Let’s talk about the great death

No, not them.
Photo: Chris Reardon/MGM+

Spoilers follow for the third season of From through the finale episode “Revelations: Chapter Two,” which aired Nov. 24 on MGM+.

Rejoice, From fam! Finally, our collective nightmare is over: Jim Matthews is dead.

This conspiracy theory-peddling, wife-doubting wet blanket of a man probably didn’t deserve to die as brutally as he does in the season finale, “Revelations: Chapter Two,” with his throat ripped out in front of his teenage daughter, Julie. But it’s also very much in keeping with Jim’s whole aggrieved-father-trying-to-prove-his-worth deal that instead of listening to Julie’s pleas and running away with her, he took a sip of a sneering villain like a absolute aggro idiot and ended up getting murdered for his trouble. Every supernatural series, from Midnight mass to Yellowjacketsneeds a character resistant to the show’s internal creepiness to provide sustained conflict, and Eion Bailey and his big head of hair played theme park engineer Jim with just the right amount of tiresomely square-mindedness. But From loves a cliffhanger and loathes complacency, making Jim’s death the fitting end to a season that pulled off the double whammy of explaining very little while also bombarding us with new villains of all types.

Fromseam was recently renewedhas spent its three seasons so far avoiding answers. Instead, the series prefers to regularly introduce additional puzzles into its central city that somehow continues to attract new residents despite being a nightmarish place that could be a parallel dimension, a pocket universe, purgatory, or even hell. Season 1 of the MGM+ series from creator John Griffin established both the smiling monsters that hunt and devour the townspeople and their guiding rule: like vampires, the creatures sleep during the day and only come out at night. If the humans stayed inside their homes, insisted Army vet and Sheriff Boyd Stevens (Harold Perrineau), they would be sure to live another day and try to figure out how to get home. Season two expanded the world, introducing forest ruins that housed a blood-borne pathogen, an evil music box that allowed monsters to attack people in their dreams, and even a way out of town with Jim’s wife, Tabitha Matthews (Catalina Sandino Moreno). steps into a log and transports to Maine. resolution, From fans thought was just around the corner.

But at that time Fromthird season brought Tabitha back to the city, it became pretty clear that this show has no real intentions of introducing short-term solutions into its long-term plan. (Griffin and series producer Michael Mahoney have declined saying how many seasons of the show they have in mind, and the cast says they don’t know either.) That kind of wheel-spinning can be annoying in a genre show; think about how the second season of Yellowjackets eventually became too unmanageable or how certain episodes of Lost (one of From‘s clear inspirations) felt inconsequential. But what From doing so well is refusing to look too far ahead; there are no broken timelines here and no assurances that everyone will be okay in the end. The series has an exquisite sense of presence, driven primarily by how this cast will respond to obstacles and aggressions that transform and amplify day by day. And in this year’s ten episodes, From just kept pushing forward, giving its ensemble opportunity after opportunity to play the fear, mania, desperation, loyalty and love that come out of surviving terrible things together.

To summarize this season: The vampire-like monsters learned to torture. Someone (or something) claiming to be Jim and Tabitha’s dead son began calling them on their landline in a home that has no apparent power or telecommunications sources. There were evil cicadas buzzing around, a sentient instant camera that took pictures on its own, a possibly malevolent ventriloquist doll, and an evil ghost lady in a kimono. Amidst all this, From was also willing to blow up his own established characterization and rules. While it makes it seem like we’ll never get full explanations, that approach also feels like a sign of cheeky confidence. No one is safe in this world — as the monsters tell Boyd, “Do you think this place can’t break you? Let’s see” — and From emphasized this theme this season with a series of cleansing twists.

Boyd, after being forced by the monsters to watch as they spent hours tearing apart Tien-Chen, one of society’s most beloved members, transforms himself into a torturer and hammers the monster-manipulated Elgin to get information about where Boyd’s daughter-in-law, Fatima, is being held. Fatima, the ever-sunny resident whose positivity was a salve for newcomers to town, became pregnant with a mysterious entity that was revealed in the finale as a new monster. It was a goofy mass of flesh that, after being born, grew in record time into another version of the smiling redheaded monster that Boyd killed in season two. A log portal that appeared to lead people out of the city instead sent its traveler into the wall of the abandoned pool that sits in the middle of the city, which mysteriously has no accompanying motel; we saw him shed tears in his last moments of life. “Do you want hope?” From seemed to mock us. “Have a face filled with concrete instead.”

It’s all painful stuff, but it makes progress From shall keep us watching. On one level, From is about all its myriad inexplicables, from the dog that playfully chases Boyd around the woods outside of town (who feeds it?) to the nocturnal creatures that roam the huts where the town grows its food, to what the hell is the word “anghkooey ” is. has to do with the city’s apparent power to reincarnate. These details and threads keep redditors going! But the reason we care about any of this absurdity is these characters, and how starkly they show us the effort required – and the emotional toll it takes – to rebuild a society that is constantly at risk of to collapse, to get up every day and keep trying to make sense out of the senseless. The series’ horror, fantasy and sci-fi flourishes are entertaining; yet they are always in the service of that quest and those conditions. And all of that brings us back to Jim, whose death is a significant disruption to the show’s status quo.

When people on From die, they tend to be either unnamed extras or characters on the outer ring of the series’ environment whose death affects those on the inner ring. Waitress Sara becomes an outcast for accidentally killing her brother; Reverend Father Khatri’s death makes Boyd realize that the town’s emotional health is not as stable as he thought; Deputy Kenny becomes a nihilist for a while after both his father and mother are murdered by the monsters – that sort of thing. The Matthews family of Jim, Tabitha, teenage daughter Julie and young son Ethan were not only our entry point into the series as the group that arrives in town and experiences all its quirks as we do; they were also plot drivers. Tabitha attracted the ghosts of dead children; Julie was possessed; Ethan became best friends with the town’s longest resident, Victor; and Jim used his engineering background to build a radio tower and try to find out who is in charge of the town. As Tabitha’s connection to the town’s ghosts intensified, it felt like Jim’s Season 3 arc was reduced to nagging his wife about the weird crap that happened to her—but what was easy to miss is how Jim’s constant questions were interpreted as a threat by the monsters we haven’t seen yet.

Who did Jim taunt over the RV radio and on the phone by pretending to be his dead son? Who was watching Jim and the Matthewses from afar, and why were they considered so dangerous compared to the town’s other residents? Because these intermittent warnings were so rare, they felt secondary to the monsters we knew and saw all the time and easier to categorize as less important. “Revelations: Chapter 2” chastises us for that complacency and for believing that someone on From is essential enough to keep on the board.

Killing Jim is a big swing, and so is how it’s presented: with a new villain in a smart yellow suit saying meta things like, “Knowledge comes with a price,” and Julie in a time loop, desperate for regret , what has happened to her family. Will she succeed? We won’t know until the fourth season, which could theoretically expand Julie’s time travel and provide a conduit for Bailey’s character to return in some form. However, remember that Ethan tried to dissuade Julie from his plan by implying that changing the past has unique consequences. (“No one can change a story once it’s been told.”) Even if From somehow brings Jim back from the dead, its willingness to knock him off in such a cruel and devastating way marks a new boldness from a series that has been consistent in its determination to make any outcome feel possible .