Foreshadowing / The Hardy Boys (2020)

As a mystery series that heavily utilizes the Law of Conservation of Detail, there are naturally quite a few setups to later reveals.

Warning: All Spoilers Unmarked!

Season 1

• As the Hardys first arrive in Bridgeport, the welcome sign for the city gives the town a slogan of "where friends meet". Several other kids immediately greet them and introduce themselves when the boys stop at Wilt's later, and they do indeed end up forming a tight-knit group of True Companions with these same kids, as does Belinda when she moves there later and meets them, with these being the closest friendships that all of them have ever had.
• In Gloria Estabrook's confrontation with Kanika Khan in "In Plain Sight", the former accuses the latter of hiring the Tall Man, who's been targeting her grandsons, threatening retaliation if either of the boys comes to harm. Considering that (as the audience learns a couple of episodes later) there's a third branch of the Eye besides their two families—the Nabokovs—which Kanika even points out, it does seem odd that Gloria is so aggressively sure the Khans are the ones responsible for employing him. This sets up The Reveal that she was the one who murdered Viktor Nabokov; since she doesn't find out until later about the existence of his daughter, Anastasia, who took over the family after her father's death and is the Tall Man's real employer, Gloria believes at the time that the Nabokovs are no longer in play, leaving the Khans (and thus Kanika) as the only other option left in her mind for who hired him.
• On a related note, Frank learns from Stacy that someone in the Circle murdered her father, and goes to ask his grandmother what she knows about his death. He asks if Kanika could be the killer, and Gloria states that it's possible, but when he asks if she did it, she gives an incredulous chuckle and it takes her several seconds to actually deny it outright. Of course, she did kill him.
• "In Plain Sight" ends with Chief Collig coming to Gloria's home to tell her about the Tall Man escaping from jail. At the time, it seems like he's informing her of this because the man's been targeting her grandsons as mentioned above, but within a few episodes, it's revealed that Collig is a Dirty Cop who's directly working for Gloria, so it makes more sense why he would come to see her personally to tell her this.
• As the Hardys flee from the Tall Man in "A Figure in Hiding" and he begins to pursue them, he's killed when Stacy hits him with her car, with her hysterically saying she didn't see him. However, he's not running when he starts to cross the street, as he hasn't picked up his pace yet, and is still moving at a semi-fast walk, which should have given Stacy enough time to see him and stop unless she wasn't paying any attention at all. It's later made clear that she was the Tall Man's employer whom he turned against, and she did indeed hit him on purpose.
• A couple when JB brings Joe to Gloria's home and confronts Frank and Stefan, her Dragon:
  • He shares Joe's belief that his buyer was involved with Laura's murder, saying to Stefan, "So I figure that leads back to you and your employer." Gloria is his buyer, while Stefan is the one who killed Laura.
  • JB doesn't get the chance to say anything to Gloria about Laura's death before Stefan knocks him out, and when the boys tell her a few minutes later that Laura was actually murdered rather than her death being an accident, Gloria is completely stunned and blindsided by this. And yet when JB mentioned someone killing Joe's mom to Stefan moments before, the latter didn't show surprise or even react to this statement at all, hinting that Stefan already knew that Laura's death wasn't an accident...because he's the one who killed her.
• When Joe tells Biff that he and Frank are considering giving the piece of the Eye to Gloria at her request, Biff—the only other person besides the Hardys who knows where it is—is very against this idea. The boys go with Stefan later to get the piece, only to find it already gone; sure enough, it's revealed in the next episode that Biff is the one who took it and moved it (and, in fact, did so even before she knew Frank and Joe were thinking about letting Gloria have it).

Season 2

• There are two different groups of new people in town at the start of this season: Stratemeyer Global, who just recently bought the land that includes Demon Paw, and the Conrad family, as Belinda is introduced as a New Transfer Student. "The Doctor's Orders" reveals that the two are connected; Belinda's father, Brian, works for Stratemeyer and is the superior of Angela, Mack, and the other agents (albeit actually a Mole in Charge), so them moving to Bridgeport after Stratemeyer bought Demon's Paw was no coincidence (not that Belinda was aware of this).
