From the moment Teagan Tao (Miku Martineau) arrives in Eagles Cove in Season 1 of Crew Girl, she finds herself in a whole lot of mess.
After scandal befalls their family, Teagan and her mom, Ella (Jessica Paré), leave Teagan’s promising rowing future in Los Angeles for a fresh start across the country at Easton Prep. In the first episode alone, the FBI raids Teagan’s house, her welcome buddy Juliet (Olga Petsa) blows up her sports car, and Teagan usurps the coxswain seat of the varsity crew boat. The only catch? Teagan has never coxed before. “We meet Teagan at a time in her life when it is completely turned upside down,” says Martineau.
And things only get chaotic from there. Teagan finds herself torn between two boys in the boat — underdog Cam Dillinger (Kyle Clark) and Easton Prep golden boy Josh Regis (Sam Braun) — and embroiled in inter-team secrets. Meanwhile, Teagan has to steer a boat of unruly teenage boys to the podium at the prestigious Haverford Cup.
So does Teagan choose Josh or Cam? Is she able to patch up team politics and bring the boat to victory? And how are all of these messy teens — and, let’s be honest, adults — related to each other? Keep reading to row through the drama with Martineau, Braun, Clark, and showrunner Vivian Lin.
Teagan still hasn’t completely closed the door on either relationship by the finale. “I truly go back and forth,” laughs Lin. “You can see where the relationships fall short, where it gets messy. I’m team messy.”
From the moment Teagan runs her bike into Cam’s truck, sparks fly between them. “Cam is the classic boy next door who’s so sweet and gentle, but they get along so well because they’re both trying to earn the team’s respect and trust,” says Martineau.
He finally gets up the nerve to ask her out on a date in Episode 5, and the afternoon ends with tacos in his truck bed and plans to attend the fall formal together. “She’s an outsider like him,” Clark says. “What draws him to Teagan is that she doesn’t allow her circumstances to define her.”
At the same time, Josh and Teagan’s verbal sparring morphs into undeniable chemistry. “Teagan is a fiery and opinionated young lady. Josh may come off a bit arrogantly, but there’s something attractive about a person with such confidence. They have a very fun and spicy dynamic,” says Martineau, before adding, “Teagan is a person who has experienced a lot of challenges, and she’s able to see through people’s hard exteriors.”
In Episode 4, he tells her he wants to be more than friends, and in Episode 5, he breaks up with his girlfriend Britney (Sage Linder). “She doesn’t put up with his [attitude], and that’s so refreshing for him,” Braun says. “Teagan’s this new girl, and she’s not fake in any way. He’s yearning for that because he’s been putting on this mask for so long.”
At the fall formal, Cam’s insecurity about money drives a wedge between him and Teagan. “He wants to show up for Teagan as stroke seat, as a winner, as everything she deserves. He doesn’t feel quite worthy, which is so tragic,” Lin tells Tudum. Teagan flees to lick her wounds in the boathouse, where Josh finds her, and the two hook up.
Episode 6 begins with Teagan and Cam smooching all over the boathouse, but ends with them back in the storage space — only this time, breaking things off.
In the last few minutes of Season 1, Josh asks for a second chance after his heart surgery. “Teagan might be more attracted to this vulnerable side of Josh,” Braun reflects. The finale leaves it unclear where they stand, but the two share a very loaded moment of eye contact — one that Braun advocated for. “Originally, the look wasn’t written in,” says the actor. “It leaves the audience going, ‘There’s something still there to be explored.’ ”
Moments later, though, Cam stumbles upon Teagan, and they kiss. But Clark isn’t sure that Teagan and Cam are a sure bet: Now that Cam has taken over stroke seat, “there might be some tension with how he’s handling that emotionally,” he says, adding that Cam might also feel betrayed when he learns about Teagan’s clandestine relationship with Josh.
If Teagan’s story continues, Martineau is equally torn about what’s to come: “I think she’s still going to be figuring it out. Who knows what could happen in Season 2? A love square — is that even possible?” she says.
Martineau, for now, has declined to choose between Team Cam and Team Josh: “I’m Team Teagan. Girl power,” the actor says. “We all have those moments where we feel like the underdog or underestimated, especially as women in male-dominated environments. So I’m Team Teagan because she’s a pretty powerful young lady.”
Josh secretly begins seeing a cardiologist in Baltimore and discovers he has hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a heart condition that makes continuing to row dangerous. Because he feels so much pressure from his family, he bribes a doctor to give him medication so he can continue racing.
After he crashes his car while experiencing heart pain, he has no choice but to come clean. His dad steps up to the plate to support him, while his grandfather is dismissive, confirming Josh’s fears that his illness would deem him defective in his family’s cutthroat business.
As for whether Josh’s rowing days are officially behind him, his future remains uncertain. “We’ll have to see post–heart surgery,” says Braun. “It was physically but also emotionally necessary, because now Josh gets a fresh start.” Braun would “just be really excited to have him explore what it means to him to be a good person. It’d be fun if he coached the girls’ team or something like that. I feel like there’d be a lot of drama.”
