Ashley is alive, but where the hell is she?!
Keeping up with the breakneck pace for all the twists and turns this series is throwing at us, Harlan Coben’s Shelter Season 1 Episode 3 was filled to the brim with revelations.
Of course, it also opened the door for a gazillion more questions. This series is hellbent on keeping our heads spinning.
Is Brad alive or not? Who took Ashley and why? Why is Rachel being so shady? So all sides of the Shira, Hannah, and Ken triangle have touched in more ways than one? Whew!
The series mix-matching the characters and how the trio interact with each other are among the most fun things to happen.
During Harlan Coben’s Shelter Season 1 Episode 2, we had a heavy dose of Mickey and Ema, and it was such a unique vibe. When Ema realized that she liked Mickey and dropped her antisocial defenses, we saw this genuinely caring, supportive, great friend.
But her vibe is entirely different when she spends time one-on-one with Spoon. They play off one another so well, and there isn’t a scene that goes by with those two that won’t have you giggling a bit.
Mickey: How do we get that footage?
Spoon: Yeah, it would definitely be really hard to download every second of every surveillance camera the day Ashley disappeared… OK, so I downloaded every second of every surveillance camera the day Ashley disappeared.
Abby Corrigan and Adrian Greensmith have great chemistry with each other. It’s something distinctly throwback and retro about their interactions.
It’s like putting The Breakfast Club’s Allison Reynolds and Brian Johnson in a room together and forcing them to become begrudging friends.
Spoon is delightful enough to wear a person down even if they weren’t so inclined to like him. And their energy toward each other feels reminiscent of totally opposite siblings who squabble and tease but genuinely care for one another no matter what.
They made a lot of headway together while Mickey was dealing with personal matters.
With Ashley’s locker empty, they came up with the idea of accessing the surveillance footage around school and tracking down everything Ashley did on her last day.
It was no surprise that Spoon could successfully hack into the system, nor was it that he had his own version of a Bat Cave in the school’s boiler room.
Spoon Spinell never ceases to amuse and is hands down my favorite character in this series.
Ema and Spoon discovered that Ashley had a run-in with the cheerleaders that looked unpleasant. Later, they saw that Sunglasses Man visited her locker in the wee hours of the morning when it was already empty and took the magnetic hippo.
Mickey: Guys, it’s going to take us days to go through that type of footage; we should take turns.
Spoon: I can take the first shift. I’ve trained my teachers not to expect regular attendance
Mickey: You?
Spoon: I learn when I want to learn, Mickey.
But their most significant discovery was that Rachel visited Ashley’s locker and took her belongings. She’s not who any of them anticipated, mainly because of how cool she had been playing things anytime Ashley got brought up.
With Rachel, we learned that her run-in with Octoface shook her up really well. He chased her out of the station, and she went as far as pulling the gun out on him after she fell and hurt her arm while trying to escape.
She was rattled enough that she missed school, so she had a tense interaction with Troy Taylor at the Bolitar home.
You could tell that it triggered her when Troy innocently grabbed at her in the middle of their spat. Her violent response shocked him, but I almost wished he had pressed more, as something was clearly happening with her.
Now that there is footage of her, she won’t have a choice but to open up more with the trio and join forces for whatever they’re facing.
Mickey was juggling a lot on multiple fronts, and the family aspect of the series is just as strong and a great balance to the other elements.
Allen and Ellen were adorable. They were so vibrant, and they brought a different energy. Ellen was the quintessential judgmental mother, and from Shira’s perception, it sucked that she had to deal with strong judgments about her life.
But you could also tell that Ellen loves and cares about her family. She tends to come from a well-meaning place, and Allen amused with his Dad jokes.
He and Mickey had a nice relationship, too, and the focus on the parents struggling with how they were grieving Brad and having open conversations with Mickey when he found them was good.
It’s nice to see a communicative and emotionally vulnerable family across generations.
Ellen overstepped with inviting the Taylors to the function when she knew there was a history. It was awkward to see Shira Bolitar and the Taylors try to interact, and Troy was chill-deficient, digging into their past and being intrusive with no regard for how his parents or Shira would feel about any of it.
Shira and Hannah’s interaction on the roof touches on the tension between them and implies that Hannah felt betrayed and abandoned when Shira left town.
Shira owned up to being selfish when she was a teenager, and it seemed they put their issues behind them without having to delve into all the nitty-gritty.
But the real shock came when Hannah returned to the house later and kissed Shira. With more context, the two were probably in love, and Hannah was heartbroken when Shira left town and never looked back.