• The Hardys and their friends discuss in the season premiere who all knows that the Circle of the Eye is more than just a conspiracy group and revolves around an actual magical artifact, and name Anya Kowalsky and Paul McFarlane—two characters who haven't been seen in a while—as possibilities. During his mission to bring down the remaining members of the Circle, Fenton encounters both Paul and Anya's daughter Olivia. They also name-drop JB Cox, who's revealed later in the episode to be Stratemeyer Global's prisoner.
• The first time JB warns Joe and Frank about Stratemeyer, he says "If they can get to me, you can bet they can get to you as well." The second time, when he encounters Frank at the drive-in, he urges him and Joe to skip town because they're in danger, especially now that Stratemeyer can track the Eye's power. Sure enough, in the very next episode, Stratemeyer does capture the Hardy Boys, and Angela mockingly tells them that they should have left town like JB did.
• On a similar note, when Joe tells Frank about a dark blue van that he's seen idling in town various times that seems suspicious, one of the potentially-shady things he suggests they could be up to is "maybe they're kidnappers!" Frank initially treats it as Joe being so desperate for a case to solve that he's imagining suspicious behavior where it doesn't exist, but then at the end of "A Disappearance", JB tells them that the van belongs to Stratemeyer (who did abduct him earlier). The boys later get an instant Oh, Crap! moment in "Heading for Destruction" when it does indeed drive up to kidnap them.
• When Chet and Belinda first meet in detention, they play a game of guessing what the other kids are there for, jokingly naming actual crimes.
  • Chet guesses "carjacking a monster truck" for Lola, who does in fact end up carjacking a vehicle in the Demon Day parade to use for the bombing.
  • Belinda names "killing her boyfriend" for Vanessa, and adds "gotta watch out for the pretty ones". Vanessa does turn out to be an Ax-Crazy teen involved with a bomb plot, and while she doesn't kill a boyfriend, she does wear her ex-boyfriend's track coat while planning the bombing, causing him to briefly become a suspect.
• JB accuses the Hardys of switching in a fake Eye relic in the Chamber at the end of the previous season while taking and keeping the real one for themselves. Though this isn't true—the actual relic is real, but Frank unintentionally absorbed the Eye's power from it—Joe does end up pulling this exact switcheroo during their heist later to trick JB himself (along with Stratemeyer).
• The first time Frank returns to Gloria's house, there's a shot of him glancing up at the crystal chandelier in the hallway before entering the study. One of the crystals on it turns out to be the Crystal, another supernatural object like the Eye, which later gets stolen from the house by the Shadow Man.
• During the week leading up to Demon Day, which is generally full of pranks and vandalism, one victim is Wilt's Deli, which gets vandalized with toilet paper. Wilt is just irritated but not all that concerned because nothing was actually stolen, but there is one thing there out of place: an arcade game, moved out from against the wall but otherwise undamaged, and Frank and Chet move it back. In "Heading for Destruction", the gang figures out from Dennis's drawings the general area where the bomb is planted and realize that it must be at Wilt's, and the break-in was actually done to plant the bomb there. Chet then recalls that nothing was disturbed except the arcade game, and they do indeed find the dynamite bomb hidden in it.
• After Wilt's is broken into, Joe asks why he doesn't get a security system, pointing out that there's a store for that literally next door. This turns out to be the reason the bomb was really planted at Wilt's, as a decoy for the fact that the security store is the true target. The explosion is close enough to temporarily knock out the security monitoring on all homes using that system, which includes Gloria Estabrook's house, giving the Shadow Man enough time to break in and steal the Crystal.
• In "A Clue on Film", JB gets Stratemeyer to not hurt him and let him go for the time being so he can possibly trick or manipulate the Hardys into giving him the Eye (as opposed to Mack going and violently confronting them about it) by saying "I have a plan, okay? They trust me." The boys decidedly do not JB all that much at this point, which he almost certainly knows, hinting that he's lying to Angela and Mack to get away from them. Sure enough, when he actually sees Frank at the drive-in, he just directly tells him that they need to give him the Eye for their own safety, makes it clear when Frank refuses that he does know they have it, and warns him about Stratemeyer, then leaves town.
