Harlan Coben's Shelter episode 7 recap: it's time to rescue Ashley

The penultimate show of Prime Video's newest TV show Harlan Coben's Shelter thunders towards a conclusion for the mystery thriller, with one of the two main stories of the season concluded and another brought to light too.

Previous episode recaps

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6

Shelter follows Mickey Bolitar who, in the wake of the death of his father, finds his high school sweetheart missing. So far through the season, we've seen him make friends, antagonize rivals and pull at threads to unravel a mystery in his town, and it's time to end one of them.

The seventh episode of Shelter, called Sweet Dreams are Made of This, sees Mickey's allies team up to complete his mission, while some enemies become friends and some friends become enemies.

If you haven't checked out the show yet, here's how to watch Harlan Coben's Shelter; spoilers ensue and we want to make sure you're up to date!

So here's our recap of Harlan Coben's Shelter episode 7.

Continuing where Mickey left off

After Mickey's (Jaden Michael) disappearance at the end of the last episode, Ema (Abby Corrigan) and Arthur (Adrian Greensmith) search for him, using a stalker app the latter installed on his phone. They find him washed up on the bank of a river, and he's rushed to hospital in a coma.

Ema decides that this must be the doings of the Bat Lady (Tovah Feldshuh), so she and Ema go to confront the elderly lady, who's recently been haunted by the voices of Brad, Mickey's dead dad. The Lady tells them that they must take up Mickey's mission now that he's out, and Rachel (Sage Linder) shows up too, following a text she thinks she received from the two.

At their school hideout, Ema and Arthur introduce Rachel to all the information they have, and the trio makes a plan to break into the club that Mickey and Rachel were staking out the night he had his 'incident'.

When they're out, Mickey starts to recover. Sunglasses Man / Dylan Shakes (Hunter Emery) comes to visit him, and tells him his side of the story of when Mickey's father as a young boy was stuck in the house — that's when he started to work as an agent for the Bat Lady. Shakes also implies that Brad is dead.

Troy's family falls apart

After googling "Am I a homewrecker?", Shira (Constance Zimmer) is visited by Troy (Brian Altemus), the son of the woman she's having an affair with. Troy is dropping off Mickey's letterman jacket since he was accepted into the basketball team, but the young man also warns Shira from coming near his family — evidently, he thinks Shira is sleeping with his dad, not his mom.

Troy later finds his dad (Lee Aaron Rosen) miserable in his car, and the man tells his son about the divorce, and that it's all the fault of Shira.

Troy decides to go back to Shira's house, but through a window he sees his mom (Missi Pyles) with Shira, and realizes who the affair is really between.

The plot to rescue Ashley

At the club, Arthur sneaks through vents, however after taking a wrong turn he's captured by the bad guys. Candy (Sophia Adler) recognizes him as a friend of Mickey — he tells her that his friends are in the alleyway before he's taken by some henchmen.

Candy goes to Ema and Rachel and helps them with a plan to steal the main baddy's phone to unlock The Dungeon where Ashley is. The duo manages to woo the sleazy guy and steal the code from his phone while pretending to take a picture, but as they're getting to The Dungeon, he figures out their plan and attacks them.

While this happens, Candy sneaks onto a van that's taking Arthur to the beach to have him executed. They talk and Arthur finds out that this girl is his age, so he promises to break her out. However on the beach, while Candy rescues the boy, she's shot and dies in his arms! He's clearly traumatized by this.

Rachel and Ema beat the baddy in a fight with the help of Ashley, who they emancipate mid-way through the fight, and escape into the alleyway. However once there the head honcho of the operation shows up and takes Ema at gunpoint while telling Ashley to get into the car of the person who bought her. It's a tense standoff...

... until Mickey shows up in a van to rescue everyone and run over the head honcho. Shortly afterwards a load of friendly helpers show up and a gunfight erupts while Mickey and the girls drive away.

Later, Ashley explains her past to Mickey, about how she was nearly liberated before, when she saw Mickey and Brad on their camping trip. They bid a final farewell, as the girl needs to move to somewhere safer.

One of the friendly helpers who rescued the group was the octopus-faced man, who they all thought was a baddy — in fact, he was just a plant, and his tattoo is just a temporary one that he wipes off. The man gives Mickey some documentation from his dad, including a letter.

When he gets home later, Mickey reads the letter, which is from his dad, but quickly deduces from it that Bat Lady was the person who killed him, in punishment for abandoning the cause.

Mickey rushes to the Bat Lady house and finds her in a room lined with pictures of kids who've been rescued (including Arthur, curiously). She states that she didn't kill Brad, and that The Butcher / Luther did after Brad rescued him — but before she can explain further, this scarred figure shows up. He stabs Bat Lady, locks Mickey in the picture room and sets fire to it, trapping the boy in a room rapidly filling with smoke.