MGM horror series, “From,” created by John Griffin, is set in a mysterious town somewhere in the USA with no visible entrance or exit. This town doesn’t have any exact position on the map and represents a pocket dimension that lures people from all around the USA. Whenever a person or a group of people passing through the forest road spots a fallen tree in the middle of the road, they are forced to take a second road and end up moving in circles, only to realize in the end that they have been captured in a loop where there is only one thing and one thing alone, a mysterious town. But that’s not where the horror ends.
At night, in the absence of sunlight, the town witnesses a horde of bloodthirsty human-looking monsters that come out of their hiding in the forest and feast on any living human being they find on their hunt. The people of the town protect themselves in basements or behind closed doors and nailed windows, while a mysterious talisman with unusual markings protects them from these nocturnal monsters. The end of the “From” series, Season 1, leaves behind a lot of puzzling questions without giving any definite answers to ease the viewer’s curiosity, and thus a lot of it is left to speculation or theories. Hence, without any further ado, let’s enter into the mysterious world and try to understand it based on the hints dropped throughout the narrative.
“From” Season 1: Plot Summary – What Is The Series About?
The town is divided between two sets of people. On one hand, there are members of the actual town that live by certain rules and regulations and have a democratic setup, while on the high grounds, there is the colony house that is looked after by a woman named Donna, who believes in free community and the people live like hippies, growing their own food.
In the central town, Boyd Stevens (Harold Perrineau), a retired army man, acts as a self-appointed sheriff and maintains law and order with his deputy, Kenny. Every evening, before it gets dark, Boyd patrols the streets with a bell in hand to signal the towners to wrap up their work and lock themselves in their respective houses, which are protected by a stone talisman hanging near the door on the inside. Boyd has advised people to nail down their windows in case they have any children under the roof, as the creatures of the night try to lure the innocent souls and trick them into opening the door. One such event happens at the beginning of season 1, when a young girl named Meagan opens the door for a monster at night as the creature convinces Meagan that she is her late grandmother. As soon as Meagan opens the door, the horde of monsters attacks her and her mother, Lauren Pratt, whose severed bodies are found by Boyd the following morning.
Lauren’s husband and Meagan’s father, Frank, was away that night and had been drinking with a friend. Due to his ignorance, the town lost two innocent souls, and as a part of the punishment, Boyd and Father Khatri decide to lock Frank in the “box,” which is a small iron shelter in the middle of the town with no talisman inside it to protect the person from the night creatures.
Meanwhile, outside the dimension, a family of four is traveling down a road in an RV when the father, Jim Matthews, suddenly spots a fallen tree in the middle of the road. The family decides to take the second route they saw a mile back and circle around to continue with their trip, but as they hit the second road, they suddenly realize that they are moving in circles, and the only thing they spot is a mysterious town where people have gathered around the cemetery to pay their last respects to Meagan and Lauren Pratt.
Jim comes out of the RV and asks for directions from Boyd, who instructs him to stay on the road, and he will finally find the highway. As soon as the RV leaves, Boyd and Kenny lay the spike strip on the road to puncture the RV and inform them about the horrors they have soaked into. However, before they can stop the RV, it is met with an accident outside the town, where another car driven by a boy named Tobey loses its balance. While trying to save the car, Jim steers away from the RV that slips off the tracks and crashes into the forest, where a wooden piece penetrates his young son, Ethan’s leg.
Boyd and other towners come to their rescue as they take Jim’s wife, Tabitha, and their daughter, Julie, to the town along with Tobey, while Jim decides to stay with Ethan in the RV, where the town’s doctor, Kristi, decides to operate on Ethan and Boyd stays back to save them from the monsters.
The series further follows the Matthews’ family and Tobey’s friend, Jade, who was asleep (intoxicated) in the car while it entered the unknown dimension. Boyd explains the horrors to the new residents of the town and asks them to choose between the central town and the colony house as their permanent abode. Meanwhile, a girl named Sara Myers, who works at the diner as a waitress, is contacted by the voice of these creatures as they make a deal with her to carry out their commands in exchange for a way home. Will any of these residents be able to return home, or will they be trapped in the mysterious town for the rest of their lives?
Major Spoilers Ahead
Hints That Pave Way For Possible Theories
“From” series Season 1 refuses to answer any question with exact certainty; however, while setting the premise in Season 1, it does leave a lot of hints behind for the viewers to ponder. Let’s discuss some of the major clues and what they could mean.
