons 2 and 3 are a TwoPartTrilogy, and the finale introduces a {{Cliffhanger}} and leaves open some plot points from this season to be resolved in the next one.
** When Biff gets in touch with Abigail Owens, her birth mother, the person who returns Biff's call is not Abigail, but her daughter (meaning that Biff has biological siblings).
** JB sneaks into the Hardy attic and steals the scroll piece that Fenton entrusted to the boys--given to him by [=McFarlane=]--which JB was shown earlier to be searching for, and is last seen opening it up and looking at it in his car.
** On a related note, when trying to convince Fenton to let her go and work with her, Olivia reveals that the Eye is only the beginning, and there are other powerful relics out there as well that she's working to gather together with a partner, whom she claims won't be corrupted by them like the Circle was; these include the Crystal, JB's scroll, the scrolls Trudy now has, and presumably more.
** Despite Joe telling "Frank" (actually George) that he gave the relic, now restored with the Eye, to Brian to make sure it "never sees the light of day again", it's later shown that he actually kept it, for reasons unknown.
** A woman in a black hooded coat shows up in the warehouse where Fenton is keeping Olivia. The woman removes her hood, revealing herself to be '''Laura Hardy''' (or someone borrowing her appearance).
** Coupled with CruelTwistEnding: George Estabrook did succeed after all in his plan to transfer his mind into Frank's body, essentially resurrecting himself in his great-grandson's body, while the real Frank is still trapped inside the Crystal.

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Several towards the CruelTwistEnding:
** Joe notes in "A Clue on Film" that perhaps the reason Frank's having trouble controlling the Eye's visions is because he's reflexively resisting it, and suggests he try "letting it in." Frank increasingly doing just that causes him to fall further and further under the Eye's [[TheCorruptor corruptive]] influence, driving a wedge between the brothers in the process, which sets him up to be kidnapped and body-snatched.
** When Joe, Phil, and Lucy find Mr. Munder, their prime suspect, seemingly catatonic, Joe talks aloud with Phil about how Frank could have the Eye and still have been wrong. It turns out that the "Mr. Munder" they know--the twin of the man they found catatonic--was listening in nearby from hiding, and this is how he learns that Frank has the Eye in him and motivates him to kidnap him. Joe is distraught when he realizes this after Frank is taken, though his friends attempt to reassure him that Munder would have found out anyway. And then the ending reveals that Joe still hasn't gotten his brother back....
** The BigBad, Mr. Munder, kidnaps Frank with the intention of uploading his twin brother's consciousness into Frank's body in an attempt to bring the former back. Frank's mind is successfully removed from his body and stored in the Crystal...where the Eye reveals to Frank that Munder's plan was never going to work, and he was being used. This gives [[GreaterScopeVillain George]] the opportunity to take over Frank's body, unleashing him back into the world.
** As Joe and Frank flee Angela and Malone and run to the beach, this triggers another vision in Frank that essentially causes him to time-travel, allowing his great-grandfather George to see him. As a result, George's grand plan to avoid being killed by his partners involves him transferring his mind into the Crystal to wait until his great-grandson Frank appears there, so George can hijack his body.
* UnwittingPawn: The season finale reveals that the Eye was using Frank as one all along, seemingly being helpful by giving him visions and insight that were vital in solving the case, while actually acting as TheCorruptor to him to drive him away from his loved ones who would be able to reel him in, all for the purpose of allowing George to resurrect himself by stealing Frank's body.
* WhamEpisode: The finale, "An Unexpected Return". Munder tries to put his brother's consciousness into Frank's body, transferring Frank's mind into the Crystal in the process. There, Frank learns that George Estabrook didn't actually die in the plane crash that seemingly killed him; instead, he transferred his mind into the Crystal so he could wait there for Frank (whom he'd seen on the beach thanks to a time-travel vision given to him by the Eye) and steal his body himself, though Frank is seemingly able to thwart him. Fenton learns that Olivia was lying about knowing who ordered Laura's death, but she reveals that there are many other magical relics out there besides the Eye, and other forces trying to gather them. Fenton then apparently sees Laura, meaning she's either still alive or someone is impersonating her. Frank still hasn't recovered from his experience with the Eye and breaks up with Callie for no apparent reason, and the very ending of the episode reveals why: thanks to the Eye, George ''succeeded'' in his plan to transfer his consciousness into Frank's body, meaning that he's essentially come back to life, while the real Frank is still trapped inside the Crystal.
* WhamLine:
** In the finale, first when the Eye, in the form of young George, essentially turns on Frank:
--->"The Eye's loyalty has always been with its original master."
** And then, when the real George reveals that he's going to take over Frank's body and leave his mind stranded in the Crystal:
--->'''George''': The transfer's about to begin. And then I'll be free. The Eye has shown me the path, Francis. This is all part of it. I truly wish there was another way.
** Pretty much everything Frank says in his visit to Gloria at the very end of the season finale. Namely, that it's more and more clear that he's not actually Frank, but George's mind inside Frank's body, until he outright calls Gloria "my darling, darling daughter", fully confirming it.
* WhamShot: While Fenton is holding Olivia captive near the end of the season finale, a woman in a hood arrives, and Fenton demands that she turn around and reveal her face. She does so...and it's apparently ''Laura Hardy''.

* WouldHurtAChild: Stratemeyer Global has no problem with kidnapping, hurting, torturing, or killing teenagers, as seen with Frank, Joe, and their friends.
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Angela outright states that this is why she murdered Malone.

* AlwaysIdenticalTwins: Adrian and Aaron Munder, the former of whom is a teacher in Bridgeport while the latter was a Rosegrave Academy student left catatonic by their experiments on him, which removed his soul from his body. Adrian is able to use this when he realizes that the Hardy Boys and friends are onto him being the Shadow Man by pulling a TwinSwitch, substituting Aaron for himself to throw the kids off the trail and make them think he was another victim of the Shadow Man instead.

* BigDamnHeroes:
** In the penultimate episode, Angela and her minions have Frank, Joe, and JB cornered and are about to force Frank to give up the power of the Eye. At that moment, Chet and Brian pull up to the dock in the former's truck, beginning an all-out brawl that allows them to get away.
** Joe, Callie, Chet, and Belinda attempt to pull this in the finale when Frank has been kidnapped by the Shadow Man. By the time they get there, though, it's already too late; Frank's consciousness has already been pulled out of his body by then and put into the Crystal, and while they seemingly do manage to bring him back, the ending reveals that it was ''George's'' mind that got put back into the body instead, and Frank's own mind is still stuck in the Crystal, unbeknownst to everyone else.
* TheBigDamnKiss: Joe and Lucy share one at the school dance in the penultimate episode.
* BothSidesHaveAPoint: Twofold when Frank and Joe are locked in a cargo storage and have a fight in "Captured!":
** Frank rightly calls Joe out on constantly being too impulsive and having half-baked plans that basically boil down to "We'll figure it out when we get there" as opposed to thinking things through, which causes him to take unnecessary risks and put himself in danger far too much. But when Frank asks why he didn't talk to him first before going through with this plan, Joe angrily points out that Frank wouldn't have listened because, even though he asked Joe to keep him in check with his use of the Eye, he stopped listening to him about it a long time ago despite the latter's best efforts.
** Joe also states that Frank has come to trust and rely on the Eye far too much, while Frank has similar feelings about Joe continuing to work with JB despite him repeatedly screwing them over. They both turn out to be correct about this. JB ends up abandoning the Hardys when their heist of the relic is thwarted, and then tries to steal it from Joe (though he reveals in Season 3 that this is an attempt to protect them), only failing because the latter swapped in a fake; he then returns to the Hardy home and swipes [=McFarlane's=] scroll that Fenton gave the boys. Meanwhile, Frank finds out in the hardest way possible that the Eye has always remained loyal to George, and was manipulating Frank the whole time, driving a wedge between him and his loved ones and setting him up for George to steal his body.
* TheBusCameBack: Paul [=McFarlane=]; see BackForTheDead above.

* CassandraTruth:
** After Frank stops Joe and JB from walking into Angela's trap, Joe finally tells JB that the reason Frank knew this was because he has the power of the Eye inside of him. JB thinks he's just making up an outlandish excuse to not tell him what's really going on, and [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere promptly decides to bail]] (though unfortunately for him, he gets caught in the trap anyway).
** As the season goes on and Joe sees what a ToxicFriendInfluence the Eye is becoming to Frank, he repeatedly tries to dissuade him from continuing to use it, warning him that it's dangerous and pointing out that they didn't need the Eye to solve the case in Season 1. Frank doesn't listen well enough and keeps falling back on the Eye, and it ends up completely screwing him over, setting him up to get [[GrandTheftMe body-snatched]] by George and trapped inside the Crystal forever.

** Frank and Joe are likewise kidnapped by Stratemeyer, for the same reason, in "Heading for Destruction", being stuffed into a van with bags over their heads and tied to chairs in their lair.
** In the same episode, a thug in a Demon Day mask sneaks up on Phil after he finds the blue car, knocks him out, and [[PunkInTheTrunk locks him in the trunk of said car]].
** ''Also'' in the same episode, Fenton briefly gets captured by Olivia, though she doesn't end up hurting him despite her threats to do so. A few episodes later, though, and she drugs him and knocks him out for real, in an attempt to frame him for murder.

* EmptyShell: Aaron Munder was left as one when his consciousness was removed in Project Midnight and trapped in the Crystal, leaving his body a catatonic husk because there's no longer a "person" inside to control it. This briefly happens to Frank's body as well when his mind is put in the Crystal too, but unfortunately for him, [[GreaterScopeVillain George Estabrook]] was waiting for this and takes the chance to [[GrandTheftMe hijack it for himself]].

* FramingTheGuiltyParty: Brian Conrad arrives with Chet at the docks to rescue the Hardys, and manages to steal Angela's gun--which she used to murder Mack Malone--in the ensuing chaos, holding it with a handkerchief so he doesn't leave his fingerprints on it or smear hers. He then returns to her motel room and leaves the gun in the bathroom near Malone's body to ensure the cops can trace the murder to her.

* InSpiteOfANail: Frank sees a vision of himself, Joe, and JB being taken hostage by Angela during their heist to steal the relic, and he and Joe try to use this to avoid capture and turn the tables. However, since this vision causes Angela's tracking device to spike, she's able to locate him and capture all of them anyway, though they're luckily saved by the timely arrival of Chet and Mr. Conrad.
* IWantMyMommy: Frank states that, if he continues to use the Eye's power, it will give him what he wants the most. Joe angrily demands to know what this is, and Frank screams in response, "I WANT MY MOM BACK, JOE!"

