Akiva Goldsmith’s brilliant creation, The Crowded Room, released its sixth episode today, and honestly, it takes a turn that none of us could see coming by a long shot, especially because of the way the episodes have been presented so far. In the previous episode, Danny Sullivan admitted to his counselor, Rya Goodwin that his stepfather Marlin had sexually abused Danny’s twin brother Adam when the kids were nine years old. However, this episode takes a completely different turn, turning the story on its head from this point forward. Brace yourselves as we go on a recap of everything that happened in the sixth episode of The Crowded Room.
Spoilers Ahead
How Was Rya Goodwin Brought Into Danny’s Case?
The sixth episode in this psychological drama sees the events from the perspective of the counselor Danny Sullivan had appointed; Rya Goodwin. A professor of psychology at a university, Rya is struggling to come up with a new thesis to secure tenure because sustaining herself and her son Ezra as a single mom is rather tedious. Tipped off by Detective Matty about a kid who was arrested for a shooting at Rockefeller Center, Rya goes to the holding cell to meet Danny for the first time, and this is the part that we, the audience, hadn’t been privy to until now. However, this isn’t the Danny we know at all! He has a careless smile on his face and a loose attitude about him that almost feels creepy when he arguably flirts with Rya. She’s deeply intrigued by this kid, who’s been known to talk in funny voices, and even Matty mentioned that Danny would often reference some guy named Jack. Now, we know that Jack is that suave and tight-lipped British man who gave Danny a crash course in confidence when he briefly went to London, but for now, that bit of information is unknown to Rya and the rest.
How Was Danny Different From How We Remember Him?
When Rya decides to meet with Danny, he shocks her by suddenly undoing his cuffs, and honestly, we’re just as shocked to see the shy and timid Danny pull off something so maverick. She decides that this isn’t for her, and later she gets preoccupied with her ex-husband interfering in her son’s life and the other personal troubles that plague her. Still, she tries to make sense of Danny Sullivan’s situation when, during an exchange of dialogue between two characters in the movie her son was watching, Rya has a sudden brainwave that’s about to turn the case on its head. Rya finds time to sneak into the address Danny had provided, and this is when she discovers that album full of portraits Danny used to make. While going through the pictures, though, there’s something that strikes Rya about the portrait of Jack because it’s splintered, and the clouds of suspicion have slowly begun forming in Rya’s mind as a clinical psychologist. By requesting Matty to stay with the decision to send Danny to Rikers Island for a little longer, Rya visits Danny again and gets him to mention Jack once more.
What Were The Shocking Discoveries That Rya Made About Danny?
That night, she asks Matty over to look at the album, and she points out the oddities she spotted in the portrait of Jack. This is where she brings up what we all might’ve been thinking till now: “What if Danny is Jack?” This would completely change the series The Crowded Room as we know it because it would mean none of what Danny experienced, thanks to a suave British man, was real because he was a splinter of Danny’s personality. Although Rya and Matty discuss it as Multiple Personality Disorder, in 2023 will know that this well-documented and empirically proven clinical diagnosis is dissociative identity disorder, or DID. However, back in 1979, DSM-IV was still in its infancy and most of what is recognized today as valid mental illnesses were dismissed as the ramblings of a con artist trying to cheat the system. The best bet Rya has right now for the sake of Danny and for her own career as well is to prove that the boy is a patient of MPD and that he’s mentally unfit to face the consequences of his actions. However, the first step to curing a patient of MPD was believed to be making the patient himself come to terms with the illness.
Who Is Jack?
The first step Rya decides to take is to visit Danny yet again, but this time she knows whom to address. The man that walks into the room where Rya has organized the meeting looks like Danny and is wearing the same clothes that we’d seen Danny wear, but his demeanor, gait, and his personality are completely different from the Danny we know. As a matter of fact, it’s also quite different from the flirtatious Danny, who seemed quick with the handcuffs, because this Danny is a lot more well-spoken, mature, and seems much more knowledgeable. He even quotes Carl Jung, the famous psychologist, while casually flipping through a book. As this ‘Danny’ sits down to speak with Rya, she addresses him as Jack, which he doesn’t deny. Instead, he refers to the shootout incident between Danny and Ariana as an act by two “misguided children,” meaning this ‘Danny,’ or Jack, knows about Ariana and considers her and Danny as kids. Soon afterward, he identifies himself as Jack and agrees that, at the moment, he’s in control of Danny’s body while the real Danny is asleep. Rya convinces this well-read British personality fringe that she has no intentions of hurting Danny and that she only wants what’s best for the kid he also wants to protect.
How Does Rya Win Danny’s Trust?
Jack consents to let Rya question Danny, but he does warn her to be gentle with the kid because Jack knows just how much trauma Danny has suffered. The the transition that occurs in Danny’s expressions is only a testament to the range of acting that Tom Holland is capable of because the change of personality is evident as Jack recedes to let Danny out in the spotlight. The first thing Rya does when Danny is here is not harangue him with questions but seek to gain his trust. She offers him food after she asks him whether he’s hungry, and then we see the slow development of a connection between the two, although we’ve seen the discussions happen in real-time in the previous episodes already. Simultaneously, Rya’s situation with her mother improves, who drops by multiple times to help her daughter and grandson cope with the tough times.
What Does Danny Confess To Rya?
The session with which this episode ends is the same as last week, so by now, we know what Rya discovers about Danny. This was when Rya asked Danny to speak of his childhood, and as the session continued, the monstrosities that the child witnessed as a 9-year-old slowly came to the forefront. By the time Danny finished telling the story of how Marlin had taken Adam to the barn because Danny’s twin took up all the harm on his little shoulders, Rya was shaken. We see her walk out of the jail where Danny was being held as she vigorously wipes tears from her eyes. Incidences of child abuse are riveting for people who hear about them from somewhere, and this was a woman who had just learned from a patient that his twin sibling had offered himself to a monster to be sexually assaulted to protect his brother. Nobody can blame Rya for her tears, and it makes all the more sense why she went home, hugged her mother, and then went to sleep beside her son Ezra.
‘The Crowded Room’ Episode 6 Ending Explained
Rya was only now beginning to understand the gravity of the case she found before herself when she received the news that her patient had witnessed sexual abuse. As a rule of thumb, Rya clarified; MPD was witnessed in patients who had been victims of intense childhood trauma, and sexual abuse is probably the highest on the long list of things that can traumatize children to an extent where their psyche splinters into multiple parts. The discoveries of Rya regarding her patient Danny Sullivan were manifold, as she realized this was no ordinary case of a shootout and that the young man before him was a severely troubled individual who in no way deserved jail time but intensive mental therapy. Now, I’ll be honest. I wasn’t too pleased in the beginning when the story went towards MPD because I really liked the characters the show had introduced, but by the time they tied everything together, I was certainly impressed. I’m sure all of you are just as excited to find out what happens afterward, so be here next week for the seventh episode of Apple TV’s The Crowded Room.
