Each week, Joe and Terry discuss Apple TV+’s new series The Changeling, based on the novel by Victor LaValle.

Spoilers follow for Episodes 1-3

Episode 1

TERRY

Well we’re back on the fiction TV recap beat, Joe, after covering HBO’s Last Call docuseries just a month ago. And this one is a weird beast, at least based on the first episode.

Apple TV+’s new show is based on Victor LaValle’s novel of the same name. LaValle is an acclaimed, award-winning author of books like Big Machine, The Devil in Silver, as well as The Changeling. Two of his novels won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel; The Changeling was also nominated and it won the World Fantasy Award, the Locus Award and the British Fantasy Award.

So we’re dealing with a multi-award winning novel, which is honestly the exact kind of story that Apple TV+ would want to dabble in.

Weirdly enough, The Changeling’s showrunner Kelly Marcel is best known for co-writing the two Venom movies, as well as Saving Mr. Banks and…Fifty Shades of Grey. These are wildly divergent stories and her latest continues that trend.

The Changeling begins with a narrator (author Victor LaValle, himself) who immediately tells us we’re in the world of fairy tales. “Once upon a time,” he begins, “a specific time, July 5th, 1825, to be exact…” he tells the story of a group of immigrants attempting to sail out of Norway to America, seeking religious freedom. LaValle explains that not only was this an improbable crossing, but an impossible one. And yet, they made it. Somehow. Against all odds.

“Tell me your journey, each of you. Tell me your life’s voyage. And I will tell you who you are.” He concludes, before shifting the narrative to a library in Queens in 2010. We’re quickly introduced to bibliophile Apollo (LaKeith Stanfield) and librarian Emma (Clark Backo). On this particular day, Apollo finally gets the nerve to ask Emma out…but she quickly shoots him down with a “mm-mm.” Apollo won’t take no for an answer…but before we get to that, we have to go to the past.

To explain Apollo’s persistence, The Changeling takes us back to 1968 and The Great Garbage Strike, where a parole officer named Brian West (Jared Abrahamson) meets a receptionist named Lillian Kagwa (Alexis Louder). He accidentally gets her fired, but continues to ask her out on dates. For years. Until 1977 when she finally says, “yes.”

Back in 2010, it takes Apollo six attempts to get Emma to say yes and, over dinner, we find out a bit about her life. Emma’s parents died when she was five, and her older sister Kim adopted her. When she saw the movie Quilombo, she realized how big the world is and it ignited a wanderlust in her. In fact, that’s why she kept telling Apollo no. She’s planning on going to Brazil and doesn’t know when she’ll be back.

This all seems like a romantic drama, split between two different time periods, but The Changeling introduces horror in this moment when Emma asks about Apollo’s past and we’re greeted with a brief image of a person with a black-blue faceless mask and ominous music. “One sad story is enough for a first date,” he responds. In the past, as Brian and Lillian get closer, we’re greeted with a similar flashback of pain and horror for Lillian, who repeats the same statement: “One sad story is enough for a first date.”

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg, Joe. For a 47 minute first episode, The Changeling stuffs a whole lot of magical realism, different concepts of magic itself, and hints of the fantastical that suggest the show’s name has roots in fairy tales. So let’s dive in. Are you familiar with Victor LaValle’s work/this particular book? What do you make of Emma’s trip to Brazil, the old woman by the lagoon and the three wishes she’s given? Is the structure of this episode working for you, with the reveals of the connection between Brian/Lillian and Apollo? And what exactly is going on with the faceless monster/Brian West’s disappearance and Apollo’s recurring nightmare?

JOE

You’re right, Terry, that there is a ton of stuff going on in this first episode. It’s not dense per se; most of this premiere is relatively easy to follow, but there are plenty of balls being juggled.

What works best for me is how cyclical this is. The boat in the prologue is from Norway and later we learn from Emma’s friend Michelle (Rasheda Crockett) that a nude photograph Emma took of herself in São Paulo is hanging in a gallery in…Norway! There’s also a lot of repetition: not just the lines of dialogue you mentioned above, but visuals as well, including Alex arriving at the door after a long absence to whisk Apollo away into the mist-filled bathroom. All of this repetition simultaneously suggests that these events and characters are connected, but also that history is linked and/or repeating.

As someone who was unaware of LaValle’s work except by name/reputation (he’s one of the first Black horror authors that come up if you Google), this is a fascinating, albeit challenging introduction to his work. Episode One demands that audiences pay attention, even though the actual narrative essentially boils down to a series of meet-cutes with ominous implications.