* LetMeGetThisStraight: JB going over Joe's request to steal the relic from Stratemeyer. He outlines what he'd have to do in a way that makes the heist sound incredibly difficult (which it is)...and then, to Joe's surprise, gladly agrees with no complaints, pointing out that he's good at what he does and it's still less difficult than the first time he stole a piece of the relic (taking it from an assassin and jumping out of a plane).

* MakesUsEven: Joe cashes in on the favor JB promised him last season, and JB makes sure to tell him that, once he's finished this job for him, they will be even, which Joe acknowledges.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: The tension between Frank and Joe about their differing opinions on the Eye reaches a boiling point in "Captured!" and results in a fight that culminates in Frank shoving his brother into the wall of a storage crate. This KickTheMoralityPet moment gives him a huge JerkassRealization and is what finally convinces him to give up the Eye's power.

* OutGambitted: Near the end of "Captured!", in the confusion at the marina when Chet and Brian show up to save the Hardys, JB apparently steals the relic from Joe before escaping. Joe reveals to Frank and Chet in the car afterwards that JB took a fake that he swapped in during the chaos, while Joe has the real one. Though JB does bounce back quickly when he breaks into their attic once again and steals the scroll that [=McFarlane=] gave to Fenton (which he was previously shown to be looking for).

** During the climactic battle at the docks in "Captured!", once you know to look for it, you can see Joe swap out the real relic with the fake right before JB steals it, moments before Joe reveals to Frank and Chet that he did so.

* SelfFulfillingProphecy: As Frank prepares to give up the power of the Eye, it gives him a vision of the Shadow Man abducting someone who appears to be Lucy from the school dance. He tells Joe and Chet about the upcoming attack, and they quickly head there. In fact, the vision was a trick to lure them to the school. The Shadow Man ''does'' attack someone there: Frank himself, once he and the others arrive.

* TwinSwitch: Used by the Big Bad to throw the heroes off his trail. Frank and Callie figure out that Adrian Munder is the Shadow Man, but when Joe, Phil, and Lucy go to his house to confront him, they apparently find him catatonic. They later discover that the catatonic man they found was Aaron Munder, Adrian's twin brother who underwent Project Midnight and never recovered; Adrian put his brother in his own place so everyone would think he was a victim of the Shadow Man.
* UnspokenPlanGuarantee: A double-whammy when JB recruits Joe to help him with the latter's own request to steal the relic from Stratemeyer:
** JB describes exactly how he would need Joe to help him pull off the heist. What's more, this is already combined with some DramaticIrony, since the audience knows that Malone was deceiving Joe with the information he gave him about the relic's location in the previous episode. Sure enough, Angela is there waiting with her men to turn the tables on them.
** Frank crashes the party and has a vision that allows him to foresee Angela originally capturing the three of them; he and Joe then attempt to use this to flip the script on her, with Joe describing his whole idea to Frank. Naturally, the second the two of them step out of the cargo hold, they find that Angela has already captured JB (who tried to bail) and has them cornered, having used her tracking device to find Frank on the ship after he had his vision.

* WhamEpisode:
** "Captured!", the penultimate episode. Jessie finally wakes up from her coma, and gives her blessing in Biff's search for her birth mom. Frank's and Joe's simmering tension over the Eye finally boils over and they have a fight, which leads to Frank agreeing to give up the Eye's power. They and JB get captured by Angela and her goons (both in a vision and in reality), who almost force Frank to hand over the power until Chet and Brian rescue them. JB fails to take the relic thanks to Joe pulling a switcheroo, but instead steals the scroll he'd been looking for from the Hardy home, which [=McFarlane=] left with Fenton, who entrusted it to the boys. Finally, Callie, Belinda, Biff, and Phil figure out the true identity of the Shadow Man (namely, that they were right about it being Munder all along, and he performed a TwinSwitch to throw them off the trail) just as the latter succeeds in kidnapping Frank at the end.
** The finale, "An Unexpected Return". Munder tries to put his brother's consciousness into Frank's body, transferring Frank's mind into the Crystal in the process. There, Frank learns that George Estabrook didn't actually die in the plane crash that seemingly killed him; instead, he transferred his mind into the Crystal so he could wait there for Frank (whom he'd seen on the beach thanks to a time-travel vision given to him by the Eye) and steal his body himself, though Frank is seemingly able to thwart him. Fenton learns that Olivia was lying about knowing who ordered Laura's death, but she reveals that there are many other magical relics out there besides the Eye, and other forces trying to gather them. Fenton then apparently sees Laura, meaning she's either still alive or someone is impersonating her. Frank still hasn't recovered from his experience with the Eye and breaks up with Callie for no apparent reason, and the very ending of the episode reveals why: thanks to the Eye, George ''succeeded'' in his plan to transfer his consciousness into Frank's body, meaning that he's essentially come back to life, while the real Frank is still trapped inside the Crystal.

* WhamShot:
** Trudy gets a box of files from the attic for Fenton in "Captured!" and leaves to go meet him. The door swings closed behind her to reveal JB standing behind it once more, and shows that he stole the scroll that Fenton got from [=McFarlane=] and left with the boys (which JB was also searching for).
** While Fenton is holding Olivia captive near the end of the season finale, a woman in a hood arrives, and Fenton demands that she turn around and reveal her face. She does so...and it's apparently ''Laura Hardy''.

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Angela outright states that this is why she murdered Malone.
* YoureJustJealous: A sign of how much [[TheCorruptor the Eye]] has corrupted Frank is when, during his fight with Joe, he angrily accuses the latter and their friends of wanting to remove its power from him out of "jealousy" that the Eye "chose" him and not them. Joe, of course, is in complete disbelief. Thankfully, Frank snaps out of it soon after.

* ArtisticLicenceGeography: Though [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield it's not entirely clear where Bridgeport and Dixon City are supposed to be located]], as mentioned above, they're indicated to be far enough north that characters wear long sleeves outdoors even in the early fall and late spring. However, when Joe solves JB's code to get his phone number and contact him, said number has an area code of 864, which is in South Carolina in RealLife--very unlikely to be the actual intended setting of the series--and for that matter, is for the most-inland portion of the state, rather than the part that borders the ocean.

** When JB meets up with Frank and Callie at Rosegrave and starts talking to them, Callie confusedly asks who he is, and is then incredulous when he introduces himself; while she has certainly ''heard'' a lot about JB from the others, she's one of the few members of the group who's never met or seen him before then.

* DoubleReverseQuadrupleAgent: Angela tries to convince Chet to turn on Frank and help her get the Eye out of him, even reminding him of how Frank stole his girlfriend. While this does motivate Chet to finally confess his lingering complicated feelings about Frank's and Callie's relationship to them, he has no intention of actually betraying them, and only pretends to go rogue to convince her; his friends are in on the whole plan. He outright refers to himself as a "double agent" when he successfully gets Angela to fall for it.

** Joe finds Mack Malone chained up in Angela's bathtub, and agrees to let him go only after Malone tells him where the relic is. He does so, but Joe knows he's lying about not planning to hurt him and reneges on releasing him. Which turns out to be a good call, since, unfortunately, Malone also lied with the information he provided.
** Angela turns out to have likewise lied to Malone about planning to release him once he gave the Hardys and co. false information, and murders him instead, [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness feeling that he's no longer useful to keep alive]].

** When Joe finds Malone chained to a bathtub in Angela's motel room, he only agrees to let him go if Malone tells him where the relic (the now-empty rock that once held the Eye's power) is located (and then, wisely, reneges on this afterwards). Unfortunately, Malone gives Joe false info that leads him, Frank, and JB right into a trap set by Angela.

* OnlyInItForTheMoney: Angela reveals to Chet when he asks that this is her reason for wanting to get the Eye from the Hardys; she outright states that she has no interest in using a "mystical moon rock that messes with your mind" for herself, but knows that a lot of other people would kill for it, so she plans to sell it.

** Belinda's father is also in on the plot and is Angela's boss, but has secretly become a MoleInCharge.
** JB Cox (which is an alias, not his real name) was a Rosegrave Academy student.

** At the end of "The Missing Camera", Frank learns a valuable lesson after "cherry-picking" from the Eye's visions and single-mindedly investigating Tom Elroy, who turns out to be innocent. Frank acknowledges the dangers of relying on the Eye too much, asks Joe to keep him in check and promises to listen to him better from now on, and states that they'll solve the case with "good old-fashioned detective work". However, it only takes him a few episodes to go back on this (even as Joe attempts to stick by it) and become over-reliant on the Eye again, crediting it for most of their discoveries and saying they'd be "lost without it" while repeatedly disregarding Joe's fears. It's somewhat {{Justified|Trope}} in this case, though, because the the Eye is TheCorruptor and increasingly messes with Frank's mental state while poisoning him against his loved ones.

* AlmostKiss: Once Chet and Belinda discuss said kiss in "Hunting an Intruder" and are about to share another one, Phil and the rest of the gang come back and the moment passes, and the two move away from each other. It takes until the season finale before they kiss again.

* ArbitrarySkepticism: Once Frank finally fills in their friends about having the power of the Eye, he also tells everyone, including Joe, that in his latest PensieveFlashback from the Eye, George ''actually saw him'' from the past somehow. Phil reflexively states that it's not possible, and Frank promptly lampshades that, after all the other supernatural experiences they've had with the Eye, IntangibleTimeTravel seems like an arbitrary place to draw the line.

* ArtisticLicenceGeography:
** In "Hunting an Intruder", Frank tells the rest of the gang about the coordinates he saw on Stratemeyer Global's machine that they use to track the Eye, which end up leading to Gloria's house. However, when Frank writes them down, we can [[FreezeFrameBonus briefly see]] that they're 23° 30' 48.017" N, 179° 45' 53.331" E, which, as any world map will show, is smack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's somewhat justified in that this was probably done to avoid indicating exactly where the series takes place and pointing to some person's private property (with similar reasons to why 555 phone numbers are always used in fictional works), but it's a bit egregious to include an east-hemisphere coordinate at all when the series is meant to be set in either the northeastern US (like in the books) or Canada (where the show is filmed), both of which are very far into the west hemisphere.
** Though [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield it's not entirely clear where Bridgeport and Dixon City are supposed to be located]], as mentioned above, they're indicated to be far enough north that characters wear long sleeves outdoors even in the early fall and late spring. However, when Joe solves JB's code to get his phone number and contact him, said number has an area code of 864, which is in South Carolina in RealLife--very unlikely to be the actual intended setting of the series--and for that matter, is for the most-inland portion of the state, rather than the part that borders the ocean.

