Hill House Rewatch: Silence Lay Steadily

I have been taking notes while watching each episode and jotting down important things or moments I wanted to talk about. I have not had an issue getting something coherent out of my notes until this episode. I spent too much time watching this episode to write down as much as I had been.

The first scene combines two scenes from earlier in the season, Theo in the dance studio and Nell and Sherley trying to get into The Red Room. It sets up a reveal that comes later during one of the best scenes in the episode.

Poppy has gotten all the Crain children into The Red Room and put them into some dream state. In this state, she is preying on their insecurities and mistakes. Sherley relives the night she cheated on her husband. Steven is with his wife, who verbally breaks him down. Theo is spending the night with a woman she has feelings for but keeps pushing away, and Luke is on the verge of death. Just as they appear to be losing their battles, they are rescued and pulled back to reality by Nell. In my discussion of the last episode, I talked about Poppy being the embodiment of the evil side of Hill House. Nell is the other side, the good side. She saves her siblings and then delivers the second-best speech in the series. It is the start of a change for the house-which I will get to in just a bit.

I want to hop back to Luke for a second. He wakes up in the Red Room with his mom, Abigail, and young Nell. Olivia starts talking about how they have been waiting for him and welcoming him. All that Nell says is "don't" and "go." She is begging him to ignore Olivia and return to the rest of the family. Young Nell is enough of a distraction for adult Nell to show up and pull him out. Olivia's purpose when she snapped was to "save" Luke and Nell by killing them. I hadn't made the connection of this scene being Luke dying until this rewatch. Here is Luke, dying of an overdose, and he shows up in a white room, and the only other people in it are those we know are dead. I feel dumb for not making the connection sooner.

Nell's speech to the other Crain kids is where the truth of The Red Room comes out. Many times during the series, we see all the Crains, except Hugh, in a room. Steven in a game room, Sherley in a family room. Theo in a dance studio, Luke in a tree house, and Nell in her playroom. None of these rooms was real. As Nell puts it, these rooms were a way for the house to make them docile while it "digested" them. The black mold originated in the Red Room, and the house kept Hugh distracted in the basement- as far from The Red Room as possible.

Outside The Red Room, Poppy is tormenting Hugh with a rhyme. Olivia comes in and stops it. She and Hugh discuss everything that happened. Hugh asks Olivia to let the kids go. He promises he will stay with her if the kids can go. Small note for later: they are standing by the staircase where Nell and Olivia died when this conversation takes place.

Back in the Red Room, Nell has disappeared, and suddenly, the door opens. Hugh enters and helps Steven carry Luke out to the cars. Sherley and Theo bring Luke to the hospital. Hugh says he and Steven have something they need to do first but will join them later. Here is where the show gives its final revelation; what happened when Hugh returned to the house after leaving the kids at the motel.

He sees Olivia's body and is holding it when the Dudleys show up. After getting over the shock, Hugh asks why they are there. They say they are looking for their daughter Abigail. The look on Hugh's face when they say that name is crushing. He knows the true extent of the tragedy of the last few hours. He takes them to The Red Room, where they see their daughter's body and her ghost. Hugh says he is going to burn the house down, salt the earth and make sure no one is ever harmed again. The Dudleys beg him not to; they want to be there for Abigal. They offer him a deal: if he keeps the house and keeps them on, they will not tell anyone about what happened. Abigail was kept inside most of the time to keep her safe. Hugh agrees.

Adult Steven has been watching all of this unfold. He is trying to grasp what he is seeing. "I wish you had told me," he says. Hugh's response is as simple as it is true "Some things can't be told. You live them, or you don't, but they can't be told." Steven sees his father's body lying near the stairs. To keep his promise to Olivia, he overdosed on his pills. He leaves Steven with these lines "This is all yours now. The house. And the promise. I want you to know. You and your sisters and your brother were the best part of my... Never been prouder of anything. Anything, ever." With that, he joins Olivia and Nell in The Red Room.

The epilogue shows Steven reconciling with his wife, Shirley telling her husband about the affair, Theo moving out of the guest house, and everyone celebrating Luke being two years sober. There is also a scene of The Dudleys years later. Horace is carrying his dying wife's body to Hill House. Once there, she passes and is reunited with her daughter and the child she lost years ago. Once the place of nightmares, Hill House is becoming something better; a home.

Random Rambling

• All the kids try to apologize to Nell for not being there for her. She says that it wouldn't have changed anything. "I loved you completely, and you loved me the same. That's all. The rest is confetti." That line will always bring tears to my eyes.