We know, for instance, that Emma and Apollo will get together in the same way that we knew that Alex and Lillian would get together. There’s an inevitability to The Changeling that is pretty captivating as a narrative conceit: it feels playful in the way that romantic comedies tend to lean into where we know that the couple will wind up together and it’s simply a question of when and what obstacles must be overcome.

In this case, it’s not just the repeated “nos” from the women, but also something like Emma’s months-long sojourn to Brazil when it’s unclear when, or even if, she’ll ever return to Apollo.

Of course, these are all very human-level stakes and, as you said, The Changeling is playing in the world of magical realism. Apollo’s recurring nightmare about his father ripping off a mask (which honestly resembles Blackface, albeit without the actual human features) is one fantastical element, as is Emma’s encounter with the elderly woman who grants her three wishes. We’ve both seen enough horror films to be incredibly suspect of Emma’s deal, although perhaps the story of Rumpelstiltskin is more appropriate given the series’ predilection for fairytales.

I have a feeling that we’ll learn a great deal more about these elements as the series progresses, though I’ll confess that the narrative Easter Egg that I’m most excited to see paid off is the frightening children’s book To the Waters and the Wild that Apollo finds in a box of his father’s belongings as a teenager. Considering the name of the series, I’m reasonably certain that we’re dealing with some kind of (re)interpretation of the creatures that are prominent in Irish folklore. Changelings are mischievous doppelgangers and they often have a role to play in stealing children, so the fact that Emma finally gives birth to her son during the subway blackout at episode’s end is prophetic and dread-inducing.

Obviously there’s also the element of the third, unspoken wish that Emma made. We’re unaware of what it was, but it’ll be interesting to see how this all unfolds. Apollo is a dutiful husband, but his attitude to the price of the food at the bougie restaurant clearly indicates that he has money issues, and if anything happens to their child, then he’s technically breaking two of Emma’s three wishes.

But I’m very curious to see if the next episode will reveal what Emma’s third wish is. So let’s dig into that

Episode 2

…and it does not. Something tells me that this could be a tease that hangs over the season, since we do briefly flash back to Emma making the wish.

For the most part, Episode 2 keeps the focus on Emma as she struggles with what doctors would typically classify as post-partum. We learn more about her troubled back story, which involves her sister Kim (Amirah Vann) lying to her about the fiery death of their parents that left them in foster care and we also see that in the six months since baby Brian’s birth on the NY subway, things have not gotten easier for Emma and Apollo.

There’s one magical day, when Uncle Patrice (Malcolm Barrett) lures Apollo out to an estate sale and the new father discovers a first edition copy of To Kill A Mockingbird signed by Harper Lee to Truman Capote, that suggests all of their financial issues will be solved, but for the most part, the first half year is torture.

Baby Brian doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t latch on to breast feed either, and when he does, Emma is bitten (despite the doctor confirming later that he has no teeth). Most strangely of all, Emma begins receiving ominous text photos of Apollo and Brian and her; pictures that were taken by someone else, who has the ability to make the images disappear afterwards.

Naturally Apollo never sees this, and assumes that his wife is sleep deprived. Later, when things are at their worst, he calls Emma the problem and encourages her to take more pills. This is after Kim has already accompanied Emma to collect a bag full of chains from a woman living in a dodgy apartment, and Emma has taken Brian on a walk where she yells at him, calls him an asshole and suggests he’s the devil.

Obviously this is pretty disturbing stuff. Backo really shines in an episode that demands the actress go to pretty dark places, which is reflected in both her disheveled hair and sunken features (kudos to hair and makeup), as well as the dim apartment lighting.

Typically I hate in media res openings that turn into a flashback, but in this case, the opening is jarring because it’s unclear what drove Emma to this state. Flashing back allows us to pay attention to Emma’s increasingly erratic and manic reactions, while also analyzing how much of this is “regular” post-partum, how much is inherited trauma from her mother’s mental illness, and how much of this is supernatural and tied to her wishes in South America.

The Changeling has only gently leaned into its supernatural elements thus far, but both episodes have done a solid job of reinforcing the series’ more straightforward human drama with a tinge of mystery and wonder (aided in no small part by LaValle’s narration and the whimsical musical score).

Terry: what do you think is going on here? Were you satisfied seeing Stanfield take a bit of a backseat to Backo here? Were you excited to see Adina Porter as Lillian, Apollo’s mother? And how much do we need a baptism for Baby Brian?

TERRY

I’ll be honest, after the first episode I wasn’t completely sold on The Changeling. It had some really cute moments, fun repetitions of themes and lives intertwining, but it felt overstuffed for the runtime.

