Dead Boy Detectives
Hey everyone and welcome, today we will be talking about season one of the show Dead Boy Detectives. Fun Fact, The Dead Boy Detectives were also featured in Doom Patrol and The Night Nurse played by Ruth Connell from that show reprises her role in this show. This season came out in 2024 and stars George Rexstrew, Jayden Revri, and Kassius Nelson and was developed by Steve Yockey. So without further ado let’s get right into it.
The Dead Boy Detectives follows Edwin and Charles who are ghosts who are not only trying to avoid Death but also investigate crimes that involve the supernatural. They meet Crystal who is a medium who can see ghosts and end up in Washington solving unresolved business as well as running away from a witch named Esther and The Night Nurse.
Dead Boy Detectives is a supernatural detective show that is also a spinoff of The Sandman. It has similar vibes to The Sandman, Penny Dreadful, or Lockwood & Co.
I’ve read The Sandman comic as well as watched and enjoyed the first season so I was excited to watch this spinoff. I enjoyed how there are some very obvious ties back to The Sandman but they don’t spend too much time on that and focus on what the characters of this show are going through. It was cool to see them helping these ghosts while also getting out of their own predicament.
Edwin was a character who I didn’t enjoy at first but as you learn more about him you learn to love him and his sassiness. We see how even though he has been dead for so long, he is finally finding himself this season and realizing that he likes guys. I feel like he always knew this but put up a wall to prevent anyone from getting too close so that he would never have to face those feelings. It sucks that he fell for Charles and Charles has more interest in Crystal but I think he means well even if he can come off sassy.
Edwin uses a spell on a cat which ends up catching the eye of the Cat King and he punishes him by giving him a bracelet that locks him in the city until the Cat King decides to take it off. I like how the Cat King is helpful in situations and has a lot of knowledge but doesn’t get involved with the actual fights. I actually enjoyed this character and I was kinda hoping that he ended up with Edwin because even though he trapped him, he was the reason why I think Edwin started to confront how he felt.
I love how Charles was like the brawns of the group even though he didn’t seem that intimidating and fought hard for his friends. In the episode where the dad killed his family, we see how this is triggering for him due to the years of abuse at the hands of his own father which was sad to see. He is the nicer of the two and tries his hardest to keep everyone together and out of harm’s way even if that means putting himself in harm’s way.
Crystal was cool and I loved her psychic abilities and how she could kind of get a back story about a person just from touching them or even just touching objects. It was cool to see her getting in touch with her ancestors and while she doesn’t know the full extent of her powers, she knows that she is more powerful than she thought. I thought it was a smart way to get rid of Esther by going into her memories and speaking to Lilith there to get her to punish Esther. She was in a bad situation with her demon ex stealing her memories but I’m glad she not only defeated him but got her memories back and found out she was an awful person in the past and decided that she liked the nice person that she became and that’s what she will stick with.
Niko was adorable and I love how she was generally nice and treated everyone with kindness and wasn’t so quick to judge. In the beginning, I thought she might be a good witch because of all the colors around her when we meet her but we come to find out that’s just because she has sprites in her head. I love how she was kinda like a love matcher and was able to see when someone clearly was into someone else. I really want to know what happened to her character at the end because we realize she isn’t dead but she is with the sprites who are now the same size as her.
Jenny the Butcher just wanted to be left alone and to be honest, I understand that. She kept her guard up when it came to dating and honestly, after looking at that town I don’t blame her. The one time she goes on a date we think it’s going well and then we find out that she has a stalker and that stalker accidentally kills herself. I was rooting for a happy ending and then that happened and I was like why can’t they let her be happy? I do like how even though she wants to be left alone, she does care for her tenants and tries to be helpful when she can.
Esther is the overarching villain of this season and she was kind of funny. She had some of the best comebacks and was just a crazy fun time, minus the killing and kidnapping. I did hate how she did Monty like that because how are you gonna let him catch feelings and then turn him back into a bird? I was glad in the end she got dealt with because she was just selfish and didn’t care about anyone but herself.
The night nurse was an annoyance but I love how they kept getting rid of her. I thought she was having a change of heart but then I realized she wasn’t and was still mean. I thought it was funny how her plan ends up backfiring in the end and she ends up stuck overseeing the boys after constantly trying to get rid of them.
Detectives is in the name of this show and they do complete some cases throughout the season and they made sure to mix up the cases. Some were simple, some were complicated like the loop, and sometimes the people asking for help were not the good guys in their story. This shows that their job isn’t as clear and some things are more difficult and it shows that these guys are capable of handling it.
As I said this show is a spinoff of The Sandman and the most obvious connection is that we see 2 of the endless who were in The Sandman, Death and Despair. Death plays a role in the show throughout the season because the boys are running from her but are also helping her. We get to see more of Despair’s lair in this show and it seems as if she will be using him more in the future which I hope we get to see. We also get to see more of hell and learn that it’s not all run by Lucifer and that there are different levels and different experiences. I’m glad these were the connections and they made them tie into the show and characters instead of just throwing in random things to make it connect.
Some of the shots that were outside like when they were on the roof in Washington or when they were back in London and it was snowing looked so fake. I feel it’s fine to shoot inside but if it looks that bad maybe you should explore changing the location or just doing it outside.
My favorite part of this season was seeing what happened to Charles and Edwin that led them to become ghosts. This was a question I had from the moment I started the show and wanted answers. We come to find out that both their deaths were really sad and that both were dead due to peers doing something dumb. Edwin was sacrificed as a joke and accidentally sent to hell for a very long time and escaped while Charles died of hypothermia and internal bleeding after being attacked by some of his supposed friends after he stopped them from attacking this kid. In Edwin’s case, it was sad because he wasn’t supposed to go to hell but did anyway and had to fight to get out while with Charles, Edwin stayed with him until he died and helped be his mentor in the ghost life. Both of their lives were cut too short and while it was sad, it was interesting to see how they got where they were and how it affected them.
Dead Boy Detectives is a fun show that’ll satisfy your supernatural appetite. I thought the cast was great and loved the introduction to these characters and has me interested in learning more so I hope it gets renewed for season 2.