Cam, Ryder, Baloo (Jude Wilson), Josh, and Teagan all qualify for the prestigious Norfolk Indoor Rowing Invitation. A scout from the junior national team attends, looking for fresh talent for Olympic tryouts.
For Ryder, there’s more than a race at stake. His mom, Karina (Amber Lewis), is the daughter of Josh’s grandfather, who had an affair with the family’s dog walker. That makes Ryder Josh’s cousin — but, as Cam puts it, “Ryder’s less of an heir, more of a spare.” The cousins are rivals both on the water and within the family business, Regis Airlines, where they’re competing for their grandfather’s approval and a future at the company. Becoming the first Regis to make it to the Olympics would give Ryder another chance to finally step out of Josh’s shadow.
But Ryder’s biggest competition at Norfolk isn’t Josh; it’s Cam. So he tells Cam to name his price to throw the race. At first, Cam refuses, but after he overhears his mechanic dad stressed about money, Cam decides to take Ryder up on the offer — for a whopping $48,000.
When Cam surprises everyone by losing the race, Teagan confronts Cam, and he begrudgingly admits he was bribed. Teagan asks to be moved to Cam’s erg, where she jams blister tape in the flywheel. The faulty erg disqualifies both Teagan and Cam’s scores, giving Cam another chance to get back on the Olympic track. Cam’s frustrated that Teagan jeopardized her own chance to get the scout’s attention, and tells her to stay out of his business.
The Cambridge Racing Committee conducts a full inspection and concludes that the equipment was tampered with by either Cam or Teagan. Principal Cabrera (Liza Huget) orders Coach Hayden (Thomas Cadrot) to find out which athlete broke the rules and remove them from the boat.
Teagan steps out of the Haverford Cup, but each of the rowers refuses to row out of solidarity, so Hayden lets her back on the water. With Cam finally in stroke seat and Teagan back at coxswain, Easton beats rival Westvale and takes silver, its first trip back to the podium. When Cabrera sees both Teagan and Cam on the boat, she confronts Hayden, who takes the fall and is fired.
The stroke’s oar snaps during a race in Episode 6. After some meticulous detective work led by murder mystery aficionado Noah (Riley Davis), the team realizes that, after a romantic rendezvous, Baloo left Westvale Academy rower Logan (Tyler Roberge) alone in the boathouse, with ample time to saw the oar. Distraught, Baloo blocks Logan, and the team bands together to help their teammate heal from the betrayal.
In the following episode, Logan tells Baloo that there’s been a mistake: Logan didn’t saw the oar; Josh did. Baloo and Logan make up and get back together.
Britney and Baloo are what Cam calls “designer twins.” Their mom, esteemed Senator DeeDee Garner (Lucia Walters), used two surrogates simultaneously.
The FBI informs Ella and Teagan that David (Byron Lawson)was defrauding investors out of millions, and they seize the Taos’ money. David flees, leaving Teagan and Ella to deal with the fallout.
David reappears in Episode 7 brandishing a USB that he claims will fix everything. He tells Ella that his CFO threw him under the bus and proposes that he’ll blackmail his partner for enough money to restore Teagan and Ella to their old life.
Ella hides his surprise visit from Teagan, but Teagan happens to spot him outside her crew practice. In an emotional confrontation, she tells her dad she’d rather he turn himself in, because at least then she’d know where he is and could talk to him. David watches Teagan take silver at the Haverford Cup before following her advice and turning himself in.
When Baloo sees his sister hop on an erg with confidence, he’s confused. But his always-overachieving sister borrows an iconic blonde’s line — “What, like it’s hard?” — before telling him her real motivations for learning about the sport: “The best way to get over a guy is to crush them and take everything they love for yourself,” she says.
Britney corrals a group of students — as well as a wealthy donor in her family — and convinces the school to start a girls’ boat. Will Teagan take a seat in Britney’s scull? “Britney brings out a certain side of Teagan,” Lin says. “I don’t know that they want to dislike each other, but they also enjoy it.”
“We’re going to have to wait to find out,” says Martineau of Teagan’s involvement with the girls’ boat. “She has such an attachment to the boys’ team, but she’s also in the pursuit of her own rowing career, and singles are her passion. It’s going to be hard to decide.”
If Teagan joins the girls’ team, does that mean the boys will need a new coxswain? “I’m honestly such a fan of the girls’ team idea. The love triangle is going to expand to a love octagon,” Braun laughs, before saying, “Will the boys’ boat fall back into the same mistakes, or will we rise to the occasion?”
Clark adds, “It’ll get pretty messy for sure. She has already helped the boys’ team in all the ways that she could.”
Ready to get back in the boat? Rewatch all eight episodes of Crew Girl Season 1, now streaming on Netflix.
