Unlikely as it seems, Ruben Brandt travels by train along with Duveneck's Whistling Boy and is attacked by Velázquez's Infanta Margarita Teresa.

Kowalski (and sacrificing the fan to escape), she understands that she has psychological problems and seeks help from psychotherapist Ruben Brandt, specialized in treating artistic souls.

John Cooper, a former associate of Brandt's late father working with subliminals in the CIA, realizes that Brandt is the culprit (because the list of stolen paintings is exactly the list they had worked with) and calls Kowalski, but before Kowalski arrives, a mercenary, Kris Barutanski, kills Cooper, trying to find the Collector to deliver to him.

Examining Brandt's late father's house, Kowalski sees that the movies (with subliminals of the works; we had seen a flashback in which Gerhard had forced his son Ruben to watch the cartoon movies he liked, even though the boy would have preferred to go out for snails (maybe that's why he now has snail-shaped ice cubes) and discovers that Ruben Brandt is the Collector; he fights and kills Barutanski there.

Brandt seems like he is going to have a nightmare, but he wakes up on a quiet train, with an art book that his accomplice has dedicated to him, and Kowalski appears in the reflection of the glass (The movie had started with Frigyes Karinthy's quote "In my dream I was two cats and I was playing with each other").

The site's critical consensus reads, "Ruben Brandt, Collector is flawed from a storytelling standpoint, but the eye-catching animation is more than enough to make this offbeat thriller well worth watching.