Or when Lucy Liu took on the role of Watson in the Sherlock Holmes drama series Elementary (also, it should be noted, a CBS show). Like when a black actress, Noma Dumezweni, was cast to play a grown-up Hermione Granger in the new Harry Potter play. Reboots, sequels, and the rest offer a way to retroactively diversify the largely white canon of Western films, shows, and books. This was somewhat the case with The Force Awakens, but it’s especially meaningful when iconic characters long since cemented in the public’s imagination as white are reimagined as people of color. But the prospect of a non-white Nancy Drew points to one possible upside to the reboot/remake/revival madness: It opens up the chance for old, beloved stories to be told again with more diverse characters in the spotlight. The announcement will do little to quell fears that the future of entertainment will primarily be reboots, sequels, origin stories, prequels, and remakes dooming audiences to year after year of studios excavating material from the past and trying to make it all feel new again. (Whatever the network decides, the show will hopefully take care not to treat any of these identities as casually interchangeable.) For another-the awkward use of “diverse” aside-Geller implies that Nancy Drew’s ethnic background has already been written into her character and story somehow-and yet CBS hasn’t yet decided whether she’ll be black, Latina, Asian American, Native American, Pacific Islander, or multiracial.

For one thing, it’s the latest example of the TV industry taking concrete steps to put women and characters of color in major roles.

There’s a lot to unpack in that brief, somewhat mysterious statement. Glenn Geller, the president of CBS Entertainment, told The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday that the network is developing a new series starring Nancy Drew as a 30-something NYPD detective, with one major change to the strawberry-blonde, blue-eyed heroine: “She is diverse, that is the way she is written.

Cast of nancy drew series