• Joe tries and fails to contact JB at the end of "Hunting an Intruder" and tosses the latter's note aside in frustration. The camera lingers on it for a couple of seconds, long enough to see that there are some oddities in the note, like randomly capitalized letters and a period that's underlined. In "A Midnight Scare", Joe figures out that JB's letter actually contains a hidden code for how to get in touch with him.
• There are a few hints scattered throughout the season that, despite Chet's genuine interest in and feelings for Belinda, he's not entirely over Callie, or at least isn't over what happened between him, her, and Frank. "The Doctor's Orders" confirms the latter to be true, rather than the former; he's truly not hung up on Callie, and is glad she and Frank are happy together and isn't jealous of them, but can't help but feel hurt by the way everything went down, despite his best efforts to move past this. However, once he finally vents these feelings to Frank and Callie and they both sincerely apologize to him, he's able to get the closure he needs and move on for real.
• When Biff and Phil are asked to leave the school in "The Doctor's Orders" when they're there after hours, Mr. Munder is present and sincerely tells Biff that he's sorry about what happened to her mom. He's later revealed to be the Shadow Man, and Lola admits at the time of her arrest that the bomb explosion wasn't meant to be as big as it was and nobody was supposed to get hurt, so as the mastermind behind the bombing, he has extra reason to be sorry about what happened.
• In "A Midnight Scare", Frank and Callie run into JB at Rosegrave trying to find a certain scroll in Dean McFarlane's old desk, only to discover that McFarlane had already stolen it, and Frank then tells JB that the ex-dean was murdered. When Joe calls in his favor with JB at the end of the episode, the latter briefly glances down at the Hardys' case board, and the the final shot lingers on the scroll pinned there that McFarlane gave to Fenton before he died. Next episode, after JB's attempted heist of the relic for Joe goes south and the former ends up making off with a fake relic that the latter swapped in, JB comes back to the Hardy home and steals this scroll.
  • What's more, this scroll ends up becoming very important in the first half of the next season as one part of a Dismantled MacGuffin, with the boys competing with multiple other parties to assemble all of them.
• Numerous times, Frank receives a vision of Joe in a chair strapped to some kind of machine while he tries to stop it, before Joe is replaced with the boy this actually happened to. The Eye is, in fact, using Frank and Joe as surrogates in the vision to try to tell Frank that the Big Bad he's looking for is the person whose role he himself is filling: the brother of the boy strapped in the chair. That is, Adrian Munder, the twin brother of Aaron, who was experimented on.
• Frank's vision from the Eye near the beginning of the premiere has Laura tell him to play a video game where he catches as many gems as he can; "There's one very special one, but be careful. Or you'll lose everything, like your brother here." The Hardy gang later discovers that one of the crystals on Gloria's chandelier is indeed "very special" compared to the rest and has supernatural properties, and by the end of the season finale, Frank—as a result of not being careful enough about trusting the Eye and letting it manipulate him—has lost everything, including his brother, when George has swapped places with him and left his consciousness locked inside that Crystal.
• In one of the Hardy Boys' discussions about the power of the Eye being inside of Frank, Joe asks for confirmation that it's not controlling him, and "You're still you, right?", and Frank jokingly replies "For now!" in a faux-spooky voice. While the Eye never outright controls Frank, it does heavily manipulate and corrupt him, and at the end of the season, George manages to steal his body while trapping his consciousness inside the Crystal, meaning that Frank really isn't himself anymore.
• Callie and Belinda trick Marian Cody, a nurse who was involved in Project Midnight, into coming to Gloria's home to speak with them by lying that Gloria is dead and included Marian in her will. The season ends with Gloria, already hospitalized after a stroke, dying for real upon seeing that her father has returned and stolen Frank's body, with Season 3 kicking off with her funeral.
