One of my favorite things about "The Haunting of Hill House" is that it is not out to explain everything. The best example is Theo (Kate Segal) and her powers. She sees things when she touches people or certain items with her bare hands. This is why she is usually wearing gloves and also why she keeps people at a distance.

When she was at Hill House, she was helping her dad sort through some items in the kitchen. He hands her a box to throw out, and she tells him something is in it. It turns out to be a very old bottle of wine. Then later, when she is helping Luke and Nell with something, she touches a bed and instantly knows it used to be someone's sick bed. After an incident involving Luke and the dumbwaiter, she finds the room where he was trapped and discovers a ledger that previous owners used for bootlegging. She tells her mom that they wanted it to stay hidden. When asked how she knew, Theo responds, "I could tell when I picked it up." Theo gets a flash of her mother bloodied when her mom takes her hand, and it scares her. Mom seems to have an understanding of what is going on. Later her mom talks to her about how the women in the family seem "sensitive" to things. Shirley says things in her sleep, and Nell describes Hill House as loud. Theo has this power with touch. Her mom gives her gloves and says they will talk about this power more as she grows up.

As an adult, she has become a child psychologist. We see a few of her sessions in this episode. A little girl is talking about "Mr. Smiley," someone who visits her at night. When she touches the child, she sees something we don't know what it is, but this subtle look she gets on her face tells the viewer, "something bad is happening to this girl." Because of her mother's death, Theo has been dealing with her power for years on her own. She has mastered not showing reactions in front of other people. She can diagnose her patients using this power, which makes her very good at what she does.

At one point, she visits the home of the little girl she is helping. She asks to go to the basement and then takes off her gloves and touches objects. She stops cold when she touches the couch; something horrible happened there. She feels the girl's fear and sees a water stain on the ceiling that looks like a smiley face. As she leaves, she shakes the foster father's hand without the gloves. She then knows that the foster father is abusing the girl.

She goes to the morgue where Nell's body is, takes off her gloves, and touches her sister. Theo, who can keep her calm and composure when dealing with child abuse, screams, and cries when she touches Nell. Theo is someone who seems cold but might be the most empathic of the Crain kids (except for Nell). She finally opens up to a woman she brought home from the club one night. She talked a lot about walls that she and kids like her had to build in the episode, and it is good to see some of those walls crumbling.