The Crowded Room Episode 6: With Tom Holland at the center of its drama, The Crowded Room’s narrative is unfolding like a mystery thriller. Until now, it showed Rya Goodwin interviewing Danny Sullivan and trying to dissect the root of his connection to several homicides. Danny spoke about his relationship with Yitzhak, Ariana, Jack Lamb, Adam, Marlin & his mother. It gave us a hint of Rya doubting the truth in Danny’s testimony.
Now the sixth episode dives right into the way Rya started dissecting how Danny’s mind works. It gives us an insight into her personal life, which she tries to balance while trying to find out the reasons and motivations behind the crime.
*Spoilers Ahead*
The Crowded Room Episode 6 Recap:
Episode 6: Rya
The episode begins at Rya’s (Amanda Seyfried) home. Her son, Ezra (Thomas Parobek) wakes her up because of his stomachache. She tells him to get dressed before his grandmother comes home to take care of him. She also realizes that she might be late for her lecture. When her mother arrives, she remains busy preparing for work. Her mother does not appreciate her lack of maternal care toward Ezra.
In the university, Rya approaches her senior – Martin, seeking approval for a grant request. He continues to deny it for some bureaucratic reasons that reek of sexism. She goes to give a lecture to a hall full of students about how people respond to traumas. Detective Matty Dunne (Thomas Sadoski) arrives there and, after the lecture, requests her to consider the case of a kid who has been arrested for his connection to several homicides. Dunne finds the pattern of the kid’s behavior strange and, thus, wants Rya to consider interrogating him.
Later, the story goes back to an event we see in the first episode. Dunne brings Rya to his office to speak about the case. The kid – Danny (Tom Holland), refuses to share his last name and gives sketchy answers about his landlord and Ariana. While Dunne’s associate thinks the evidence is mostly circumstantial, Dunne finds Danny’s behavior suspicious.
Rya walks over to his room and notices him from outside. She then goes up to speak with him. He still does not tell his last name. But he mentions someone named Jack. He proceeds to say that the cops won’t be able to find Ariana (Sasha Lane). While he continues to ask Rya to get him out of the prison, he unhooks his handcuffs and startles her. Dunne sends someone into the room to take care of Danny. Later, he says that the kid did not behave like this the last time they spoke.
Rya mentions Danny mentioning Jack. Dunne says Danny earlier mentioned Jack told him to ‘face the music.’ Dunne thinks he is playing them. While she cannot rule out that possibility, she wants to carry forward with the questioning. Back home, her mother gives her a cold welcome due to her lack of attention to Ezra. Her mother lets him speak with his father, even if Rya is against it. She speaks about the growing distance between her and Ezra. Her mother advises her to keep loving him no matter how hard it gets.
Rya later goes to meet her husband, who brings up the subject of her grant request getting rejected. She tells him not to make Ezra get used to interacting with him. Back home, she lies down, watching a movie. A dialogue between its two characters leads to a deduction about Danny’s behavior. She later asks Martin for a grant once again based on a theory she formed about Danny’s behavior. He promises to approve it under certain conditions.
Soon after, Rya visits Danny’s boarding house and looks through all the things inside. She finds blood spots on the wall and Danny’s diary, among other things. Right outside, Candy (Emmy Rossum) startles her. She asks where her son is. Rya goes to her house and asks things about Adam. She tries to find some traces of Danny’s current behavior in his troubled past. Candy takes it as Rya blaming her.
Eventually, Candy accepts Danny’s peculiar behavior since his childhood but denies that he would ever commit murder. She mentions cursory details about his stay at the boarding house and ends the dialogue by saying that she will come to meet him. Later, Rya asks Dunne to let her meet Danny again. This time, he speaks in a British accent. She asks him to let her speak with Danny. He agrees to do so in the future.
Later, Rya discusses her theory with Dunne along with the diary of paintings inside the boarding house. While they consider most of those people to be Danny’s victims, they do not believe the bespectacled man is one – since the drawing style is different. She and Dunne consider this person to be Jack – that Danny keeps mentioning. Rya does not think Jack is an accomplice but believes he is Danny’s split personality. She says Danny might be unaware of his violent actions and might be innocent.
Dunne thinks it would be hard to convince a panel of jury. But he agrees it would help Rya make a case to her tenure committee to get a grant for her research. She says she needs to emerge as a trustworthy personality for Danny to make him realize that he has this condition.
Rya goes to speak with Danny’s legal aid lawyer – Stan (Christopher Abbott). She urges him to help Danny get out of prison and be in a caring hospital instead. Stan, however, does not find much hope in her claims. Subsequently, she tries to make him see the other side. Rya notes that multiple personality results are almost solely from extreme childhood abuse. She worries about him being transferred to a worse penitentiary. That convinces Stan to let her speak with Danny under certain conditions.
Sometime later, Rya goes to speak with Danny. He continues to speak in a British accent, as Jack. She directly asks him where Danny is. He says that he (Jack) is very real. He mentions a theory of quantum entanglement to explain his situation. Besides, he refuses to cooperate and to let her speak with Danny. After she returns home, Dunne arrives with a tape, hands it over to her, and makes a definitive statement about Ariana’s state.
The Crowded Room Episode 6 Ending, Explained:
After her initial failed attempt, Rya again goes back to meet Jack and tries to persuade him to let her speak with Danny. She manages to convince him to share details with her as Danny. Jack eventually lets Rya speak with Danny after making a request to be gentle with him. Eventually, Danny opens himself up to Rya and starts shedding tears. Rya sees this new side of his and treats him in the gentlest way possible.
The latter part briefly summarizes all the things we saw Danny sharing in the episodes until now. Rya tries to make him open up about what happened with Adam but makes sure that she isn’t forcing him to do so. He notes the details about how Marlin abused his position of authority against Danny.
The details are so painful that Rya cannot control her emotions. She walks out to her car and lets them loose. She returns home and hugs her mother. Then, she goes up to Ezra’s bed and curls up next to him. You can sense her intense feelings of concern.