• The last few minutes of the Season Finale have heaps of Five-Second Foreshadowing—largely revolving around Frank acting far more emotionless and less warm than usual and displaying an uncharacteristic Lack of Empathy—towards the final reveal at the very end that he isn't the real Frank we know, and is actually George Estabrook, who did succeed at body-snatching Frank after seemingly being thwarted:
  • "Frank" wakes up to see his own brother Joe, his girlfriend Callie, and two of his other friends (Belinda and Chet) unconscious on the floor, but after tricking Munder into setting him free, doesn't go over to them to try to wake them up, show any concern for them at all, or even acknowledge their presence, instead leaving the room with Munder before revealing that he's not really the latter's brother. George really doesn't care about any of the unconscious people on the floor or even know who they are, as they're total strangers to him.
  • He seems very reluctant to return the Eye's power to the relic, stating that if he does so, he won't be able to "get what [he] wants most", even after Frank had already moved past that mindset in the previous episode. George only does so once it's clear that he won't be able to keep up his facade as Frank if he doesn't.
  • And later, in the hospital, "Frank" shows a startling lack of any kind of trauma or angst about what he just went through or relief that he and Joe are reunited and both okay and they've solved the case, and seems more concerned that Joe lied to him with his promise that they could keep the Eye and instead gave it away to make sure it'll stay gone forever. George, after staying quiet for a moment when Joe reveals his reasons for lying, just smiles and says "Thank you", probably in a minimal effort to keep up the charade.
  • Most noticeably of all, "Frank" rather coldly and uncaringly breaks up with Callie out of absolutely nowhere, despite his consistent warm and respectful treatment of her in the past and him having told her that she's what got him through the previous year. What's more, he gives a very flimsy excuse for it, claiming that the Eye's been a part of him for so long, he doesn't know who he is without it, and needs time to figure this out by himself. It's an unusual thing for Frank to say considering that he'd only been consistently seeing visions from the Eye for a couple of weeks—much shorter than the amount of time he and Callie have been dating—but makes much more sense for George. To hammer it home, she angrily asks him, "Who do you think you are?!" before storming out, and "Frank" shows absolutely no reaction, because he's not really the person she thinks he is.

Season 3

• In the season premiere, the gang sees a TV commercial for Sparewell Technology, advertising their advanced new laptop computers, and Phil eagerly expresses that he would love to have one, though the others are a bit more skeptical. Sparewell ends up becoming central to this season's plot, and all the way at the end once they've saved the day in the Series Finale, the True Companions each get one of these laptops of their own as a reward and in exchange for signing a non-disclosure agreement.
• JB speculates that his client may not have known that there are four scrolls total, because he was only hired to steal two of them, and so maybe Olivia didn't know how many there are either. This turns out to be Wrong for the Right Reasons and a major hint that Olivia is part of the same organization as his buyer; at the time he was hired, she either already had or could easily get two of the scrolls (which Fenton later took from her), so she and Sparewell Tech only needed JB to get the other two that they couldn't find or access as easily, not all four of them.
• During the museum heist, when "Frank" first finds the painting they're searching for, he keeps looking toward the top of it rather than the picture itself, and a moment later, emphatically states to Joe and JB that the scroll isn't inside the frame behind the painting. An eagle-eyed viewer can see when George first discovers it that the codex is indeed inside a metal ring on the top of the picture, and Joe goes back and realizes this a few minutes afterwards, only to find that "Frank" already took it.
• When Callie goes to Drew in "A Promise of Trouble" to get a new Sparewell computer processor chip they need, she knows a lot about them, saying she could never get one of the newest ones because it's too proprietary (she maybe could have, but it would've blown her cover) but an older model would work at least as well. While it does make sense for a computer nerd to be aware of that, all of this makes even more sense upon learning that her name is Drew Sparewell, so she's intimately familiar with the tech.
• At the beginning of "The Crash", when JB returns to his apartment, there's a news report playing in the background about an expected meteor crash. Joe remembers this later, and figures out that this is the last relic, just as it comes crashing down to Earth at the quarry.
