Crew Girl S1. Miku Martineau as Teagan in Episode 1 of Crew Girl S1. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
Netflix’s YA drama Crew Girl takes viewers into the deeply competitive world of rowing, where 16-year-old Teagan Tao (Miku Martineau) leads a prep school’s boys’ crew as their outspoken, yet brilliant coxswain. But as the tension builds, she finds herself caught in a messy love triangle.
If you’re a fan of The Summer I Turned Pretty and Finding Her Edge, chances are you’re in a bit of a TV rut at the moment, waiting for the next YA teen drama, full of all the same sweetness and charm. And despite us leaving summer behind, Netflix is keeping the warmth and sunlight in the spotlight with cozy drama Crew Girl, from showrunner Vivian Lin. This series is the type not designed to blow you away or leave you breathless, but will satisfy you with all the genre clichés you can shake a stick at, especially with messy romantic triangles. This time, it hooks you in with the backdrop of competitive rowing.
In Crew Girl, we follow teenage rowing prodigy Teagan Tao (Martineau), whose whole life is upended by a family scandal involving her father, who goes on the run from the authorities after dodgy business dealings. Forced to relocate to a completely new town, she attends a prep school where there’s no female rowing team. She has to join the boys’ crew as their coxswain in order to keep up her training. There, she forms complicated relationships with the high-strung crew, including the arrogant team captain, Josh Regis (Samuel Braun), and the local boy, Cam Dillinger (Kyle Clark), who is the underrated MVP of the team.
It doesn’t take a genius to see how the show develops from there. Crew Girl jumps into its story with confidence. This is a show that knows its audience down to a tee, delivering instant-win storylines: an underdog teen from a dysfunctional family, competitive sports, and a love triangle. On that front, it’s pretty bland and predictable, but very enjoyable nevertheless.
Crew Girl S1. (L to R) Samuel Braun as Josh Regis and Miku Martineau as Teagan in Episode 1 of Crew Girl S1. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
The first thing I noticed upon watching Crew Girl was just how familiar it was. It’s a coming-of-age teen romance about a young girl who struggles in her family life, finding comfort in pursuing her chosen sport — but unwittingly falls into a tricky love triangle with members of her team. If that sounds familiar, it’s almost exactly the same core story as Netflix’s Finding Her Edge earlier this year. Except, of course, Crew Girl swaps out the ice skates for the rowing oars. And when I finished the series premiere, I then noticed in the credits that Crew Girl is executive produced by Jeff Norton, who worked as showrunner on Finding Her Edge. Not only do they share the same storytelling tropes, but they have the same DNA behind them. Is Norton building a ‘YA Sports Drama Universe’ at Netflix? Probably not, but it’s clear that the streamer is happy to throw bags of money at the genre.
At this point, Miku Martineau is well-known to Netflix subscribers, particularly for her role in Bet. Her casting in this series is another triumphant moment in her short, yet fantastic career. She can be such a quintessential teen and so vulnerable, but when the opportunity arrives to boss around the boys, she’s absolutely the confident and outspoken leader. After witnessing her performance, it’s hard to imagine anyone else delivering her lines with as much vigour.
Crew Girl S1. Miku Martineau as Teagan in Episode 1 of Crew Girl S1. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
The love triangle between Teagan, Josh, and Cam is totally serviceable, but over the course of an 8-episode series, I expected it to become a bit more heated. The show prefers, and ultimately feels more comfortable, exploring how the romantic relationships evolve the dynamic of the crew as they compete towards the regatta.
The series offers up characters that we love, hate, love to hate, and hate to love. But beyond that, there’s one character in particular who breaks the steadfast mold. That character is Josh Regis. The heir to a business empire, and forever in the shadow of his rowing superstar father, when we first meet Josh, he masks his insecurities through pure arrogance and nastiness. But then as the show goes on, we see how deeply flawed — and emotionally volatile — he is, especially when life throws him a bad hand. This is a character who everyone would love to throw a punch at. However, by the season’s conclusion, the writers manage to have him earn our love. It’s a breath of fresh air to see a series like this play out a genuinely heartfelt and powerful storyline.
That’s not to say other characters are uninteresting by comparison. Kyle Clark’s warm and boyish Cam is affable as the other leg of the love triangle, being a more level-headed alternative to Josh. Beyond that, the rest of the boys’ crew, including Ryder (Connor Paton), Baloo (Jude Wilson), Damon (Vincent Muller), and Chris (Jarrett Carlington) — have more than enough individuality to feel like solid standalone characters rather than people to fill up numbers in the boat.
For every storyline that punches above its weight, there’s others that fall like damp squibs. For instance, the season-long ‘will-they-won’t-they?’ romance between Teagan’s mother Ella (Jessica Paré) and Easton’s nice-guy Coach Hayden (Thomas Cadrot) lacks chemistry. Plus, Teagan’s criminal father feels more like a catalyst than anyone we’re supposed to have any feeling towards.
While Crew Girl delivers adequate romances and plenty of rowing-drama, the core theme of the series is plainly evident. This is a show that explores commonality and finding each other. Everyone in the boys’ crew is different and unique with individual struggles and different reasons for wanting to succeed. They clash often as adolescent teens do, especially under immense pressure. But the difference in this one is that they have to continue working as a team. Rowing is the ultimate team sport; they have to row at exactly the same wavelength in order to win. And with Teagan as their cox, she’s responsible for keeping them all in line.
MVP
Samuel Braun — It’s incredibly hard not to cite series lead Miku Martineau as the MVP; I wouldn’t argue heavily against it, either. But then there’s Sam Braun’s portrayal of Josh Regis, a bratty teenager at the beginning, who undergoes one of the best and most powerful emotional transformations I’ve seen in a series of this genre. Josh’s story and its development across the season is written with immense maturity.
Watch Crew Girl on Netflix if you like:
- Finding Her Edge
- My Life with the Walter Boys
- The Summer I Turned Pretty
Verdict
I cannot profess to be the target demographic of these YA shows, but they absolutely fall into the realm of guilty pleasure watches. Out of the myriad that I’ve seen, Crew Girl shines brightly. Firstly, the rowing aspect is a breath of fresh air. Having Teagan coxswain a team of high-strung teen boys builds a type of tension that is hard to achieve elsewhere. The writers managed to derive a story that, while it undeniably has all the bells, whistles, and clichés of a cheesy teen drama, is genuinely touching and sentimental at times. These characters are not black-and-white but complex and often flawed. That extra element came as a welcome surprise.
Is it formulaic? Yes, but it’s one of the better executions of the formula out there.
Plus, the show has gotten me genuinely interested in checking out the world’s biggest rowing tournament, the Charles Regatta, next month. So on that front, I imagine it’ll inspire a lot of viewers to take up rowing — or at least try it out. In fact, when I chatted with showrunner Vivian Lin, she revealed that the entire team had gotten into rowing while filming the series. So clearly, if this is a hit on Netflix, rowing clubs over the world need to prepare for an uptake in the sport.
