The Real Truth
Episode 6 of Black Butterflies begins with Solange heading for a baby scan and gravely despairing over what this means. After what happened with Carrel earlier in this timeline, she’s worried the same thing will happen here too. The difference this time though, is that the love has gone.
Is Albert really a killer?
Sol is afraid of Albert after he killed Hans, and she’s no longer happy to live in the same way. So naturally, she burns the salon (just like Catherine said last episode) and hops on a bus to Brussels.
Sol adopts a new persona for herself, calling herself Catherine and meeting Wim Winkler, Adrien’s step-father.
In the present, Adrien visits Nastya, where he learns she was the one who left the flowers by Albert’s grave. She invites him in, believing this is a booty call. The real reason for his arrival though is that Adrien wants to try and explain their ties together.
However, she ends up reading parts of Black Butterflies and immediately lashes out at Adrien. It turns out Albert actually distorted the story and he hasn’t given the truth reflection of what really happened between them.
What happened with Nastya?
She was 5 years old at the time and saw everything. She witnessed Solange not Albert killing Hans and promptly hid under the bed. Unfortunately, she also saw her own mother die too. Albert was actually the one who tried to protect her and encouraged Catherine to leave. She was about to grab the poor child from under the bed but Albert stopped her, calling her a monster. Albert is actually the innocent party in this.
Adrien comes to the same realization as he pores over old newspaper clippings in the library and notices several stories involving Catherine. One in particular happens to be that abusive flashback we saw at the start of the season. Now, given the cries coming from that room we were led to believe that it was actually Catherine being beaten, when in reality what actually happened is very different. But we’ll get to that in a hot minute!
So wait, Solange is the killer?
When Adrien confronts his mother, the real truth comes out. It was Solange all along, not Albert. She’s the one who killed all those people through the 70’s while Albert watched from the wings, unwilling to get involved. She’s the one who encouraged him to sleep with her after. This also explains why Albert presumably took Carrel away, he did so to protect the babe from Catherine, to stop her from potentially harming him.
Adrien returns to his mother who admits as much; our protagonist blinded by guilt for killing an innocent party in all this.
Why is Adrien wanted by the police?
Meanwhile, Mathilde shows up at Albert’s place looking for her partner. Carrel has been missing for a while and she heads into the greenhouse, noticing the basement. The stench is overwhelming but she passes maggots on the steps to find Carrel in the corner, “MODY” scrawled up on the wall.
After taking his body out and gravely realizing the man is dead (because Albert obviously never came back to feed him following his death), Mathilde ends up reading the Black Butterflies book.
As for Adrien, he gets back to writing, intent on getting the truth down on paper as quickly as possible. However, Julien rings with grave news. The police are after him and although he’s bought Adrien some time, it may not be enough to hold them off for long.
Adrien writes like a madman, making sure he can get the words down before the police catch him. He ignores calls from Nora and eventually finishes, sending the email on to Julien and telling him to use what he’s told them wisely.
Does Nora save Roman?
Nora learns who Catherine really is and realizes that she’s in trouble. With her outside with Roman, the baby monitor broadcasts everything. With a knife in hand, she places the babe in the backseat and tells Nora she started all of this. After all, Nora is the one who told her about Adrien’s story.
Nora manages to save Roman, running back down the road like before and coming out before Sol in the car. She had ever intention of running her over until a young Albert pops up in the seat next to her and convinces her to stop.
Meanwhile, Mathilde questions Adrien about what happened to Carrel. He introduces himself as Adrien Desiderio, using Albert’s surname instead of Winkler and embracing his heritage for the first time this season.
Is there a post-credit sequence?
There is indeed and it’s one you 100% need to stick around for. Here, we cut back in time to see Adrien’s past. Wim tells Adrien not to play with his food, and he stares at his father as he drops milk on the table.
When Wim strikes Adrien, it’s a step too far and Sol doesn’t hesitate. She immediately stabs him and kills the guy, taking his belt off and lashing herself in the room to make it seem like self defence. Little Adrien is left to eat his breakfast, with that familiar chaotic horn blaring from the record player.
The Episode Review
What a fantastic ending. The whole metamorphosis idea for a butterfly is echoed in this story, as we see the cocoon break and stem forth a shocking truth. It turns out Albert was the innocent party in all this all along and perhaps that’s not surprising, given in episode 1 we learned that Albert dedicated his entire life to Solange.
Here though the veil is well and truly lifted as Solange reveals herself to be the one responsible for all the murders in the past and even convinced Albert to go out of his way to admit to everything. It’s quite the shocking revelation and one that reframes everything that’s come before in the series in a completely different light. But hey, Albert hood-winkled all of us too!
This thriller has been quite the slow burn at times but it’s definitely made the wait worth it for this final episode. Clocking in at 63 minutes, there’s not a minute wasted here, as the show recontextualizes everything we’ve learned thus far and does so with a lot of flair and beautifully constructed montages.
A great way to round out a great thriller; Black Butterflies is definitely one of the dark horses of good TV this year!
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Episode Rating
(5)
The hitch hiker didn’t. It was solange. You know when she asks if it’s his kidneys a little guiltily. He must have refused to sleep with her.
I’m glad I’ve read the recaps, because several characters looked so much alike that I didn’t even realize they were different people. To me, Carrell looked so much like an older Adrien that when he appeared on the scene, I just assumed we had jumped to a later time-line. Which meant I attributed everything that Carrell did (including the research in the storage unit) to Adrien. Even when Carrell showed up at Albert’s place with a gun, I thought it was the “older” and now deranged Adrien. To complicate it further, I found that Mathilde resembled Nora enough that I was thinking Nora was a policewoman by trade. On the other hand, I had no trouble with the changing of the actresses that played the young Solange and understood immediately what was going on.
I thought that was pretty smart switching the actresses- up until episode 5 we don’t actually know what Solange looks like! only what Adrien imagines her to be, but when we find out the truth they change the actress so she looks more like the mother plot twist! Cause we saw the “real” sola he from early we would have guessed the link between Albert and Adrien from earlier on! I think it was nicely done.
What a lame story…started out well until the Sol being someone else and the actors don’t look at all alike, very convenient. The switch to who is the killer by using another persons interpretation isn’t very imaginative either. Too bad, this started out like an interesting story and could have been better sticking to the original story line and finding a more realistic endings
Why are two different actresses playing the young Solange?
Why did the hitch hiker stab Albert?