In the Season 3 finale of FROM we got some very big answers to at least some of our burning questions about Fromville and its residents and why they’re here, though I’m not sure we’re any closer to actually solving this mystery. Maybe a little bit.
Still, with every new answer there comes a new parade of questions. That’s a good thing! We have at least two more seasons to get through. We don’t want to know everything just yet. Several pretty wild things happened into tonight’s finale. Let’s go over each. Spoilers ahead.
It’s Jim who finally figures out what the numbers in the bottles mean: Musical notes. For some obscure and puzzling reason, whoever put the messages in the bottles couldn’t just put musical notes, but had to write numbers. I don’t know that I really need an explanation for this, but it did cross my mind. In any case, it’s very clever of Jim and kind of a feather in his cap since Jade is always the smartest guy in the room.
They figure out the melody to the song and head to the Faraway Tree with Jade’s violin. He starts to play and after awhile, the Anghookey kids show up, drawn by the melody to where they’re standing. Only now, both Tabitha and Jade can understand what it means: Remember. I guess this is some kind of spell that they’ve just cast or broken (more points to my fae theory) because they do remember. They remember who they are.
This was something that I felt was conveyed pretty strongly last week when Tabitha was suddenly having Miranda’s memories. Other clues—the bracelet, for instance, her appearing in Camden, her having all the same motives as Miranda—have pointed to something like this for a long time now. Jade being Christopher was a bit more surprising, but as soon as I realized Tabitha had to be Miranda last week, I thought of how Jade is the only other person who has had such similar experiences. Why does he, and he alone, have visions of Jasper? Why does he see the same symbol as Christopher? All signs pointed to Jade being a reincarnation of Christopher.
They have come back to this town across many different lives, apparently, each time trying to save the children. I was also pretty sure that the children had been ritually sacrificed in some dark bargain with the devils / fae / sidhe but I wasn’t sure what that bargain was. Here we get an answer: Parents sacrificed their children so that they could live forever. And live forever they do, as the creatures that stalk the night, tormenting the townsfolk before ripping them to shreds.
But what if they are killed? Well, that’s answered also. The evil beings that struck this bargain keep a useful herd of humans around. They can impregnate the women and grow a new creature inside. This is what happened to Fatima. The baby was, indeed, a monster. Fatima’s rescuers are too late. The Kimono Woman comes up out of the hatch Fatima was trying to open and delivers the “baby”—it looks more like a fleshy egg—and takes it back down. Boyd, always too brave for his own good, goes down after.
He watches as the egg opens, unfolds, and out of its grotesque membrane the creature, Smiley, is reborn amidst his hideous companions. A lot of people theorized this would be the outcome, so this isn’t a huge surprise (and there were leaks, which I avoided, but a lot of people were spoiled). Still, it’s a pretty horrific moment, especially paired with the revelation about child sacrifice. This is the immortality the evil faeries / demons gave to these horrible people. I suppose if you’re willing to kill children for eternal life, you may as well be damned to this gruesome fate—though, to be fair, none of them seem unhappy. They rather seem to like being monsters.
Fatima’s rescuers didn’t find her by mistake. Ellis told his father, Boyd, that he suspected Elgin after the two of them searched for Fatima in last week’s episode. He was saying very suspicious comments about Fatima and her baby, and how maybe Fatima is out there doing something to help. Elgin is a fool. He was suckered completely. His treachery may not have caused Smiley’s return, and I’m not sure what anyone could have done to stop the pregnancy from coming to term, but maybe they could have destroyed Smiley’s egg. But then . . . would she just get pregnant again?
Why does the Man In Yellow kill Jim? He says that knowledge comes at a cost. But why? Why him and why now and why like this? Was it because he was the one who cracked the bottle code? Is it just petty revenge for Jade playing that song?
Are any of the other characters reincarnated versions of other people who have been here before? Like Jade, Boyd has visions of the dead. Boyd has a “special relationship” with the monsters, who keep him alive on purpose to torment him. Could he also have been here before?
Boyd has always been the central protagonist of this show, the leader, the Chosen One but with this latest revelation it’s clear that Tabitha and Jade are the real heroes, returning time and time again to stop this evil.