• George tells the kids in "A Vanishing Act" that not everyone will get through this case alive, and two episodes later in "The Crash", JB Cox waves around all sorts of death flags. He gives a Tempting Fate line to villains who threaten him that he always lives to see another day, and later impersonates Cadmus Quill over the phone to his boss to lie that JB's dead. Joe convinces him to do One Last Job with the group by pointing out that they might get "captured and murdered" without his help, and JB responds "Okay, I know you're joking, but that might actually happen." He does indeed join the team to keep them safe, playing a much larger role than usual and patching things up with Joe for good—even finally being candid with why he likes him so much—basically bringing their friendship full-circle. So it's incredibly sad, but not super surprising, when JB's murdered at the end of the same episode while Taking the Bullet to protect the Hardy Boys.
• In "The Spider's Net", there are a ton of hints (which, to be fair, jump out a lot more on a re-watch) that something is wrong with the "heist" that Drew is supposedly helping the Hardy Gang plan.
  • Drew's conversation with Bob Carpenter, Sparewell Tech's lead engineer, where she "blackmails" him to give her the master blueprints to the building. His reaction to her words and behavior isn't quite what you'd expect if she really was blackmailing him; rather than seeming shocked or horrified that she knows the intel she's "threatening" him with (that he's been embezzling from the company) or getting at all angry or upset, he just responds with total confusion. Drew also glances over several times at Callie and Frank watching nearby, as if indicating to Bob that they have a listening audience, and the final and most obvious time she does it, he seems to notice them too and then agrees to her "demands". All of this makes sense when you know that she was going off-script because Frank and Callie were there, and Bob was didn't know what was going on at first but then tried to play along with her.
  • When Olivia chases after Belinda and Chet, she shouts after them, "Tell your friends it's no use! The Core's out of reach, you'll never get down there!" Not only is this a deliberate mislead about where the Core is, but it also shows she knows they're planning to break into Sparewell. The only other person besides the Hardy Gang who knows about this is Drew, the one who came up with the whole heist plot.
  • We get all sorts of build-up as the heist is happening to the eventual reveal once Drew captures the boys that they're not even in the Sparewell building at all, and she actually took them somewhere else completely:
    • She states that there's no security personnel at the Sparewell parking garage, but there is a security camera, so her solution is for the boys to hide in the trunk of the car throughout the ride so they're not seen. While this sounds like it makes sense, it's actually so that they won't be able to see where Drew's really taking them, which she lampshades after revealing her treachery.
    • Drew tells them that they get into the parking lot via a sensor in the company cars that'll open the gate. When she actually gets to the garage with the Hardys in the trunk, we never see a shot of Drew herself in the car driving up to the sensor, only shots of the other kids listening to her talking over the comms, to hide this reveal from the audience that she's about to enter a totally different garage.
    • The Sparewell logo doesn't appear on the parking lot walls, in the elevator, or anywhere else once the boys and Drew reach their destination, and the "private elevator" itself—which is supposed to be for specific use by an arrogant, narcissistic tech billionaire—looks surprisingly plain and non-descript (not even having a floor indicator in it), and is also right smack in the middle of the parking lot with no other elevators (which would need to be used by literally everyone else besides Hurd who parks in that garage) in sight.
    • Drew claims to the gang that Hurd's key card will get them down to the sub-basement, but they need his fingerprint to actually get into the elevator; yet, when she and boys get to the one in the parking garage, she does this the other way around (which they don't notice): swipes the key card when calling the elevator and again once they're inside it, then states they'll use the stolen fingerprint once they're at the lab. There's also clearly no print reader anywhere, either outside the elevator or in it, and Drew just presses the piece of tape with the print against the floor numbers next to the buttons. All of which indicates she's just improvising on the spot to make it look convincing.
    • Joe suggests using the emergency button when the elevator gets stuck, but Drew firmly stops him. This would be a bad idea anyway since it would promptly get them caught, but she actually doesn't want to do this because it would immediately reveal her deception.
    • Belinda keeps an eye on the Sparewell security detail by hanging out in the lobby, and reports that the guards aren't reacting at all to Hurd's private elevator supposedly being stuck, which Chet lampshades is weird.
