Abhiroop Das
Created by John Griffin, ‘From’ begins with the arrival of the Matthews family in a town that seems to be surrounded by an unfathomable dread. As Tabitha and Jim Matthews talk to the residents, their experience only gets stranger and stranger, and they soon discover why. From a road that never ends to the repeated advice to stay shut inside their home during the night, all forewarnings fall short in the face of the terror they feel upon discovering the nocturnal creatures that plague this town. The self-proclaimed sheriff and mayor of the town, Boyd, tries his best to maintain peace and order, but trouble always seems to find its way in. By the end of the first season of this horror thriller series, we are left with more questions than answers, not just about the entities but also about where the characters wind up. SPOILERS AHEAD.
From Season 1 Plot Recap
‘From’ season 1 begins in an unnamed town where everything comes to a stop as the night falls. With people locking themselves indoors and a mysterious stone set at the door, we are introduced to creatures that look uncannily human but are anything but. A while ago, Boyd Stevens, the mayor and sheriff of the town, created a system to survive here, and the townfolk religiously adhere to it. They didn’t always have such a cruel fate, though, as originally, none of them was meant to be here. They are all strangers who ended up getting stranded in this supernatural land, and now a new family seems to be on the way. The Matthews, comprising Jim, Tabitha, and their two children, Julie and Ethan, arrive in the town after narrowly surviving a car accident with another trapped man, Jade Herrera, a lone tech entrepreneur.
As the group learns the truth about the town and how there is no way out, they respond with a diverse set of reactions. While Jim is quick to accept the situation, Tabitha questions the availability of electricity and suggests that there might be some wiring hidden underground. Jade, meanwhile, believes that creating a radio might help him escape. In the process, however, he ends up experiencing several hallucinations of blood and gore, including a mysterious symbol which has been documented even by some of the earliest known inhabitants of the town. Meanwhile, an even more mysterious fate awaits Ethan, who was the most injured during the car crash. Upon waking up, he spots a boy in white, but no one believes him except Victor, who once saw the boy as a little kid himself.
As Victor begins exploring the woods with Ethan, we learn about the Faraway Trees, which seem capable of teleportation. Before the duo can dig any deeper, however, Jim finds his son and takes him away, leaving Victor alone. Meanwhile, Sara, one of the residents, begins hearing voices that instruct her to sacrifice lives in order to get out, and in a dazed state, she ends up killing her own brother. Frustrated with all the deaths, not just by the night-dwelling creatures, Boyd decides to let Sara follow the voices and joins her on a journey outside of the town’s safety. As a storm approaches, Jade and his team are able to finish work on the makeshift radio, just as Tabitha digs down quite a bit, but the answer that awaits them is far from pleasant.
From Season 1 Ending: Does Tabitha Live or Die? Where Does She Go?
Season 1 of ‘From’ ends with Tabitha uncovering a major truth about the smiling creatures, but seemingly disappearing in the process. While everyone else focuses on gaining elevation to get the radio tower working, Tabitha alone digs downwards and ultimately discovers something unexpected. After a certain point, the dirt gives way to a hollowed-out tunnel, complete with ancient rock carvings that are reminiscent of the symbol Jade saw in his hallucinations, a symbol that has echoed through several generations of townsfolk. That isn’t even the most surprising detail about the scene, though, as Victor, of all people, finds Tabitha underground and reveals that the place is where the creatures live when the sun is up.
The revelation about these underground chambers explains where all the creatures go during the day, and also potentially gives our townsfolk a way of killing them. With all the nods to vampirism, there is a good chance that the creatures are actually inactive or comatose during the day, and thus rendered vulnerable. This can also explain why no one attacks Tabitha or Victor, who has presumably been down there much longer than she has. That said, given how little we know about the creatures’ anatomy, and whether they can be hurt at all, all of these questions are left unanswered, at least until Tabitha and Victor can make their way back up and gather more intel. It is likely that this cave network is connected to all the other openings of the Earth in and around the town, be it the Faraway Trees or the cave Boyd discovered, which gives the townsfolk more hope.
