‘The Changeling’ Episode 5 Recap: What’s Wrong with This Picture?

There was a lot going on in Emma Valentine’s life, before she ended her baby’s. For one thing, it really wasn’t her baby.

Or was it? This week’s episode of The Changeling, “This Woman’s Work” (Episode 5), is reflective of its Kate Bush–derived title: It spends much of its time showing us the events that led up to that tragic event from Emma’s perspective. It shows the first time she saw the witch by the waterfall in the jungle years earlier, and her first warning from the locals to steer clear. It shows her hitching a ride into the jungle with a friendly photographer, declining his request to shoot her in an abandoned stone structure they find — then mysteriously stripping naked and photographing herself in his absence. (More on this later.)

It shows her talking to her baby — or is that The Baby? — relatively early on during her postpartum depression, about how she wishes he’d known her when she was as happy as she was on her wedding night, about how she wishes she were a better mommy. It shows her first contact with the Wise Moms Facebook group, through which Cal immediately responds to inquire if she’s been getting mysterious self-deleting text messages, one of which immediately follows warning her not to talk to witches.

It shows her later, arguing with the baby in its crib, swearing she won’t let it drive her crazy even as it purrs like an animal and laughs like a demon. It shows her agreeing to use the Wise Moms’ method as she ignores the baby’s cries, which its laughter morphed into after she left its room upon throwing a bottle at it.

It shows her preparing for the ritual that would cost the baby’s life and nearly Apollo’s as well. It shows the baby biting her, its face morphing into bizarre shapes.

In other words, it shows that she was telling the truth, that paranormal phenomena really were plaguing her, that her baby was not a baby at all but some other thing. 

At least that’s what the structure of the episode primes us to believe. When we see the action in filmed narrative through a clear focalizing character, Emma in this case, we’re conditioned to believe what we’re seeing as the truth of what befell them, unless it’s eventually revealed to be a dream or vision or hallucination or lie or plain-old wishful thinking. 

But it’s not like there’s some rulebook that mandates trustworthiness on the part of our POV character’s apparent experiences; for all we know their version of things could be anything from partially distorted to completely bogus. (The Affair made an entire series out of playing with this uncertainty.) The Changeling, which has already done much with the similarities between psychotic ideation and supernatural horror, is capable of pulling a bait and switch here. Think of the sound of that formerly freakish baby crying in vain as Emma burrows deeper into the Wise Moms; the ambiguity is deliberate and unnerving.

Not that I think there’s much room for doubt anymore. When we’re not in the past with Emma, we’re in the present with Apollo, who gets a guided tour of the Wise Moms’ island’s facilities from coven head Cal herself. The assembled witches, all of whom have done what Emma did, have built a little village for themselves, complete with a school and a library. Apollo, whose two favorite things in life were being a dad and books, takes to the prospect of reading to kids like a duck to water. It’s the first time he’s been really happy in the moment since the premiere.

But Cal also insists that the island is not in New York City anymore, but has been removed from that plane of existence by the witches’ assembled power. She insists that the evil fairy tale world of Apollo’s beloved storybook is real, and that Emma is in it somewhere.

And she outs Apollo’s formerly mild-mannered buddy William as a murderer of one of his daughters, which his wife Gretta (Michelle Giroux) confirms. That rare copy of To Kill a Mockingbird he sent her to win her back? He stole her life savings to buy it, then scrawled the dead girl’s name on every page. When Apollo runs off to confront him, he finds him transformed within his cell, healthy and heroically coiffed instead of balding and beaten to shit. Growling like a beast, William says that isn’t his real name, that some mysterious new friends showed him his true self, and that he’s been “Kinder Garten,” the anonymous account leaving cruel comments on posts about the murder. 

He’s a troll, get it? And he’s been embroiled with Apollo’s life ever since he was first stopped in his tracks by the site of that nude photo of Emma, staring at him, “like a fucking sorceress” in her sister’s words, through a gallery window.

All of this is engrossing and effective, powered by the raw and lively performances of LaKeith Stanfield, Clark Backo, and Samuel T. Herring. (Jane Kaczmarek I’m a little cooler on, though I think that’s more the character than the acting.) Yet I find it difficult even now to give myself over to The Changeling completely. 

Despite what wrestler Bret “Hitman” Hart might refer to as its excellence of execution, it still can’t shake my distaste for modern/urban fairytales, for one thing. It’s an inherently twee genre, its dark magic too cute at its roots, as decade after decade of Neil Gaiman knockoffs have demonstrated. (To say nothing of Gaiman himself. No, I still haven’t forgiven anyone involved for American Gods.) 

I feel similarly about benevolent witches, same as I feel about benevolent vampires, benevolent werewolves, benevolent giant spiders, whatever. You know me, Marge: I like my beer cold, my TV loud, and my Draculas eeevil. 

Most of all, there’s my lingering suspicion that The Changeling will eventually have some big obvious gloopy moral: the power of family, the magic of storytelling, the need to Believe Women, whatever. (Please note that we do in fact need to believe women, but believing people exhibiting every symptom of a psychotic break is a different matter entirely, and the two should not be conflated.) Maybe it’s all that amber lighting, but there remains a syrupy warmth to this show I distrust. With few exceptions, I like my horror cold as the grave.

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the show being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.