I Finished Watching Season 3 of From
If you, the reader, have not finished watching season 3 of From, a very enjoyable show with one of the worst names ever devised, probably don’t read this.
If you’re still here, we left the end of season 2 with Tabitha back in the real world, having been pushed through the window of a lighthouse into Maine. There she followed the address on a lunchbox to find Victor’s dad. Incidentally, I kind of hope someone who has not seen the show reads those two sentences, because they are ludicrous without context, and riveting within it. Victor’s dad reveals that his wife, Miranda, had visions of the From Town, and painted pictures of it, and even made an art installation of the bottle tree. They start driving to go see it but get in a car crash. Thinking back on this now, it seemed very important that they get to see the real-world bottle tree, but I guess it was just actually a thing Miranda had a vision of and seeing the original wouldn’t have done anything. It’s not like they can walk in one and out the other. Tabitha and Victor’s dad - whose name I have completely forgotten - end up in an ambulance, which stops… because there’s a tree blocking the road. This was probably the most shocking moment of the season, where you’d say “oh shit” aloud. They lose their two medics (d’oh) to the night monsters and the only new survivor is some cop lady named Acosta. That was the most interesting plotline.
Meanwhile, there was a lot of wheel spinning. I don’t read much media about this show, because it’s very mystery driven and it would be very easy to find out something you don’t want to, but the idea is supposed to be that it’s character driven and you care about who these people are and what happens to them. You’re not supposed to be just compiling clues and making a bullet point list of things you don’t know yet (this is coming later).
Some people had a strong season, character-wise. Probably Tabitha (above) most of all, once she got back to From Town she was very up for exploring and trying shit out. As was Jade. This, in light of the finale, was probably not a coincidence. Jade though, didn’t really do anything. He spent forever being drunk and looking at numbers, spinning wheels. He did have the most relatable line in the entire show, yelling at the ghost children to just actually tell us what they want. Victor and his dad had some decent character work, Victor never progressing mentally past being about ten years old has been a good source of drama and you kind of just accept it now. He did get a lot of “it’s not your fault”, which, it isn’t, but ok, we get it. Fatima arguably had an interesting story, at least her pregnancy was evil, there’s nothing more tedious than a baby. On TV, I mean. Yes, on TV. Did anyone actually find out she was drinking blood? Julie was also not bad, and I guess she’s going to be a time travelling road warrior now, which I’m on board with. Elgin being a generally wholesome guy who gets whispered into evil and being tortured was good. Sara did nothing at all until the very end when she suddenly became awesome by gouging Elgin’s eye out, but did it need like 14 episodes to get there. Spinning wheels.
Boyd actually tortured a guy, which I didn’t expect him to go through with. He spent an awful lot of time this season yelling at people to trust him and to wait and really it hasn’t been all that justified. Someone brought up that he went on something like a vision quest in season 2 and then came back and said nothing to anybody.
Who did not have a strong season? Donna did absolutely nothing. Her entire role was emerging from Colony House to find out who had died outside of it, or tell other people who had died inside it. Jim was the wettest of wet blankets, after his phone tower experiment fell over, he adopted the persona of “what if we don’t do anything, no you shut up”, over and over. Kristi got caught in a bear trap and did nothing else. Poor Kenny lost his mother and did nothing else, and that was in the first ten minutes of the premiere. Randall was set up like he had a plot coming - getting left outside to die but then spared - but his great character arc was to no longer live on a bus. Ellis had two modes of operation: “Fatima, you’ll be ok” and “Where the fuck is Fatima!?!”. The bus driver lady opened the diner again.
Dale teleported into the wall of a swimming pool, oops.
But then they revealed basically what was going on. The townspeople had made some kind of deal where they’d sacrifice their children to become immortal, except for one couple, who actually liked their children. The night monsters are the townspeople (did they know they’d be demonic?) and the couple are reincarnated over and over because each iteration fails to save the children. Christopher and Miranda were a reincarnation. Tabitha and Jade are a reincarnation. Looks like we don’t need Jim any more. It was actually a good twist that the children couldn’t just come out and tell them what was going on because they’ve tried that before and been rejected. Not sure transposing musical notes into numbers and then hanging them individually inside bottles on a magic tree that you’re being tortured in the caves underneath is the best workaround necessarily, but it seems to have gotten the job done.
Things I don’t know, purely fired off from the top of my head:
- Who was chained up in the tower? We have time travel now, so it could be anyone
- Who is the kimono lady who midwifed the Smiley baby
- Who’s the yellow guy who showed up at the end and tore Jim’s throat out
- Where does the food, running water, electricity, animals, etc come from
- Who made the weather go bad to stop the phone tower from working and how did they do it
- Why does the jukebox keep coming on
- How can they save the children if you can’t change the story and the story has already happened
- Where did the talismans come from
- What happened to the three of them who got locked up in the tower and why is that special
- Who’s running the show here, like, where do the voices and ghosts and phone calls come from
I suspect that, if they follow this 5 season plan, the next one (in 2026, sigh) will have a lot of flashbacks to the beginning of this thing, and will get to the point where the people have to choose whether to go home and leave the monsters running the town, or stay and save the children in some way. You have to assume they will stay and then the final season will be some kind of supernatural battle. I’d watch that.