** In "The Doctor's Orders", when Dr. Burelli calls [[BigBad the Shadow Man]] to inform him that Dennis has disappeared, the scene immediately cuts to Brian Conrad (who was just shown a few moments ago to be involved with Stratemeyer) and shows his pager beeping, implying that ''he's'' the Shadow Man and will become an ArchnemesisDad to Belinda. Then the latter is soon revealed to have been wronged in the past somehow by Stratemeyer, and Mr. Conrad is revealed to be [[TheMole a whistleblower]] in the Stratemeyer group.

* BrickJoke: In "Hunting an Intruder", Frank gets a vision from the Eye, complete with his usual wincing, right next to Chet, who knows something's up and, when he tries to brush it off as nothing, responds with "Ten bucks says it's something," though they have to hide from Angela and Mack before the conversation can go any further. Then once Frank tells everybody about having the power of the Eye inside him, Chet's first words are "You owe me ten bucks," and he agrees.

* ChekhovsGun: Lucy mentions to Joe in "Hunting an Intruder" that she plans to stay at the lighthouse and "watch the storm roll in" after he has to leave. By the time the Hardys flee from Mack and Angela at Gloria's house down to the beach, said storm ''has'' rolled in, and a bolt of lightning hits the sand next to the boys and knocks them unconscious.

* CurseCutShort: Phil gives an "Oh, shi--" (which is cut by the commercial break) when the plan for him, Biff, Lucy, and Joe to sneak Dennis out of the hospital goes awry.

* DeusExitMachina: Frank and Joe insisting that Fenton meet Olivia in Dixon City to get the information she offered him, despite his own reluctance to leave his boys, causes father and sons to be separated for the rest of the season, so Fenton's not there to prevent Stratemeyer Global's continued harassment or Frank being kidnapped by the Shadow Man and having his body hijacked by George.
* DidntSeeThatComing: Angela says this word-for-word, and Mack agrees, when they discover through a bug that Fenton has been working with Gloria to bring down the Circle. The boys' dismayed faces when he tells them this suggest a similar sentiment.

* DoubleReverseQuadrupleAgent:
** Belinda thinks that her dad is an ordinary salaryman, and he claims to have recently started dating Angela. Then she and Chet learn that the two were never dating; Mr. Conrad works for the Department of Special Affairs, is part of Stratemeyer, and is Angela's boss. '''Then''' Belinda discovers that he's actually a MoleInCharge of the group of rogue Stratemeyer agents.
** Angela tries to convince Chet to turn on Frank and help her get the Eye out of him, even reminding him of how Frank stole his girlfriend. While this does motivate Chet to finally confess his lingering complicated feelings about Frank's and Callie's relationship to them, he has no intention of actually betraying them, and only pretends to go rogue to convince her; his friends are in on the whole plan. He outright refers to himself as a "double agent" when he successfully gets Angela to fall for it.
* DrawAggro: Thanks to their tracking device, Stratemeyer arrives at Gloria's house while the Hardy Gang is there, forcing them to hide. They try to sneak out without being caught, but Phil doesn't make it before Angela comes back. The Hardys have their other friends head to Chet's truck, and get Angela and Mack to leave Phil and come after them instead by purposely triggering Frank to have a vision, so the tracker will pick it up. This does work as planned, but unfortunately, Frank's subsequent flashback-vision during the ensuing chase iclues in Mack and Angela that he has the Eye's power.

* HourglassPlot: Frank and Joe spent the entirety of the previous season wishing their dad was there and hadn't gone away to investigate, and they have some angst and a bit of resentment about him leaving and being gone for so long. In this season, when Fenton returns from Dixon City in "Hunting an Intruder" with a possible lead on who ordered Laura's death, ''he's'' the one reluctant to leave to look into it--partly because he knows it's likely to be a trap, and partly because he's worried about his sons' safety after Stratemeyer Global kidnapped them recently, and doesn't want to leave them alone--while the boys absolutely insist that he go check it out, even saying that they won't ''let him'' stay. This also serves as a DeusExitMachina to get Fenton out of the way for the rest of the season, since Stratemeyer Global wouldn't have had nearly as easy of a time continuing to menace his sons and their friends if he were around to play PapaWolf for them.

** Fenton to the boys, word-for-word, when filling them in on his case. He had previously claimed to them that his frequent trips to Dixon City were to get their old house there all fixed up and ready to put on the market to sell, but admits to Frank and Joe that this wasn't true, and he was really working with Gloria (who's in prison) to try to bring down the rest of the Circle.

* InternalReveal:
** It's shown that Fenton is in contact with Gloria in the season premiere, heavily implied to be working with her, which is then reinforced when Callie sees him visiting the prison in "The Missing Camera". The boys, and Stratemeyer Global (via listening in), only learn about this in "Hunting an Intruder" when Fenton finally admits it to his sons.
** The audience learns that JB (and by extension, Stratemeyer) have the Hardys bugged at the end of the third episode. The kids themselves don't learn this until the end of the seventh...right after they've just made a huge, important breakthrough in the case.

* MistakenForGay: A variation where this happens to a non-straight character. Chet is quite attracted to Belinda, but one reason he doesn't actively pursue her at first is due to learning that she has an ex-girlfriend, so he's not sure that she's interested in men at all. After he and Belinda kiss and he talks to her about this, she explicitly confirms that she's bi, and assures Chet that yes, she's very into him, too.

* OhCrap:
** Belinda and Chet, especially the former, when they're hiding with the rest of the gang in George's secret room from the Stratemeyer intruders attempting to track the Eye, and recognize one of their voices as Angela's (who's been dating Belinda's dad, Brian).
** The Eye gives Frank a vision of George finding the Crystal many years in the past. He turns around...and ''actually sees Frank'' somehow, giving both of them this.

** The Eye transferred its energy from the relic to Frank, meaning that Frank is now a vessel for its power.
** Fenton Hardy has been working with Gloria to bring down the remnants of the Circle. Also, Gloria is the real leader of Stratemeyer Global, and the Stratemeyer criminals that the Hardys deal with this season are rogue agents.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome:
** Joe's impulsiveness and constant lack of planning for most of the things he does, which boils down to "come up with basic starting point for a plan, [[IndyPloy figure the rest out once we get there]]", is called out numerous times by most of his friends as being reckless and a bad idea, and it's pointed out that the majority of the time that this approach actually ''does'' succeed, it's mostly just luck.
** In "The Doctor's Orders", Joe sneaks into Dr. Burelli's office to snoop, but gets caught red-handed when he leaves through the office door just as she's returning. He then confronts her over the suspicious information he found there; she responds by having security escort him out of the hospital for trespassing into her office, and bars him from returning.
** Though Chet did his best over the past six months to get over what happened with him, Callie, and Frank (how, even though Callie started liking someone else, Chet had to be the one to end things between them, and how Frank basically stole his girlfriend), and tried to let it go for the sake of their happiness and his friendship with both of them, he does still have unresolved frustration and hurt feelings over it, no matter how hard he's tried to suppress them and despite his new feelings for Belinda. It takes until "The Doctor's Orders" (the seventh episode) for him to come clean to Frank and Callie about this, but once he does, and they both apologize for it, he's finally able to get proper closure, feel a lot better, and move past it for real.

* UnspokenPlanGuarantee:
** Joe, Biff, Phil, and Lucy use a hospital map and knowledge of Dr. Burelli's evening routine to plan out a "heist" of Dennis at the hospital to keep her from handing him over to the Shadow Man. The first stage of the plan--getting Dennis out of his room--goes smoothly, but things rapidly spin out of control from there: the elevator that the kids plan to use to sneak him out is out of order, requiring them them to take a detour and risk being seen; then Biff gets spotted by Deputy Riley and Mayor Krassner, the latter of whom wants to photograph her for a publicity stunt, forcing her to send Dennis down in the elevator alone. By the time Phil gets to the elevator, Dennis is gone, although it turns out he just wandered off by himself. Ultimately downplayed, since despite the plan hitting so many snags, the group does accomplish their goal of saving him from the Shadow Man.
** A double-whammy when JB recruits Joe to help him with the latter's own request to steal the relic from Stratemeyer:
*** JB describes exactly how he would need Joe to help him pull off the heist. What's more, this is already combined with some DramaticIrony, since the audience knows that Malone was deceiving Joe with the information he gave him about the relic's location in the previous episode. Sure enough, Angela is there waiting with her men to turn the tables on them.
*** Frank crashes the party and has a vision that allows him to foresee Angela originally capturing the three of them; he and Joe then attempt to use this to flip the script on her, with Joe describing his whole idea to Frank. Naturally, the second the two of them step out of the cargo hold, they find that Angela has already captured JB (who tried to bail) and has them cornered, having used her tracking device to find Frank on the ship after he had his vision.

** When Belinda and Chet go to meet Angela in "The Doctor's Orders", and find Brian there too:
--->'''Belinda''': You two were never dating, were you?\\
'''Angela''': No, Belinda. It would be very inappropriate for me to date my boss.
** And then, not too long afterwards:
--->'''Brian''': Angela doesn't know, so I had to keep up the front, but I'm a whistleblower.

* AndThenWhat: Joe is often on the receiving end of this due to his tendency of not looking before he leaps:
** When Joe, Biff, and Phil sneak out to try to find Dennis, the latter two ask Joe what they'll actually do if they ''do'' find him, since he could be trapped or hurt, and Joe admits that he didn't think that far ahead.
** Frank asks this word-for-word when he and Joe are kidnapped by Stratemeyer and the latter suggests headbutting their captors to try to get away, pointing out that they're still tied up and, even if they could somehow escape from their chairs and get to the doors, there would probably just be a bunch of Stratemeyer goons right outside who would immediately recapture them anyway. Luckily for them, Stratemeyer ends up letting them go (for now) soon after.

* BackForTheDead: Paul [=McFarlane=], who fled town to escape the Circle back in the first season, reappears here just in time for Fenton to find him dying after Olivia poisoned him.

* TheBigDamnKiss:
** Chet and Belinda officially hook up with one of these in the mid-season finale.
** Joe and Lucy share one at the school dance in the penultimate episode.
* BigNO: A couple in "Heading for Destruction":
** Phil has one just before Lola hits the button to detonate the bomb, despite his best efforts to stop her.
** Frank does this as well when the Eye is about to give him another vision, which will set off Angela's tracker and reveal that the Eye is inside of him. While this does stop any real vision from happening, the tracker goes off anyway, though luckily for the boys, the signal isn't coming from Frank, which tricks her and her goons into letting them go for the time being.

* BreakUpMakeUpScenario: Downplayed since they don't actually break up, but Frank and Callie keeping secrets from each other causes them to have a fight near the end of "A Clue on Film", and there's still tension between them at the beginning of "Heading for Destruction". By the end, though, after Frank and Joe survived being kidnapped and Callie and the others survived a bombing, they make up and promise not to hold out on or lie to each other from then on.

