Harlan Coben’s Shelter is the first teen adaptation of the eponymous mystery/thriller novel by author Harlan Coben, and it’s a doozy from the jump.
In the pilot we meet Mickey Bolitar—nephew of famed Kasselton, New Jersey basketball player Myron Bolitar—by way of his father, Brad. After a stint abroad, the family is settling into their new life in Santa Monica, California when Brad receives a phone call and tells the person on the other end that they’re back in the States. The phone call ends quickly and Brad and Mickey play some basketball—Mickey has inherited his uncle’s gifts; Brad, not so much—before going back home. In the car, Brad plays a song called “Shelter” that clearly holds some significance to the entire family when the car collides with a truck in a fiery crash.
Brad is hoisted from the car and carried away by paramedics, pronounced dead on the spot, while Mickey watches from the car. Flash forward four months, and Mickey is starting over without his parents in his dad’s hometown of Kasselton. He already has a contentious relationship with his aunt Shira, whom he accuses of hating his mom who is unable to care for him right now. Shira promises that she’ll reach out to his mom’s facility, but it’s clear that she won’t—even though she admits to her brother Myron on the phone that she’s out of her depth.
Almost immediately, Mickey makes a new friend in Arthur (who will later request the nickname Spoon because he carries one in his pocket). Spoon offers him a ride to school but Mickey declines, leaning into his lone wolf sensibilities. His walk to school is the first time he comes across the eerie house on Hobart Avenue when he hears “Shelter” playing in the midst. Though it looks abandoned, the house still has one inhabitant: an older woman with long white hair who peers down from a window. Spoon later identifies her as the “Bat Lady” and tells him about the lore around her in Kasselton (she is accused of being a witchy presence in the neighborhood) which is eerily reminiscent of the treatment Boo Radley gets in To Kill a Mockingbird. (Of course, we later find out that she is someone to be suspicious of.)
GIF 10:46 – Mickey follows the song to the house the first time
It’s the first of a few run-ins at the Bat Lady house, all of which use “Shelter” as a way of luring Mickey to the home. On his way home from school, he stumbles through a wooded path to the home’s backyard where a tombstone for “E.S.” sits. This time, Bat Lady makes contact and reveals that she knows his name and says that Mickey’s dad is still alive. When she goes back inside after dropping that monumental information, Mickey bangs on the door desperate for answers. A gothically-styled girl named Ema approaches and chastises him for bothering the old lady.
But Mickey won’t give up. After an argument with Aunt Shira where he accuses her of never liking his mom and blaming her for his dad’s death, Mickey finds himself at the house again at night. Once again, he bangs on the door but this time, the local police officer greets him with a pair of handcuffs. There are some definite racist undertones to the arrest and when Aunt Shira bails him out, there are hints at a tense history between the two.
Shira, worried about her nephew, asks about his fascination with the house before sharing the town lore: when Brad was young, a boy his age named Dylan Shakes disappeared and many assumed the Bat Lady was involved. Bullied by some older kids, Brad went into the house and “was never quite the same,” according to Shira. In her memories, Shira relives the moment hearing her brother scream for her with his small hand pressed against the window in anguish. She whispers an apology to him for whatever she allowed to happen inside, and relives the last phone call with her brother where he asked her to look out for Mickey if anything happened to him and his wife—the very same one we saw at the beginning of the episode.
At school, Mickey tries his best to live a normal life. He meets another new student named Ashley who is being recruited as a cheerleader by squad captain Rachel at the same time that the varsity basketball captain Troy Taylor (conveniently, Rachel’s boyfriend) zeroes in on him due to his family pedigree. But Mickey declines, saying basketball is something he doesn’t do anymore. Ashley, however, reluctantly agrees to try out for the cheer squad—but unbeknownst to her and Mickey, a creepy teacher is taking pictures of her in the gym and texting them to a mysterious number.
A trio of friends also emerge as Spoon and Mickey join reclusive Ema at lunch and force a friendship upon her after one of Troy’s friends Buck bothers her at lunch. She remembers seeing Mickey at the Hobart house but he lies about what the woman told him about his dad.
Mickey feels a connection with Ashley—maybe because they’re both fish out of water at the new school, or maybe just because she’s a pretty girl who gave him her number—and they make plans to meet at a diner at 6pm while standing at her locker. She’s excited to have a locker for the first time, but is jumpy when Mickey points out a butterfly etched into the locker wall. But don’t worry, she has something to cover up the markings. Ashley pulls out a magnetic mirror in the shape of a hippo and slaps it right on top.
GIF: 14:33 – Ashley at the locker
That’s not the only weird thing about Ashley: she’s also in possession of a gun in her school bag, which she seems somewhat surprised to see but immediately covers with a sweatshirt at cheerleading practice. And after texting Mickey to reconfirm their diner plans, poof! She’s gone. She ghosts him, maybe even blocks him (after all, her texts turn from blue to green), and doesn’t show up to school the next day. Later, Mickey even takes it upon himself to go to her house to check on her and he discovers that everything about her is a lie: the woman who lives in the address listed for Ashley says she doesn’t have a daughter.
Mickey decides to try to make contact with the Bat Lady one more time and when he arrives at the house, Spoon and Ema are there waiting for him. Donning some wireless headphones, he heads into the house. He doesn’t find her but he does find Ashley’s hippo locker mirror, Dylan Shakes’s baseball hat, and the “Shelter” vinyl playing in the house. Outside, Spoon and Ema meet a uniformed man who tells them to leave the property (after they pretend to be a couple and Spoon gets his first kiss), and Mickey escapes in the nick of time. Inside the home later that night, the uniformed man assassinates the creepy teacher at the behest of the Bat Lady after he admits to losing Ashley. The Bat Lady holds a picture of Mickey’s family as his blood pools at her feet.
GIF 51:46 – Bat Lady holding photo after assassination
Being a mystery series, there are quite a few things to keep our eyes on—the most obvious of which is the butterfly motif. Appearing as tattoos on the paramedic’s ankle and Ema’s shoulder, in Ashley’s locker, and on the “Shelter” album artwork, it’s clear that the butterfly symbol will hold significance down the line. The preview for episode two also points out that Dylan Shakes disappeared on September 8, the same date of Ashley’s disappearance. It’s definitely not a coincidence but it does beg the question of why 25 years have passed between incidents.
An episode-ending montage also reveals Rachel discovering Ashley’s gun and Mickey’s history teacher Mrs. Friedman looking at old news stories about Dylan Shakes. In stories like this, everyone is a suspect and we’ll have eight episodes to unravel all of the mysteries spun by Harlan Coben.
Radhika Menon (@menonrad) is a TV-obsessed writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared on Vulture, Teen Vogue, Paste Magazine, and more. At any given moment, she can ruminate at length over Friday Night Lights, the University of Michigan, and the perfect slice of pizza. You may call her Rad.