From Season 3 Finale Recap and Ending, Explained

The psychological horror show ‘From’ has been painting an increasingly perplexing narrative from the start. Season 3 remains no different and offers a treasure trove of new mysteries and obscure clues for old ones that will maintain the show’s mysterious appeal, inviting fans to speculate about the fate of the unlucky people who are stuck in the Township of nightmares. In the aftermath of season 2, numerous key players, including Tabitha, Jade, and Boyd, continue to scrutinize the Town’s puzzles as it throws new hurdles their way. Meanwhile, other characters, such as Fatima—who has miraculously gotten pregnant—and Elgin—who has become the latest victim of the Town’s mind games—become pawns in a menacing overarching game. SPOILERS AHEAD!

What Do The Numbers Inside The Bottle Tree Mean?

The Faraway trees that exist in the woods outside the Town remain one of the most intriguing elements that are the focus of ‘From’ throughout season 3. At the start of the season, Tabitha gets transported into the Outside world after traveling to a Lighthouse through the Faraway Tree. Furthermore, once on the outside, she tracks Victor’s father, Henry, and learns of a cryptic connection between his wife, Miranda, and the Faraway Trees. Of the two Faraway Trees seen in the Town so far, one is decorated with bottles that have numbered paper inside. Before Miranda ever stepped foot in the Town, she created art installations of identical Bottle Trees in the outside world.

Therefore, Miranda seems to have some pre-existing connection with the Town. Things become further perplexing once Tabitha returns to the Town and makes a startling realization. As it turns out, she also had nightmares about the Town before getting stuck inside it with her family. Inevitably, this piques the frantic interest of Jade, who attempts to help Tabitha make sense of the numbers in the Bottle Tree. However, in the end, it’s Jim who cracks the code. There are 12 separate digits that form the numbers inside the bottle, with backward 2 and 7 forming the additional digits. This prompts Jim to speculate if these numbers could correspond to the twelve musical notes—an explanation that Jade hadn’t yet considered despite his extensive scrutiny of the numbers.

As such, back in Town, Jade and Tabitha attempt to crack the different numbers in the bottles as one joint melody. Surprisingly, once they equip this method, a melody naturally forms inside Jade’s brain, allowing him to form the song trapped within the Bottles. Yet, after Jim points out the potential danger of the song, especially in light of the precious lethal musical box and nursery rhyme, the trio moves their experiment to the woods. As Jade plays the melody on his violin, the Anghkooey kids—the ghoulish spirits visible to Tabitha and Jade appear around them. Thus, the truth about the numbers emerges: they’re notes of a melody that create a lullaby that was once sung to the Anghkooey kids before their deaths.

What Does Fatima Give Birth To?

Before further divulging the secrets that the Bottle Tree song reveals, it’s worth it to take a look at the events unfolding on the other side of the Town. While Jim, Tabitha, and Jade work out the Bottle Tree puzzle, Boyd and Ellis continue searching for Fatima, who went missing the day prior. After the weird conversation with Elgin, Ellis suspects that the other man knows where his wife is. The way Elgin had spoken about the greater good and a way to escape from the Town reminds Boyd of Sara’s previous actions that led her to kill her brother. Thus, he brings her and Kenny to confront Elgin at Donna’s emptied Colony House.

Once Boyd and the others confront Elgin, he has no choice but to come clean about the fact that he has abducted Fatima. Nonetheless, he insists that she is safe. Furthermore, he claims that her unnatural pregnancy—which doesn’t show up on a sonograph and compels her to eat rotten things and human blood—is actually the thing that will finally save them from the Town. Elgin believes that the ghastly Ghost Lady haunting him is actually an Angel who is showing him the way to salvation. Once it becomes evident that Elgin won’t simply talk, Boyd decides to take extreme measures and prepares to torture the information out of him.

Even though his conscience remains heavy with the decision—materializing as the disappointed ghost of Priest Khatri—he goes through with his plan and smashes Elgin’s hands in an effort to make him talk. Ultimately, Acosta manages to stop him. Nevertheless, Sara finishes what he starts and gets Fatima’s location out of Elgin after gouging his eyes out with a screwdriver. Meanwhile, trapped inside the root cellar, Fatima attempts to hurt the thing growing inside of her womb—which grew rapidly thanks to Elgin’s blood. Yet, the Ghost Lady appears before her moments before her water breaks.

By the time Boyd and the others arrive at the Root Cellar, Fatima is already in labor with only the Ghost Lady by her side for aide. As such, she has already extracted the baby from Fatima when Boyd manages to enter the secret room inside the Cellar. As Ellis rushes to his wife’s side, Boyd decides to follow the Ghost Lady, who is going down the room’s trapdoor tunnel. At the end of the tunnel, Boyd covertly spies on the group of Creatures who have seemingly gathered for the child’s birth. After the baby—encased within a fleshy cocoon—is placed on the ground, it rapidly evolves and breaks out of its case.

Thus, Boyd finds a fully grown man standing among the Creatures. Worse yet, the newborn man is actually one of the Creatures himself—one that Boyd is familiar with all too well. Fatima has given birth—or rebirth—to the Smiley creature who has been terrorizing the Township even before Boyd’s arrival. Previously, Boyd had managed to kill Smiley, using his body for examination before burning it into ashes. Nonetheless, Smiley has returned, solidifying the never-dying trait of the Creatures. Fatima’s pregnancy has been a trick all this time, meant to pave the path for Smiley’s return.

