Crew Girl Filming Locations

‘Crew Girl’ may send Teagan Tao to an elite school on America’s East Coast, but the lakes, castle and waterfront town surrounding Easton Prep are actually thousands of miles away. Netflix filmed the first season primarily around Greater Victoria on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, with Victoria, Colwood, Sidney and nearby communities standing in for the fictional Massachusetts setting. Production operated under the working title ‘Easton Prep’ and began shooting in Victoria in September 2025. The show’s most recognizable locations include Hatley Castle at Royal Roads University, Elk/Beaver Lake, the Gorge Waterway, Sidney and Seahorses Café in Brentwood Bay. Showrunner Vivian Lin has personally confirmed several of those sites, making the series unusually easy to trace from fiction back to its real Canadian geography.

Also Read: Crew Girl Cast Guide

Hatley Castle, Colwood: The Real Easton Prep

Hatley Castle at Royal Roads University provides the visual identity of Easton Prep. Located in Colwood, immediately west of Victoria, the historic estate supplies exactly the kind of old-money architecture the series needs for a prestigious American boarding school. Its stone exterior, formal grounds and imposing entrance make Teagan’s new school look as though it has been educating wealthy families for generations. Local British Columbia production reporting confirms that the castle was used as Easton Prep.

The location may be particularly familiar to superhero fans. Hatley Castle has a long screen history and has previously appeared as part of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters in the ‘X-Men’ franchise, as well as in other film and television productions. ‘Crew Girl’ uses that recognizable grandeur for a different kind of outsider story, with Teagan arriving not as a mutant but as the girl attempting to take charge of a boys’ rowing crew.

Royal Roads University occupies the surrounding property today, and Hatley Park is a National Historic Site. That allows the production to combine a real institutional campus with the cinematic scale of a private estate rather than constructing Easton from scratch. The result is one of the show’s strongest illusions because there is nothing visibly Canadian about the school once the fictional East Coast context is established.

Elk Lake and Beaver Lake, Saanich

Elk Lake is one of the two major places where the rowing sequences were filmed. Vivian Lin directly confirmed that the production used Elk Lake and the Gorge Waterway for the sport that defines the series. Local reporting similarly identifies the connected Elk/Beaver Lake system as a prominent production location.

The choice gives ‘Crew Girl’ a connection to genuine rowing culture rather than merely a photogenic body of water. The Victoria City Rowing Club operates at Elk Lake, and the area has a long history of competitive rowing and training. That existing infrastructure made it possible for the production to stage demanding crew sequences in a setting already designed around boats, docks and athletes.

The filming itself was considerably more complicated than simply pointing cameras toward actors in a shell. Production reporting says the crew used a floating camera barge equipped with a crane for tight shots and drones when the actors were rowing independently. Some filming days kept cast members on the water for eight to ten hours. That helps explain why the race and training scenes have a physical quality that would have been difficult to recreate entirely against a controlled background.

The Gorge Waterway, Victoria

The Gorge Waterway provides the second major rowing environment in the show. Running through Greater Victoria toward Portage Inlet, the waterway gives the series a different visual texture from Elk Lake, with bridges, shoreline neighborhoods and more obvious urban infrastructure around the crews. Lin confirmed the Gorge alongside Elk Lake when discussing where the rowing material was shot.

Several recognizable Victoria landmarks around the waterway appear in footage connected with the series. Local viewers identified Tillicum Road Bridge and the Selkirk Trestle, while the industrial waterfront near Point Hope Maritime also appears among the places visible in the trailer and finished production. These locations help the fictional Eagle’s Cove feel larger than a school campus and a single rowing course.

The Gorge is also a particularly appropriate choice for a crew drama because it is genuinely used for rowing events. Instead of disguising a random river as a sports venue, the production could work within a landscape where narrow shells and training crews are already a familiar sight. That realism matters for ‘Crew Girl,’ where Teagan’s credibility as an athlete has to be believable before the romance around her can work.

Sidney, British Columbia: Standing In for Eagle’s Cove

While the school and rowing scenes dominate the series visually, parts of Sidney help create the fictional town around Easton Prep. Sidney sits on the Saanich Peninsula north of Victoria and has a compact waterfront, walkable commercial streets and a coastal atmosphere that can convincingly pass for a small town in New England. Local reporting confirms that production filmed there during the 2025 shoot.

Fifth Street is among the identifiable areas used by the production, with Fish on Fifth appearing in exterior footage. The town gives Eagle’s Cove an everyday environment separate from Easton’s privileged campus, allowing Teagan and the other characters to move through stores, streets and waterfront spaces that feel like part of an established community rather than a television backlot.

That distinction is useful for the story. Hatley Castle sells the exclusivity of Easton Prep, while Sidney has a friendlier, more ordinary coastal character. Combining the two lets the fictional town contain both the expensive boarding-school world and the people who actually live around it.

Seahorses Café, Brentwood Bay

One of the most useful confirmations comes directly from Vivian Lin: the Crab Shack where Teagan’s mother Ella works was filmed at Seahorses Café in Brentwood Bay. The waterfront restaurant is located on the Saanich Peninsula and gives Ella’s storyline a setting noticeably removed from Easton’s polished academic environment.

That location is particularly valuable because it ties a specific fictional business to a real filming site rather than relying on visual guesses. Ella and Teagan arrive in their new community after losing the stability they previously had, so Ella’s workplace helps establish the more practical side of their restart. While Teagan enters a school filled with wealth and status, her mother’s life operates in a very different social space.

Brentwood Bay also keeps the production geographically compact. Hatley Castle, the lakes, Victoria, Sidney and the café all sit within the Greater Victoria region, allowing the series to create what appears to be a much larger fictional Massachusetts world without repeatedly relocating the production across Canada.

Crew Girl Turned Vancouver Island Into the American East Coast

‘Crew Girl’ is a good example of why Greater Victoria works so well for productions that need several completely different environments close together. Hatley Castle becomes Easton Prep, Sidney helps form Eagle’s Cove, Elk Lake and the Gorge provide the rowing courses, and Brentwood Bay supplies Ella’s workplace. The production can move from grand institutional architecture to open water and a small coastal town without leaving southern Vancouver Island.

Filming ran from September 8 to November 21, 2025, according to local production reporting, with ‘Easton Prep’ used as the working title. That autumn schedule also suited the show’s northeastern-school atmosphere, even though the cast was actually on Canada’s Pacific coast.

The location trick works because ‘Crew Girl’ does not require one spectacular landmark to sell its fictional setting. Its world depends on the relationship between the school, the water and the surrounding town. Greater Victoria could provide all three. For viewers looking for Easton Prep on a Massachusetts map, there is nothing to find, but the real version is considerably easier to locate: it begins at Hatley Castle and stretches across some of Vancouver Island’s best-known rowing waters.