Somehow, she retreated into herself and ended up in this relationship with Ken, which is weird. If neither woman loved Ken, and they cared about each other, why were either of them with him?
If they were keeping their relationship a secret for obvious reasons during their teen years, that’s understandable. However, Hannah’s choice to marry and remain married to Ken is bizarre. They are freaking Shira and Hannah, and he’s just Ken. Be for real!
Bat Lady: We will do what we must.
Sunglasses Man: But?
Bat Lady: I’m not sure everyone will survive.
Perhaps she felt like being with Ken was like having a piece of Shira. Regardless of what was happening, it was shocking to discover that they were lovers, and based on that makeout session in the kitchen, they were more than content getting reacquainted with each other.
I notoriously despise cheating arcs, but a girl might make an exception for this one because look at them! I ship Shira and Hannah like Fed-Ex. Also, kudos to this series for being so casually and effortlessly queer.
It was a solid installment for Shira, an intriguing, complex woman from the scenes we get of her. Seeing her bonding and talking with Mickey while they played basketball was lovely.
And he learned that her reservations about Brad and Kitty’s relationship weren’t rooted in her fear of Kitty’s mental illness. She felt like her brother had given up his dreams of being with Kitty, and then he was gone and seemingly absent from their lives.
Part of the issue is that Brad was involved in covert work that he alluded to when he and Mickey had to leave their camping trip early.
Your mom and I do important work, and we help people who cannot help themselves. But doing the right thing doesn’t make you immune to the badness in this world, and my job is to watch for it and stay in front of it, and when that fails, my job is to protect my family.
Brad
We’ve heard multiple times how Mickey said his parents “helped people,” but there’s little context about the details of that assistance.
Whatever the case is with their work, Mickey can’t exactly reach out to his mother for answers now that she’s back at a mental facility with no contact.
It’s no wonder he sought out Bat Lady for more answers. And instead, we got a convoluted story about how she’s Lizzy Sobeck of the folklore about the young girl who rescued a train of children set to go to Auschwitz during the war.
The butterflies came into play during both versions of that story, and Bat Lady’s connection to Mickey was in their father both getting killed by the same man.
How the scar-faced EMT at the accident scene may be The Butcher who slaughtered people when Bat Lady was a kid is beyond me!
If Bat Lady and Mickey are connected that way, it’s 100% feasible that Dylan’s disappearance is connected to Ashley’s, even if they vanished on the same day, 27 years apart.
Shockingly, we got our first glimpse of Ashley since she vanished during Harlan Coben’s Shelter Season 1 Episode 1.
In the past, she was there, eavesdropping when Brad told Mickey about helping people and said they needed to leave at the campsite.
She was in the woods, for some reason, back then. And someone took her.
Now, wherever she is, she’s reflecting on the friendship she forged with Mickey, and she has the same blue butterfly tattoo on her shoulder that Ema has, and on the same side, too.
Because this version of the butterfly was always meant to represent protection and something beautiful and meaningful, then whoever is behind all of this must feel they have good intentions.
Perhaps, since Brad kept speaking about protecting and helping, it’s something to which he’s been connected, possibly since the day he got pulled into that house as a kid.
Bat Lady: It takes strength to live in the darkness to remember that darkness exactly how it was. Not everyone can. Question is, can you, Mickey?
Mickey: I am ready.
Sunglasses Man: He’s not ready.
Mickey: I am.
The flashback shows that Ashley was seeking Mickey out for a reason, but what was it?
And if she’s okay, why won’t she reach out? Bat Lady doesn’t know where she is or who she’s involved with at the moment, explaining why Sunglasses Man was trying to find whatever he could on Mickey’s computer.
But this means that there’s something bigger at play than what anyone thinks regarding Bat Lady.
It’s so much bigger than these players. Getting to the bottom of Octoface’s identity is key.
Over to you, Shelter Fanatics. Were you shocked to see Rachel? Did you see that Shira/Hannah twist coming? Sound off below!
All-new episodes of Harlan Coben’s Shelter stream Fridays on Prime Video.
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Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. She is an insomniac who spends late nights and early mornings binge-watching way too many shows and binge-drinking way too much tea. Her eclectic taste makes her an unpredictable viewer with an appreciation for complex characters, diverse representation, dynamic duos, compelling stories, and guilty pleasures. You’ll definitely find her obsessively live-tweeting, waxing poetic, and chatting up fellow Fanatics and readers. Follow her on Twitter.
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