After the brutal cliffhanger ending, From Season 3 Episode 2 reveals what happened to Boyd and Tian-Chen, and we also learn more about Victor’s mom Miranda.
In case you’d forgotten (or blocked it from your memory), Season 3 Episode 1 ended with arguably the most horrific scene in the TV show yet: the smiling monsters taunting Boyd by torturing Tian-Chen before his very eyes.
Even prior to this, we learn things aren’t looking too rosy in Fromville: Kenny and Jim are out in the woods; Tabitha’s stuck in the real world and she’s not sure why; and the town’s food supply is dwindling.
With the arrival of From Season 3 Episode 2, there are even more highs and lows, as well as yet more questions to add to this ever-expanding mystery. Warning: spoilers ahead!
From Season 3 Episode 2 starts with the aftermath
In Fromville, Jade (David Alpay) and Victor (Scott McCord) are stuck at home with a whole herd of goats. Jade decides to go looking for Boyd (Harold Perrineau), finding him in the barn – and the worst has happened.
The monsters tortured Tian-Chen (Elizabeth Moy) to death, leaving Boyd in a state.
Yes, this means Kenny (Ricky He) didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to his mom. He’s currently still in the woods with Jim (Eion Bailey). On the plus side, they’ve woken up to find a whole crop of fresh vegetables – not rotten and destroyed like the ones at home.
“There’s enough food here to feed everybody in the entire town,” says Jim, and the pair work together to gather as much as they can.
Back in the real world, Tabitha (Catalina Sandino Moreno) wakes up to a fright: she’s in Victor’s father Henry’s (Robert Joy) house, and he’s asleep beside her, holding a gun. He wakes up too, explaining that she passed out on his front porch.
When she tries to leave, he holds the gun towards her, demanding to know where she got Victor’s lunchbox. She tries to explain by starting right from the beginning – when the Matthews family first got to Fromville – but he’s not buying it.
Henry grows increasingly agitated, asking where the lunchbox came from. Tabitha says Victor gave it to her, and that his son is still alive. She begs him not to call the police as they’ll think she’s “crazy,” but he reveals he already did and they should be there soon.
After taking a moment, Tabitha says, “I know how to prove I’m not lying.”
Boyd’s struggling to hold it together
In Fromville, Sara walks into the clinic, and her arrival is not welcomed by Kristi (Chloe Van Landschoot) after the deaths she caused in From Season 1.
“Boyd might be okay with everything you did but if you think for a second–” says Kristi, but Sara (Avery Konrad) interjects to reveal Tian-Chen is dead. Kristi is left devastated, telling Marielle (Kaelen Ohm) as Sara leaves.
Next, we finally find out the body Jade and Boyd are seen carting through Fromville in the trailer is, in fact, Tian-Chen. Everyone in the town is in bits, and to make matters worse, snow starts falling… winter has arrived.
The pair bring Tian-Chen into the church, where Jade asks a pertinent question: how the hell is Boyd still alive after spending the night in a barn with the smiling monsters? Boyd, who is still in shock, replies, “They wanted me to watch.”
As he walks through the town, he tries to hold it together but he can’t stop having flashbacks, with scenes showing the monsters torturing Tian-Chen. Boyd’s been through a lot, and he may be displaying signs of PTSD.
Back at Julie (Hannah Cheramy) and Ethan’s (Simon Webster) house, she’s trying to comfort her baby brother when Victor comes tearing through to grab his bag, announcing he’s off.
Ethan and Julie plead with him but Victor shouts, “I told you bad things happen here. It’s not my fault you didn’t listen,” before leaving.
Henry starts to believe Tabitha
At Henry’s house, Tabitha’s having a hard time convincing him she’s telling the truth. However, his whole demeanor changes when she mentions the “children locked in the tower.”
Before she can elaborate, the police turn up, but thankfully he tells them it was a false alarm. When he walks back in, he puts the gun down, explaining it was never loaded. Henry goes to make her some food – it appears he’s finally starting to believe what she’s saying.
In Fromville, Donna (Elizabeth Saunders) and Boyd get into an argument over Tian-Chen. She’s pissed at him for putting the townspeople at risk over the animals, which is rich given she was the one panicking about their dwindling food supply in the last episode.
They both break down, with Donna explaining she’s not really mad at him, she’s just had it with this place. “You did the only thing you could do and you lost, because the game here is f**king rigged,” she says. “And no matter what hand you play, you lose.”