** In JB's second warning to Frank about Stratemeyer Global after previously talking to both brothers, he reveals that they've found a way to trace the Eye's signal remotely, and will know the next time the boys use it. When Frank tells Joe about this, the latter convinces the former that JB was just bluffing to try to scare him into handing over the Eye. They soon discover after being kidnapped, and lampshade to each other, that this was very much a sincere warning and ''not'' a bluff.

* CharacterDeath: Four major ones in this season:
** Fenton tracks down [[BackForTheDead ex-Rosegrave Dean Paul McFarlane]], who [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere fled from the Circle]] in the previous season, on his private boat in "Heading for Destruction"...dying from poison that Olivia gave him after he refused to give her the scroll from the George Estabrook's desk that she was searching for. [=McFarlane=] lasts long enough to entrust the scroll to Fenton before he dies.

* ChekhovsGun:
** A ton building up to the bombing on Demon Day in "Heading for Destruction":
*** The lightning symbol with the circle around one small part of it that Dennis repeatedly draws after he's rescued. It turns out to be part of the bombing plot he witnessed: the "lightning" is actually the route of the Demon Day Parade through the streets of Bridgeport, and the circle is where the target is located (which turns out to be Wilt's Deli).
*** On that note, Wilt's is broken into and TP'ed a few days before Demon Day; Wilt chalks it up to a prank because nothing was stolen, but Frank and Chet do notice that one of the arcade games was moved out from against the wall, and put it back. In the mid-season finale, they realize that the break-in was actually done to plant the bomb, and when they search Wilt's, Chet remembers that the arcade game was the only thing out of place. Sure enough, they find the bomb there.
** Lucy mentions to Joe in "Hunting an Intruder" that she plans to stay at the lighthouse and "watch the storm roll in" after he has to leave. By the time the Hardys flee from Mack and Angela at Gloria's house down to the beach, said storm ''has'' rolled in, and a bolt of lightning hits the sand next to the boys and knocks them unconscious.
* ChekhovsGunman:
** Anya Kowalsky and Paul [=McFarlane=] are both name-dropped at the beginning of the season as two other people besides the Hardys and their TrueCompanions who might know that the Eye has magical properties. This comes back in some way for both of them:
*** Anya was introduced last season as a woman who was wronged by the Circle; her father died in the mine explosion caused by Ahmed, George, and Sergei claiming the Eye, and they went on to become rich and powerful. This season, as Fenton hunts down the remnants of the Circle, he meets a woman trying to do the same thing; she turns out to be Olivia Kowalsky, Anya's daughter, who's seeking revenge for her family.
*** After ex-Dean [=McFarlane=] became a case of WhatHappenedToTheMouse last season, he reappears here [[BackForTheDead in time for Fenton to find him murdered by Olivia]].
** Lola Burton and Vanessa Bender, two of Belinda's fellow detention girls. Vanessa is this year's Demon Queen at the Demon Day Parade, and they both turn out to be the culprits behind the bombing at Wilt's and holding Dennis prisoner in the woods.
** The true identity of the Shadow Man is recurring character Mr. Munder, the detention and programming teacher at Bridgeport High.

* DangerTakesABackseat: How Fenton gets kidnapped by Olivia. He returns to his car after finding [=McFarlane=] dead on his boat, only for her to pull a gun on him from the seat behind him and order him to drive them to Dixon City.

* FrameUp: Tom Elroy is framed for the Demon Day bombing plot after evidence is planted in his car. At first, the cops seem more than happy to believe he did it, but when Tom talks to Frank, he reminds him that he's a war veteran who has experience with explosives and would never make such an amateur bomb, which is enough for Jessie and Deputy Riley to start believing him.

* GilliganCut: As the Hardy Boys try to convince Jessie that Elroy is innocent, Riley comes in to inform her that their suspect refuses to speak with anyone except Frank, who helped him earlier. The boys triumphantly grin at Jessie, and she insists, "You're not going in there. It's not gonna happen." Cut to Frank entering the holding room to talk to Elroy.

* HeWhoFightsMonsters: Olivia Kowalsky has a noble goal on paper: bring down the Circle of the Eye to take vengeance on the people who destroyed her family, not unlike what Fenton is doing. Unlike him, though, she's crossed the line into murder, and has no problem with making him her fall guy for it.

* IronicEcho: Biff hears [[AlphaBitch Vanessa]] talk to friends about being named Demon Queen for the second year running and shares her recent discovery that her own (bio) mom was also a former Demon Queen, only for Vanessa to rather indifferently reply, "Oh, well, congrats to you." During the Demon Day Parade once the gang has figured out Vanessa is the bomber, she tries to escape, but Biff tackles her to the ground; Trudy compliments her on it, and Biff says, "Yeah, ''congrats to me''" right in Vanessa's face.

** The Shadow Man is this to the Demon Day Parade bombing, paying Vanessa and Lola to hold Dennis captive and plant the bomb.

* NotMeThisTime: As Callie, Biff, Belinda, and Chet check the list of who's both taking senior chemistry and on the track team, they find one name in common: Donald Dukay, whom Callie earlier confronted about possibly falsely accusing her of cheating, and when they all confront him again, Chet and Belinda recognize his voice as one of the teen vandals who pranked Tom at his house. Donald does admit to being one of the pranksters, but emphatically denies knowing anything about the bomb plot, and the intel they pry out of him puts them onto the real bomber: his ex-girlfriend, Vanessa Bender.

** Frank and Joe when Stratemeyer's dark blue van [[VehicularKidnapping pulls up to kidnap them]], with Frank quickly pushing Joe behind him.
** In the same episode, Jessie Hooper when she sees that the bomb she's attempting to disarm has been armed and is about to blow.

* OnlyInItForTheMoney:
** Vanessa Bender and Lola Burton are revealed to have held Dennis prisoner in Elroy's shack, where he witnessed them planning a bomb attack on Wilt's Deli. When cornered, Lola insists that they were paid to do so by someone else, which was their motive, and didn't hurt Dennis before handing him over to whoever paid them.
** Angela reveals to Chet when he asks that this is her reason for wanting to get the Eye from the Hardys; she outright states that she has no interest in using a "mystical moon rock that messes with your mind" for herself, but knows that a lot of other people would kill for it, so she plans to sell it.

* PunkInTheTrunk: When Phil finds and investigates said blue car in "Heading for Destruction", he gets jumped and knocked out, and wakes up to find himself in the trunk of this same car as well.
* RedHerring:
** When Elroy is framed for being behind the bomb plot, he tells Frank that he saw someone lurking by his car who fits the description of JB's most recent disguise, leading the Hardys to believe that Stratemeyer Global is behind it and forced JB to plant evidence. It's later revealed that Stratemeyer actually had nothing to do with the bombing; this was the plot of the Shadow Man (another member of the BigBadEnsemble), and JB was lurking around Elroy's place because he thought the Hardys might have hidden the Eye there and was searching for it.
** Frank and Joe, after being kidnapped by Angela Todd and her cronies, are released from captivity thanks to an in-universe one. Angela took them because she's certain that they have the Eye or know where it is, and she can only track it when it's actively being used. Frank starts to have a vision while they're in captivity, and despite his attempts to suppress it, it sets off Angela's tracking device...except the tracker pegs the energy as coming from a completely different location (namely, Gloria's house, where the Crystal was being stolen by the other Big Bad, and apparently emmitted some of the Eye's energy in response to Frank's vision), making Angela think that the Eye is being used elsewhere by someone else and the boys are telling the truth about not having it. Later, she realizes that they ''do'' have it after all (specifically, that it's inside Frank) and renews her pursuit of them.

* TapOnTheHead: Played straight with Phil, who's knocked out by Lola when he finds the car that was used to abduct Dennis. He wakes up later in the trunk of the car, and is no worse for wear other than appearing to have a bit of a headache.

* TroubleEntendre: Right after the Hardys' friends figure out Vanessa is the bomber, we cut to Trudy finishing up her Demon Day dress and telling her to enjoy her big moment. Vanessa responds with "For sure. It's going to be '''a blast'''." Not long after, when the kids catch up to Trudy and fill her in, she remembers these exact words and realizes this trope was in play, to her consternation.

* VehicularKidnapping: Happens to Frank and Joe in "Heading for Destruction". They go to visit JB at his motel but find Angela there instead, and her Stratemeyer goons promptly pull up in their dark blue van, grab the boys, put bags over their heads, and drag them into the van before driving away.

** "Heading for Destruction", the mid-season finale. The Hardy Boys are kidnapped by Stratemeyer Global and spend most of the episode out of the action, but are released when, for some reason, Frank experiencing a vision from the Eye causes their tracking device to track its power source to a completely different location. Phil is also knocked out and locked in a car trunk during the parade. The gang figures out that the bomb is at Wilt's and that Vanessa and Lola are behind it, but fail to stop them from detonating it, and Jessie Hooper is critically injured in the explosion. Fenton Hardy is revealed to be hunting down the remnants of the Circle and finds Paul [=McFarlane=] dead, and meets Anya Kowalsky's daughter Olivia, who is also fighting the Circle to get revenge for her family. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking And Chet and Belinda finally hook up.]]

** Frank and Joe visit JB at the motel in town, only for Angela to answer the door instead. And almost immediately after, the dark blue van drives up right next to them (and some goons jump out to abduct them).

* AlmostKiss:
** Belinda and Chet get one in "A Clue on Film", as Brian and his date walk in right before they can. They get to kiss for real in the next episode.
** Once Chet and Belinda discuss said kiss in "Hunting an Intruder" and are about to share another one, Phil and the rest of the gang come back and the moment passes, and the two move away from each other. It takes until the season finale before they kiss again.

** In "A Clue on Film", Belinda's ex-girlfriend Erica shows up at her house, wanting to get back together with her, and invites her on a date (which Belinda looks a bit tempted by), right as her new LoveInterest Chet is arriving at her house to pick her up for a movie, making it look like Chet's going to walk in on something that's NotWhatItLooksLike and their budding relationship will be damaged as a result. Instead, Belinda firmly turns Erica down and leaves with Chet, it doesn't cause any real issues between them[[labelnote:*]](just briefly making Chet think he and she may have IncompatibleOrientation until she clarifies to him that she's bi)[[/labelnote]], and Erica is never seen again.

