If you’re like me, you’re counting down the days until FROM returns for its third season.
It’s been a while since we were back in that dreadful town, watching things fall apart before a last-minute save by Boyd essentially saved the town from succumbing to whatever had been plaguing them and making it impossible to sleep.
With the town in recovery mode, the second season ended with Tabitha pushed out of the lighthouse and spit back into the real world, with her family none the wiser.
It was one of the wildest season cliffhangers you’ll ever see.
With a new season on the horizon, it’s another opportunity to get answers.
It’s also a pivotal time for the series, which has a well-established premise and a devoted fanbase that will grow impatient if it fails to move the story forward.
Audiences are fickle. They enjoy the thrill of the chase, but they don’t want to be disappointed in the end.
As FROM gets ready to embark on another ten-episode run, there’s a lot at stake here.
This could be a make-or-break time for the series, which is coming off a run I personally enjoyed, but that some fans found a little lackluster.
If you’re one of those less-than-impressed folks, the series has plenty of time to turn things around.
So I’m going to take a look at some of the ways the series can shake things up moving forward.
Make The Monsters The Biggest Threat Again
The premise of FROM is that the characters live in a town they can’t leave due to lack of access to the outside world and that monsters come out at night ready to tear them apart limb for limb.
During FROM Season 2, as the season went on, the series moved from the monsters, with the cicada and the music box becoming the things that needed to be defeated.
It wasn’t a terrible decision, as it tied back to the beginning of the season and what Boyd went through in his escapes from the forest, but the monsters should always be the number one antagonist.
Everything starts and ends with them essentially, as they are the true big bads of the whole thing, and the series would do well to remember that.
It may sound odd to talk about ways to shake the series up and then basically say stick to the status quo, but when those monsters come out of the shadows with their creepy smiles and pleasantries, just waiting for someone to slip up, it’s among some of the most unnerving things you’ll see on television.
Expanding the terror didn’t derail anything, but FROM can’t forget its roots!
Don’t Drag Out Tabitha’s Newfound Reality
Tabitha’s emergence in a hospital bed after the boy in white pushed her out of a window was jaw-dropping, and we’re heading into this season totally blind as to what it all means.
Is she truly back in the real world?
How much time has passed since the day her family went missing? What part of the world is she in?
IS ANY OF THIS EVEN REAL?
Tabitha’s journey is one of the more intriguing things to consider, as is the idea that the forest may start throwing people out into the world.
With two separate entities to consider now, the town and Tabitha’s new location, hopefully, the writers won’t take too long to answer some of the more pressing questions.
There should be no dragging out whether or not Tabitha was merely dreaming and is actually unconscious in the woods or if she’s genuinely just back in a random part of America.
Let us know what’s real, and then take the story from there.
There are enough mysteries out there for us to continue to obsess over (more on that later), and solving one of the biggest ones, that you CAN escape that town and live to tell the tale, should stand on its own.
Watching her try to return to her family should be exciting, as will seeing how Jim, Julie, and Ethan deal with her absence.
There are many stories to mine here, and they’d do well to get right into them and not spend too much time asking us to piece it all together.
Tabitha made it out. She won’t rest until she gets her family back. So, let’s watch her do it.
Introduce Some New Pairings
FROM has a massive ensemble, and they do a decent job of spreading stories around and involving everyone in the overall narrative, which is challenging.
But I saw a glimpse of Jim and Kenny teaming up in the trailer, and it made me think: Have we ever seen those two spend any significant time together?
If we have, it wasn’t enough to make an impression.
I’m interested to see these two, who on the surface probably don’t have much in common, team up.
Will they work well together? Or will they butt heads?
Do their ideas and theories align? Or do they approach things in entirely different ways?
It’s a small thing, but seeing new character dynamics is exciting nonetheless.
Remember when Kenny and Ellis teamed up during FROM Season 2 Episode 3?
Seeing Boyd’s biological son and pseudo-son work together was fascinating because it’s something we seldom see.
Now that the division between the town and Colony House is essentially non-existent, it would be neat to see everyone meshing together more.
Boyd gets subplots with everyone, but what about some Jade and Fatima content?
It would be incredibly random, but it would be something fresh.
Maybe Donna and Kristi will join forces in some capacity to do God knows what, but I know they’ll do it flawlessly.
Let’s switch things up and see what hidden gems are out there.
Expand Upon & Explain Some of the Greater Mysteries
As I said before, FROM has a lot of mysteries to stew over.
How do you get stuck in the town? Why do you get stuck in the town? Where do the monsters come from?
What does Anghkooey mean? What does the symbol Jade keeps seeing mean?
I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
Mysteries upon mysteries have been plaguing viewers since the series premiere, and it’s about time we started to get some answers or at least a better understanding of some of these lingering questions before the series inevitably introduces a new set of horrors.
I worry about the show going in circles sometimes, and I worry that we’ll get frustrated with the lack of explanations.
There does hit a point where you lose not only your patience but your interest in something that isn’t paying any dividends.
FROM has a killer premise, and when it hits, there is nothing else like it on television.
However, one of the biggest things that must happen is further discovery and information.
Introducing one more mystery before solving various unsolved mysteries would be a massive mistake.
Don’t Be Afraid to Shock the Audience
This one should go without saying, but I’m saying it anyway.
It’s been a minute since we’ve had a death that was truly, truly shocking.
I’m talking Father Khatri levels of shocking. And while I’ve come to love this main ensemble, this is a show where you should never feel like anyone is safe.
This town is dangerous and terrifying, and if we don’t believe that anyone could die at any time, then they writers have lost the plot.
I don’t want to see anyone go, but the series would do well to remind us of just how scary it can be.
FROM fanatics, the floor is now yours!
In the comments, tell me what you want to see from this season and what you’re most excited about.
I’ll be back all season long to discuss it with you guys!
You can watch FROM on MGM+ when it premieres on September 22.