Things aren’t looking much better over at Colony House. Fatima (Pegah Ghafoori) is still vomiting non-stop, and Ellis (Corteon Moore) wants to take her to see Kristi. She insists she’s fine, but her mind is changed when a tooth falls out.
When they arrive at the clinic, Kristi’s gone out so Marielle agrees to check her out instead.
Kristi, meanwhile, finds Boyd and comforts him, telling him it’s not his fault what happened to Tian-Chen and reminding him of how much good he’s done for the town.
Kenny and Jim return
Their heartwarming moment doesn’t last long, as Kenny and Jim return with a whole stash of fresh produce. They’re excited until they notice the dour mood and the blood on Boyd’s shirt.
Although Boyd tries to pull Kenny aside, he refuses to accept the reality that his mom is gone. He starts shouting for her from outside their house before walking off.
Kristi follows him into the diner, where he paces and tries to hold himself together. He says he’s “fine” but he’s clearly not, and understandably so. Just as we had feared in the From Season 3 premiere, Kenny never even got a chance to say goodbye.
Back at the clinic, Marielle is proving herself to be impeccable at her job. She reassures Ellis and Fatima, explaining that she’s likely got hyperemesis gravidarum, a form of severe morning sickness.
The baby is fine, but the main concern right now is that Fatima’s malnourished and she can’t hold food down, so Marielle goes to find some meds to settle her stomach, putting the couple’s minds at ease.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” says Ellis, although in this place, that’s wishful thinking.
Julie tells Jim to get it together
At the diner, Kenny wants to know whether his mom suffered, explaining that when he thinks of his father, Bing-Qian (Simon Sinn), he can’t help but think about him in the basement after he was killed by the smiling monsters.
“I don’t want it to be like that for her,” he says, before asking Kristi for a favor: he wants her to make Tian-Chen look like herself, so he can remember her for how she was. Kristi is reluctant but agrees.
After she leaves, out of nowhere the radio comes on, and it’s the most inappropriate song ever: Kool & the Gang’s ‘Celebrate’. It’s as if whatever’s controlling the town is mocking him. Kenny breaks the radio to get it to stop before storming out.
Back at the Matthews’ home, Jim arrives to a frosty reception. Julie is ready to deliver some hard truths. She tells him Ethan nearly died the night before, and that with no Talisman, Tabitha is likely dead.
Jim going out into the woods was reckless when their family is already struggling. Julie points out that if he dies, she’d have to pick up the pieces and look after Ethan like she did when their brother Thomas died in the real world.
“I need you to get your s**t together, okay?” she says, and Jim agrees.
Tabitha sees Victor’s drawings
We cut to Henry’s house, where he explains to Tabitha that before Miranda and the kids disappeared, his wife had started hearing voices. She said they were children locked in a tower, crying out to be saved.
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“The only person I ever repeated that to was the investigating detective, and he died 20 years ago,” he says.
Once Tabitha’s done eating, Henry takes her up to the bedroom where Victor and his sister Eloise slept when they were kids. He’s kept everything just as it was back then, and Tabitha notices drawings like the ones Victor makes in Fromville.
Henry opens up about how devastated he was when they vanished, saying he didn’t care about the accusations that he was behind it – all he cared about was the fact that his last words to them were “clean your room” and “no TV.”
He went to work that day, and when he came home, they were gone. Tabitha asks why he’s showing her this, to which Henry explains that he can’t come up with a reasonable explanation other than she’s telling the truth.
“If this isn’t real, you tell me right now,” he says, but Tabitha enures him, “I swear to you… I believe that the reason I was sent here was to find you.”
Meanwhile, at the church, Kristi finds Jade with Tian-Chen’s body. For the first time, she sees how the monsters have ripped chunks of flesh from her, and torn open her ribcage to remove the contents.
Kristi doesn’t feel up to the task of restoring her for Kenny, saying, “I’m not a mortician.” But Jade says he’ll help her.
Fatima’s rotten feast
Back at Colony House, Fatima and Ellis are back, and are hopeful now she has some medicine.
She convinces Ellis to go and see his dad, and when he leaves, something rather strange happens – Fatima starts secretly feasting on the stash of rotten vegetables, as if she’s eating a juicy steak.
Speaking of steak, Donna’s butchering the cow that was killed by the monsters last night. Ethan comes looking for Victor, and Donna notices how sad he seems after everything that’s happened. Although she tries cheering him up, he leaves in a somber mood.
