Home Before Dark series premiere recap: What happened in Erie Harbor?

Home Before Dark begins with 9-year-old reporter Hilde Lisko and her family moving to Erie Harbor and discovering several shocking deaths.

Intrepid 9-year-old reporter and our heroine, Hilde Lisko (played by the phenomenal Brooklynn Prince) narrates the opening of Home Before Dark for us. We learn that the Lisko family is moving to Erie Harbor after Hilde’s father, Matthew (Jim Sturgess), got fired from his job.

Hilde and her father are very similar, as Hilde has journalism in her blood, just like Matthew. The other Lisko family members include her mother, Bridget (Abby Miller), and her two sisters. Hilde has always enjoyed writing about everything she sees.

Since she was a baby, her dad took her out on homicide beats and read her the newspaper. She watched All the Presidents Men more than 36 times. Hilde leaves and breaths journalism and even writes a newspaper in her spare time.

The move to Erie Harbor changes things for Hilde, as it is a much smaller town where “nothing bad ever happens,” which is much different from life in Brooklyn, New York.

Hilde struggles to fit in at her new school, and the fact Erie Harbor is where her dad grew up doesn’t make things easier. Shortly after they arrive, Hilde begins investigating everything from the man digging holes to the woman running a yard sale.

At the yard sale, Hilde meets a woman named Penny Gillis, who knew Matthew when they were younger. She even gives Hilde a bike to bring home that allegedly belonged to Matthew. Matthew doesn’t have a good reaction to the bike showing up in his driveway, and that is our first big clue that something terrible happened when Matthew was a kid.