re: FROM (MGM+) SEASON 4 OFFICIAL DISCUSSION THREAD (This show needs watchers!)

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Hate that they went the latter GoT route of 9 episodes of filler for one great episode as the finale. This season really fell off

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Yeah this show basically is the definition of stretching a story to fill airtime. It would have been a fantastic 12 episode limited series instead of multiple seasons where nothing worthwhile happens 80% of the time.

What makes them think that the tree being removed will change anything? Jade didn’t see anything about that in his vision, right?

Still seems really odd that nobody would check the rope ladder a few times once it’s completed to make sure it’s good to go.

Well I guess Victor isn’t stopping them from pulling down the tree.

“Don’t look down.” How high do you think shes climbing, Jade? It’s like 12 feet. But the rope is still a rope. Just pull them out.

Shifting immediately to night was pretty awesome. Didn’t see that coming. I guess everybody’s sleep cycles will be thrown off.

The earthquake seems to be helping. So is that maybe the dead kids doing that to help?

Why in the world would they bring that chick whose face was half ripped off? I assume just to die but how is she helpful at all.

And now Patty is losing her shite. Of course.

And now she steals Boyd’s gun and shoots out the window. Of course. Should’ve just let her kill herself, Boyd.

So Fatima shrieks just like monsters and Smiley peaces out. She has to be turning into one. Has to.

Least sexy lesbian kiss ever in a tv show?

At least someone relatively main character-ish died. That is a consequence. That’s good.

Elgin should be like I’ll accept your bargain if you let me bang this Sophia version of whatever you are.

So now Elgin is dead too. Consequences. Fantastic. Little disappointed he didn’t just bowl over Clara and shove her arse out of the way and get out of there. But still.

What in the Stranger Things storms is going on?

Julie’s hair, it looks like it actually is getting bigger.

So if Sophia is collecting the talismans then I guess they really do work (just not on her/MiY).

MOTHERfrickER HE ALMOST SHOT ETHAN. Goddammit, Victor. Why did you have to stop him? frick. I literally threw my arms in the air in victory when that happened.

I love how they went into the tunnels with one flashlight and assumedly Boyd’s weapon, and literally nothing else at all. And Boyd pretended to care about safety for the last three episodes.

If Fatima turns into a creature that would be awesome.

Boom. Hell yes. More consequences. That was actually cool.

Disappointed we got absolutely nothing from Fatima’s golem though. I guess that was a gigantic waste of time.

And I guess the parallels to Lost are stronger with Sophia/MiY seemingly battling against the BiW and representing good and evil and all that.

This was a great finale IMO.

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What makes them think that the tree being removed will change anything? Jade didn’t see anything about that in his vision, right?

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In Jade’s vision when he looked up from the grave he saw a whole with tree roots. So they dug up the tree as an escape route.

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Shifting immediately to night was pretty awesome. Didn’t see that coming. I guess everybody’s sleep cycles will be thrown off big time. The earthquake seems to be helping. So is that maybe the dead kids doing that to help?

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Shifting to night helped the creatures. The earthquakes helped the town people. Yeah I have no idea who is actually controlling it, MiY/Sophia made a comment that sounded like it was his doing.

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So now Elgin is dead too. Consequences. Fantastic. Little disappointed he didn’t just bowl over Clara ans shove her arse out of the way and get out of there. But still.

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Maybe the biggest letdown from the finale. Elgin couldn’t even die right. Didn’t leave any clues, body about to get hidden, no signs of a struggle, and didn’t even go after the helper. Just straight up died.

I think the biggest issue is season 3 had a terrific ending that connected a lot of dots coherently & progressed the story & was getting things moving.

This season felt more like a return to season two where there was just a lot of miscellaneous shite thrown against the wall to see if it stuck.

I was really hoping that Tabitha would have a significant flashback when looking at the skull which led to a cliffhanger ending the episode. However the Fatima scene kinda felt empty emotionally & then BIW/MIY interaction just more reiterated the points we already mostly knew.