** Twice, Frank and Joe appear to end up in a life-threatening situation, only for it to be revealed as a vision that the Eye is showing Frank:
*** In "A Clue on Film", when they're in George's SecretRoom, Joe hears a noise a few minutes later and steps out to check it out, but gets captured; Frank tries to lock the door at Joe's urging so they can't get him too, only for them to attempt to break it down and trigger the explosive that destroys the room. It's never made clear exactly what the Eye is trying to tell him in this vision, but this is shown to be the first instance of Stratemeyer successfully tracking its use, although the boys have already left by the time they get to Gloria's.
*** In "Captured!", Frank, Joe, and JB reach the final stages of the latter's plan to steal the relic, only to find that they've been LuredIntoATrap by Angela, who holds them at gunpoint to try to force Frank to give up the power and shoots Joe for motivation when he's unable to do so. After seeing this, which is what will happen if they continue down their current path, when JB arrives to continue the plan, Frank warns them that it's a trap. Though, unfortunately for them, they still get caught anyway, but avoid the outcome of the vision thanks to Chet's and Brian's BigDamnHeroes moment.

* BoyfriendBlockingDad: Brian shows some shades of this towards Chet due to his interest in Belinda, but he pretty quickly sees that Chet is a good guy who's respectful in his feelings for her, and doesn't take long to warm up to him.

* TheBusCameBack:
** Paul [=McFarlane=]; see BackForTheDead above.
** Sam Peterson, Fenton's former partner, who hasn't been seen since the first half of the first season, appears again as Fenton's FriendOnTheForce who provides him intel for his investigation.
* CallBack:
** When planning to break into Tom Elroy's house, Frank brings up the time that Joe and Biff broke into Chief Collig's house.
** Callie's entrance exam to Rosegrave Academy plays a major role in her prep school subplot this season. Gloria also mentions how she mentored Callie for years when revealing her motive for doing so.
** Likewise, Biff brought up to Joe last season that she was adopted and that she learned things about her biological parents that she didn't like, but didn't elaborate on it any more since they had bigger issues to worry about. This is her main arc for the season, starting off with Joe trying to get her to tell him what she knows in his desperation for some kind of mystery to solve. It's soon revealed that her birth father is dead, while she continues to search for her birth mother.

*** In "Conflicting Reports", when searching Elroy's shack, Frank notes a powdery substance on the table, sniffs it, and realizes that it's flour. At the end of "A Clue on Film", Frank, Joe, and Callie realize that whoever was in the shack was mixing the flour with hydrogen peroxide to build a homemade dynamite bomb.

* ContinuitySnarl: Callie notes to Frank that "the first time we hung out alone", Gloria locked them in her study as part of a test to be inducted into a secret society. While this did happen in "In Plain Sight", it was certainly not the first occasion they spent time alone together, having also done so on the Ferris Wheel in "Of Freedom and Pleasure", and at Wilt's and while breaking into the library in "Secrets and Lies".

* DidYouActuallyBelieve: Gloria asks Callie if she really believed that she and Frank--Gloria's protegee and grandson, respectively--just happened to be the two students who did the best on the entrance exam for Rosegrave Prep. Gloria reveals that ''everyone'' who took the exam aced it, but outright states the school's admission is not a meritocracy; Callie's acceptance was guaranteed from the start, long before she took the entrance exam, because--unknown to her--Gloria was grooming her to be part of the innermost ring of the Circle of the Eye.

* DidntThinkThisThrough: In "The Missing Camera", Biff calls a florist to track down who ordered flowers that were left on her birth dad's grave, in hopes of finding her birth mom. She doesn't want Jessie to know she's looking into this, so doesn't use her own name and phone number for them to call her back; however, she instead gives them ''Joe's'' contact info--someone she hasn't told yet about her search--rather than Phil's, who is actively helping her. Naturally, when the three of them are at the Hardy home later, Trudy passes the message on to Joe, forcing Biff to fill him in on the spot regardless of whether or not she wanted to yet.

* FaceOfAThug: Tom Elroy initially sparks Frank's suspicions due to having similar black boots that their unknown perp wore, but his grumpy, loner-like tendencies and {{Perpetual Frown|er}} don't help. But when he catches Frank breaking into his house and establishes his innocence, he's revealed to be a MisunderstoodLonerWithAHeartOfGold, a war veteran who plants trees and picks up trash in the woods during his walks. Elroy was only unfriendly to the Hardy gang because he has a long history of teens trespassing on his land and pranking him, and befriends Frank, Chet, and Belinda when they drive off one such group of pranksters. Frank later has to [[ClearMyName clear his name]] from a FrameUp.

* HeKnowsTooMuch: Dennis, on multiple fronts.
** The Hardys and friends eventually discover that Dennis was kidnapped in the first place because, while he was filming in the East Woods, he stumbled upon Elroy's shack, where Vanessa (wearing her ex-boyfriend Donald's track coat) and Lola were plotting the Demon Day Parade bombing, and caught some of it on film before they looked up and saw him at the window.
** Though Dennis can't recall what happened on that night, he's mostly lucid as he recovers after being found, just suffering some memory loss, a concussion, and a few panic attacks. It also looks like he's gradually getting close to regaining his memory. Then he disappears again, and when the younger kids and Lucy find him at the school, he's catatonic, and only really starts recovering by the end of the season. It's later revealed that the Shadow Man briefly took Dennis again and messed with his mind to keep him from remembering.

* InnocentlyInsensitive: Joe, being AllergicToRoutine and desperate for a case to solve, repeatedly pesters Biff to tell him what she learned about her adoption so he can investigate it for her, to her annoyance. Turns out her birth dad is ''dead'', and Joe [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone feels terrible and profusely apologizes]] when he learns this. Biff accepts his apology easily and assures him that it's okay; she was just getting irritated and not wanting to tell him because he was trying to turn it into his thing when it's not, it's '''hers'''.

* MeaningfulName: Fenton and Sam lampshade this about [=McFarlane=]'s boat, named the ''Ellie'': it's the phonetic spelling of the letters "L-E", for Laura Estabrook (who became Laura Hardy), [=McFarlane=]'s [[HighSchoolSweethearts high-school sweetheart]] and TheOneThatGotAway.

* MoodWhiplash:
** Frank and Joe are discussing Fenton selling their old Dixon City house, and are kind of upset about it but do manage to joke a little bit back and forth. Then they suddenly get jumped by a couple of Demon Week pranksters who pelt them with paint balls, followed by arriving at Wilt's and seeing that his store's been vandalized.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone:
** When Joe learns in "The Missing Camera" that Biff's discovery about her adoption, which she's mentioned to him before, is that her birth father is dead, he feels terrible about having repeatedly lightheartedly pushed her for information about her bio parents and immediately apologizes, as he can certainly relate to the tragedy of having a dead parent. He also gently tells her that while she didn't ''have'' to tell him about it, she ''could'' have, and she equally-gently admonishes him that he was trying to make her family situation into a mystery for himself, when it's something that's private to her, at her own discretion to share with others. Joe accepts the rebuke without complaint.
** The tension between Frank and Joe about their differing opinions on the Eye reaches a boiling point in "Captured!" and results in a fight that culminates in Frank shoving his brother into the wall of a storage crate. This KickTheMoralityPet moment gives him a huge JerkassRealization and is what finally convinces him to give up the Eye's power.

* ObliviousGuiltSlinging: Callie initially intends to keep her visit to Gloria in prison a secret from Frank, at Fenton's encouragement, but when Frank tells Callie that she's what got him through the past year and compliments her, she's overwhelmed by guilt and blurts it out to him.

* RememberTheNewGuy: When Callie discovers that she's been falsely accused of cheating on her Rosegrave entrance exam, she thinks the person responsible is Donald, who apparently took the test with her and Frank and was one of the rejected candidates. None of the students at this exam in the previous season were named as "Donald Dukay," and if one of them was supposed to actually be him, he's [[TheOtherDarrin played by a different actor here than he was then]].

** Belinda recognizes in "A Clue on Film" that her dad is lying to her, and has Chet tail him so they can find out what he's really doing. Considering Chet's bright yellow truck isn't exactly stealthy and they park at a distance but relatively out in the open to spy on Brian, it's unsurprising that, the first time Brian's physically facing in their direction and looks up, he instantly spots them.

* ThatCameOutWrong: Belinda confronts Brian about who he really met up with when he falsely claimed to her that he'd be in a work meeting all day, and he answers that it was a real estate agent. She assumes this means they're about to move ''again'' and reacts with dismay, and Brian says this word-for-word in response before clarifying that the woman is a real estate agent whom he's ''dating''.
* ThereAreNoCoincidences: Gloria reveals that Frank and Callie being the final two students standing in the Rosegrave entrance exam in the previous season wasn't because they just so happened to be the two best students among those who took it; it was rigged in their favor from the start because of them being Gloria's grandson and her protegee.

** Frank's plan to break into Tom Elroy's house is fully stated and shown happening as he's explaining it, so naturally, it doesn't go as planned; Frank gets caught in the act by Elroy, and it turns out that the latter is innocent.

** When Callie is crying outside of the prison after visiting Gloria there, she and the audience see Fenton pull up in his car and go inside, clearly to visit Gloria as well.
** The end of "The Missing Camera" shows JB listening in on the boys' conversation (and learning that they still have access to the Eye), revealing that he bugged their house somehow.
** Brian Conrad introduces his new girlfriend to Belinda and Chet, and we see that it's ''Angela Todd'', the leader of the Stratemeyer Global rogue agents who are trying to steal the Eye.

** Frank and Joe spend the entire first half of the season concealing from ''everyone'', including their friends, that Frank now has the power of the Eye inside of him, with Frank outright stating that they learned after the events of the last season that they can't trust anyone...apparently forgetting that they trusted their [[TrueCompanions friends]] pretty early on, and said friends all proved to be loyal and helpful and worth trusting in their investigation. It takes until the midpoint of the season before they finally clue the others in.
** Frank briefly considered using the Eye in the previous season to see and talk to Laura again, but Joe eventually got him to see that they were better off without it and he, too, decided to destroy it. As the season goes on and Frank falls deeper and deeper into the its power to get "the thing he wants the most", said thing is revealed to be getting their mom back. Though, to be fair, it's made pretty clear that said power is TheCorruptor, so having it inside of him brought him back to a mindset he probably otherwise would have avoided.

* AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents: They also react this way to Fenton's, and to a lesser extent Trudy's, over-enthusiasm for the pay-per-view wrestling event, with Frank asking them not to use their "wrestling voices" while their friends are over, and both brothers refusing to let their dad watch it in the same room with them and their friends.

* ArbitraryScepticism: Once Frank finally fills in their friends about having the power of the Eye, he also tells everyone, including Joe, that in his latest PensieveFlashback from the Eye, George ''actually saw him'' from the past somehow. Phil reflexively states that it's not possible, and Frank promptly lampshades that, after all the other supernatural experiences they've had with the Eye, IntangibleTimeTravel seems like an arbitrary place to draw the line.

