In the second episode of The Crowded Room, Danny essentially fleshed out his relationship with Ariana and Yitzhak and how the ghost house became his new home. He talked about how he rekindled his relationship with Annabelle after it abruptly came to an end when Danny was still going to school. But apparently, Ariana stole Danny’s girl from him. At least she apologized to him by taking him to the diner and then to the movies. However, as soon as Danny assumed that he was getting closer to Ariana, she pushed him away. She inflicted some of that anger on her former fling, Jerome, and eventually came back to Danny, asking for his help. When Rya asked about her whereabouts, we got a glimpse of Ariana walking in a decrepit house filled with water and dead bodies.
Spoilers Alert
Danny Almost Strikes A Deal With Angelo
The third episode of The Crowded Room begins with Rya revealing Danny’s notebook to Matty. Then we shift to Danny’s memory of having a conversation with Ariana about how she was abused when she was a kid. Danny revealed that his twin brother, Adam, was sexually assaulted too, and he committed suicide when he couldn’t take it anymore. When Rya asks Danny to be a little more explicit about Adam’s life, he refuses. So, Rya tells him to talk about the plan that led him to the Rockefeller Center. Danny describes it as his way of giving Ariana a second chance at being happy and himself a second chance at saving someone (because that’s something he couldn’t do for Adam).
To explain how it all went down, the miniseries goes into flashback mode again and shows Danny requesting Jonny arrange a meeting with Angelo. Jonny obliged and took Danny all the way to Brooklyn to meet Angelo. Danny revealed that he wanted a gun, i.e., the gun that they used at the Rockefeller Center. Angelo said that he would give him the gun, but under one condition: Danny had to perform fellatio on Angelo. Initially, Danny refused the proposal. But when he realized that he was desperate to get it for Ariana, he agreed to do what was needed. Angelo took him to a not-so-discreet place away from his home. Danny was down on his knees and about to do the needful. Thankfully, Jonny showed up with a baseball bat, and he hit Angelo in the face. That gave the duo enough time to run away with the gun.
Annabelle Calms Danny Down
Danny returned to the ghost house and gave the gun to Ariana as a gift. Ariana seemed to be in two minds about it. On the one hand, she found the gesture problematic (because it was a gun, after all), and on the other hand, she saw it as an oddly sweet display of friendship. She even played around with it and pictured herself shooting her abuser. But when she came to her senses, she gave the gun back to Danny and told him to get rid of it before Yitzhak found out about it. In the present day, Danny explains that he didn’t expect Ariana to ever use the gun. He hoped that she’d feel safer with it and maybe scare anyone away if they tried to take advantage of her. However, since she didn’t want to do that, he kept it for himself.
Rya recaps everything that Danny had said up until this point. She essentially wants Danny to realize that the way he’s telling his backstory, it feels like he is the only perpetrator involved in the Rockefeller shooting. Danny did go to get the gun. He was involved in the assault on the original owner of the gun. When he tried to pass it on to someone else, she refused. So, the gun remained in his possession, and then both Danny and the gun showed up at a crime scene. Anyway, they move forward with Danny’s backstory, and he starts chronicling the day Annabelle came to meet him at the ghost house. They apparently went out to fly kites and talked about going to college. When they went back home, Annabelle asked Danny if she could show his artwork to his dad’s friend, who is an art professor. This both overwhelmed and calmed Danny so much that he fell asleep, even though Annabelle had something else on her mind.
Who Was Danny Trying To Kill For Ariana?
Although Danny isn’t comfortable talking about what happened after he went to sleep with Annabelle on his chest, Rya urges him to talk about it. So, we go into flashback mode once again and witness Angelo breaking into the ghost house. He was there to get his gun and beat up or kill Danny for messing with him. The first thing that Danny did was tell Annabelle to hide in the closet and not make a sound until they were safe. Then Danny proceeded to take the gun and lure Angelo towards him under the pretext of returning it to him. But he lost the element of surprise when he dropped all the bullets. Now, unbeknownst to anyone in the house, Yitzhak had returned, and he benched Danny so that he could take care of this situation himself. Before he could do that, Annabelle made a sound that attracted Angelo to the closet. He started to assault her, and that was when Yitzhak struck Angelo. The mere threat of killing him caused Angelo to wet his pants and run away. Annabelle was understandably shocked after witnessing all this, and she bailed out of that wretched place. Yitzhak told Ariana and Danny to leave the premises, too, because they had broken his house rules.
The following day, while sitting outside the ghost house, Marlin asked Danny to come back home, and Danny didn’t respond to him. When he started packing, Ariana revealed that she had struck a deal with Yitzhak. So she was getting to stay. Realizing that Danny was in a vulnerable situation, Ariana brought up the idea of scaring her abuser so that he wouldn’t dare look at her ever again. We know that Danny agreed to help Ariana. But, at the end of The Crowded Room, episode 3, it’s revealed that the person Ariana and Danny went after at the Rockefeller Center was none other than Marlin. Rya asks the most obvious question: how can Danny’s stepfather be Ariana’s abuser? Danny says that he assumed Marlin somehow knew Ariana’s family, and that was how he got access to Ariana.
When Rya says it’s too much of a coincidence that Danny ended up staying at the same house where his stepfather’s victim was staying, Danny overlooks all of that and gives birth to a whole new conspiracy theory. He says that Yitzhak and Ariana somehow wanted him to meet his biological father and that this whole operation was to push him out of the USA and into the U.K. If it wasn’t obvious before, it’s obvious now that the whole thing is a figment of Danny’s imagination. He simply wanted to kill Marlin because he hated his guts. Marlin is abusive towards him, and he doesn’t treat Candy properly. So, it’s highly possible that Danny wanted to end Candy’s misery. However, his fractured mind is conjuring a narrative that absolves him of his criminal intent and puts the blame on people who may or may not exist. To find out if that’s actually the case, we have to wait until next week.