Overall a meh season. Not nearly enough to get off the boat. I think no talismans next season leads to a lot of potential. The monsters haven’t felt like much of a threat for a while. Bringing them back full frontal could be great. Main concern is there’s a lot of open items to go over to stick the landing. Guess we’ll have a year and a half or so to find out

Curious how this season would feel on a binge vs seeing them weekly, seemed like it barely moved things along this season and they wanted to get their full 5 seasons rather than compact the story to the amount of time they really needed.

Was expecting a major purge towards the end of this season, seemed to only kill characters that had recently been introduced and do fake outs for the main players. Feels like they should’ve laid some real cards on the table in terms of the past or current situation to set the ground work for next season. Instead it’s just more sort of veiled truths and edging

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I feel like the BiW definitely is connected to the tree. However I can’t figure out how he’s a ghost but aging?

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Think the real answer is just kid actors age quicker than it takes to develop multiple 10 episode drama series seasons

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- Story walking has to be reintroduced in season 5. I can respect the writers patience not going back to it for the rest of season 4 but it’s too big to just keep ignoring during the final season.

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Well you have to assume they will go back to it, otherwise they made the final scene from last season irrelevant where Julie comes in right after Jim dies.

I just have no idea why they completely abandoned that storyline this season. Made no sense to me. We get what, a single throwaway line from Julie about it being dangerous or something like that? Well we (and she and Randall) already knew that and were doing it anyway. And more than that, we know it fricking WORKS. She literally visited several time points in the past. Abandoning that completely this season after showing some promise is one of the bigger mistakes of the season IMO. But I assume it will be prominent next season.

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- What’s going on with the kitchen cabinets?

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I think it's just to show that this place is "basically" haunted, and to frick with the inhabitants even further. I don't think there's anything more to it than that (could be wrong though). But I think it was more just showing that some weird shite was going down because they were "getting close to the end" or whatever.

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- Did we really need the MiY having a spy? Almost more annoying to randomly spring that on us with a character we’ve barely seen compared to just writing around it.

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Clara was also a mistake this season. They could have easily replaced her with Elgin, especially since we've seen him do it before and buy into the Town's bullshite with the kimono lady. Bringing in Clara to the forefront was just sort of flat for me, especially considering we have basically zero history with her.

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- Fatima went from a pretty annoying character to now one of importance. Who knows what direction they’ll go with there, she could turn into the big bad or makes a sacrifice play. We’ll see.

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I'm interested to see if she can somewhat control the monster shite, or at least for a while. Like maybe she can be a bit of a spy on the inside for the monsters since she a) is one, and b) seems to be so connected to them/Smiley.

I really liked this season, but the other main mistake for me this season was her whole golem thing. I was hoping at the end, when she hulks out as the monster, that her golem would've shown up and helped her wreck shite. That would've been cool and a solid payoff for her wasting all of that time making a mess in Colony House. But I guess next season the residents of CH will just have to solve the mystery of where the frick all this water and mud came from all over the house.

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We had central characters standing around doing nothing during a season finale, have to do better.

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My biggest letdown for that was Kenny. His importance seemed to be ramping up a little, and then the last few episodes he's been a background character. It's funny because I used to hate the character and the actor, but they have both improved a lot over the course of the show and I actually like him now. But for Clara to have more screen time than Kenny is just dumb IMO.

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- We still don’t know who Martin is. The ballerina box is still a mystery. Sudden weather changes were an interesting twist, even MiY made a brief comment that made it seem like it was out of his control. So what’s the end goal with the bones? Can we ditch the MiY disguised as a girl and snooping around because one season was enough of that.

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I'll respond to each piece of this.

I think Martin is just another person/soul that is/was trapped in the Town, and he served his purpose by helping Boyd get out of the well (which we saw he did via Julie when she shows up there and he tells her to toss the rope down to Boyd), and then to transfer the blood worm things into his blood which helped him kill Smiley. And Martin died right after that Not sure we'll get any more info on Martin (but it would be cool if he shows up next season though).

