“Battle of the Island” gets literal, but not quite literal enough.

In the closing moments of the finale of The Changeling, Apollo (LaKeith Stanfield) finally visits the grave of his late infant son, Brian, a journey he has been avoiding amid a haze of grief and guilt. In quick flashes of imagery shot through excessive darkness, he reaches into the child’s coffin. The audience can’t see what Apollo finds in there, but he recoils as though something has bitten him.

What’s actually happening here? And what does it mean? It’s hard to say. The last episode of The Changeling, a series highlighted by strong performances and increasingly sinister, supernatural vibes, is challenging, both as a tonal change-up from what’s come before — a brisk, action-driven half-hour, rather than a measured character study pushing 60 minutes — and as an episode of television whose meaning is not easily deciphered.

“Battle of the Island” tries to do two contradictory things simultaneously: explain its central mystery and leave key matters unresolved for a hypothetical second season. As written by Kelly Marcel, who adapted Victor LaValle’s novel for Apple TV+, the finale provides some answers to the show’s central questions, albeit murky ones. But everything feels a little rushed, as if someone told Marcel at the last minute that she had to edit down her original draft while still hitting every plot point.

Following on the heels of episodes focused on his wife, Emma (Clark Backo), and his mother, Lillian (Adina Porter), Apollo becomes the central figure again in “Battle of the Island,” which picks up where the last moments of episode five left him. The finale confirms some important details, including the fact that William Wheeler (Samuel T. Herring, a.k.a. the frontman of Future Islands), the man who claimed his wife had killed one of their daughters, is actually part of Kinder Garten, which Wheeler described as a network of 10,000 men “with one name,” who seemingly snatch babies and turn them into changelings. (There are a lot of things about Kinder Garten, how it operates and why it exists, that remain unexplained.) It was William, not his wife, who murdered their daughter; it is also William and the beast associated with Kinder Garten, whose existence seems to (literally) burst out of nowhere, that wreak havoc on the community Cal and her fellow women have built on North Brother Island, ultimately destroying it. The episode introduces this creature for the first time, though it never fully depicts it; during the island escape, the entity mostly functions like the Smoke Monster from Lost, rustling through the trees; making alarming, echoing noises; causing immense destruction but never taking on a definitive shape. In the final frame of the episode, just after Apollo has that strange encounter at his son’s grave, he enters a cave where he discovers a massive, reptilian eye. Is this the monster or something else entirely?

This reveal is emblematic of how the whole episode functions. It offers a tiny bit of information, but not enough for the viewer to draw any definitive conclusions about where the story is going or what it all means. If you’ve read the novel, which I have not, perhaps this is less of an issue, though that doesn’t let the finale off the hook. A work of television, even an adaptation, should be able to stand on its own without the need for additional homework. It’s clear this Changeling episode was made with care — the effects are believable and the performances, particularly from Stanfield and Jane Kaczmarek as Cal, are fully committed. But it also feels so slapdash in its pacing, and so vague in its message, that it’s difficult to know how it wants us to feel by the end. Watching it is like listening to someone tell a story while withholding the point, but swearing they’re going to get there soon, promise.

The Changeling bursts with fascinating messages and themes: the titular folktale, generational trauma, the wrenching effects of postpartum depression. The idea that the difficulties that come with motherhood can be weaponized against women is a very real phenomenon rendered all the more horrific by the supernatural elements at play in the series, which contribute to Backo’s raw portrayal of Emma as a zoned-out husk of a person immediately following Brian’s birth. Some of the most visceral and violent moments — the flashback to the fire that killed Emma’s parents, young Lillian watching her brother being murdered by Ugandan soldiers, Apollo’s memories of his father as an intruder — highlight how trauma stretches across generations. As suggested by the show’s fixation on how The Water and the Wild may function as prophecy, it can also feel inevitable: That children’s story is about fairies who steal little children. In their own lives, Emma, Lillian, and Apollo all grew up in circumstances that taught them to brace for things to be taken away from them.

This is also a drama about what it’s like to live on the margins because society forces you to its peripheries, whether you’re a woman, a Black person, a member of the working class, an immigrant, someone struggling with mental-health issues, or some combination of the above. The series explores this in its story lines, but also the imagined worlds it folds into our reality, including the feminist enclave on North Brother Island (an actual geographic locale) and the underground society that runs beneath New York City. Both appear to be fully operational communities that only function because they’re completely off the grid, a fascinating idea The Changeling tugs at only a tiny bit.

Instead of taking its time to tease out these issues in the finale, The Changeling gets literal, but not quite literal enough. It confirms that Emma ventured to the forest in Little Norway in an effort to reclaim the real baby Brian. It shows a glow emanating from her as she goes on this quest without explaining what that glow signifies or how she got it. It lets us know that Apollo finally makes it to shore and to Brian’s grave, the place his mother, Lillian, encouraged him to visit. But this information is conveyed in so many quick bursts that, especially after the stream-of-conscious journey in episode seven, it’s unclear whether these scenes should be taken as fact or as part of a vision either Emma or Apollo is having. I’ve rewatched the ending three times and I still don’t know.

Marcel and LaValle told The Hollywood Reporter that a second season will provide some clarity. But these days especially, there is no guarantee that Apple — or any streamer — will give a promising but flawed series another chance at-bat. Every showrunner, writer, and director would be wise to approach each season of television as if it’s their last chance to say something, even if they don’t get to say everything they planned. Unfortunately, whatever The Changeling finale is trying to tell us is not loud or clear enough to be heard.

Let’s Talk About the Challenging Ending of The Changeling