    • It's awfully convenient that the elevator stops right where there's easy access to a vent shaft after the boys climb out the hatch on the ceiling of it, and that the vent is easily big enough for them to crawl through, which seems like a major lapse in security for a tightly-guarded, fortress-like building like Sparewell Tech.
  • Once again with the audience not seeing things occur and only hearing it over comms: when Olivia is supposedly chasing Callie, causing her friends to freak out, this is never actually shown at all, because it's not really happening and Olivia is faking her voice.
• There's also a lot of foreshadowing towards The Reveal that Drew Sparewell, a.k.a. "Drew Darrow", is the Hidden Big Bad of the season, as well as what her true personality is like, and that Hurd is innocent and being framed by his daughters:
  • During the planned heist at Sparewell, Drew appears to mess up in the planning multiple times, and at one point during the heist, even pretends to have forgotten the fingerprint Callie took from Hurd, then pulls a "just kidding!" by pulling it out and says she was just messing with them. She plays it off as a joke, but this sets up perfectly that not only is she the real mastermind, but she's also a pathological liar and Manipulative Bastard who enjoys toying with people just because she can.
  • Earlier, when Callie and Drew first enter the Sleep Room together, Drew—despite having earlier claimed that her beloved older brother Orrin was Project Midnight's Patient A (who died in that room)—doesn't seem at all disturbed, upset, or even emotionally affected by being there, just cheerfully stating with a grin that the place is "much creepier than I expected." Indeed, she doesn't say anything about Orrin while she's there until Callie brings him up first, and even afterwards, still doesn't seem to be mentally or emotionally impacted by being there. All of this sets up Hurd's eventual reveal that Drew doesn't even have a brother and made the whole story up to manipulate Callie.
  • Callie at one point states during the heist planning, "It's time to face the enemy head-on." She's talking about Drew arranging for her to meet Hurd directly for an "interview" so they can get into his office, but she happens to be speaking to and looking right at Drew herself, who (unbeknownst to them) is the real enemy, when she says this.
  • Five-Second Foreshadowing: Biff and Phil eventually figure out that all the clicks in Hurd Sparewell's phone calls to JB and to their group are from the typing of computer keys, indicating that his words were being typed out and converted to speech rather than spoken directly, which Phil notes someone would do if they want to hide their voice. And a few minutes later, it's shown that Olivia, after knocking out the kids' communication devices, faked a distress call from Callie. These two things combined make it clear that the bad guys are using computers to falsely imitate people's voices, which also hints that Hurd isn't really the Big Bad since there's no reason to fake his voice if it's actually him speaking. A few minutes later, the true ringleader is revealed to be Drew, a known computer whiz.
  • Speaking of which, considering all the blatantly illegal things that "Hurd" is caught doing or admits to over the phone—such as hiring a known thief to steal for him, kidnapping three people (including a government agent and a police chief), threatening to harm them, and openly taking responsibility for JB's death—it seems pretty Stupid Evil for him to directly make these phone calls rather than having an underling do it, no matter how arrogant or cocky he may supposedly be; all it would take is one of them being recorded (which they are) and brought to the police or any other kind of authority for it to blow up in his face, and even if he avoids being convicted of a crime or getting charged for anything, his reputation—which Drew claims that he "carefully cultivates" to be a Villain with Good Publicity—would take a hit for it. For someone who's a genius, this seems too careless and sloppy. That's because he's not the one making the calls.
  • On the same note, despite Drew's "real" backstory supposedly being that her father Hurd Sparewell was emotionally abusive to her because he's pure evil and always hated her, when Drew brings Callie to meet him as part of their "heist plan", Hurd just acts more wary, removed, and unhappy to have her there rather than actually doing or saying anything cruel or belittling like she claims he always was, and Drew also doesn't seem even remotely uncomfortable or upset being around him like you'd expect from someone with that kind of trauma, just likewise speaking coolly and seeming mildly disdainful. The True Companions eventually discover that she either made up or exaggerated everything she told them about Hurd and her backstory, and he was distant from both her and Olivia because Drew is pathological and downright evil, burying himself in his work instead and outright admitting that both of his daughters frighten him.
