‘The Changeling’ Episode 6 Recap: On the Wrong Track

Well folks, this is what I was worried about. In its sixth episode,The Changeling changes tracks, departing horror for a route deep into the urban fantasy/modern fairytale genre. That it makes this shift on literal train tracks is fitting — and also the source of the problem. I can put up with a lot in a horror show, but I can’t put up with a li’l be-boppin’ beardo underground train conductor named Wheels.

This freakin’ guy shows up in the middle of an otherwise interesting episode, depicting the aftermath of Emma’s killing of the false baby from Emma’s own perspective. This accomplishes three things. First, it firmly roots us in her mindset rather than Apollo’s, thus swapping the show’s protagonist, for a time anyway. More than that, it removes the show’s antagonist, who up until the final moments of last week’s episode had been Emma herself. This swap establishes that the central conflict is no longer Apollo vs. Emma, but Apollo and Emma against William and the dark forces he represents.

Second, it’s a clever exercise of dancing between the raindrops of the show’s now-established continuity. We learn that Emma’s stay with the witches was a brief one, because she was determined to locate her real baby and refused to take no for an answer. We learn that she stocked up the witch village’s library quickly, as a way of establishing her good intentions and as a bribe for allowing her to repeatedly leave the island. We learn that she was actually in the library when Apollo held it up with a shotgun, because she’d gone there to use the internet since the island has none. Most interestingly to me, we learn her sister believed her about the baby and the witches and helped her escape the night of the killing, something she obviously never told Apollo. And we learn for a certainty that William was sending the disappearing text messages as well as leaving the vicious trolling comments.

Third, it sets the stage for the final leg of the journey into fantasy. After Emma kills the baby, she finds a pile of dirt and a twig from the branch of an unknown tree in the crib. She takes the twig with her when she flees, and soon susses out that other women plagued by this supernatural occurrence also discovered leaves and soil in their “baby”’s crib. Using the twig and a drawing of a leaf, she discovers the tree in question: a Norway maple, an invasive species that chokes out nearby plant life with its dense canopy and roots, including eventually itself.

And that, sigh, is where Wheels come in. He’s the leader of a secluded but benevolent underground community in the tunnels beneath Grand Central Station, a multi-racial gender utopia that is functionally identical to a hippie commune from a circa-1970 off-Broadway musical. In New Orleans-accented dialogue laden with absurd beatnik wordplay like “electrickery” and “ain’t no people higher, in both senses of the word,” he introduces Emma to this improbable community of “mole people” straight out of an urban legend.

Frankly, I wish they’d stayed there. Once, not very long ago, this was a show about a mother driven to psychosis by the belief her baby is not human, and the horrified husband left behind to deal with the fact that the woman he loved more than anyone murdered their child and nearly murdered him as well. The horror stems from that, and from the uncertainty of the role of the supernatural in it all — the fear that the mother was right all along, and what that means about the world. It does not stem from a visit to the Age of Aquarius, featuring Tom Bombadil narrating a Zatarain’s commercial.  

Also not very long ago, this was a good looking show. Not so this week, as Emma’s adventures on the island are rendered in a murky, dull palette of grey-green-browns. The low-contrast lighting during the nocturnal scenes is a particular weak point, as it is on so many shows these days, even shows in the fantastic-fiction lane that should excel at scenes of moonlit peril. Seriously, watch any given Billions scene in which Paul Giamatti has a conversation with someone on a Manhattan street at night, then watch a nighttime scene from 80% of the fantasy shows on TV, then tell me which world looks more inviting and full of magic and possibility.

This is normally the point where the occasional reader will post a comment saying “It seems as though this reviewer just isn’t a fan of this kind of show.” That reader would be correct — but they shouldn’t be! I love horror, I love the three lead performances on this show, I love New York City, I love books, I love my children, and I love several people who have suffered psychotic breaks. Theoretically, this is all tailor made for me.

But if Wheels is any indication, it’s going to become less and less so. I try very hard to review what’s actually on screen, rather than making up things that haven’t happened yet and then getting mad at a show as if it had already done them. It’s entirely possible that Wheels is an anomaly, that we’re not headed to a warm-hearted paean to the power of family, that the savage intensity the show displayed in its third and fourth episodes will return. I plan on hanging onto that possibility like Emma is hanging onto hers.

This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, after the victory of the WGA in their own strike over similar issues. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the series 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.