The Music Box thing was pretty much solved in S2. That was the entity/big bad in S2 who captured/tortured Marielle, Julie, and Randall. And Boyd destroyed it which set the three of them free and got them out of the dungeon thing and into the present-day ruins.

I am reading up a bit on some things on the From-pedia page and forgot that Abby tells Boyd that hope is what feeds the forest, not fear. I wonder if that is still in play. It certainly seems like it could be tied to the "knowledge comes at a cost" thing in that knowledge and hope are "positive" things and the more of that the people of the Town have, the more the Town seems to fight back against them. Anyway, just something I noticed and was thinking about...

Sophia mentioning the weather was interesting. I don't think she/MiY can control it per se, but it definitely didn't surprise her that it happened. So she's definitely seen it happen before.

As for the bones, I'm not sure. But as of now it seems like they are definitely on the right track with removing the bones from the tunnel chamber. And the fact that that plot line wasn't resolved in S4 and is carrying forward into S5 makes me believe that Jade and Tabitha may finally be figuring out the key shite to get everyone saved/home.

As for Sophia/MiY, I agree with you. It almost feels "unfair" to have her walking around directly fricking with things. But then again, BiW sort of does the same things sometimes too. So I guess all is fair in their little war of sorts. The Sophia stuff this season was a bit of a distraction. But I'd prefer for S5 to be more straightforward in terms of story and plot, and move toward a resolution.

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I think the biggest issue is season 3 had a terrific ending that connected a lot of dots coherently & progressed the story & was getting things moving.

This season felt more like a return to season two where there was just a lot of miscellaneous shite thrown against the wall to see if it stuck.

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I agree with you that this season felt like a step backwards in terms of progression. Or let me clarify...I like where this season led to, but it felt like it took a long time to get to it.

I like the idea of this place existing and trapping people there as part of some game between powerful entities. And I like the Jade and Tabitha angle of having been there for centuries. But I do wish we'd have gotten more flashbacks and information from J&T throughout the season, and not just when it was convenient (like with the lake doll monster things...which is a testament to the miscellaneous shite like you mentioned).

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I was really hoping that Tabitha would have a significant flashback when looking at the skull which led to a cliffhanger ending the episode. However the Fatima scene kinda felt empty emotionally & then BIW/MIY interaction just more reiterated the points we already mostly knew.

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Per above, I agree with you on Tabitha. I think the Fatima thing felt empty emotionally because we have zero emotional attachment to her and Ellis as an audience. And I think that is partially because both she and Ellis are shitty actors. We talked about that a week or two ago, there is just nothing about them that feels true or genuine and a lot of times it sort of seems like they don't really like each other, let alone love each other like a marriage.

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Overall a meh season.

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I disagree, but I also understand why you think so though. I think this season had some real advancements with the story, and I think the main points (like the bones, for example) are clearly moving us into the endgame for the show (assuming S5 continues and with it and they don't just do a massive pivot at some point).

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I think no talismans next season leads to a lot of potential. The monsters haven’t felt like much of a threat for a while. Bringing them back full frontal could be great.

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Definitely agree with that, although I assume they will at least figure out some sort of workaround since the monsters are so overpowered when there isn't a talisman to keep them out. But I would like to see more of the monsters being a threat, and not just when someone is down in the tunnels. They were SUCH a big deal in the first season (and then here and there like when they killed Tian-Chen in S3).

As I've said before too, I do hope MiY isn't the end boss of the series. I think they have referenced a higher power there several times already, so I hope they stick to that. It would be cool seeing something even more powerful wreaking havoc.

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I wondered if Sophia put them in that particular tree on purpose, or if she was just getting rid of them randomly knowing they would show up somewhere else.

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Gotta think it was deliberate. Whether or not that bites her/him in the arse is TBD.

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I wonder if the earthquakes (which I still assume are being caused by BiW/the children to help) will open a route to CH.

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I think that is exactly what happened.

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What would be cool is if we get that showdown early on and MiY is defeated, only to have whatever entity that controls everything pop up as the big bad/final boss of the show.

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Ideally, this is ep1s5. Then a season to battle the big bad and get home.

Interesting metaphor.