'Home Before Dark' ending explained: What really happened to Richie Fife?
Spoilers for 'Home Before Dark' Season 1
At the end of 'Home Before Dark' Season 1, Hilde Lisko (Brooklynn Prince) finally solves the mystery of her father Matt's (Jim Sturgess) best friend Richie Fife's (Kiefer O'Reilly) disappearance.
After 10 episodes filled with twists and turns, as is the case with classic whodunnit murder mysteries -- putting every inhabitant of a little town under suspicion one by one -- we see Hilde and her father drive the aged Carol Collins slash Margaret Miller into confessing that she did have a role to play in the kidnapping that everybody knew of.
Her brother was the kidnapper, and she was a blackmailed and threatened accomplice. But what happened after the brother-sister duo kidnapped Richie in front of Matt and Frankie Briggs 31 years ago?
After Carol gives her written confession to the police, Hilde and Matt find out what happened that night. Richie was supposed to be held for ransom by Carol's brother, Ezekiel aka Zeke Miller (James Pizzinato), and he threatened to ruin Carol's new identity in the new town if she didn't drive the van. She gave in, but trouble began soon after Richie was picked up. Amidst active altercation between Richie and Zeke in the backseat of the van, Carol decided to stop the vehicle after little Richie ends up stabbing Zeke. Unfortunately, by the time Carol walked to the backdoor, she found Richie lying on the road, bleeding. Zeke had her convinced the child was dead, left her stranded on the road and sped off.
Once home, Carol gets a call from Zeke asking her to come take him to the hospital. He tells her Richie is dead and once she refuses to come, he speeds off once again, but this time Carol hears a loud crash. Upon investigating, Hilde and Matt end up at the payphone where Zeke had called Carol from and notice a metal piece lodged inside a tree trunk; a little bit beyond is a giant opening to a lake. This helps Hilde and Matt deduce that the van must have geared into the lake and that's why nobody ever spotted it all these years, but once they search the lake and even pull out the swamp covered van, the backdoor opens to reveal no one inside. Just a wrench, a shoe that was worn by Richie that night, and several broken window panes in the car.
Hilde then asks what if Richie Fife is alive and that becomes front-page news the next day. She and Matt set off to investigate what really happened to Richie Fife - sparking intrigue in the viewers' mind about why Richie - if he had managed to escape by breaking the submerging van's windows - didn't return home that night.
The easiest speculation in the scenario is that little Richie, tired of being abused - verbally, emotionally, and physically by his strict father - decided to run away from home that night. There's also a high possibility that given he was just 11, he couldn't really survive in the woods by himself for long and gritty as it might be, the body was never found because of the wild animals. But it doesn't hurt to hope that Matt's best friend is still out there somewhere, safe. At least it's giving us a second season of the townie-noir!
'Home Before Dark' premiered on Friday, April 3, with all 10 episodes only on Apple TV+.