This episode, though, like the baby, sunk its figurative teeth into me for what turned out to be a very jarring hour of paranoia, helped by the exquisite camerawork of director of photography Chirstopher Norr (Sinister). At first, it was the flashy camera trickery to loudly explain the madness overtaking Emma and Apollo’s small family. The way the camera spins as Emma and Kim walk down a dingy apartment hall, carrying a bag of chains (!) immediately evoked Emma’s mental state.

But it was the smaller moments that really made me appreciate what was happening. Just as Emma keeps getting these self-deleting photos of Apollo and the baby (and then later her), taken by someone who is watching from the sidelines, Norr stations the camera in voyeuristic ways.

Take, for example, when Apollo and Brian are meeting other dads at the park. While the camera stays mostly in a more comfortable position, there’s a moment when it’s all of a sudden farther away, looking out at them from, possibly, the woods.

Later, when Emma gets a text message photo after locking up the library, the camera switches to inside the library, looking out at her. Like the increasing paranoia and feelings that someone–or something–is getting closer and closer to the family, the camera takes on a more sinister presence. At one point towards the end of the episode, it’s stationed right outside the family’s window, looking up at Emma while she holds Brian. It mimics the photographs in some ways, but it also suggests that the family is being watched constantly.

And the threat is getting closer.

After Episode 1’s character-filled introduction, I was happy to see the focus tighten and the attention placed mostly on Emma’s deteriorating condition. It’s always a joy to see Adina Porter show up, and I hope she gets to have more things to do as the show goes on besides being the slightly creepy religious mother who thinks it's okay to grab Emma’s breasts and call them “wrong.” Her insistence of a baptism and Emma’s eventual decision that Brian does need to be baptized is curious. I’m hopeful The Changeling doesn’t devolve into Christianity vs. Fairies/magic.

I enjoyed the subtle way the supernatural horror slinks into the already crushing weight of having a baby that won’t stop crying. I was annoyed at the lazy use of prescription drugs, though. It’s a time-honored trope in movies (particularly horror) to show that the person isn’t doing well when they have that orange prescription bottle. In an episode where everything is firing intensely, the shorthand use of it made me roll my eyes (Apollo’s dismissive “why don’t you go take another pill or something” doesn’t help).

As for what I think is going on here, we’re obviously pushing deeper into the magical realism the first episode introduced. One thing I didn’t mention from the first episode that I’m curious whether it’ll have anything to do with the story is the use of Aleister Crowley, a real life person who believed in Magick and spent time in New York City.

In the first episode, Apollo finds a postcard from him with the phrase “Some men are born sodomites, some achieve sodomy and some have sodomy thrust upon them.” Simply mentioning his name places The Changeling in a magical realm and the repeated use of William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Stolen Child” (here annotated as To the Waters and the Wild book) suggests that fairies are involved. Was Brian, the baby, kidnapped by fairies in a way that the old Brian (and Apollo’s dad) vanished, only to return to potentially kidnap Apollo?

Who knows…but I’m hoping that that’s the case because, otherwise, it’s going to be a crushing show about depression.

Let’s turn our attention to the third of these initial episodes, though, and see what we have in store.

EPISODE 3

While Episode 2 handled the paranoid thriller subgenre incredibly effectively, the horror parts of Episode 3 didn’t really ring true for me, Joe. It opens with the chains Emma grabbed in the previous episode, except now they are on Apollo, who is tied to a pipe with a bike lock on his neck and blood pouring out of his mouth. With haziness, we see glimpses of horror from the chains to a hammer, to a concoction sitting in a bowl to a kettle boiling. And then Emma enters the frame, her hair looking as wild as her eyes are vacant.

She’s giving zombie meets J-Horror ghost and her stuttering walk and her very wide open eyes almost made The Changeling veer into B-grade horror comedy. It was easily the most upsetting scene, and yet I almost laughed at the performance and Apollo shouting, “I am the god Apollo!” It almost felt like camp. For me, it ruined what was otherwise a horrifying opening scene in which Emma grabs the bottom of a boiling pot of water and whacks Apollo with a hammer.

The action cuts forward at least three months and gives us some context. Brian, the baby? Dead. Emma, the mother? Missing. Apollo, the dad? In jail for bringing a shotgun to the library in search of his missing wife. He only got a few months and now he’s walking around NYC like a zombie himself. Patrice has him over for dinner, where Apollo hands over the first edition, signed copy of To Kill a Mockingbird and Patrice deftly convinces him not to commit suicide.

