Butcher & Blackbird

Rowan goes to Raleigh without telling Sloane and pays a child $100 to deliver groceries to Sloane’s house without revealing who they are from. Rowan watches her house from across the street. Sloane texts Rowan to confirm that the groceries were from him. He says he wants to cook with her like he should have done at the restaurant. On the phone, Rowan gives her instructions on how to prepare the orzo pasta and vegetables.

Rowan asks why Sloane works for a medical company instead of being an artist. She says art would not generate enough money, plus it has been ruined for her. She still sketches in black and white, but she does not paint, sculpt, or do anything with color. However, the webs she makes to hang her victims’ bodies in are like art to her.

Rowan wanted to be a chef since childhood, when he used to cook meals for his brothers. Cooking provided Rowan with an escape from his abusive household and made life better for his brothers. Sometimes, his father would refrain from abusing him if he cooked, so cooking was also like “armor” to Rowan. Rowan considers cooking his art and wonders what happened to ruin Sloane’s art for her.

Rowan pays the same child to deliver groceries for two more meals to Sloane, then walks her through the cooking steps on the phone again. He gives the child extra money when he learns he is saving to buy a PlayStation. Sloane does not talk to her parents much and has no siblings or other close family. Rowan returns to Boston and looks forward to seeing Sloane for their annual competition in less than a month.

Sloane chats with their serial killer target, Thorsten Harris, in a fancy bar in California. Rowan appears and crashes their conversation, which annoys Sloane. Although they have both discovered who their target is, Sloane knows more about him. For example, she knows he practices cannibalism, but Rowan does not seem to. Rowan easily charms Thorsten, who invites both Rowan and Sloane to his house for dinner the following evening.

Thorsten’s house is upscale, with an extensive collection of famous artworks, most of which are creepy or ominous. A man named David Miller serves them appetizers. David does not speak, has a vacant stare in his eyes, and seems to have trouble comprehending words, often needing to have things repeated multiple times. Thorsten claims that David was recently in an accident, so Thorsten employed him out of the goodness of his heart. Sloane assumes that Thorsten actually lobotomized David and then forced him to become a servant/prisoner.

David continues bringing more courses. Sloane mouths the word “lobotomy” to Rowan, but he does not understand what she is trying to say. Sloane does not drink her wine because she suspects it is drugged, but she pretends to take sips to appease Thorsten. Rowan drinks it and becomes increasingly intoxicated. He admits he thinks Sloane is the world’s most beautiful woman and that he has been abstinent since he met her because he is waiting for her. David brings the main course, which looks like beef but is actually human flesh, although Thorsten does not reveal this. Sloane does not eat it but Rowan eats some, then passes out.

When Rowan comes to, Sloane has Thorsten tied up and is cutting off bits of his skin and gouging out his eyeballs to make her web. Rowan now realizes that Thorsten drugged him with the wine and food. Sloane gives him a bowl to vomit into. Meanwhile, David is eating human flesh in the kitchen; Rowan and Sloane assume he does not realize what it is. Rowan discovers that he also ate human flesh and vomits more. Rowan claims not to remember what he said about Sloane and abstinence, even though he does. He worries Sloane does not like him the way he likes her, but he does not want to give up pursuing her because he thinks she is the only person who knows the real him and is capable of accepting him. Sloane continues making her web, which Rowan regards as a “masterpiece” and “art.” As with her other victims, she is creating a map of the locations where Thorsten killed or kidnapped his latest victims.

Sloane tells Thorsten, whose real name is Jeremy Carmichael, that he reminds her of the first person she killed, who would charm people to lure them in and then hurt them. Thorsten calls for help from David, but David ignores him. The first man Sloane killed was an art teacher from a program she attended with Lark when they were teenagers. The teacher promised to help the students get into good colleges, but when Sloane discovered he was sexually abusing Lark, she killed him and vowed to kill other monstrous people like him in the future. Sloane kills Thorsten, then dissociates for a while until Rowan snaps her out of it with a joke.

Sloane and Rowan find David in the kitchen, eating ice cream as if in a trance. Sloane takes the ice cream away from him and reads the handwritten label, which reveals that it contains semen. Rowan vomits again. Sloane does not want to abandon David, who seems helpless, so she asks Rowan to give him a job at his restaurant. Rowan protests but Sloane insists. There are no missing person records for anybody matching David’s description, and Sloane assumes that if Thorsten picked David, David probably does not have family or friends who are worried about his disappearance. Sloane instructs David to wash dishes, which he does easily, so Sloane argues that David could be a dishwasher at the restaurant. Rowan agrees to give David a job if Sloane will do an unspecified favor for him in the future. They clean up, and then Sloane admits that when she came to Boston, she was not there for a work meeting.