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

Before we can dive into that, however, Penny suddenly turns up dead.  Hilde is on the scene within seconds, having followed the sirens. She noticed forced entry and footprints leading up to Penny’s house. The sheriff obnoxiously blows her off and pats her on the head, telling her to go home and sleep tight. But Hilde isn’t buying the accidental death story the cops want her to believe.

To learn more, Hilde marches into the precinct and demands to see Penny’s official death report. She charms one of the deputies, Mackenzie Johnson, who lets her look at the report. She also casually mentions that when Matthew lived in Erie Harbor as a kid, she heard that the mayor’s son, Richie, went missing.

They allegedly caught the guy who did it, but never discovered what happened to Richie. Hilde wonders if they found the right guy, and Mackenzie reveals that the man they imprisoned happened to be Penny Gillis’s brother! That grabs Hilde’s attention, as does the fact a VCR is missing from the items taken from Penny’s home. (I’m old, I can’t believe Hilde didn’t know what a VCR was).

Hilde firmly believes that Penny was murdered, to the point that she publishes an article in her new newspaper, “The Magic Hour,” and sends it to everyone in town.

Obviously, the article doesn’t go over well. Even though Hilde didn’t technically break any rules, she quickly makes herself a pariah at school. Her article accumulates hundreds of negative comments, which her parents try to hide from her. Hilde finds them anyway.

In an effort to stand up for herself at school, Hilde marches into the cafeteria and stands on top of a table. She begins to read out some of the comments to the school. Eventually, her older sister Izzy stands with her, along with two other kids named Donny and Spoon. They make for our new Stranger Things-like quartet.