see you next crime

none of this is fleshed out or anything and some of it might even change in the future, but just some general spitballing:

carmen maintains most of the backstory from woeics. orphaned as a child, was always a prodigy, became the best detective at ACME as a teenager but later left to become a thief, you know the drill.

zack and ivy work with ACME, and the fact that they’re kids is actually made note of. their young age makes them unusual agents for an international detective agency, but it’s not unprecedented, because carmen was a child prodigy at ACME, too. in fact, the siblings’ main reason for working at ACME at their young age is because their parents work there too, and they’re so dedicated to their work that they’re actually kind of neglectful. zack and ivy worked super hard to get into ACME as soon as possible as a way to actually get their parents’ attention for once.

carmen looks at zack and ivy, these kids who are trying so hard to capture her because they think that doing so will get them validation and attention, and she feels a sort of strange kinship with them.

because let’s be honest here, all that thrill-seeking, all that grand high-stakes thievery in the public eye...even if carmen doesn’t necessarily realize it herself, it’s a cry for attention, attention like the kind every child should receive but she never did because she didn’t have parents. even when she was the best detective at ACME, the focus and attention was on her skills as a detective rather than on her, herself, and so a lot of her emotional needs just went unmet. carmen has never quite felt at peace or fulfilled with her life and that’s why she left ACME---and even as a thief, she doesn’t necessarily feel fulfilled, but it’s just the best outlet she’s ever found so she keeps doing it.

anyway, that’s just one of the reasons carmen unintentionally ends up being real fond of the kids even as she taunts them and plays mind games with them, and as the kids interact with her more, they gradually start to become fond of her too. at some point, it becomes a character development thing where they have to actually confront the fact that they like their supposed enemy more than they should, and they have to realize that they might not actually want to capture her anymore so much as help her somehow.

suhara was carmen’s mentor, and he’s a senior agent who kinda just mentors everyone, really. carmen was his favorite, and he could tell that she was troubled, but he didn’t understand the extent of it. plus, stretched thin as he was, he didn’t necessarily have the time or resources to properly help her in any way beyond directing her to focus on her detective work. nowadays he regrets that immensely, but at the time he just didn’t know.

jules argent was once carmen’s partner and friend, and was possibly the only person at ACME who really genuinely saw how carmen was mentally and emotionally struggling during her agent days. jules could kind of see that ACME wasn’t really doing carmen any favors, and she was as supportive and understanding as she could be, but carmen wound up spiraling anyway. when carmen left, it didn’t take jules by surprise, and she would actually have been very supportive of carmen taking a different path in life if that path hadn’t been grand larceny. even now though, she’s still very sympathetic towards carmen, and the anger and betrayal she does feel stems not so much from the fact that carmen left, but from the fact that jules can tell that even now, even as a thief, carmen still isn’t really happy.

jules’s partner ever since carmen left is shadow hawkins, and their vibe is pretty much how it was in tok, but like. shadow’s been on the job for some years now so he’s not “the rookie” anymore, and by now they actually have a pretty decently established amount of trust in each other as partners. they aren’t the ones chasing after carmen here, that’s more or less on zack and ivy, but jules does tend to keep a close eye on the carmen case, and she and shadow are first in line whenever the kids need backup in the field.

also, jules is keeping a close watch on zack and ivy for their own sakes because she’s all too aware of what happened the last time ACME recruited a prodigy and how bad that actually was for them. honestly, jules has at several points seriously considered going up to the chief and just yelling “IF YOU’RE GONNA RECRUIT LITERAL CHILDREN THEN ACTUALLY TAKE CARE OF THEM!!!!”. basically, she and shadow kinda take on mentor-like roles for zack and ivy and it’s cute.

chase devineaux is like, really high up there in the ranks at ACME, but he’s not exactly the type who hangs around the water cooler. he’s involved in the more covert and secret ACME operations, he’s done a lot of undercover work, and he’s definitely had to get his hands dirty before. he doesn’t necessarily show his face around the other characters very much, but every now and then he might pop in to reference his own mission of something mysterious or shady happening in the background. and yes, he still has phoenix, because fuck you netflix let my man have his falcon (and also let him be competent kthnxbai).

chase and carmen were actually partners for a very brief period very early in both of their careers, but as carmen quickly came to be known as ACME’s famous golden girl and chase found that he took well to undercover work that required him to stay out of the limelight, they naturally went their separate ways. they got along fine when they did work together, but they were never all that close, so chase doesn’t have any particular feelings about the fact that carmen left.

speaking of the whole shady stuff happening in the background thing: basically, carmen is mostly stealing for herself, and she’s aware that she’s not somehow morally better than other thieves just because she steals for her own satisfaction rather than for profit. but she can get heated about white-collar crime. it’s very common for carmen, during her games against zack and ivy, to commit thefts that inconvenience rich and powerful people (cough often white men cough), and the kid detectives might perhaps even unveil said rich and powerful people’s misdeeds and corruption in the process of solving the case. also, when it comes to stealing historical artifacts, carmen may have a few things to say about colonization and appropriation and so will pull a stunt like, oh, stealing the entire british museum and then purposefully delivering every single artifact to the land or peoples it originally came from.

on another note, whenever carmen happens to run across the types of criminals who hurt and traffic and kill (not as common, but it happens), she does her best to keep zack and ivy out of it. if for whatever reason this can’t be taken care of by tipping off the typical authorities (local police, FBI, Interpol, etc), she’ll even hack directly into ACME to drop a hot tip---usually to jules, but sometimes to chase if the situation calls for it. even if carmen doesn’t really have trust in ACME as an agency, she has enough professional trust in both jules and chase to know that they’ll do what needs to be done, and jules and chase accept her information because even as it’s established that carmen is ACME’s most wanted, she is certainly not ACME’s most dangerous.

by the way, ACME is. well, it’s a law-enforcement agency that operates all over the world. it’s so big that not everyone or everything that happens in it is necessarily always good. zack and ivy will have to face that at some point in their work, and that’s when they really first run into chase, since that stuff is sort of under his jurisdiction, too.

also, the good guides are here. they’re not necessarily main characters, but they show up from time to time to help zack and ivy out with information and busting clues now and then. ann’s their go-to for deciphering ancient artifacts, renee can help with identifying information about art and music, ivan’s the techno whiz, etc etc. 

Here’s hoping they upload the old series on Netflix.

Identifying Carmen Sandiego

While working on this larger Carmen Sandiego history project, I’ve had the hardest time keeping the canon straight. I created multiple spreadsheets just to figure it all out. And once I did, I wanted to make a cheat sheet for quick reference. The cheat sheet became an infographic.

The Evolution Of Carmen’s Crest

Carmen Sandiego’s first showed up 35 years ago today in WHERE IN THE WORLD IS CARMEN SANDIEGO? for the Apple II.

But she wasn’t yet wearing her iconic red outfit (she wore a black hat and fur coat), and she didn’t yet have her memorable circular logo.

Carmen’s crest went through more iterations than you probably realized. As part of my ongoing research on the history of the series, I’ve tried to assemble a definitive history of how the logo evolved, with as much historical information as I’ve been able to gather.