What Are The Creatures? Where Do They Come From?

With Smiley’s rebirth, unanswered questions about the Creatures and their origins resurface. It confirms that the Creatures in the Town can truly never die and will continue returning to their old forms even if the townsfolk manage to kill them. Fortunately, before Fatima gave birth to Smiley, she managed to catch a glimpse of the reality of the Creatures. As revealed by her, the Creatures are former humans who once resided in the Town. The ever-elusive “It” that controls the Town and its supernatural happenings offered these people immortality.

As a result, they sacrificed their children in a ritual that granted them eternal life. Whether their inclination toward violent chaos came as a side-effect of the ritual or if they simply developed a taste for evil after their actions remains unclear. Either way, the truth about the Creatures finally emerges. They look like humans and share their biological physicality because they were humans, to begin with. Nonetheless, in gaining their immortality, these Creatures have lost their humanity. This also answers the question about the Anghkooey kids and the rituals they were subjected to in the past.

What Does Anghkooey Mean? Why Can Tabitha and Jade See The Kids?

The Anghkooey Children’s participation in a ritual of some kind was already foreshadowed in Jade’s season 2 storyline. However, the reveal that the Creatures were behind the ritual further explains the motives behind the ritual. Yet, the explanation for the word “Anghkooey” doesn’t emerge from the revelation about the ritual. Instead, Tabitha and Jade learn the word’s real meaning after conducting their experiment with the Bottle Tree melody. Once the Anghkooey kids appear in front of the duo after Jade plays the melody, one girl steps toward Tabitha and repeats the word.

In the context of the supernaturally-powered song, Tabitha finally realizes the meaning of the word. When the spirits of the sacrificed kids are saying “Anghkooey,” they’re urging Tabitha—and Jade— to “remember.” As a result, Tabitha and Jade, the only two characters who have interacted with the sacrificed kids so far, do remember everything they had forgotten. As it turns out, it isn’t Tabitha or Jade’s first visit to the nightmarish Town. The two are repeated reincarnations of the original townsfolk. Over the years, they have been getting reincarnated without memories of their previous life and returning to the Town.

In fact, Miranda—Victor’s mother—and Christopher—the strange owner of Jasper the puppet—were previous versions of Tabitha and Jade, respectively. For the same reason, Tabitha has experienced a strange connection to Miranda that resulted in a flashback to the latter’s death. Likewise, it also explains why Tabitha kept finding bracelets identical to the one she had made before arriving in Town. In both instances, the bracelets were made by previous incarnations of Tabitha. Similarly, her and Miranda’s dreams of the Town were also likely memories of their past selves.

The reason Tabitha—and Jade—are destined to return to the Town repeatedly is because they have a purpose they need to fulfill: saving the Anghkooey kids. The duo aren’t randomly connected to the strange Town. Instead, they’re one of the earlier residents who partook in the child-sacrificing ritual. Furthermore, Tabitha and Jade were parents to a kid in their past lives who ended up getting sacrificed for the ritual. It remains unclear whether the two were involved in the ritual and benefited from it. However, their participation, to some degree, would explain their strangely exclusive reincarnation. In a way, their souls have achieved immortality through constant rebirths reminiscent of Smiley’s gruesome rebirth.

Does Jim Die? How Did Julie Know?

The revelation of Tabitha and Jade’s past leaves both individuals emotionally distraught. The Bottle Tree’s melody seems to have awakened previously buried memories of their past lives, including the one where their child was sacrificed as a part of an inhuman ritual. Naturally, this compels Tabitha to look for an escape. Yet, Jim—who is entirely out of the loop—follows after her to understand everything that has just occurred. After an emotional Tabitha shares the truth about her and Jade’s reincarnation, she retreats again to mull things over in her solitude. Meanwhile, Jim is left behind alone in the woods.

However, a frantic Julie—with a different haircut than the one we have seen her in so far—joins Jim in the woods so far. Julie attempts to warn her father about some upcoming doom, urging him to run away from the woods as soon as possible. Shortly after, a man in a yellow suit shows up, sporting the same eeriness that all the other Creatures do. Yet, his unusual excursion during the daytime remains perplexing. As the Creature charges toward Jim, a physical altercation occurs between the two. Eventually, the man in the Yellow Suit admonishes Jim for previously letting Tabitha dig the hole before the Creature slices his neck open.

Thus, despite Julie’s attempts to warn her father, Jim dies in the woods that day. The strange thing to note here remains Julie’s sudden change in her hairstyle, which seems to indicate she isn’t the same Julie the audience has been following so far. Earlier in the season, Julie discovered some ruins that send her physical body into a trance while her consciousness is sent back into the past. She floats the idea of using this ability—story walking, as Ethan calls it—to change the past and save lives. Therefore, it’s possible that Julie, who warns Jim before his death, is actually from the future.

Nevertheless, as Ethan said, it’s impossible to change a story that’s already been told. The Creature who kills Jim is another peculiar detail worth exploring. Before killing him, the man in the yellow suit references Tabitha’s hole, which seems to hark back to the voice on the radio who had warned Jim of the same last season. Moreover, the man also previously appeared in one of Miranda’s drawings, which shows past memories of the Town. As such, Jim’s killer is almost certainly a key player who would prove to be troublesome in the future.