Dead Boy Detectives – Episode 8 Recap, Review & Ending Explained

The Case of the Hungry Snake

What is Crystal’s real identity? 

In episode 8 of Dead Boy Detectives, Crystal finds that she’s from a wealthy family with negligent parents and she’s, in general, a horrible person. Well, no surprises there.  In the meantime, Esther is trying out her new machine where she tortures a ghost to extract power, as the ghost vanishes into oblivion, and her next target is Edwin.

Crystal calls her parents, who don’t even know that their daughter has been missing. She eats another one of the memory balls and decides that she needs to go home to deal with things she never knew existed in her life. Meanwhile, since Niko and Edwin are great friends, she tells them that she will miss them when they return to London.

While this is going on, Jenny finally wakes up. Crystal and Niko tell her about demons and ghost and show her the sprites in the jar. Also, Jenny is now able to see Edwin and Charles as well. Later, Crystal bids her goodbyes to everyone and leaves only to come back after a huge blast at the butcher shop. It seems Esther was the cause behind the destruction and she’s captured the two boys. Niko and Crystal decide to save them.

They go to visit the cat king to receive information about Esther. And the cat king narrates the tale of how Esther was beautiful and hardworking when she arrive to New England. When her husband cheated on her, she turned to black magic and killed him. Following this, she invoked the ancient goddess Lilith, who granted her immortality that she asked for but without granting her youth. And so, she began feeding little girls to a giant magical snake to maintain her youth.

Crystal and Niko visit the magic shop and Tragic Mike gives them black salt to counter the witch. He also gifts her a lucky charm to Niko as a token of his gratitude for listening to his story. The two arrive at Esther’s house. They toss Charles’s infinity bag to him and ask him to kill the snake. Monty, now a crow, helps Charles to get free from Esther’s iron binding.  

What happens to Esther?

Meanwhile, Esther has been torturing Edwin and extracting power from his pain. The black salt has no effect on Esther. In the scuffle, Niko protects Crystal and dies from Esther’s attack. Crystal reaches into Esther’s mind using her powers and invokes Lilith, the goddess of wronged women, and tells her that Esther has been sacrificing young women to maintain her youth. At the same time, Charles has been fighting the snake responsible for Esther’s youth and finally kills it. Esther returns to her old persona as Lilith appears and drags Esther with her as a punishment. Edwin is saved but Niko is killed in the process.

What happens to Edwin and Charles?

Back at Jenny’s, they are informed that Niko’s body is to be shipped back to Japan. Crystal invites Jenny to London and she says that she’ll consider her proposal. Edwin meets with the cat king and says his goodbyes. They part on a friendly note.  Edwin also informs him the correct number of cats in the city.  

Back at the Dead Boy Detectives’ London office, the Night Nurse and her superior appear to take the boys back to the Afterlife. However, her superior acknowledges the number of lives that the boys have saved and lets them be on earth to solve cases. She appoints the Night Nurse to stay with them as their overseer, which she isn’t very happy about.

In a brief epilogue, we find someone holding Niko’s lucky charm and it’s hinted that her soul might not have moved to the Afterlife after all. And that is how season 1 of the Dead Boy Detectives comes to an end.  

The Episode Review

The finale episode of the Dead Boy Detectives was action packed as much as it was shocking. Well, to be fair though, Niko had been receiving bad signs from the death crystal ball that she had from the sailor ghost of the lighthouse. The good news is, we’ll be able to see her again should a season 2 of the show is made!

Overall, I love how the show incorporated myth, urban legends as well as serious themes along with the fun and quirky supernatural cases that the Dead Boy Detectives team encountered. The finale was definitely as chaotic as the show, in a good way and we cannot wait to have season 2 of this young adult supernatural mystery show!