The third episode of Shelter is titled “The Dirt Locker” and there are at least two lockers in question surrounding the disappearance of Ashley: her school locker and the bank locker that housed a number of fake IDs and a wad of cash.
Mickey, Ema, and Spoon aren’t aware of the latter so their search begins at school. Spoon brings the crew to the “Spindell Spot” aka the janitor closet where his dad works and unveils a red yarn board tracking all of the information they have right now and how it might connect to the disappearance of Dylan Shakes over 20 years ago. When they realize they haven’t looked in the most obvious place, they rush to Ashley’s locker but find that it has been cleared out by the school. But never fear—Spoon promises to get the security footage to further investigate the mystery around her disappearance.
During Ema’s shift of combing through the house of footage, she notices her crush Whitney checking her out as she walks through the halls. But her smile is quickly erased when she sees Ashley speed walking away from something and hiding in a corner of the hall crying. Ema and Spoon back track her steps and find another angle where it seems like Ashley was being bullied by a group of cheerleaders before she storms off into the camera’s blind spot.
As they keep watching they finally see not one but two people visit Ashley’s locker: first, the uniformed guy working for Bat Lady visits at 3am followed by the head cheerleader Rachel, who was found sneaking around the other bank locker as well. But it’s not clear what, if anything, both parties take from the locker aside from the hippo mirror that winds up in Bat Lady’s possession.
Speaking of the second locker, Rachel’s run-in with OctoFace has given her serious PTSD. After OctoFace confronted her at the locker, she escapes using Ashley’s gun. In the aftermath, she has become distant from her boyfriend Troy, who feels like she’s pulling away, and she accidentally slaps him when he gets too touchy with her.
Troy is distracting himself by becoming interested in the dynamics between his parents and Shira, and keeps needling them about what exactly happened between all of them. Mickey’s grandparents throw a 49th anniversary party at the house and invite the Taylor family, allowing his needling to happen out in the open. But the party is also a way for Shira and Hannah to reconnect and rekindle their friendship…and more. Before Hannah leaves, she says goodbye to Shira with a big old kiss on the lips, which promptly turns into a little makeout session.
Mickey shares a couple of sweet moments with his grandparents who are putting on a brave face after the loss of their son. He overhears them talking about how their son was “taken away” from them, which prompts Mickey to remember a conversation he had with his dad while they were abroad about how their job is to do good in the world even if sometimes bad things get in the way. It’s a vague and slightly ominous warning, only made more alarming when we see that Ashley (with a butterfly tattoo on her shoulder) was there too eavesdropping before she was kidnapped—her appearance in Mickey’s life was no coincidence. We also get a glimpse of her looking at the photo of her with Mickey at school, so we at least know that she’s alive.
At school, a new teacher arrives in the wake of Mr. V’s resignation to take over the theater department: EGOT actress Angela Wyatt. It’s curious that someone of that stature and magnitude would want to return to teach high school theater, which almost immediately makes me question how they’re involved in the Bat Lady’s web.
But Spoon, apparently a theater hopeful, desperately wants to be cast as the Phantom in the school’s production of Phantom of the Opera, which is aptly about an obsession with a mysterious figure, and we’ll likely see more of Wyatt through this lens. Spoon is also carrying around a bobblehead that he picked up from Mickey’s room when he was dropping off pie in the last episode, which Mickey doesn’t recognize and will definitely draw a line to the uniformed man being in his house.
By episode’s end Mickey is breaking into the Hobart house yet again and navigates a series of underground tunnels into the house, he’s greeted by the Bat Lady and answers to her identity. Perhaps the strangest plot twist is the reveal that the Bat Lady is actually Lizzy Sobek, Anne Frank’s contemporary in Nazi Germany about whom Mrs. Friedman was teaching in class.
She recounts a memory about trying to free captive children by using etchings of the butterfly into trees. But she was only slightly successful due to the wrath of the Butcher of Lodz, a man hellbent on hunting down the children (and, apparently, her father). We see him through her memories and immediately see that it’s the same face as the paramedic who was on the scene when Mickey’s dad died.
I won’t lie—this Nazi development threw me for a loop and is certainly a choice that will have consequences if not handled correctly. Here’s hoping that the writers are able to navigate the weight of that type of story in the episodes to come.
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.