The sudden slow-paced narrative progression that season two of MGM+’s From adopted since its third episode continues in this one too, and the world exploration gets halted as a result. In the previous episode, newcomer Kelly’s devastating death shook up all the key players, and Boyd found a strange connection between his past with the names of the unfortunate couple. Tabitha sees weird premonitions and disfigured kids after her return from the underground maze, and both events seem related in an unknown way. However, the biggest discovery of the previous episode was Kenny discovering Sarah in the basement of the town church. Boyd hadn’t told a soul that in his journey to the wilderness to find an escape, he was accompanied by Sarah, and given her past actions, things were bound to get heated up.
Spoilers Ahead
A Callback To The Past
The episode begins with a flashback sequence that shows the time Kenny and his mother, Mrs. Liu, decided to admit the Alzheimer’s-afflicted Mr. Liu into the town clinic. Despite the old man’s disapproval, they have to go through that ordeal, as a mentally challenged Mr. Liu had previously tried to open the doorway of their household for the monsters, considering them to be his deceased brothers. During that period of time, Sheriff Boyd consoled Kenny, took him under his wing, and asked him to join him as a deputy. Fast forward to the present time, and Kenny is seen rushing through the town to bring Boyd into the church, and he shows him Sarah being present there.
Boyd asks Kenny to leave them for a while, as he wants to have some words with Sarah. Boyd asks Sarah how she ended up here again, to which she replies that the faraway tree had teleported her here. Sarah’s return to town is going to open a can of worms, which makes Boyd think about the best course of action for them. However, Sarah knows that when the townsfolk learn of her return, sooner or later, she has to end up in the box to make up for her past actions—basically the execution site of the town, where people are forced to stay without a talisman, and monsters devour them at night. Boyd is not ready to entertain the idea and states that he will talk to Kenny. During his conversation with Sarah, another shocking truth is revealed: Boyd hasn’t told Kenny the fact that, under the influence of unseen entities, Sarah had opened the door of the clinic, which resulted in the death of Mr. Liu, Kenny’s father.
Boyd goes to Kenny and tries to convince him of Sarah’s innocence, stating that her actions were motivated by the unseen entities and that her connection with this place can be key to their escape. He also shares about Father Khatri trusting her and the fact that he went to the wilderness with her to find an escape, where Sarah saved his life too. Kenny is baffled and keeps insisting that Sarah deserves to be in the box, which makes Boyd a bit worked up. He goes outside and sees the skin-crawling worms appearing in his body, and he almost collapses. Kenny and other people present at the spot take him to Kristi.
Later, Kenny goes to Sarah and asks her about the entire situation regarding her getting influenced, as he really wants to believe that Boyd is putting his faith in the right place. Sarah finds herself unable to make a comprehensive assessment of the situation; instead, in her guilt-ridden state, she prepares to confess to opening the door of the clinic previously, which resulted in the gruesome death of Mr. Liu at the hands of nocturnal monsters. At the clinic, Boyd discovers that while the symptoms of his Parkinson’s are receding, he is increasingly receiving bouts of skin-crawling worms. In such a situation, he is visited by a vision of Father Khatri, which might be the workings of his mind being influenced by the worm situation. Boyd is left in a dilemma as Khatri repeatedly warns him not to tell Kenny the truth about his father’s death unless it will put the chance of knowing the place better in jeopardy.
What Is Jim’s Speculation About The Place?
Tabitha goes to find her husband, Jim, at the clinic but finds him absent. She finds him out in front of the town diner. Jim shares a shocking speculation of his about the place, which he has started considering after his experiences there and as an amusement park engineer. Jim states that the place might be designed to observe the reactions of the people to it. He considers the possibility of the entire ordeal being a messed-up experiment and also states to Tabitha that someone who knew the identity of the townsfolk had answered the radio from the other side at the point she entered the underground maze. As we can remember, in the finale of the previous season, Jade and Jim’s effort to make contact with the outside world was successful, but all Jim could hear from the other side was a warning or threat about his wife digging through their basement, resulting in consequences. Jim states only he and Donna knew about what the voice had remarked from the other side, and he goes to discuss this with Donna.
Unlike Jim, who is positive about this discovery and wants to make another attempt to communicate with the other side, Donna is extremely skeptical about the motivation of their ‘observers.’ She states that the warning Jim gave entailed a number of strange occurrences, all of which tried to stop the townsfolk in their tracks, not to mention that the house the Matthews family lived in collapsed after it as well. Donna firmly believes that whoever is on the other side, whether human or not, they are not well-wishers of the townsfolk, and it would be wise not to take any decision in haste that might wreak severe consequences. Their conversation is cut short as Randall, the irritably aggressive newcomer, unloads some beatings on a Colony House resident for going through his stuff, which forces Donna to evict him and station him at the bus with a talisman.
Julie and Ethan go to the colony house as well, and while the former chats with the newcomer Elgin to make him feel at least a bit comfortable in this hellscape, Ethan proceeds to meet his friend Victor. Ethan apologizes to him and presents him with a new set of sketch pens he recovered from their collapsed house’s rubble, but Victor is still fuming over his action of assisting Jade in rummaging through his room. Upset, Ethan returns to his home with his elder sister. At the town bar, Jade connects with the bus driver, Bakta, as they share their past lives with each other.
Was The Truth About Sarah Revealed At The End?
The episode ends as Boyd is directed towards the clinic by a newcomer named Tilly, where Kenny was last seen. Boyd sees a distraught Kenny looking at the basement, where his father was brutally murdered by the creatures. Kenny states how the death affected his mother, who has thus far considered that in his mentally unstable condition, Mr. Liu had opened the door of the clinic. But now that Kenny knows who was truly responsible for the act, he will see that Sarah goes into the box after all. Kenny resigns from his role as deputy and leaves the clinic as Boyd stands helplessly in front of the basement.
Boyd tried to give a second chance to Sarah by trusting her, but by not revealing the truth to Kenny, he was simply avoiding an inevitable confrontation that was bound to make matters worse. In the absence of his father, Kenny looked up to Boyd as a father figure, which made the ordeal even more painful for him, and as a result, he lost his trust. Boyd’s feeling of guilt will act up if he has to put yet another townsfolk into the box, and it will be interesting to see whether that somehow connects with the premonitions induced by his condition, as Jim speculated in his theory about the place testing its denizens. In the upcoming episodes, it will be interesting to see whether Jim’s theory is put to good use and whether Victor agrees to help Jade after all. Because if Sarah indeed dies at the hands of the monsters, a significant lead to learning about the place will be lost forever.
