From on MGM made me fall in love with its mysteries, but it has now become frustrating for long-time fans as the writers have started buying more time, making me question my commitment to it. Season 4 has been equally maddening, and I’ll explain why.
MGM’s From is a science-fiction thriller about a nightmarish town that came into being through a satanic ritual that seeks to trap its residents forever, and its diabolical creatures, which appear only at night, like to haunt and prey on them. The unwilling residents are cut off from the rest of the world, surviving each night as if it were the last battle of their lives.
The very first scene of From Season 1 grabbed me by the collar, and I was bound to lock myself into the show until now. I found the series gripping and perplexing — there are too many questions popping up with each progressing season that we need answers to in the next one.
The first episode of Season 4 begins where the previous season left off, when the Man in Yellow comes to kill Jim (Eion Bailey), saying his wife shouldn’t have dug that hole, and there’s always a cost for knowledge. Two new people come to town when their car collides with Boyd’s (Harold Perrineau) office wall. The new girl, Sophia (Julia Doyle), is (*drum roll*) the Man in Yellow who changed his appearance to trick the townspeople. She purposefully kills the Father with whom she came in the car, faking him to be his dad, and whispers in his ear, “This is when they tear themselves apart.”
The scene instantly leads us to think of the previous glimpses of the town where everyone was dead, their chest ripped apart, with only one kid surviving: Victor (Scott McCord). He remembers what happened that day, having seen the same Man in Yellow devouring his mother. But he is too scared to talk about it. However, when he opens up about his mother’s death, things start to change in Henry’s (Robert Joy) head.
Everyone is seen finding answers on their own. Julie (Hannah Cheramy) finally understands that she is the “storywalker” and that she can go back in time and save her father once she enters the ruins with the help of Randall (A.J. Simmons). But her awakening doesn’t really help the story move forward. Henry is under Sophia’s spell, as he keeps imagining that the town is not real, and he is probably levitating between this world and the real world, where he could see Victor in a suit and tie, fathering a child. He is desperate to go back, and for that, doesn’t hesitate to point a gun at his own son.
Acosta’s presence in the town makes no sense. For the first time, she was given greater screen time, which falsely led us to think she had a better role to play in the town. Even the dolls from the lake made no sense when Donna (Elizabeth Saunders) and a few townspeople went to get food. The mud man (golem) that Fatima (Pegah Ghafoori) was building was lost somewhere, too. And hell yes! Fatima can control Smiley. Above all, what happened to Jasper from Season 3, for whom Victor was going crazy, as he wanted to find him to know the answers about the town? Jasper’s chapter is completely overlooked here, offering no payoff in connecting any dots to help us find answers.
The season’s finale had a lot of things going on, which was a good thing for the season’s pacing, as the rest of the episodes were sluggish. Definitely, Sophia masquerades as the Man in Yellow and tries to exploit Clara (Katherina Bakolias), Elgin (Nathan D. Simmons), and even Tabitha (Catalina Sandino Moreno). She is discreet about her actions, collects all the talismans of the town, leaving the town open for the monsters at night to attack anyone, anywhere, and sets the town over a ticking time bomb. Now that they have bones, they need to act fast!
The red lightning that pierced into the sky where once the bottle tree stood, changing day into night, movement of the monsters, especially Smiley, into anywhere where talismans also couldn’t work, and the death of notable characters, including Marielle (Kaelen Ohm), and the Boy in White (Vox Smith) telling Sophia that she is going to lose this time while she throws all the talismans into the tree where they are lost forever, are some of the electrifying details that set the stage of the next officially announced season.
Season 4 seems to be a draggy humdrum of nothing but the town’s enigmatic chaos that the monsters, townspeople, and even the writers themselves don’t understand. And honestly, with the news of the upcoming fifth season, I am officially going insane since I cannot stop myself from thinking about how much of this absurdity could be stretched enough to take it to the next level.
Character development seemed absent, and only a few are seen actually trying to put meaning into the story. Story-wise, I’m dying to find answers to the previous mysteries, and here we are trying to figure out what is being randomly thrown at our faces out of nowhere. The finale should’ve been jaw-dropping just like the ending of Season 2, where Tabitha finds herself in an unknown hospital out of town via the bottle tree, but it left me indifferent.
From’s latest season ended with a drawn-out narrative detailing how the Man in Yellow enters the town and the tactics he uses to infiltrate everyone’s minds and wreak havoc. The writers and the script are certainly trying their best to connect the previous dots of the questions to some answers this season, but, obviously, too much talk and no action stole the actual excitement of the show.
Review Courtesy of Madiha Ali
Feature Image Credit to Amazon MGM