Netflix: The Haunting of Hill House finale (Silence Lay Steady) recap

The Haunting of Hill House – Courtesy Netflix

Luke wakes in the red room, and hears Steve and Hugh knocking. Steve walks in, mean old Poppy taps his forehead, and he collapses. Hugh is outside the door trying to get it open.

Adult Shirley and Theo walk into HH, and hear Hugh upstairs. Theo goes up, but Shirley turns and sees the handsome man again. Theo walks into the red room, Poppy taps her forehead, and she collapses.

Shirley thinks back to a conference she attended years ago. The handsome man sent her a drink, and they ended up chatting and flirting. In her memory, he invited her to his room and she declined, saying, “Good night.”

The man says, “That’s not what you said.” They had a one-night stand, and, “You never did it again, but you never told Kevin.” Then, Shirley is standing in her funeral home with Kevin, at her own funeral, and Kevin tells her when you die, you learn every secret. When he dies, he’ll be in that hotel room and he’ll know everything.

The funeral director walks up to the coffin with her, and as Shirley looks at her own corpse, he tells her that “underneath, she’s a horror, but she’s pretty.” Shirley’s corpse sits up, pulls her own eyes out. Nell speaks Shirley’s name, and touches her, causing her to wake up in the red room, where Steve’s performing CPR on Luke.

The Haunting of Hill House – Courtesy Netflix

Theo is in her room with Trish. She puts her gloves on, and when Trish asks her why she wears them, she says she can’t recall the reason.

Trish says, “Fear and guilt are sisters. When you wake up, they’ll leave you be.” As Theo lays down, horrible hands come up and wrap themselves around her head, then we hear Nell say, “Theo”, she comes to, and sees Shirley, Steve and Luke. Luke is not responding, and they stop performing CPR.

Luke walks into the red room, where Olivia, young Nell and Abigail are sitting at the table. He asks “Where are we?” Olivia says, “We’re home.” She gives him the “big boy hat” from when he was a child, and he says no. Nell looks at him, and says, “Go.” Olivia tells Luke to sit. Nell says, “Don’t. Go.”

Luke asks if he’s dead, Olivia says he’s awake. She tells him to sit, Nell tells him again, “Don’t. Go.”  He says he doesn’t want to be dead, and Olivia insists he wants to be “in here.” He says he doesn’t, Olivia responds that he has been knocking at that door for years. Little Nell says, “Don’t”,  then adult Nell grabs his hand, pulling him back to the present.

The Haunting of Hill House – Courtesy Netflix

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Luke comes to, and as his siblings gather around him, he says “She saved me”, pointing to adult Nell’s ghost. Nell says, “I feel a little clearer just now. I wouldn’t have changed anything. So many times, and we didn’t know it.” She keeps repeating the phrases.

Shirley says she feels like she’s been here before, and Nell says all of them have. “So many times, and we didn’t know it.” She always thought time was a straight line, but she was wrong. “Moments fall around us like rain. Or confetti.” She says a house is like a body, and this room is a stomach.

“It was your dance studio, Theo. It was my toy room, it was a reading room for Mom,  game room for Steve, family room for Shirley, a tree house.” We see flashes of each of them in their own version of the red room. “It put on faces so we would be still and quiet while it digested.”

She tells Luke he has to live, he says, “I don’t know how to do this without you.” She tells him there is no “without.” “I am not gone. I am scattered into so many pieces, sprinkled on your life like new snow.” Readers, I am pretty sure I was full-on ugly crying during this segment, and I don’t think I stopped until after the end credits rolled.

Theo says she’s sorry their last words were in anger, Shirley is sorry she didn’t answer the phone, Steven is sorry he didn’t listen, but Nell smiles. “Forgiveness is warm, like a tear on the cheek.” She looks at her siblings. “I loved you completely, and you loved me the same. The rest is confetti.”