From Season 4 may be over, but that doesn’t mean fans have stopped buzzing with theories and speculation about what’s coming next. As From has exploded into (long overdue) mainstream fandom, the show has generated some of the biggest on sites like Reddit – a testament to what showrunner John Griffin has done with his supernatural-horror/mystery story.
But now that we know From Season 5 will be the show’s final season, there are make-or-break stakes for any fan theories that are still hanging strong. After combing through a dozen of the most frequent theories still be tossed around in the From fan threads, we’ve landed on the top 3 theories that fans want to see answered in Season 5.
The Season 4 Finale ended on a cliffhanger reveal, that saw the Man In Black (disguised as “Sophia”) convene with the Boy In White, who has been guiding some of the townspeople (like Victor) toward unraveling the mystery of how they became trapped in Fromville, and how to escape. The meeting seemed to indicate that the two entities represent opposing forces of good an evil, who either guiding the towspeople toward solving the mytery of their confinement, or sabotaging those efforts until the townspeople slaughter one another.
QUESTION? The question that we’re left hanging with after this scene is, “Why are they doing this? What’s the point of this game?” There are many theories about that answer, but the one that seems to get the most consensus is that Fromville, The MIB, and The BIW are form a metaphor that is a spin on the biblical Book of Job. That story tells of a righteous man who becomes the subject of contest between God and Satan to test his faith. Job, a righteous man, has his wealth, family, and health all stripped away, to see if he can still maintain his love for God. It’s a a story that resonates with so many of the themes and side-stories of From, as faith and sanity in the face of horror and death has been one the most prominent motifs of the series.
THEORY: The ending of From is predicted to be linked to how the surviving characters of Fromville pull together (or come apart) as the nightmare gets even darker, illustrating the deeper themes and message of how we should deal with a darker, scarier, modern world.
The Bottle Tree has been one of the bigger MacGuffins in the lore of From. The tree (or rather trees) are located in several locations in Fromville and the outside world. While their exact function has never been fully explained, the importance of their presence has certainly been indicated. Boyd (Harold Perrineau) decided to pull up the Bottle Tree as part of his master plan to help Jade (David Alpay) and Tabitha (Catalina Sandino) raid the tomb where the bones of the orignal townspeople sacrificed (most of) their children; it didn’t go well.
QUESTION? Once the tree came out, day immediately turned to night and Fromville was rocked by a massive earthquake. It was clear that something fundamental was broken when the Bottle Tree was uprooted. The immediate question (for the characters and the viewers) was what did Boyd and Co. break by pulling the Bottle Tree from the ground?
THEORY: There’s a fan theory that the Bottle Tree is directly tied to the power of a storyteller, a mantle that has been teased throughout From‘s run. If Fromville is some kind of purgatory where the MIB and BIW influence reality, The storyteller seems to be a wild card “chosen one” who also influence the reality of Fromville. The Bottle Tree has been theorized to be a key mechanism in controlling the power of storytelling, hence why it is also the portal to the lighthouse, which leads out of Fromville back to the real world. The Final Season will now have the added wrinkle of having the power of storytelling thrown out of whack by the Bottle Tree’s removal. That’s already a key side quest that will need to be fulfilled, early on.
The power of controlling the reality of Fromville seems to be the ability that the townspeople need to harness.
QUESTION? The question is who is supposed to manifest and weild that power? Over the course of four seasons we’ve seen characters like Boyd or Julie manifest powers to move through “the story” and observe events that have taken place in Fromville’s past, but the real end goal we seem to buidling toward is having a person who can actually influence the story.
THEORY: There’s been growing fan theory that Victor (Scott McCord) was supposed to develop the power to be the storyteller, but that opportunity was lost when the Man In Black killed his mother and let the town descend into a massacre, leaving Victor all alone. Victor’s childlike crayon sketches have been windows into key events of Fromville the modern townspeople have needed at key points; they’ve also affected people like his father, Henry (Robert Joy), in ways that seem way more profound than a simple illustration. It all seems to be a hint that Victor’s powers were stunted along with his development; but Ethan is the version of Victor that will be able to fulfill that destiny. Having the townspeople ‘s secret weapon be the imagination and outlook of a child could potentially be a powerful metaphor in the larger thematic story From is telling.
From Seasons 1-4 are streaming on MGM+. Season 5 is currently in production.