- No Physical Location: John Griffin probably named the series “from” because the residents of the mysterious town cannot possibly answer the question, “from which town they belong to now.” Another point to be noted is that Deputy Kenny told the new resident, Jade, that every single one of the residents came from a different location in America. For example, he and his family were traveling in Austin, Texas, while Kristi, the medic, was in Detroit when she saw the same tree in the middle of the road and the same crows in the sky.
- The New Arrivals were predetermined: Sara Myers, who was contacted by these creatures, told Father Khatri that these nocturnal monsters have been inside this realm for a very long time and have been waiting for someone who would hear them and help them escape. These creatures also prophesied the arrival of Tobey, Jade, and Matthews’ family, which means that either they allure people to enter this realm in search of their messiah, or they have other sinister motives and have been probably lying to Sara Myers so that she would carry out their commands like opening the door of the hospital and attacking the new boy, Ethan Matthews. They even knew about the past lives of all the residents, as Sara Myers told Father Khatri about the bag he buried in the ground when he came into town that reminded him of the crime he had committed in the real world. Through these voices, Sara found out about Boyd’s name from the army, where they used to call him Mr. Fish and Loaves.
- The Boy Dressed In White: In the entire Season 1, only three people spotted the mysterious spirit of the boy dressed in white. The first to encounter him was a resident of Colony House, Victor, who had spent his entire childhood in the realm and had been in there for the longest time. Victor often drew crayon paintings about the massacre, the white boy in the woods, and other symbolic images. He first saw the boy in his childhood when the two cars came into town, much like the incident with the Mathews’ family. Victor was quite puzzled when he found out that the new resident, Ethan, could see the white boy and might be the chosen one, just like him. Victor decided to share with Ethan all his secrets and the information about the mysterious lands he received from the voices in his head. Victor also showed him the farway tree in the woods that could transport people or things to different locations.
- The Wireless Cords: While struggling to find answers, Jim found out that there were no wires inside the cord, yet they transmitted power to the appliances, especially to the lamps inside the house. Tabitha plunged deeper and figured out that there were no power lines in the house and that these wireless cords just went straight down into the ground. She also found a bracelet that she had made for Jim years ago, and there was no answer to how it ended up in this realm. Tabitha decided to dig the ground to find out where these wireless cords would lead to, and at the end of Season 1, she found out that they weren’t attached to anything. Inside the tunnel, she found Victor, who used the farway tree on the night when the monsters attacked the colony house. He revealed to Tabitha that it was the place where these monsters used to sleep, and he already knew that Tabitha would come there.
- Mysterious Frequencies: In the dining room, the radio would pick up any frequency and start playing songs out of the blue. It was one of the weirdest things in the town, and it also brought to attention that the radio transmitter in the police station (post office) also picked up weak frequencies once in a while. Jim and Jade erected a transmission tower on the terrace of the colony house to contact the outer world, only to find out in the end that it was these creatures that controlled these frequencies as well. How and why? Nothing was revealed with certainty.
- No Holy Bible In The Entire Town: Father Khatri told Sara Myers there wasn’t a single copy of the Holy Bible in the town, yet there were dozens of copies of Robert Ludlum and Judy Blume’s novels. He found this extremely puzzling, and maybe this was the single piece of information that hinted that this realm or dimension could be an evil domain run by an occult group who had a horrifying symbol seen in many places throughout Season 1. If the dimension is ruled by some occult group or their deity, then it would also justify the use of the talisman that Boyd found in the woods, which had been protecting the residents from these creatures. While trying to catch a signal for the radio transmitter, Jade had visions of a few dead bodies hanging from the tree and a historical war gunman who tried to shoot him. In the forest, Boyd also found a few bottles hanging from a tree, inside one of which he found a piece of paper with the number 1864 written on it. It could mean that the history of this dimension goes back to a long period of time.
‘From’ Season 1: Ending Explained – What Happened To Boyd, Sara, Tabitha, And Victor?
Because of the talisman, these creatures couldn’t voluntarily enter the building protected by it, and so they started tricking people into opening the door for them so that they could feast upon them. In Episode 7, a creature called Jasmine tricked a resident of the colony house, Kevin, to open the window for her, after which the entire horde slaughtered people inside the mansion, and some fourteen people lost their lives in the ambush. The others who survived were mentally traumatized and lost all hope that they would ever be able to return home.
