After a painfully sluggish opening half of the fourth season, From finally picked up some momentum as it heads toward its final season. This week’s fourth-season finale didn’t have many new revelations, but it did set up the fifth season in what I hope will be a fast-paced 10 episodes that will, by necessity, cover a relatively short timespan.
That’s because Sophia/the Man in Yellow, with Clara’s help, steals every talisman in town and hurls them into the Faraway Tree, leaving the townsfolk unprotected at night when the creatures arrive. Which means that, unless they retrieve the talismans (unlikely), they have one night — maybe two — to figure out how to get out of the town before the monsters shred them to death.
But let’s back up. The episode opens with Tabitha and Jade recovering the bones of the Anghkooey children from the cavern. Boyd and Company also manage to pull the Bottle Tree up by the roots to create an escape hatch. However, because Sophia futzed with the rope, Tabitha and Jade are unable to use the hatch and are forced deeper into the tunnels to escape the creatures.
The plan, at any rate, was apparently ill-advised. Victor and the Boy in White had insisted that Boyd leave the Bottle Tree alone, and they were right. Once it came up, the town went to hell. Day turned to night. An earthquake hit, and lightning tore through the sky. That sent Boyd and his crew scrambling back to town, but not soon enough to prevent our old friend Smiley from killing Mari (he was able to get inside because the earthquake had knocked loose a talisman). Kristi is devastated. But Smiley also reconfirms his connection to Fatima, both sparing her and calling her “Mother.”
Elsewhere, amid all the chaos, Sophia offers Elgin the same bargain he once offered Clara: Help her out, and she’ll send him home (it’s a lie!). Elgin doesn’t take the offer. So Sophia takes him by the hands and kills him. Poor Elgin. He survived last season and stuck around all of this one with a patch over his eye, only to succumb to an anticlimactic death.
I should also note that Henry tried to bring himself to kill his son, Victor, in the belief that doing so would free him from the place and return him to the real world — where Victor is normal and has a family of his own. It didn’t happen, which is basically From’s way of saying: This is not Lost, and it’s not going to be that easy.
In the end, Fatima, Boyd, and Ellis return to the caverns to try and save Tabitha and Jade, who are still stuck down there with the bones. They manage to do exactly that, but only because Fatima keeps the creatures from giving chase by … becoming one of the creatures herself. I suppose that explains why her vital signs have been basically nonexistent.
Ultimately, there are a few big takeaways from the episode:
— Again, we learn that the more proactive the town is in its attempts to escape, the more the town’s evil turns against them.
— Fatima is one of the creatures now, but also on the side of the townsfolk, which could continue to come in handy if she survives the standoff with the horde in the cavern.
— Elgin is dead, and Mari is dead, which is sad but doesn’t really change the dynamic.
— The talismans are now all gone.
— And, most importantly, we learn that the Boy in White is apparently on the side of the town. He and Sophia/the Man in Yellow seem to have some sort of rivalry. “They have the bones,” he tells Sophia, suggesting that the townsfolk are at least on the right path. “You’re going to lose this time.”
Sophia, however, is undeterred. “I guess we’ll see,” she says, as she chucks the talismans down the Faraway Tree.
Unfortunately, the gaps between seasons have been steadily widening — roughly 14 months, then 16, then 19. If that holds, we may not see the finale until late 2027 or even 2028.
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