** As the season goes on and Joe sees what a ToxicFriendInfluence the Eye is becoming to Frank, he repeatedly tries to dissuade him from continuing to use it, warning him that it's dangerous and pointing out that they didn't need the Eye in the past to solve the case. Frank doesn't listen well enough and keeps falling back on the Eye, and it ends up completing screwing him over, setting him up to get [[GrandTheftMe body-snatched]] by George and trapped inside the Crystal forever.

* HypocrisyNod: In "Conflicting Reports", Biff steals Phil's watch after he asks about her bio dad, refusing to return it until he proves she can trust him. Phil later shows her and Joe something that he took from Dennis's notebook, and when she asks if he stole it, he replies "''You're'' going to lecture ''me'' about stealing?" [[{{Touche}} She nods at the point]] and pointedly checks the time with Phil's watch.

** In-universe and out. In "Conflicting Reports", Frank cracks a joke about the Eye possessing him, Joe jokes back "Very scary," and they're both chuckling...until they look up and see the ''actually''-very-creepy abandoned shed in the woods, and their grins quickly fade.
--->'''Frank''': ''That'', on the other hand...\\
'''Joe''': Yeah, that'll do it.

* PunkInTheTrunk:
** The gang figures out that the bad guys abducted Dennis and shoved him in the trunk of a blue car.
** When Phil finds and investigates said blue car in "Heading for Destruction", he gets jumped and knocked out, and wakes up to find himself in the trunk of this same car as well.

* ShoutOut: Joe's reaction to learning that his older brother has the Eye inside him, starting to ask him what different superpowers he has and talking about needing to test them, is ''very'' reminiscent of ''[[Film/Shazam2019 SHAZAM!]]'', where Freddy Freeman, who's similar in age to Joe, responds almost exactly the same way to his foster brother becoming a superhero. Complete with both boys asking if their brothers have [[EyeBeams laser eyes]].

** After Fenton ended the previous season learning to trust his sons more, he starts off this one by getting very angry with the boys simply for going to Demon's Paw to look for Dennis (even though they didn't do anything dangerous while they were there and were just looking around for clues), and [[YouAreGrounded grounds them]]. To his credit, he gets over this pretty quickly once they do succeed in finding Dennis, un-grounds them, and allows them to do detective work as long as they're smart about it and keep each other safe.

* AllergicToRoutine / SoWhatDoWeDoNow: In the six-month TimeSkip between seasons, the Hardy Boys apparently haven't had any significant mysteries to solve, and Joe is bored to tears by "normal" life and is desperately looking for something to investigate. Frank, on the other hand, is happy with this arrangement (and in fact, wishes things could be ''more'' normal, since he's plagued by Eye-induced nightmares).

* AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents:
** Downplayed with Aunt Trudy; the boys aren't embarrassed by her in general, but they treat having an aunt who's a guidance counselor at their school the way you'd expect from two teenage boys, refusing to ride there with her in her van because Frank's sports car is better for their reputation.
--->'''Frank''': See, we love you, Aunt Trudy, it's just that, I mean, we can't be seen with you.
** They also react this way to Fenton's, and to a lesser extent Trudy's, over-enthusiasm for the pay-per-view wrestling event, with Frank asking them not to use their "wrestling voices" while their friends are over, and both brothers refusing to let their dad watch it in the same room with them and their friends.

** Dennis disappears at the beginning of the first episode, after being seemingly cornered by someone who means to hurt him; Malone and Stratemeyer Global are later shown to be holding someone captive. But near the end, the Hardys and co. discover Dennis unconscious but otherwise unharmed (physically, at least) at an old mill in the woods, and Stratemeyer Global's prisoner is then revealed to be JB Cox.

** The opening scene has Callie engage in some playful ExactWords with Frank, followed by Joe telling her she'll be a great lawyer someday, and she responds with "Doctor, but thank you." Callie previously told Frank about wanting to become a doctor back in "Secrets and Lies".

** In the season premiere, Jessie tells the gang that Mack Malone was allowed to be on the land at Demon's Paw, and him telling them to get lost wasn't suspicious because it's his job to keep kids from falling into the mines...''"again"'', while giving a pointed look at Biff and Joe, who indeed fell into a mine there last season.
** After Frank and Joe state that the only people who know about the Eye having actual magic power are either "at this table" (them and their friends) or "in jail" (their grandma), said friends proceed to bring up everybody else who knows this and doesn't fall into either category: Fenton Hardy, JB Cox, the Nabokovs, the Khans, likely Anya Kowalsky, and possibly Dean [=McFarlane=]. (Though [[ContinuitySnarl they do neglect to mention Trudy, who also knows this]].)

* ContinuitySnarl:
** Downplayed. When the Hardy gang names everybody who knows about the Eye having actual magical powers (as opposed to only knowing that the Circle of the Eye is a major conspiracy run by powerful people, like Jessie does), they forget to mention Aunt Trudy, who was also explicitly aware in the first season that the Eye is supernatural. That being said, it's never {{Retcon}}ned by anyone outright stating that she ''doesn't'' know this, either, so it's likely that the kids just forget to add her to their list.
** Callie notes to Frank that "the first time we hung out alone", Gloria locked them in her study as part of a test to be inducted into a secret society. While this did happen in "In Plain Sight", it was certainly not the first occasion they spent time alone together, having also done so on the Ferris Wheel in "Of Freedom and Pleasure", and at Wilt's and while breaking into the library in "Secrets and Lies".

** Dennis is abducted by an unknown party (assumed for most of the season to be Stratemeyer Global, but revealed much later to actually be the Shadow Man), who does something to his mind in the process, kicking off the adventure for the season.
** Joe, Biff, and Phil go into a mine cave searching for Dennis that's full of toxic sulfurous gas, causing all three of them to pass out and almost die. Frank, Callie, and Chet figure out where they went and are able to arrive and pull them out offscreen before any serious damage is done, with Joe waking up to find the others all standing/kneeling over him.
** JB was apparently captured offscreen by Stratemeyer Global before the start of the first episode, and they later menace him in his motel room with a razor, in an attempt to figure out where the Eye is.

* DoubleEntendre: Callie invites Frank to come over in the evening to study. Frank replies that he has to work, but invites her to come do so at Wilt's while he's there, and she clarifies that that's not quite what she had in mind by "study", though she does still come there anyway.

* GetARoom: Joe's reaction, sometimes word-for-word, whenever Frank and Callie kiss in front of him.

* INeverSaidItWasPoison: Subverted. The first time the Hardys and friends encounter Mack Malone from Stratemeyer Global at Demon's Paw, they tell him they're there looking for a friend (Dennis), and Malone replies, "He's not here." Frank points out that he never said their friend is a "he", but since the cops already talked to Malone, he no doubt knew about the Dennis situation and that that's who Frank meant.

* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: In-universe, the Hardy family talking about Fenton's new look refers to the BeardOfSorrow he's grown, but it's really a thinly-veiled reference to [[TheOtherDarrin his actor changing]] from James Tupper to Anthony Lemke between seasons, complete with Fenton saying, as if to the audience, "Let's just get over it and move on."

* LoveAtFirstSight: Belinda and Chet are both visibly attracted to each other from the second they see each other in detention, before ever exchanging a word. Belinda later lampshades it outright.

* NeverTrustATrailer: The trailer for the season implies that the boys' friend Dennis going missing, and their search for him, will be a major story arc for the season. In fact, they actually find him at the end of the very first episode, and the mystery is instead trying to figure out afterwards what happened to him (since he has amnesia from being knocked out and getting a concussion).

* NoodleIncident: However JB got his face busted up. Malone tells Angela that his face already looked like that when the Stratemeyer goons found and captured him, and JB just dismisses it when Joe asks about it.

* ObviouslyEvil: Mack Malone just screams "bad guy" the second he shows up onscreen, from his cold, menacing sneer and threatening body langauge, to telling the Hardys and friends to leave Demon's Paw "before you get hurt" (and not in a way that sounds concerned for them).
* OfficialCouple:
** Frank and Callie are now dating after their BigDamnKiss from the previous season.
** Trudy and Jessie got together between seasons as well.
** Chet and Belinda are implied to get a RelationshipUpgrade midway through the season (which is confirmed by the end of it) to become the show's BetaCouple.

* RelationshipReveal: Trudy and Jessie are revealed to have begun dating between seasons.

* SayingTooMuch: In "A Disappearance", Lucy refuses to tell the Hardy Boys where Dennis was filming because that would give away what his video's about, which he didn't want Phil to know. However, Joe is able to use this to deduce that the opposite is also true: if they know what Dennis's film is about, they can figure out where he was filming. The boys and Phil break into Dennis's AV Club locker to get this info, and sure enough, this does narrow down their search area.

** Joe, Biff, and Phil sneak out to look for Dennis, heading up to an old mine where they think he ''might'' be held prisoner (without any solid evidence to back it up, going there simply because it's where "The Demon of Bridgeport" is said to be located), and completely ignore the "Danger: Do Not Enter" sign blocking it. Not only do they not find Dennis, they don't get very far into the mine before all three of them pass out from the indeed-dangerous noxious fumes there and have to be rescued by Frank, Chet, and Callie.

* TapOnTheHead:
** Averted with Dennis, who's found in the woods with a concussion; he has to stay overnight in the hospital because of it, and can't remember anything that happened to him in the last 24 hours.
** Played straight with Phil, though, who's knocked out by Lola when he finds the car that was used to abduct Dennis. He wakes up later in the trunk of the car, and is no worse for wear other than appearing to have a bit of a headache.

* TimeSkip: Six months have passed between the end of the previous season and the start of this one.

* YouAreInCommandNow: Jessie Hooper is the new Chief of Police in Bridgeport to replace Chief Collig.

!!Warning: All spoilers for Season 1 are unmarked.

** Most of the {{Sequel Hook}}s of the previous season get their proper follow-up here, with one exception: Stacy Nabokov does not appear again at all. A line of dialogue from Fenton about how the Nabokovs and Khans "closed ranks" within their own families implies that she, like Kanika Khan from the previous season, decided to just leave Bridgeport for good and rid herself of the Circle conspiracy altogether, at least for now. [[spoiler:She ultimately does [[TheBusCameBack come back]] in Season 3, though.]]

* ActorAllusion: [[spoiler:George's consciousness meets Frank's within the Crystal]], and he asks how old Frank is and suggests, "22? 23?" before Frank corrects him that he's 16. Rohan Campbell himself was 22-23 while filming the season.