On the same tragic night, Father Khatri died in Boyd’s arms after he was attacked by one of these creatures. Father Khatri had trapped Sara in the basement of his make-shift church and didn’t want to kill her because Sara had been the only person who was able to communicate with these creatures, and Father Khatri thought that through her they would be able to get answers about this mysterious domain and the monsters inside it.
After Father Khatri’s death, Boyd found out that he had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease, like his father before him, and thus decided to risk his life to go into the forest with Sara to fulfill Father Khatri’s last wish. When Boyd arrived in town, he curiously used to make trips into the woods, which were the dwelling places of these monsters. He was passionate about finding answers, but in his absence, his wife, Abby, lost her sanity and started shooting people. When Abby pointed a gun at her son, Ellis, Boyd shot her in order to protect Ellis. Ellis never forgave his father for leaving his mother in a time of need. Boyd, on the other hand, lost his curiosity and focused on protecting people and helping them adapt to their new surroundings after that.
The attack on the colony house acted as a sort of enlightenment for Boyd, who decided to go deep into the forest with Sara to find the answers that everyone had been struggling with. Meanwhile, Jim and Jade constructed a transmission tower on the terrace of the colony house to make contact with the outside world, but they only faced failure. As an upcoming storm hit the two, a voice that belonged to one of these monsters contacted Jim on the radio and asked him to stop his wife from digging the hole in the basement of his house.
At the house, as Tabitha dug further, the ground beneath her cracked open, revealing a hidden tunnel. As she gained consciousness, she found that the wireless cord wasn’t connected to anything, thus proving the theory that the electricity inside the house was controlled by an invisible force or frequency. In the tunnel, she met Victor, who revealed that the boy in white had already prophesied her arrival. Victor informed her that these tunnels or caves are where these monsters sleep during the daytime to hide themselves from the sun or daylight. Inside the caves, Tabitha witnessed the same symbol and some mystical cave drawings that don’t reveal much, except the crows, the trees, and the killings. Maybe in the second season, this tunnel will become instrumental in explaining the origins of these creatures.
Meanwhile, Boyd and Sara, who spent the night in the forest, witnessed a mysterious bright light and were attacked by someone, yet the talisman protected them. The very next morning, they found themselves in a forest that was filled with spider webs. They continued their journey, when Boyd suddenly had visions of his late wife, Abby, who was caught in a web. When Boyd tried to save her, a group of spiders attacked him, and one of them bit him too. After this mystical encounter, Boyd not only lost all hope of finding his answers but also felt dizzy due to spider poisoning.
Sara convinced Boyd not to lose hope, especially when they were so near to their goal, and thus they followed the source of light that they saw last night and finally witnessed a lighthouse and the sounds of horn blaring, probably from a ship in the harbor nearby. However, before they could unravel the mystery, Boyd lost all his strength and requested Sara to go back and inform others about their discovery. At that moment, Sara noticed the boy in white standing at a distance, who asked Sara to escape the wrath of the creatures with the help of the farway tree. Sara and Boyd both entered the bark of the faraway tree. However, a closing shot depicted that Boyd ended up in an enclosed space surrounded by thick rock walls on all four sides, leaving only the bare minimum space for Boyd to stand. At the same time, the radio in the dining room caught some frequency when suddenly the realm opened again and a new bus, the Grand Rapids Runner, arrived in town. It could also be surmised that the radio picked up signals whenever the domain opened or connected itself to the real world, thereby allowing the frequencies to enter their dimension.
Season 1 ended without revealing the fate of Boyd, Sara, Tabitha, and Victor, who got separated from their family and their loved ones. Boyd, who was trapped in an enclosed space, might die inside it if not saved by someone. For in the case of Sara, no one knows where she would arrive as Victor had told Ethan that farway tree is quite temperamental. Victor, Ethan, and Sara are the chosen ones who have made contact with the boy in white so far, and it can be surmised that the same boy may help them to protect the living and rescue them to their respective homes. Victor and Tabitha may also unravel some groundbreaking secrets about the monsters terrifying the lands, but before that, they have to first protect themselves from their attack. Their discovery may also establish if these monsters are prone to sunlight, which is why they hide in the dark tunnels during the daytime. The upcoming season of “From” will shed more light on the mysterious world while revealing the secrets of these lands and the origins of these nocturnal monsters who prey upon the living.
“From” is a 2022 Drama Thriller series created by John Griffin.
