The Changeling Review: When It's Good, It's Very, Very Good, But When It's Bad, It's Horrid

For about two-thirds of its run-time — approximately five episodes — Apple TV+'s "The Changeling," based on Victor LaValle's bestselling novel of the same name, is excellent. It's romantic and taut and mysterious. It is very much the "fairy tale for grownups" that Apple bills it as. Then in its last third, it becomes something else. Particularly in its last two episodes, the series becomes esoteric; as it gets towards the end, it becomes inexplicable. Are the people behind the show hoping for a second season and therefore deliberately obscuring the plot so they have somewhere to go next? Or are they just too scared to dive fully into fantasy? It's unclear, but the effect of this sloppy storytelling is a good series going seriously off the rails. First, though, the series has a lot of story to work through.

"The Changeling" starts with a standard boy meets girl story, although, of course, every story has its little variations. In this one, Apollo Kagwa (LaKeith Stanfield) meets Emma Valentine (Clark Backo) at the library in New York City. She's a librarian, and he's a bookseller. He asks her out repeatedly, and she keeps saying no, until one day, she miraculously says yes. During their date, she tells him that she's planning to move to Brazil for an unspecified amount of time. This is why she'd said no so many times before. Still, Emma and Apollo end up falling for one another, and after six months in Brazil, she comes home.

She doesn't come home alone though. She has a red string that was tied around her wrist by a witch at a lagoon. When it falls off naturally, according to the witch, three wishes she made will come true. But Apollo cuts it off when Emma returns home, telling her that, with him, all her wishes will come true. And at first, it seems like that may be the case. They marry and have a baby, Brian, whom they love very much.

Then things change. More specifically, Emma changes. She's not sleeping, and she doesn't believe their baby is their baby anymore. This leads to a series of tragic events that take Apollo and Emma from bliss to horror. Interwoven through this are tales of Apollo's mom (Adina Porter and Alexis Louder sharing a role) and dad (Jared Abrahamson), and of Emma's parents, leading to a story of depth and interest as various threads play out. It's a shame this changes in the final episodes; however, the first stretch of the series is still good enough to recommend it.

The elements are there to make a fantastic series. For one thing, "The Changeling" stars some amazing actors. Not only is LaKeith Stanfield wonderful as Apollo, but so are the people he acts with, including Clark Backo as Emma as well as Samuel T. Herring as William Wheeler, and, in a guest starring role, Jane Kaczmarek as Cal, the leader of the band of witches Emma briefly joins. While most of the cast is lesser-known, they're all fantastic in their roles and make the episodes mesmerizing to behold, especially Backo, who manages to go from loving wife and mother to terrifying victimizer and back again.

If that weren't enough, the series has Kelly Marcel, the writer of "Cruella" and "Venom," as its showrunner and the scribe behind all eight episodes and Melina Matsoukas, the director of "Queen & Slim" and many of your favorite music videos, as the one helming the show, and therefore, setting the scene in its first episode. These two do a great job establishing the look and feel of the piece, as they hook viewers into the story and make them want more. The scene where Apollo and Emma's son is born, in particular, is unique, engaging, and different from your average birth scene.

Even the book's author, Victor LaValle, is here providing the narration. He makes us believe what he's saying, whether it's fantastical or not. In fact, the first several episodes adhere strongly to the book. But then things veer off course, and they don't recover.

The trouble is that the people working behind the scenes seemingly aren't able to keep up the high level of precision required to make the ending work. The problems start in Episode 6, which tells the story of what's happening from Emma's perspective. It provides some new information about people who live underground, but otherwise, it's pretty much a rehash of what we already know. Then, in Episode 7, the piece goes off on a tangent when it tells the story of what happened to Apollo's father by following Apollo's mother as she goes on a journey into the worst hotel in New York City.

This is followed by the finale, which couldn't even be stretched to 30 minutes in a show where every other episode has been at least 45. While the finale gets us back to the main storyline, it appears reluctant to go fully into fantasy, and the story suffers for it. While the series has employed many fantasy elements, it hasn't done anything that can't be rationally explained away.

Up until now, we aren't sure if what's happening to Apollo and Emma is purely fantastical or if it's psychological. If it's psychological, the fantasy elements can be explained away by things like lack of sleep and postpartum depression. The trouble is that in the book, there is a strong fantasy element. The show, however, seems uncomfortable committing to that. That leaves the last episode seriously lacking.

Perhaps they're saving the big reveals for another season, but in the meantime, the team behind "The Changeling" doesn't seem to know what to do with the episodes at the end of this season. It's a shame because up until Episode 5, the story is riveting. I would watch this show if only because the first five episodes are so good. They're so fantastic, in fact, that they transcend the disappointing ending, at least for me. But be prepared for a spectacular fall before the first season of "The Changeling" wraps up.

"The Changeling" premieres on Apple TV+ on September 8. 

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