Perhaps a more chilling detail about this twist comes from the radio message that Jim gets right before Tabitha falls through the ground. After days of trying to get the radio to work, a voice cuts through the static noise at last, except it doesn’t seem to be friendly. The unknown man, identifying Jim directly by name, warns him to stop Tabitha before it’s too late, which suggests that there might be a secondary, sentient entity out there who can stay up during the day and is the one pulling all the strings. While Tabitha appears to be missing by the time Jim makes it back home, it is likely that she will make it back to the surface with Victor sooner rather than later. From there, everyone can finally begin planning a countermeasure against whatever mysteries the town holds.
Where is Boyd Trapped? Will He Get Out?
Sheriff Boyd, too, ends the first season on an ambiguous note by quite literally getting trapped in what appears to be a narrow well or chimney. Despite having made relatively astute observations thus far, he makes his first misstep in listening to Sarah’s advice and stepping into a Faraway Tree without any foreknowledge of what it might entail. Based on what we know from Victor’s experiments, there is no way to predict where the other end of these trees lies, and thus, we have no idea where Boyd is trapped. That said, the show is unlikely to leave its main character in such a perilous situation without respite, and thus, we are left with two broad options. Either someone rescues Boyd from the outside, or he finds the strength to crawl out and see the new place for himself.
While we don’t quite know how the supernatural operates within the town, one thing that’s for certain is that the spirits of the dead are seemingly still trapped here. They most consistently register as voices in Sarah’s head, and on one special occasion, Boyd is contacted by none other than his late wife, Abby. This might be our clue into how he, or the town at large, can be saved, as those who have died can now access the town’s core in a way that the living simply cannot. What awaits Boyd outside this well might not even be a human or a friendly entity, but at such a critical moment, all he can do is brave it in hopes of being rescued or figuring out a way for himself.
Who is the Boy in White? What Happens to Sarah?
Amidst all the supernatural overturnings in the season finale, one aspect that gets somewhat lost is the Boy in White. Once believed to be visible only to children, the Boy in White shows up to Sarah, of all people, strongly indicating that he isn’t just an entity but more likely the ghost of a child who once lived in the town. Here, we can pick up on each detail about the child to develop a theory about who he might be. Given that Victor once spotted the child right after a town massacre, it might be that the child once belonged to the same group, but died and turned into a ghost. The more grim interpretation, however, is that the child might have been turned into a sacrifice by the original townsfolk, which would explain how a curse so supernaturally potent befell it.
The contrast between the boy’s spotless white clothes and all the blood and gore surrounding him does lead into the idea that he was separated from the violence to some extent. Though we don’t know what his intentions are yet, he appears to be generally friendly towards humans. It might even be the case that his directive for Boyd to climb into the tree is a blessing in disguise, meant to help in the long run. As for Sarah, we don’t quite know where she goes after Boyd’s teleportation, as she doesn’t seem to join him in the well. It might be that she has decided to follow the Boy in White, or perhaps begun walking towards the lighthouse all by herself, but regardless, she appears to be protected by the spiritual forces of the town in a way no one else is, and this might lead her to an awakening of her own.
Who Are the People on the Bus?
In the final moments of the season, amidst all the chaos on multiple fronts, a bus full of people arrives in the town, ushering in potentially dozens of people who have no idea what mess they have gotten into. That itself assumes the bus is full of regular humans, since the show has already shown that we have barely scratched the surface of what lurks in the shadows. That said, the more probable scenario here is the show introducing a fresh cast of characters after the string of deaths over the last few episodes, and we can expect many more people to meet the town’s mystery with fear, curiosity, mysticism, or daring, as has always been the case.
One detail about the bus that can be easy to miss is the sticker on it that reads “Grand Rapids Runner.” This appears to be a direct tie-in to an earlier scene in which town residents Kristi and Kenny talk about never having stepped beyond Grand Rapids. This might not just be a throwaway detail, as one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the Town lies in how people are chosen to become trapped here. While the townsfolk have already established that the town isn’t situated in any one place and traps people from all over the states, the link might not lie in roadways, but in the woods and river networks. Regardless of who the people on the bus are, the team now has a much better understanding of who they are up against and, more importantly, has no intention of backing down.
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