Elsewhere, Kristi and Jade are cleaning up Tian-Chen’s body when Sara walks in to give them her favorite dress. Kristi thanks her, indicating Sara might eventually be able to win back their trust.
Boyd goes to see Kenny, who’s stocking up on what looks like gasoline. After questioning what he’s doing, Kenny replies, “I’m going to the tunnels. I’m going to find those things, and I’m going to burn every last f**king one of them.”
Even though it’s a shaky plan (especially since we, as the viewer, know there’s likely something bigger controlling the smiling monsters), Boyd’s at the end of his tether too and agrees to join Kenny.
Boyd takes care of Kenny
The pair prepare outside of the tunnel entrance, with Boyd warning that there’s all the chance they won’t find the monsters. And if they do, they might not make it out alive.
But, at this point, Boyd’s willing to go with him and take out as many of them as possible. Kenny is devastated, knowing his mother died alone.
Boyd reveals she wasn’t alone – the monsters made him watch. He says Tian-Chen was brave and kept her eyes on him the whole time. He repeats a sentence she said right before she died in Chinese, with Kenny translating it as, “Take care of him.”
He hugs Kenny, who breaks down in tears, before Boyd eventually says, “Hey, let’s go back.”
At the church, Kristi and Jade have done an incredible job restoring Tian-Chen’s body. Just after they finish, Boyd and Kenny arrive, and Kenny gets a moment alone with his mom to say his goodbye.
Meanwhile, Julie heads over to Sara to thank her for saving her and Ethan last night. Julie admits she’s scared after the music box incident.
She’s worried this place is now in her head, and she doesn’t want to end up hurting people like Sara did. Sara offers Julie a listening ear if she “ever wants to talk.”
Tabitha takes a trip down memory lane
The scene cuts to the real world, where Henry’s taking Tabitha to the basement to explain when Miranda started hearing voices.
See, he and Miranda were hippies back in the day, but when she got pregnant, they decided to quit the drugs and drinking. However, years later, Miranda thought they should take a trip down memory lane for Henry’s 35th birthday.
They left the kids with their grandparents and took a hit of LSD each for old time’s sake. “That’s when the voices started, when she started seeing things,” Henry explains. “She painted everything she saw.”
Tabitha is shocked to see paintings of Fromville, from the faraway trees and the “anghkooey” kids to the diner and the church.
Henry describes exactly what Miranda was saying she saw before she disappeared, and it’s a perfect summary of the town.
“She said she’d been chosen, and that it was a place that was everywhere but you couldn’t find it if you tried,” he explains. “Somewhere you could stumble into from anywhere but never find a way to leave.”
Alongside Henry’s narration, we see scenes of the town attending Tian-Chen’s funeral.
“She said there were people there, people who were lost and afraid, who found themselves living inside a nightmare that they couldn’t escape, fighting a battle they knew they couldn’t win,” he adds.
“She said they were holding onto hope, and when that hope was gone, they held onto each other.
“It all sounded like riddles, gibberish. She said that of all the people who would find their way to this place, she was the one who had been chosen to free the children.
“But she wasn’t the first. Others were chosen before her. She could see each and every one, and all of them had failed. None of them had ever set the children free, and none of them had ever gone home.
“If you’ve seen the children, if they’ve called to you, I guess you’ve been chosen now too. So, how did you get out?”
Tabitha’s only half listening as she takes in all of the paintings, finally honing in on one that’s caught her eye: the boy in white.
Jim gets an unexpected phone call
Following the funeral, Boyd is clearly agitated. Ellis asks him if he’s okay, to which Boyd explains that he’s not and he wants help with something tomorrow. “Yeah, alright, with what?” Ellis asks. “We’re going to catch one of these f**king things,” Boyd replies.
In the final sequence of From Season 3 Episode 2, the Matthews head home, but Ethan and Julie decide to go and check on the animals before the sun sets.
This leaves Jim alone in the house, where an unexpected twist arrives: he gets a call on their home phone. When he answers it, a boy’s voice on the other end says, “Dad? It’s Thomas.”
Now, this is obviously shocking, but what exactly could it mean? Either Thomas is somehow alive in another realm or dimension, or the entity behind the town is doing this as some sort of cruel, sick way of taunting Jim.
To learn more, we’ll have to wait until From Season 3 Episode 3 drops on MGM+ on Sunday, October 6. Until then, be sure to check out the best binge-worthy TV shows to watch right now, as well as the new series coming to streaming this month.