The Changeling Episode 7 Stormy Weather Recap – The Elk Hotel, A Suitcase And A Deal With God

Episode 7 of The Changeling is one of the most profoundly moving episodes of TV to air in years. Dream-like in quality, this tale of a New York City hotel room and a woman’s past may not make entire sense, but it will certainly leave viewers feeling emotional.

Moving away from the key story of Apollo, Emma, and The Wise Ones, in this seventh episode, we meet the real Lillian. Families are based on stories and lies, often told for the best reasons, and The Changeling is as much about that as it is about fairies and missing children.

The show opens with Apollo’s mother, Lillian, walking through seedy New York late night at night. New York is at its worst, as she walks past screaming couples, strip shows, and the homeless. She rings Apollo, who hasn’t been around for three weeks.

Our narrator, Victor LaValle (who wrote the book the show is based on), plays a second role in this episode, acting like an unseen character. “In America, we rewrite history by erasing it,” he announces. The erasing of history is a key theme of this episode as Lillian comes to terms with her own rewritten history.

Welcome To The Elk Hotel

Lillian enters the Elk Hotel, which resembles the American Horror Story’s murder hotel in its seediness. The hotel charges per hour and proudly announces it’s welcome to everyone but murderers and gang members.

The characters in the hotel are surrounded by a mystical blue glow that makes everyone look almost biblical. The imagery in this episode is outstanding, with director Melina Matsoukas finally coming into her own. Every scene is dreamlike and haunting, with timelines and stories crossing over to create a deeply touching narrative.

Lillian Comes To Terms With Her Past

The narrative centers around Lillian coming to terms with a night in her apartment in 1981. That room “holds a secret she swore she will never tell,” until tonight. She starts to record a message to Apollo, finally coming to terms with her own journey. Initially, it seems a little bland and repeats many beats of the opening episode, but it soon takes us on an extraordinary journey.

Lillian (the younger version, played by Alexis Loudr) talks about fleeing Uganda and remembers the bloodshed of her father’s death. “She remembered the unbridled hope” of coming to America, but ultimately it made her smaller. She had to control her emotions and calm her anger. All of her dreams of becoming a singer, of creating this better life in America never happened. The Changeling frequently explores the themes of othering and how little communities form out of necessity.  

Remember You Are Right Where You Need To Be appears carved into the desk of Lillian’s hotel room, the same sentence appearing as a neon light in the underground community, in the episode prior. At the end of the episode, we see past Lillian leaving the message behind.

Lillian appears to have a direct conversation with the narrator, Victor; he tells her to correct herself, and she does. When Victor speaks of the dying man in the adjacent room being someone’s son, Lily says, “I know.” It’s a really astonishing moment to see a character directly talk with this omnipresent figure in the show.

A Mother’s Dying Son

Lillian visits a man dying of aids. He tells his story, and it’s some of the show’s most poignant writing. It’s unclear how his story feeds into the entire narrative, but it’s an incredibly moving moment. She sings him to his death, and we see Lillian’s fantasy of performing on stage, her past and present crossing paths. The dying man lies in the water beneath them in Christ-like imagery.

Motherhood plays a huge role in The Changeling. Lillian doesn’t know this dying man, but he is someone’s son. Whilst this sequence doesn’t have a direct link to the show, it does play into the theme of motherhood and caring for the child of another.

The power is out in the hotel, and it becomes a cacophony of different voices, images from Lillian’s past and present, images from The Changeling’s past and present. One of the people she sees is William, beating a woman in the room above her. These scenes can be jarring because there is so much going on that it can be an overwhelming onslaught of sounds and visuals.

The Truth About Brian

 Now comes the real crux of episode 7 of The Changeling. We meet Brian (Jared Abrahamson) and Lillian in the opening episodes, and their relationship is flawed but good until Brian walks out on his family. Lillian, in this episode, comes to terms with the truth of her relationship with Brian.

She wants to tell the truth about her husband, Brian, after years of lying to herself and Apollo. It’s not that he didn’t want Apollo, the story she told her son, he “wanted him too much.” This episode relies on audiences filling in the details, which is often more powerful than showcasing the entire truth.

Brian finds a receipt for The Elk Hotel and presumes Lillian is having an affair with her boss. In the box of Brian’s belongings left on the doorstep for Apollo to find is that same receipt. She claims she never had an affair. We later see evidence this may be a lie.

One bit of advice Lillian gives Apollo that feels poignant to his own story is to never rip a mother away from a child, especially to go to work, or you will “see crazy.” Lillian seems to be more aware of Emma’s story than she ever admitted to her son.

She knows there is an unevenness of power in her marriage due to his American-ness. She can’t scream at him like she wants to, can’t defend herself. He threatens to kill her and take their son away. “You’ll find yourself stuck to a suitcase at the bottom of the river.”

Apollo’s Childhood Nightmares

She comes home to find Brian trying to drown Apollo in the bath. So, she kills him. It’s not shown or specified but this is the conclusion audiences should take. Brian never abandoned Apollo and Lillian, but his abuse forced Lillian into asking for a divorce. He became so angry at being banned from seeing his son, he tried to kill him.

Brian West left the memento box, either on the same occasion or on a visit from before he tried to murder Apollo. The timeline in the early episodes is out of order to reflect Apollo’s confused childhood memories.

Apollo is plagued by nightmares of his father throughout his childhood. The nightmare reappeared when he was under the stress of Emma’s behavior and his rocky start to fatherhood. In these nightmares often involved bathtubs and his father disappearing in a cloud of mist.

What comes after this revelation is a jarring blend of timelines and memories. Lillian saves young Lillian from jumping out of the hotel window. She tells her this is “not how her story ends.” It is hard to be certain if this is a time slip and the two versions overlapped, a metaphor if the mystical themes of the show are being presented in a new way.

Gods That What They Are Owed

That night, Lillian makes a bargain because “the gods take what they are owed.” Victor ends this episode talking about history never staying buried and that “deals will be done and gods will be repaid”. Could the loss of her grandson be connected to this deal, the gods finally earning their repayment for her life being saved?

We are never handed the answer, but the episode points towards her husband’s body being in the suitcase thrown in the water in episode 4. The narrator tells us again it is impossible for the past to stay hidden, whether that is due to the evidence being found or simply the guilty feelings haunting Lillian.

As the camera pans away, The Elk Hotel is empty and derelict. She was never here. The dying man was never here. Engraved on the table is Victor’s introduction to Lilian and Brian. On the floor are sequins from Lillian’s dress. All just ghosts of Lillian’s life and imagination. What was real, what was echoes of Lillian’s life, and what was fiction is up for audiences to judge.

The hotel visitor’s book opens and Lillian’s name is next to Charles Blackman’s, the man she denied having an affair with.

Catch up with all our The Changeling recaps here.