  • Heavy emphasis is drawn in the first few episodes to the fact that George Estabrook is a Manipulative Bastard with Chronic Backstabbing Disorder who never had any real friends in his whole life, just pawns that he uses in his games. Drew turns out to be very similar, with her father even saying that she likewise never had friends, she had "game pieces".
  • When Callie and Drew are both surprised to have each other as roommates, Drew states this must be what Rosegrave does with the scholarship students: forces them into rooms together so as to not take space from "the rich kids". Then it's later revealed that Drew is actually a Sparewell, one of the richest kids of them all, so she certainly should have been able to pull strings to get her own room if she actually did want that. This heavily implies she purposely made sure she'd be Callie's roommate under a false identity as a way to keep an eye on her and also further mess with her.
• Drew's voiceover at the start of "The Spider's Net" acts as this in several different ways.
  Drew: We all need to be careful. Perception is everything. And that means deception can quickly become your reality.
  • Drew then immediately follows these words about deception by going into detail about what a Villain with Good Publicity her father is, which does indeed turn out to be untrue (or at least greatly exaggerated compared to the villain she is).
  • During the heist in the same episode, the Hardys and friends fail to perceive all the clues previously mentioned above that something is off with the heist—how dumb it would be for Hurd to make threatening calls himself, Drew's odd conversation with Bob, that the card reader and use of the fingerprint in the elevator don't match up with what she previously told them—and as such, fall for Drew's deception and don't figure out she's the real Hidden Villain until it's too late and she's captured the boys.
  • Once she's put the boys inside her virtual reality, everything they perceive around them isn't even real, meaning that their "reality" literally is deceptive. And they're only able to figure this out through perception, too: first Joe and then Frank noticing A Glitch in the Matrix.
• "At the Old House" has the major reveal that Fenton Hardy has been trapped in Drew's Lotus-Eater Machine simulation since his final scene in Season 2, and thus his entire storyline for the whole season up until then hasn't been really happening, including Laura being alive. There are a few hints scattered throughout beforehand that something is off about Fenton's subplot and not everything is as it seems, and more and more buildup within the episode itself that what he and now his sons are experiencing is not real.
  • He "discovers" in "A Strange Inheritance" that Olivia was a DSA agent all along, but doesn't question how she's facing absolutely no repercussions from her superiors for all the cold-blooded murders he saw her commit in Season 2. In fact, Olivia faking being an agent in the real world to the rest of the Hardy family is directly inspired by seeing Fenton imagine this in the simulation.
  • Related to the above discovery that the phone calls from Hurd were faked by typing the words into a computer, causing a "clicking" noise: a sharp-eared listener can hear these clicks in all of Fenton's phone calls to the Hardy home throughout the season, too, hinting that they're being faked as well to keep his family from realizing he's in trouble, before this is officially confirmed in "At the Old House".
  • Also, when two or more characters are on a phone call in this series, the perspective usually jumps back and forth between them to show both parties talking. However, for all the calls home Fenton makes that are picked up by Trudy or the answering machine, we only hear Fenton's voice and don't actually see him having his side of the convo into the phone...because he's not. And when Trudy later tries to call him back at this same number, she's told "There's no one here by that name." Olivia later showing up at the Hardy house asking why Trudy dialed her phone makes this more obvious in hindsight, since Olivia was the one making the various fake-voice calls.
  • And when Trudy tells "Fenton" in "A Vanishing Act" about the boys being missing, the mine collapse, and her concern that they're involved in some way, "he" just tells her not to worry because they've got their friends to help them, and puts a lot of stress on making sure the codexes stay safe, even though the last time we saw Fenton, the scrolls barely came up and he was focusing on other matters. All of this is an Out-of-Character Alert, as Fenton has been consistently shown to be enough of a Papa Wolf in the past to show way more concern about his sons if he heard of something like that, and at the very least probably would have told Trudy to call him once she knew the boys were okay, but Olivia, faking his voice, really is more concerned about the codexes (which Fenton stole from her) than the kids' safety.