** Previously, Joe was one of the first people who wanted to destroy/get rid of the Eye, insisting that they didn't need it and could solve the case without it. But when he learns here that Frank has the entire Eye inside of him, Joe's initial response is to consider this to be awesome and encourage him to try to figure out what his "superpowers" are, while Frank is far more cautious about using a power he doesn't understand. This is a bit mitigated, though, by that fact that their roles pretty quickly swap and Joe remembers exactly why he wanted to get rid of the Eye in the first place, and once again returns steadfastly to this viewpoint when he sees how much danger the Eye is putting Frank in. [[spoiler:Though he does secretly keep the Eye at the end of the season, for as-yet-unexplained reasons....]]

* AlwaysIdenticalTwins: [[spoiler:Adrian and Aaron Munder, the former of whom is a teacher in Bridgeport while the latter was a Rosegrave Academy student left catatonic by their experiments on him, which removed his soul from his body. Adrian is able to use this when he realizes that the Hardy Boys and friends are onto him being the Shadow Man by pulling a TwinSwitch, substituting Aaron for himself to throw the kids off the trail and make them think he was another victim of the Shadow Man instead.]]

* AmbiguousSyntax: At the start of the season, the Eye gives Frank a vision of his mother, Laura, having him play a video game to try to find "one very special" gem, but warns him, "Be careful, or you'll lose everything, like your brother here"--meaning Joe, who's silently standing next to them. Frank, and likely the audience, interpret the final part of her sentence to mean that Joe already played the game and lost (as in, "you'll lose everything like your brother here '''did'''"), and it doesn't get much focus. [[spoiler:By the end of the season, it's clear in hindsight that what she really meant is "you'll lose everything, '''including''' your brother here;" Frank isn't careful enough and lets himself be manipulated by the Eye, which leads to him being trapped inside the Crystal while George steals his body, so he really has lost everything and everyone important to him, most notably Joe.]]

** The Crystal, which was created when lightning struck the sand on the beach near the Estabrook mansion; George found it, and later [[spoiler:had it sent after his faked death to]] Gloria, who hung it on the chandelier outside the library. It's stolen by the Shadow Man halfway through the season, and is eventually revealed to have been used in the Project Midnight tests on Rosegrave students; namely, by attempting to use it to store and transfer consciousness into different bodies. The Shadow Man wants it because he believes it contains the mind of [[spoiler:his twin brother, one of the test subjects of Project Midnight who was rendered catatonic when the tests failed]], but the big twist of the season reveals that [[spoiler:there is no sign of said brother in the realm of the Crystal, which instead contains the consciousness of '''George Estabrook''' himself, who manages to transfer his mind into Frank's body while leaving him trapped there instead]].
** Olivia tells Fenton at the end of the season that there are more relics out there. She's likely counting the Crystal as one of them, and another one or more appear to relate to several different scrolls that Fenton, Trudy, and JB have, and that [[spoiler:George]] is apparently determined to get back.

** Frank and Callie find evidence that the Shadow Man is [[spoiler:Mr. Munder]], and Joe, Phil, and Lucy go to his house to confront him, only to find him catatonic, apparently a victim of the Shadow Man instead. [[spoiler:But then this turns out to be subverted when Phil, Belinda, Callie, and Biff discover that they were right all along about it being Munder, who pulled a TwinSwitch with his catatonic brother to throw them off his trail.]]

* BatmanGambit: [[spoiler:When "Frank" (or rather, George in Frank's body) regains consciousness in the climax of the season and sees that the former's friends are still unconscious and Munder is the first person to wake up, he pretends that the attempted mind transfer worked, faking that he is Munder's twin brother Aaron for long enough to get Munder to set him free before revealing that it failed.]]

** Everything that happens to Dennis, as well as the bombing at Wilt's and the death of Dr. Vivian Burelli, is done by the Shadow Man, someone who was wronged by Stratemeyer's and Burelli's failed tests on Rosegrave students. [[spoiler:Namely, his twin brother was a failed test subject who was rendered catatonic, and his ultimate goal is to try to transfer his brother's mind--which he believes is trapped inside the Crystal--into another body.]]

** Joe, Callie, Chet, and Belinda attempt to pull this in the finale when Frank has been kidnapped by the Shadow Man. By the time they get there, though, it's already too late; [[spoiler:Frank's consciousness has already been pulled out of his body by then and put into the Crystal, and while they seemingly do manage to bring him back, the ending reveals that it was ''George's'' mind that got put back into the body instead, and Frank's own mind is still stuck in the Crystal, unbeknownst to everyone else]].

** Joe also states that Frank has come to trust and rely on the Eye far too much, while Frank has similar feelings about Joe continuing to work with JB despite him repeatedly screwing them over. They both turn out to be correct about this. JB ends up abandoning the Hardys when their heist of the relic is thwarted, and then tries to steal it from Joe [[spoiler:(though he reveals in Season 3 that this is an attempt to protect them)]], only failing because the latter swapped in a fake; he then returns to the Hardy home and swipes [=McFarlane's=] scroll that Fenton gave the boys. Meanwhile, Frank finds out in the hardest way possible that [[spoiler:the Eye has always remained loyal to George, and was manipulating Frank the whole time, driving a wedge between him and his loved ones and setting him up for George to steal his body]].

** As the season goes on and Joe sees what a ToxicFriendInfluence the Eye is becoming to Frank, he repeatedly tries to dissuade him from continuing to use it, warning him that it's dangerous and pointing out that they didn't need the Eye in the past to solve the case. [[spoiler:Frank doesn't listen well enough and keeps falling back on the Eye, and it ends up completing screwing him over, setting him up to get [[GrandTheftMe body-snatched]] by George and trapped inside the Crystal forever.]]

** Dr. Vivian Burelli tells the Shadow Man in "The Doctor's Orders" that his plan [[spoiler:(to revive his brother with Project Midnight)]] will fail, and he pursues her by car when she flees. Her car is later found abandoned on a bridge, and her body washes up from the river at the start of "A Midnight Scare". She counts as an AssholeVictim because of her role in experimenting on kids in the past with Project Midnight (despite becoming TheAtoner by the present) and initially agreeing to give Dennis to the Shadow Man until the kids thwart her.

** The final shot of the season shows Gloria Estabrook, already in the hospital since having a stroke in "The Doctor's Orders", flatlining after being visited there by [[spoiler:her father George in her grandson Frank's body]], apparently due to shock. Season 3 opens with her funeral.

** The true identity of the Shadow Man is recurring character [[spoiler:Mr. Munder, the detention and programming teacher at Bridgeport High]].

* CruelTwistEnding / {{Cliffhanger}}: [[spoiler:Initially, when Frank meets George in the Crystal and the latter tries to hijack his body, Frank appears to fight him off and successfully come back. However, the ending scene where "Frank" visits Gloria reveals that George was in control the whole time thanks to the Eye's power, stopped Frank, and ''succeeded'' in stealing his body, leaving his mind trapped in the Crystal.]]

* DeusExitMachina: Frank and Joe insisting that Fenton meet Olivia in Dixon City to get the information she offered him, despite his own reluctance to leave his boys, causes father and sons to be separated for the rest of the season, so Fenton's not there to prevent Stratemeyer Global's continued harassment or Frank being kidnapped by the Shadow Man [[spoiler:and having his body hijacked by George]].

** In the climax of the season, Frank is kidnapped by [[BigBad the Shadow Man]], [[spoiler:Mr. Munder, who intends to transfer his twin brother's consciousness into Frank's body]].

* EmptyShell: [[spoiler:Aaron Munder was left as one when his consciousness was removed in Project Midnight and trapped in the Crystal, leaving his body a catatonic husk because there's no longer a "person" inside to control it. This briefly happens to Frank's body as well when his mind is put in the Crystal too, but unfortunately for him, [[GreaterScopeVillain George Estabrook]] was waiting for this and takes the chance to [[GrandTheftMe hijack it for himself]].]]

* FauxAffablyEvil: [[spoiler:George Estabrook's consciousness seems genuinely glad to meet Frank's in the Crystal, after seeing him on the beach many years before thanks to a time-traveling incident caused by the Eye. This doesn't stop him from planning for many years, since before faking his death, to steal his own great-grandson's body while stealing the Eye from him and trapping his mind inside the Crystal, just seeming rather smugly amused when Frank tries to resist.]]

** Said someone else, whom they nickname the "Shadow Man", pays two high school kids to kidnap Dennis for him and to plant a bomb at Wilt's so it will damage the security shop next door and deactivate the alarm at Gloria's house, allowing him to break in. His goal in doing so is to steal the Crystal from her chandelier, [[spoiler:which he believes houses the soul of his twin brother, and he hopes to bring said brother back by transferring his mind into another body]].

* GrandTheftMe: [[spoiler:The finale reveals that this was George Estabrook's master plan all along: fake his death, upload his consciousness into the Crystal, and wait for the Eye to bring Frank there so George can steal his body. Unfortunately, he succeeds.]]
* GreaterScopeVillain: [[spoiler:The end of the season reveals that George Estabrook was this all along, and by extension, the Eye as well, which is ultimately loyal to George as its original holder (or one of them, anyway). The Eye causes a vision of Frank to travel across time and appear to George before he "died", and by thus learning of his great-grandson's existence, George formulates a plan to dodge his enemies and extend his life by faking his death, storing his consciousness in the Crystal, and waiting for Frank to appear there so he can [[GrandTheftMe resurrect himself as a much younger man by stealing his body]]. The DownerEnding of the season reveals that he's succeeded.]]

* HelpfulHallucination: Frank receives many of these throughout the season, courtesy of the Eye. Notably, though, while they ''are'' helpful, they're in the form of a code that the boys must decipher (such as showing Dennis being inside a "trunk" (chest) to indicate that he had been abducted by the bad guys and put in the "trunk" of a ''car'', or [[spoiler:showing Frank's brother Joe strapped into a chair and Frank protesting to indicate that the BigBad of the season, who was likewise trying to save the ''real'' kid in the chair, is said kid's brother]]). [[spoiler:The finale reveals that the Eye had a specific agenda for providing these visions: setting Frank up so George could steal his body to resurrect himself.]]

* IHaveAFamily: Played for drama. [[spoiler:Adrian Munder's motivation for his actions as the Shadow Man is trying to revive his beloved twin brother Aaron by transferring his consciousness from the Crystal into another body. As he prepares to try to do this to Frank, which would leave Frank's mind trapped inside the Crystal instead, Frank desperately tries to appeal to his morals by stating that he, too, has a brother and is a brother himself, begging him not to go through with it, but his pleas fall on deaf ears.]]

