Warning! This post contains spoilers for Dead Boy Detectives.
Although Netflix’s Dead Boy Detectives shows how Edwin and Charles died, it maintains an air of mystery surrounding their ages. Serving as a spin-off to Netflix’s Sandman, Dead Boy Detectives presents a quick-paced drama reminiscent of other coming-of-age detective stories like Hardy Boys. However, what makes the show stand out is its captivating supernatural lore and the fun dynamic between its two main characters.
Like many detective dramas, Dead Boy Detectives also follows a monster-of-the-episode format, introducing a new adventure and mystery for Edwin and Charles with each episode. However, despite introducing some standalone story elements in every episode, the show also maintains a sense of continuity by delving into the backstories and secrets of its main characters. Some of the backstories also hint at what Edwin and Charles’ real ages could be.
Although Dead Boy Detectives primarily focuses on Charles and Edwin’s present timelines, it also features a flashback that reveals when and how the two characters died. A glimpse into Charles’ past reveals that when he was 16 years old, a group of bullies forced him inside a frozen lake and threw stones at him after he tried to save a Pakistani student from them. Although he managed to escape the bullies and hide inside a cabin in his school, he eventually died from hypothermia. Since ghosts do not age like humans in Dead Boy Detectives‘ lore, Charles still looks 16 because he died at that age.
However, when it comes to his actual age, Charles is significantly older than he appears. As the flashback confirms, Charles died in the year 1989. In Netflix’s Dead Boy Detective‘s episode 3, Crystal says that the Devlin family has been stuck in a time loop for three decades since 1994. This confirms that the Netflix series’ present timeline unfolds in 2024. Since Charles died in 1989, he has been a ghost for around 34–35 years. Given how he lived for 16 years before his demise, he should be around 50–51 years old in Netflix’s Dead Boy Detectives.
Edwin’s ghost origin story is similar to Charles’. Like Charles, he was a student at St. Hilarion’s boarding school in 1916 and was abducted one day by his fellow batchmates. They took him to an isolated room and tied him down to a table to perform a sacrificial ritual. The ritual’s success invited a Demon Sa’al to take Edwin’s soul to hell. With what followed, Edwin suffered in the depths of hell for over 70 years before finding his way out of the underworld. In 1989, he met Charles and spent the next 34–35 years with him till the show’s present timeline.
Although Charles’ age during the time of his death is unknown, his ghost seems to be around the same age as Edwin. This suggests that he might have been in his late teens when his soul was sacrificed to the demon. Since Edwin died in 1916 and was presumably around 16 at the time, he should be around 122–123 years old in Dead Boy Detective’s present timeline. However, it seems likely that he is even older because hell might have skewed his sense of space and time, causing him to count his years differently than he would in the human realm.
George Rexstrew, who plays Edwin Paine in Dead Boy Detectives, is 26 years old, making him around a decade older than his character’s human age and around 97 years younger than Edwin’s total age. On the other hand, Jayden Revri, who portrays Charles Rowland in the Netflix series, is 24 years old, which makes him only eight years older than his character’s age at the time of his death. Considering how both George Rexstrew and Jayden Revri perfectly capture their respective characters in Netflix’s Dead Boy Detectives, the slight difference in their ages compared to their characters seems unnoticeable in the series.