Erasmus Wilde arrives at Faith Plantation as its new master, frightening Wash with his cruel and menacing bearing.

Titch selects Wash from the plantation to serve as his personal scientific assistant, permanently separating Wash from Big Kit.

Wash is severely burned across his face when a hydrogen demonstration on Corvus Peak explodes unexpectedly.

Philip leads Wash to an isolated spot beneath the mountain and shoots himself in the face, leaving Wash alone with the body.

Titch and Wash escape Faith Plantation by launching the Cloud-cutter into a building storm in the dead of night.

A storm destroys the Cloud-cutter mid-flight, and it crashes into a ship at sea, carrying Titch and Wash toward Virginia.

Erasmus hires the bounty hunter John Willard to pursue and retrieve Wash, dead or alive, following the escape.

Titch and Wash sail to the Arctic and arrive at Mr. Wilde's remote camp, discovering that he is still alive.

Titch has a bitter argument with Mr. Wilde and then storms out of the Arctic camp, disappearing into the snow.

Mr. Wilde falls ill after a fruitless search for Titch and dies; Wash decides to leave the Arctic camp alone.

Wash meets Tanna Goff on a Nova Scotia beach where they are both sketching marine life and strike up a friendship.

Willard attacks Wash in the street after their earlier meeting; Wash stabs Willard in the eye with a knife and flees.

Tanna insists that Wash travel with her and Mr. Goff to England to escape any remaining danger from Willard.

At an abolitionist society in England, Wash discovers that Big Kit was his biological mother and that she died on the plantation.

Wash and Tanna track down Titch in a desert settlement in Morocco, where he has taken on a new young assistant.

Washington Black begins as an enslaved boy on a brutal Barbados sugar plantation, where a cruel new master named Erasmus Wilde makes survival precarious for everyone. When Erasmus's scientifically minded brother Titch selects Wash as his assistant, Wash's world expands — though it also permanently separates him from his protector Big Kit. After the plantation owner's cousin Philip commits suicide beside Wash, Titch flees the island with Wash in his flying machine called the Cloud-cutter, launching both of them into a dangerous wider world. Their escape carries Wash from Virginia to the Arctic, where Titch eventually abandons him, and then onward to Nova Scotia, where Wash struggles to build a life as a free man. After surviving a violent confrontation with the bounty hunter Willard, Wash travels to England and then Morocco, where he finally tracks down the elusive Titch and attempts to find the closure he has long sought.

Washington Black's journey from slavery to freedom.

Big Kit adopts young Wash in the slave quarters of Faith Plantation, feeding him, protecting him, and telling him he will have a great life.

Erasmus dumps the corpse of a slave who committed suicide before the assembled workers and beheads it to discourage further suicides.

Wash and Big Kit are summoned to serve at Erasmus's dinner table for the first time, terrified and bewildered by the request.

Erasmus strikes Big Kit across the face with a plate during dinner, breaking her nose, for moving too slowly.

Titch discovers Wash's natural talent for drawing and assigns him the role of illustrator for all their scientific work.

Enslaved workers haul the disassembled Cloud-cutter up Corvus Peak using a system of trails, ropes, and pulleys built for the task.

Philip arrives on the island and immediately mocks Wash's name, dismissing it as far too grand for a slave boy.

Wash recognizes that the maimed and silver-haired old woman serving Erasmus's table is Big Kit, ravaged by years of hardship.

Titch and Wash arrive at Edgar Farrow's church in Virginia, where Edgar secretly shelters runaway slaves in tunnels beneath the graveyard.

Wash arrives in Nova Scotia and confronts the harsh reality of poverty, loneliness, and persistent racial discrimination as a free man.

While working at the docks at night, Wash sees a cluster of iridescent jellyfish and his dormant passion for science and art reawakens.

While making a delivery, Wash realizes that Mr. Goff is the celebrated marine scientist whose books he studied devotedly under Titch.

Wash dives underwater to collect specimens for the Goffs and encounters a living octopus that he finds himself reluctant to harm.

Wash and Tanna visit Mrs. Wilde at her crumbling estate; she is cold and unhelpful, and admits she has not seen Titch in years.

Wash and Tanna travel to Amsterdam and reunite with the elderly Peter Haas, who reveals Titch has gone to Morocco.

Before Wash's great escape, Faith Plantation is a place of escalating cruelty where Erasmus uses brutal public spectacles to suppress rebellion and Big Kit struggles to shield Wash from the violence. When Erasmus strikes Big Kit at dinner, the raw power dynamics of the plantation are laid bare for Wash in a way he cannot forget. As Wash adapts to life with Titch, his hidden artistic gifts emerge, and the Cloud-cutter slowly takes shape on the peak of Corvus Mountain through the forced labor of enslaved workers. After escaping to America, Wash encounters the hidden world of the Underground Railroad through Titch's contact Edgar, before being cast adrift in Canada without guidance or roots. In Nova Scotia, a glimpse of glowing jellyfish reignites Wash's scientific passion and leads him to the Goff family, the ocean depths, and eventually to Peter Haas in Amsterdam — completing the trail that will bring him face to face with Titch.

The people and moments shaping Wash's world.

Big Kit resolves to kill herself and Wash after Erasmus arrives, believing death will carry them both to freedom in Dahomey.

Titch shows Wash the moon through a telescope and quietly returns the protective nail Big Kit had pressed into Wash's fist.

Wash and Titch climb Corvus Peak together, and Wash sees the open ocean surrounding Barbados for the first time in his life.

Philip announces at dinner that Mr. Wilde has died in an Arctic accident, shocking both of the Wilde brothers.

Erasmus reveals during a hunting trip that Wash's illustration services have already been promised to a visiting scientist, blocking Titch's plans.

Titch shows Wash a scientific paper crediting Wash as its illustrator and another paper arguing against slavery on the island.

Titch leads Wash to an underground tunnel sheltering runaway slaves and urges him to escape to Canada; Wash refuses and stays.

Edgar produces recent letters from Mr. Wilde and his assistant Peter House, raising the hope that Mr. Wilde may still be alive.

Peter Haas rescues a lost Wash from a blinding Arctic blizzard after Wash chases after the departing Titch and becomes stranded.

Mr. Goff offers Wash a glass of port at the end of dinner, signaling his grudging acceptance of Wash and Tanna's relationship.

Wash conceives the idea for Ocean House, a living aquarium, after bringing the captured octopus safely back to the surface alive.

Willard approaches Wash at an eatery, reveals that Erasmus is dead and the plantation's slaves are freed, and hints that Titch may be alive.

Wash learns at the abolitionist society that Titch himself donated the Faith Plantation papers to the archives, confirming he is still alive.

Wash and Tanna attend the public hanging of Willard, who has been convicted of murdering an innocent freed black man.

Wash confronts Titch in Morocco but cannot make Titch understand the depth of pain his abandonment and self-centeredness caused.

Washington Black's story is driven by pivotal moments of choice and revelation that redirect his life at every turn. Big Kit's desperate plan to kill them both as an act of liberation sets the stage for Wash's complicated lifelong relationship with freedom, while Titch's quiet return of a protective nail marks the beginning of a bond that is never fully equal. The sudden news of Mr. Wilde's death, Titch's failed attempt to push Wash toward the Underground Railroad, and Titch's eventual abandonment in the Arctic each force Wash to confront what loyalty and kinship truly mean. In Canada and England, Wash quietly transforms into a scientist and artist in his own right, conceiving Ocean House and learning shattering truths about his birth mother and the man who shaped his youth. His final confrontation with Titch in Morocco closes a long chapter but offers imperfect closure, as Wash comes to accept that true understanding between them was never truly possible.