** Combined with IDidWhatIHadToDo: Joe convinces Frank to finally return the Eye's power to the relic by assuring him that they can still continue to use it. After Frank transfers the power, passes out, and wakes up in the hospital, Joe tells him that Brian has the relic and plans to make sure it won't ever see the light of day again. Joe justifies the lie by saying that he had to save Frank from the Eye as well as Munder, and wanted his brother back. Frank accepts this and thanks him....[[spoiler:except it's not actually Frank, but George. And then it turns out that the part about giving the Eye to Brian was a lie, too, and Joe actually keeps and hides it.]]

* InSpiteOfANail: Frank sees a vision of himself, Joe, and JB being taken hostage by Angela during their heist to steal the relic, and he and Joe try to use this to avoid capture and turn the tables. However, since this vision causes Angela's tracking device to spike, she's able to locate him and capture all of them anyway, though they're luckily saved by the timely arrival of Chet and [[spoiler:Mr. Conrad]].

* LoveMakesYouEvil: [[spoiler:Adrian Munder is utterly twisted by his grief over his twin brother being rendered catatonic in Project Midnight, and the lengths he's willing to go in trying to revive him are far beyond the pale: abducting and damaging the mind of an innocent student; blowing up an unrelated store (which critically injures the chief of police) so he can break into a house; murdering a doctor previously involved in Project Midnight when she refuses to continue helping him; and kidnapping ''another'' innocent student with the intent of ''permanently removing his soul from his body'' and trapping it inside a crystal forever to replace it with his brother's soul.]]

* OnceMoreWithClarity: In the climax of the season, the flashback of George's final conversation with Gloria is replayed, but there are some additions to it that change the context. [[spoiler:Namely, the first time, it appeared that George was essentially disinheriting Gloria because of her hunger for power while he had turned over a new leaf. Instead, it's revealed that this was part of George's plan all along, to load himself into the Crystal and await Frank's arrival so he could take his body, showing that he was considerably more EvilAllAlong than was previously indicated and never truly did go through a HeelFaceTurn.]]

** The Shadow Man is [[spoiler:Adrian Munder, a teacher at Bridgeport; his brother Aaron was part of the failed Project Midnight experiment. His motivation is to essentially bring his brother back by uploading Aaron's consciousness into Frank's body.]]
** [[spoiler:George Estabrook didn't die when his plane crashed into the ocean, because he wasn't on the plane to begin with (though his piece of the Eye was); his consciousness had been loaded into the Crystal, waiting for an opportunity to upload himself into Frank's body as his new host. The final {{Wham Line}}s of the season show that he succeeded.]]

** Throughout the season, Frank has many visions from the Eye, some of which are legitimately {{Helpful Hallucination}}s while others are much more cryptic, confusing, or downright misleading. The nature of which ones are which become clearer after the CruelTwistEnding of the season: [[spoiler:some of the hallucinations related to Dennis and the Shadow Man are helpful because they allow the boys to progress in solving the mystery, but the misleading ones are meant to keep them from finding out information they're not supposed to know or lure them somewhere. Most notably, the vision of the Shadow Man at the school dance abducting someone who appears to be Lucy, which Frank sees right as he's about to give up the Eye's power and return it to the relic, prevents him from doing so and brings Frank, Joe, and Chet to the dance, so the former can be kidnapped by Munder to kick off George's and the Eye's plan of letting George steal Frank's body. However, the visions about the rogue Stratemeyer operatives' attempts to hurt or capture him and Joe are all helpful, because they want to steal the Eye from Frank to use for their own purposes, which would ruin George's plan if they succeed, so the Eye is actively trying to help Frank avoid this.]]

** One that is only fully understood after watching Season 3: once Olivia has kidnapped Fenton and briefly leaves him alone in the car, she comes back with some kind of gold tube-shaped capsule before they have to flee the scene. [[spoiler:This was her stealing the first of George's four codexes, which Gloria uses her video will to secretly tell viewers the locations of. More specifically, this is the one from George's "first apartment in Dixon City," while the codex that Olivia finds in the season finale before Fenton confronts her and confiscates both of them is the one from George's shipping warehouse.]]

* SelfFulfillingProphecy: As Frank prepares to give up the power of the Eye, it gives him a vision of the Shadow Man abducting someone who appears to be Lucy from the school dance. He tells Joe and Chet about the upcoming attack, and they quickly head there. [[spoiler:In fact, the vision was a trick to lure them to the school. The Shadow Man ''does'' attack someone there: Frank himself, once he and the others arrive.]]

** [[spoiler:Despite Joe telling "Frank" (actually George) that he gave the relic, now restored with the Eye, to Brian to make sure it "never sees the light of day again", it's later shown that he actually kept it, for reasons unknown.]]
** A woman in a black hooded coat shows up in the warehouse where Fenton is keeping Olivia. The woman removes her hood, revealing herself to be [[spoiler:'''Laura Hardy''' (or someone borrowing her appearance)]].
** Coupled with CruelTwistEnding: [[spoiler:George Estabrook did succeed after all in his plan to transfer his mind into Frank's body, essentially resurrecting himself in his great-grandson's body, while the real Frank is still trapped inside the Crystal.]]

* StableTimeLoop: The Eye creates one by giving Frank a vision that causes him to physically appear in the past to George (when he was still an old man, but before he tried to leave the Circle), who can actually see him (unlike Frank's other visions) and thus learn of Frank's future existence before he's even born at that point in the timeline. [[spoiler:Because he knows this, when he seemingly leaves Gloria and the Circle behind, George really loads his consciousness into the Crystal (and thus doesn't truly die) to wait for the Eye to bring Frank into it as well someday so he can steal his body for himself.]]

* TwinSwitch: [[spoiler:Used by the Big Bad to throw the heroes off his trail. Frank and Callie figure out that Adrian Munder is the Shadow Man, but when Joe, Phil, and Lucy go to his house to confront him, they apparently find him catatonic. They later discover that the catatonic man they found was Aaron Munder, Adrian's twin brother who underwent Project Midnight and never recovered; Adrian put his brother in his own place so everyone would think he was a victim of the Shadow Man.]]

** Joe notes in "A Clue on Film" that perhaps the reason Frank's having trouble controlling the Eye's visions is because he's reflexively resisting it, and suggests he try "letting it in." Frank increasingly doing just that causes him to fall further and further under the Eye's [[TheCorruptor corruptive]] influence, driving a wedge between the brothers in the process, which sets him up to be kidnapped [[spoiler:and body-snatched]].
** When Joe, Phil, and Lucy find [[spoiler:Mr. Munder, their prime suspect, seemingly catatonic]], Joe talks aloud with Phil about how Frank could have the Eye and still have been wrong. It turns out that [[spoiler:the "Mr. Munder" they know--the twin of the man they found catatonic--was listening in nearby from hiding, and this is how he learns that Frank has the Eye in him and motivates him to kidnap him]]. Joe is distraught when he realizes this after Frank is taken, though his friends attempt to reassure him that [[spoiler:Munder would have found out anyway. And then the ending reveals that Joe still hasn't gotten his brother back....]]
** The BigBad, [[spoiler:Mr. Munder]], kidnaps Frank with the intention of [[spoiler:uploading his twin brother's consciousness into Frank's body in an attempt to bring the former back. Frank's mind is successfully removed from his body and stored in the Crystal...where the Eye reveals to Frank that Munder's plan was never going to work, and he was being used. This gives [[GreaterScopeVillain George]] the opportunity to take over Frank's body, unleashing him back into the world.]]
** As Joe and Frank flee Angela and Malone and run to the beach, this triggers another vision in Frank that essentially causes him to time-travel, allowing his great-grandfather George to see him. [[spoiler:As a result, George's grand plan to avoid being killed by his partners involves him transferring his mind into the Crystal to wait until his great-grandson Frank appears there, so George can hijack his body.]]
* UnwittingPawn: The season finale reveals that [[spoiler:the Eye]] was using [[spoiler:Frank]] as one all along, [[spoiler:seemingly being helpful by giving him visions and insight that were vital in solving the case, while actually acting as TheCorruptor to him to drive him away from his loved ones who would be able to reel him in, all for the purpose of allowing George to resurrect himself by stealing Frank's body]].

** "Captured!", the penultimate episode. Jessie finally wakes up from her coma, and gives her blessing in Biff's search for her birth mom. Frank's and Joe's simmering tension over the Eye finally boils over and they have a fight, which leads to Frank agreeing to give up the Eye's power. They and JB get captured by Angela and her goons (both in a vision and in reality), who almost force Frank to hand over the power until Chet and Brian rescue them. JB fails to take the relic thanks to Joe pulling a switcheroo, but instead steals the scroll he'd been looking for from the Hardy home, which [=McFarlane=] left with Fenton, who entrusted it to the boys. Finally, Callie, Belinda, Biff, and Phil figure out the true identity of the Shadow Man [[spoiler:(namely, that they were right about it being Munder all along, and he performed a TwinSwitch to throw them off the trail)]] just as the latter succeeds in kidnapping Frank at the end.
** The finale, "An Unexpected Return". [[spoiler:Munder tries to put his brother's consciousness into Frank's body, transferring Frank's mind into the Crystal in the process. There, Frank learns that George Estabrook didn't actually die in the plane crash that seemingly killed him; instead, he transferred his mind into the Crystal so he could wait there for Frank (whom he'd seen on the beach thanks to a time-travel vision given to him by the Eye) and steal his body himself, though Frank is seemingly able to thwart him. Fenton learns that Olivia was lying about knowing who ordered Laura's death, but she reveals that there are many other magical relics out there besides the Eye, and other forces trying to gather them. Fenton then apparently sees Laura, meaning she's either still alive or someone is impersonating her. Frank still hasn't recovered from his experience with the Eye and breaks up with Callie for no apparent reason, and the very ending of the episode reveals why: thanks to the Eye, George ''succeeded'' in his plan to transfer his consciousness into Frank's body, meaning that he's essentially come back to life, while the real Frank is still trapped inside the Crystal.]]

** In the finale, first when [[spoiler:the Eye, in the form of young George, essentially turns on Frank]]:
--->"The Eye's [[spoiler:loyalty has always been with its original master]]."
** And then, when [[spoiler:the real George reveals that he's going to take over Frank's body and leave his mind stranded in the Crystal]]:
--->[[spoiler:'''George''': The transfer's about to begin. And then I'll be free. The Eye has shown me the path, Francis. This is all part of it. I truly wish there was another way.]]
** Pretty much everything Frank says in his visit to Gloria at the very end of the season finale. [[spoiler:Namely, that it's more and more clear that he's not actually Frank, but George's mind inside Frank's body, until he outright calls Gloria "my darling, darling daughter", fully confirming it.]]

** While Fenton is holding Olivia captive near the end of the season finale, a woman in a hood arrives, and Fenton demands that she turn around and reveal her face. She does so...and it's [[spoiler:apparently ''Laura Hardy'']].