Intercut with Apollo dealing with the fallout are Lillian’s struggles as a single mother attempting to care for four year old Apollo while doing whatever it takes to keep her job. Apollo is left at home on Saturdays, where, it’s revealed, the nightmares he’s had about his own father Brian showing up were actually memories. It’s also revealed that Brian didn’t abandon his family. Lillian filed for divorce because he was basically The Fun Dad who was draining their income.

On the drama side of The Changeling, the script by Kelly Marcel and the direction of Jonathan van Tulleken works much better than the opening horror moments. Seeing Apollo aimlessly walking the streets, thinking back to the time when Baby Brian was still alive and dealing with grief groups worked incredibly well.

My comment in the second episode about The Changeling being a crushing show about depression feels true, here. And even when the hints of magic start to seep into the narrative, it’s still wrapped around this incredibly uncomfortable mediation of survivor’s guilt and depression.

It’s not a cheery hour of television.

That said, as a whole, I love the way these initial episodes unravel, starting with an almost romantic comedy wrapped in a sumptuous fairytale about librarians, booksellers and magical whimsy before turning into a horror show. It’s like we’re stuck on a downward spiral that’s slowly peeling back the layers of happiness and magical realism. And while the horror aspect felt a bit too stilted, the way the episode ends has me cautiously optimistic about the twisted story that’s unfolding.

But what about you, Joe? Did the horror elements work better for you than they did for me? Did you appreciate the way the narrative continues to mirror itself with its use of repetitions? What do you make of the grief group’s new member and the similar stories she (and maybe Father Jim, too?) experienced with her child? And, finally…witches?

JOE

I’ll confess that the horror elements did work for me, Terry. I can definitely understand why Apollo yelling his now trademark line was a bit campy (it also took me out momentarily), but the image of Emma unflinchingly lifting the boiling kettle from the bottom as her hand sizzled, and the image of her slamming the door leading into baby Brian’s crib were pretty horrifying.

I have a feeling a bunch of folks are going to be legitimately upset by this development.

Because you’re right: it’s shocking how the series has negotiated its different subgenres and seeing Emma go from cute librarian to horror movie villain (yikes on that hair and hunch!) in only three episodes is extremely discomforting.

Possibly my favourite part of the series is not just how smoothly it’s maneuvering between genres, but how elliptical the storytelling is. In this episode alone, we’re flashing back and forth between the attack and Apollo’s recovery, his attempts to re-enter the world via chicken dinners with Patrice and grief counselling in the church, and then Lillian’s montage-lite Saturday work schedule (Sidebar: let’s talk about the punitive misogyny of her boss Charles making her work Saturdays because she refused his sexual advances. Oof!)

I’m fascinated by how deftly the series is constructed narratively. It’s well-done, but it also entrusts the audience a great deal to keep up. There’s upwards ten different characters and at least four different timelines to keep track of between the flashbacks, so there’s a lot going on.

Now, I did want to zero in on one point: the runtime. These episodes are clocking in at around 50+ minutes so far and while the narrative and the timelines are smoothly delivered, I’m finding the pacing a bit janky. There’s been at least one or two points in every episode when I think we’re about to cut to credits…only to discover there’s another five to ten to fifteen minutes left.

Considering Apple is dropping these first three episodes (of 8) in one go, I can help but wish that some of these episodes were structured differently so that we maybe got ten but they were only 40 minutes each (but then they’d have to pay the talent - such as writers and actors - more and as the continued strike proves, studios and streamers don’t want to do that).

The bit with the mother experiencing the same disappearing media as Emma in Apollo’s grief group is definitely intriguing. As you mentioned, there’s no shortage of underplayed magic going on in the series - from Apollo’s father exhaling black smoke when he appears at the door to the mist Lillian discovers when she returns from work to the confirmation of, yes, witches at episode’s end. I think if the show continues to lightly tow the supernatural line, it should play well; I’m mildly concerned if this goes too heavily into witchcraft because that seems like it would go against the more somber, melancholy tone.

Memory is suspect (or perhaps it’s just malleable?), particularly when it is mixed with grief and depression, so I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this is more about how superstition mixes with trauma to produce seemingly supernatural events. I do think there’s magic at work in this story, but particularly thinking of the way that Apollo’s memory of his father has shifted from a gray-faced figure to one who now spouts black mist, I think there’s an element of unreliable narrator at play here.

But we’ll see when we return for episode four and the halfway point of the series. Look for that next week on QueerHorrorMovies.

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The Changeling airs Fridays on Apple TV