Episode 7 of Harlan Coben’s Shelter Season 1 was all about leading to the one big mystery the show has been hiding from us till now – Who is the paramedic? What does he have to do with Mickey, his father’s death, and the Bat Lady? Some of those questions are now on the verge of receiving an answer. The episode’s main focus shifts from the kids being scared of what lies ahead of them to them realizing that they can be heroes, too. Some of the more important themes that run on the undercurrent of the narrative come to the foreground as well as close towards a season’s end. Not sure if the show is doing justice to what it set out to do, but it makes sure to keep things engaging.
*spoilers ahead*
Harlan Coben’s Shelter (Season 1), Episode 7 “Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This” Recap:
The new episode of Shelter opens with Bat Lady being haunted by Brad’s voices. It’s evident that her connection with Mickey’s father is more personal than we imagined because we can see her call him ‘love’ as she frantically looks for him.
Spoon and Ema try to track down Mickey using the app that Spoon had secretly installed on his phone and reach the Pennsylvania River shore to find his phone abandoned, and Mickey is lying there washed up on the shore unconscious.
Meanwhile, Troy pays a visit to Shira to drop off Mickey’s jacket for making it to the team and also warns her to stay away from her dad (who he assumes Shira is in love with). She then receives a call that Mickey is admitted to the hospital and heads there.
Ema and Spoon are angry and assume that it’s the Bat Lady’s fault. They go to her place and try to reason with her and ask her to leave Mickey alone. However, the Bat Lady tells them about the loss of her childhood and how they need to band together in order to help Ashley. An unlikely alliance between Spoon, Ema, and Rachel (who also reaches there) is formed. It is almost like the new band of Abeona protectors is slowly forming shape, and they will be Sheltering abandoned children from bad things.
The three of them then suit up and get ready to stake into the underground club that led to Mickey being in the hospital.
What changed Bard after he went into Bat Lady’s house all those years ago?
A nice little moment at the hospital helps us really understand the themes of the show better. The sunglasses man, who we learned to be Dylan in the previous episode tells us the secret behind his cap being at the Bolitar residence.
He tells him that when Shira and her friends bullied Brad into the Bat Lady’s house, he met Dylan there, who was saved by the Bat Lady from his abusive father. In spite of being just a kid, Brad understood the gravity of keeping Dylan’s existence a secret and bid his goodbyes by promising to do things for children who needed help, just like Dylan. The two friends exchanged their caps, which explains why Shira found Dylan’s cap in Brad’s old room.
Dylan also tells Mickey that each generation will have abused children and the ones who will band together to protect and save them. This time, it is Mickey and his friends who are destined to do the saving.
Meanwhile, using the maps from his father’s janitorial system, Spoon tries to get inside the underground club but loses connection with Rachel and Ema, ending up inside the lap-dance room where the bouncer catches him. He also meets Candy, who realizes that he is there for Ashley and tells him that she will try to get him out of this fix.
So, Candy goes out and informs Rachel and Ema that they have caught Spoon, and they can’t really do anything to get him out of it because if they do, they’ll kill him. She promises to help him but asks them to put their main focus on saving Ashley because the buyer will come to take her away in an hour, and then it would be beyond their control.
She tells them about the dungeon and how they need to get Buddy’s phone so that they can get the ever-changing code of the dungeon. She lays down a plan for them, where they need to get to the VIP area of the club. Ema and Rachel pose as lesbians and tell the bouncer about Ema being Angelica Wyatt’s kid, so Buddy lets them in.
Abby Corrigan as Ema Winslow & Sage Linder as Rachel Caldwell in Harland Coben’s Shelter Season 1, Episode 7.They then lure him to take a photo, and Rachel sneaks into the app and gets the code that is valid for 2 minutes. But, Buddy realizes that they are up to something and checks to see the code generator app was last used. The girls run towards the dungeon and try to punch in the code, but Buddy gets there, too, and tries to stop them. They try to fight him off while trying to punch in the code, but he almost overpowers them. But, since they were able to put in the code in the nick of time, Ashley comes out and hits Buddy over the head, making him unconscious. The three of them then run away.
Meanwhile, Spoon, who is now strapped and put into a van, is helped out of it by Candy, who sneaks in. After chatting for a bit, Spoon realizes that he knows Candy from back when he was a kid. He tells her that he will help her. But when the bouncer takes him out and is about the fire at him, Candy intervenes and hits him instead. However, the bullet hits her, and she dies in Spoon’s arms. Spoon’s biggest fear of losing the ones he likes comes up again, but the show doesn’t really put its attention on it.
Rachel, Ema, and Ashley try to get away, but Kylie (the woman who double-crossed Mickey in the previous episode) gets a hold of Ema and puts her at gunpoint, instructing Ashley to get into the car of the buyer. Rachel is in the middle of the alleyway, unable to either help Ema or Ashley, and just when we think things will go bad, Mickey, who had been tracking them using Spoon’s app, runs Kylie over and rescues Ashley.
However, before they could leave, the men from inside the club started firing, and the kids are then helped to escape from there by Octoface (that’s right!). Octoface is, in fact, one of the good guys. He has been working with Abeona and wanted to help Ashley and not the other way around.
On the other hand, Troy, who is worried about his parents getting separated, sneaks up and finds out that Shira and his mom have a thing for each other.
Rachel, Ema, Spoon, and Mickey take Ashley far away from the action, but she says that she would have to leave again because that is how her life has always been. She also confesses that the school’s first day wasn’t the first time she saw Mickey. She tells him that his father had once rescued her before she was taken in again by Kylie’s men. She reminds him of the camping trip she had with her father and draws down the fact that she and Mickey have a special connection that can’t come to fructification just yet.
Octoface and the other Abeona members arrive, and Ashley bids goodbye to Mickey. This is when Octoface hands over a letter from Brad to Mickey.
Harlan Coben’s Shelter (Season 1), Episode 7 “Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This” Ending, Explained:
Who is Luther?
When Mickey returns home, Ema comforts him by saying that they will always be there for each other and then leaves.
When Mickey opens the letter that Octoface gave him, he gets extremely angry. The letter says that Brad wished to Leave Abeona because he wanted a life with Kitty and Mickey. So, Mickey, upon reading this, assumes that the Bat Lady forced him to stay and goes fuming into her house.
We see Bat Lady standing right in the middle of a room that is full of photographs of children that they have saved so far. Mickey asks her for the reason why he killed his father, but Bat Lady says that he adored Brad and would never do anything of that sort to him.
She tells Mickey that he and his friends are rescuers, just like his father. However, she also tells him that sometimes fate doesn’t sit right with such people. She tells him that his father was a good man who also ended up rescuing Luther, the paramedic who we have been seeing from all these episodes.
She tells him that there’s a terrible tale about Luther, Mickey’s butcher. But before she can tell him more about him, Luther sneaks up from being and plunges a knife into Bat Lady’s heart, essentially killing her. The ending of Episode 7 of Harlan Coben’s Shelter finds Mickey getting trapped inside the room of photos as Luther sets it up on fire.
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Harlan Coben’s Shelter (Season 1), Episode 7 Links: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes
Harlan Coben’s Shelter (Season 1), Episode 7 Cast: Jaden Michael, Constance Zimmer, Adrian Greensmith, Abby Corrigan, Sage Linder,
Where to watch Harlan Coben’s Shelter
