The Changeling has captivated audiences since it dropped on AppleTV+ following the story of Victor LaValle’s book. This week many questions were answered while others left us still wondering what is happening in Apollo and Emma’s once-perfect life. This week’s episode titled “This Woman’s Work” follows the events leading up to Emma’s life-changing decisions, and what exactly led her to kill baby Brian, who was not a baby at all.
While we have not had much opportunity to see things from Emma’s perspective, this episode gives us a deeper dive into what exactly she was experiencing. From flashbacks to her journey in Brazil and the mysterious old lady who seemingly changed the course of Emma’s life. Not to mention the strange occurrence with the cave and her photo being in some Norwegian gallery, but let’s be honest we want to know what happened with baby Brian. We have been waiting to find out the circumstances surrounding his shocking death.
We witness flashbacks of when Emma confesses to baby Brian that she wishes she could love him unconditionally, and even though she somewhat still hopes and believes that Brian is her baby, something is off and she thinks it could be postpartum depression. To seek help, Emma turns to The Wise Moms Facebook group where Cal reveals that Emmas is not going crazy and that there is indeed something mysterious going on with her baby and those strange disappearing texts that she has been getting are from a sinister being that did something to her real child. While Emma battles with what she needs to do, the crazy text stalker warns her to not get involved with witches.
We then go back to Apollo’s perspective, where he is still on the mystical island in a cell next to the not-so-innocent William. As Cal returns to speak with Apollo, William interrupts, and Cal reveals that his wife Gretta will be killing him as it was William who killed his daughter. At this point, we are just as confused as Apollo and it seems like everything we initially believed was not true, and when Apollo decides to leave with Cal, William reminds him that if he doesn’t bring Gretta(his wife) to him, everyone on the island will die.
Apollo does not know what to believe anymore but he just wants to find Emma, however, Cal does explain that there are still some things they have to understand before they can find her. We even learn that after killing Brian/The imposter, Emma would return to NYC to stake books from the library where she worked to gather books so the children on the island could have a full library, which brings us closer to Emma’s mindset and what happened to Brian.
Now, this is where the plot thickens and we get some answers, Cal claims that fairies took baby Brian and put a Changeling in his place. This explains all the biting and strange habits Emma was experiencing with Brian, and it follows the same fairytale book that Apollo’s dad would read to him when he was a kid. It is also pretty obvious that William is Emma’s stalker and he is responsible for all the weird texts.
Gretta also makes a shocking revelation to Apollo about how Williams murdered their daughter, stole $70K from her account to buy the book from Apollo, then defaced it, and sent it to Gretta to taunt her.
The sweet William that Apollo met is an evil demonic presence referred to as Kinder Garten, and he has evil plans for baby Brian.
Now, in four days we will hopefully have more answers as to where the real Brian is and if Apollo and Emma’s family can ever be whole again. Catch the next episode this week, with new episodes dropping every Friday on @AppleTV+