  • Also, Trudy tells "Fenton" in this call that the boys must have found the codexes, and it's very soon after this when Cadmus Quill, working for Sparewell, approaches them about supposedly hiring them to get the scrolls for the people he represents.
  • A twofer when Fenton supposedly calls Trudy and asks her to meet him at his and Laura's old apartment: Once again, the clicks can be heard in the background (which Biff later tells Joe when they and Phil notice the clicks in Hurd's calls), allowing a viewer on a Rewatch Bonus to realize that this call was to lure her and Jesse into a trap. Sure enough, as soon as she and Jesse get there and find Brian there too, they're immediately attacked with Knockout Gas and kidnapped. And then when Fenton arrives to the same apartment a few scenes later and meets up with Laura, he doesn't show any confusion or concern about where Trudy is, nor does he see any signs of a struggle or that someone was recently there. Of course, he never called Trudy at all, and he's not seeing any sign of her presence because he's only at the apartment in the simulation, as opposed to Trudy, Brian, and Jesse having gone to its real-world counterpart.
  • Once Drew has captured the Hardys, Joe demands to know where their mom is, and Drew answers "with your dad," and then Frank asks where he is, and she avoids answering and just states Fenton was the biggest complication in her plans. She doesn't even mention Laura being a thorn in her side, despite their mom claiming near the start of the next episode that she was kidnapped and brainwashed for getting too close to the truth about what Sparewell was up to. As the boys learn later, it's because she's not real and really is dead, so the only place Laura still exists is, indeed, with the boys' dad...in the VR world.
  • When the Hardy family returns to their old house, they realize from looking at the calendar that it's Frank's birthday. The thing is, the calendar should be from last year, the last time the Hardys were living in the house (since Fenton was lying about being there when he was really hunting down the Circle), so the fact that there's an updated calendar with Frank's birthday still circled on it doesn't add up.
  • Right after the Hardys defeat Drew within the simulation and deactivate the Core, Frank and Joe—who still have faint traces of the Eye's power in them—get a vision from it to when they trapped George in the Crystal, with him shouting "I've seen the end, this isn't it! This isn't right!", along with brief flashes of Laura and the aforementioned calendar with Frank's birthday on it. This is the Eye's first attempt to show the boys that the world they're in isn't real by highlighting the calendar clue, and neither is Laura herself.
• A few small ones towards the "new technology" that Drew's been working on and using the Core to complete:
  • One of Drew's flashbacks to childhood shows her trying to tell Hurd about her idea for the science fair: "an action-adventure role-playing video game, but in the real world." This is pretty close to the final version of her plan: trapping everyone in the whole world in some kind of virtual reality simulation. There even is some "action-adventure" in it when the Hardys, trapped inside, apparently overcome and defeat her.
  • In another flashback where Hurd tells a very upset Drew that he's sent their driver and her friend William away, he says, "You need to learn how the real world works." Her whole plan revolves around putting everyone in a Lotus-Eater Machine that'll give them what they want the most, basically attempting to circumvent the sometimes-difficult truths of the real world.
  • Initially, the beginning of the seventh episode seems to confirm that her plot is some kind of Mind Control microchip in people's brains, after such a thing was previously mentioned as how Laura became Brainwashed and Crazy. But if you look closer, these microchips were only mentioned in Fenton's scenes until this episode when the boys have been captured. Once the brothers figure out they're inside a sim, they quickly realize this was her real plan all along, and Fenton just imagined the microchip plot (which then spread to the boys after they were put into the VR world with him) as a somewhat-conceivable conspiracy for how Laura could still be alive but never came home.
• One from the previous season: in "A Clue on Film", Fenton and Sam learn that Paul McFarlane named his boat after Laura, The One That Got Away. Sam states that some people are unable to stop obsessing over the past, and urges Fenton not to be that guy. Indeed, Fenton runs into the same problem as McFarlane, and his inability to move past Laura's death makes him particularly susceptible to Drew's Lotus-Eater Machine. He has a much more difficult time breaking out of it, and is able to do so only when he finally learns to let go and move forward.

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