‘From’ Season 1 Recap & Ending Explained: Get Ready for Season 2
Only a couple of weeks are left before the premiere of the second season of ‘From,’ a highly acclaimed sci-fi horror series that kept the audience engaged with the horrifying mysteries and clever twists. While the premise is similar to other popular shows such as ‘Wayward Pines,’ From delivers a completely new chilling atmosphere and terrifying twist at the end of the word ‘trapped.’
The main premise is simple. People are trapped in a destitute town and are seemingly stopped from leaving due to some supernatural means that are so far undisclosed. The twists come when the sun goes down, as horrific bloodthirsty creatures hunt them. Summarizing the show’s essence in just a few short sentences is hard. Due to that, we’ve decided to bring you the full recap of From’s first season, including the explanation for the mysterious ending.
From takes place in the middle of nowhere, and only half of the town’s population are humans
In the first episode, we are introduced to From’s main characters. The sheriff, Boyd Stevens (Harold Perrineau), is a no-nonsense guy with a hardass attitude that goes a long way in town because it keeps people alive. His resolve to do everything it takes was successful at keeping people safe. He is joined by Father Khatri (Shaun Majumder) and Kenny Liu (Ricky He), and together they try to keep up some semblance of order and discipline around the town, and it works for a time.
The community also has a doctor Kristi (Chloe Van Landschoot), and a rival faction that separated itself and lives on the hill in the so-called “Colony house.” They are led by Donna (Elizabeth Saunders). Donna is also a hardass, but she decided to take a different approach to leadership. Instead of strict organization and routine, the members of her faction rather spend their days in artistic pursuits and hedonism. Boyd’s son Ellis Stevens (Corteon Moore) decided to join the Colony house instead of joining Township, which his father leads, resulting in animosity and tension between Donna and Boyd.
The setting is quite clear. We are immersed into a destitute town, the time hasn’t been gentle on it, but it functions just like a regular forgotten town would, except by after nightfall, the residents are hunted by humanoid monsters with supernatural strength and speed with claws sharp enough to cut through human flesh. No one knows where the monsters are coming from, but the residents have an idea that they spawn from the nearby thick forests, which likewise prevents them from leaving through supernatural or other means.
Everyone is stuck inside the town. They can’t leave ever. The only protection they have against the monsters are wooden amulets. Their origin is unknown, but keeping the amulet above the doorway will forcefully prevent the monsters from entering the house. The monsters can still be invited into the house. In that case, everybody inside the house will die. We witness the first death when a little girl invites the monster inside the house, thinking that the monster is her grandmother. The mother and the daughter are torn apart by the morning, and Boyd is extremely angry at the father, Frank Pratt, who never made it home by nightfall the previous night and failed to protect his family. Frank was drunk and passed out on the floor of the makeshift bar when his family struggled for their lives.
The matters are further complicated when two new vehicles wander into the town at the same time. The first vehicle is a camper carrying Tabitha Matthews (Catalina Sandino Moreno), her husband, Jim Matthews (Eion Bailey), and their two children, Julie and Ethan (Simon Webster). They got into an accident with another car, likewise now stuck in the town, driven by Jade (David Alpay) and his friend.
Before nightfall, the town residents must brave the surrounding road to save the Matthews family from certain death. Sherrif Boyd learns that amulets are also effective when used in vehicles since he, Jim Matthews, and Kristi, the doctor, survived inside their overturned camper the whole night while rescuing young Ethan, who was stuck in the camper.
Jade, the survivor from the other car, and his friend, who is in bad condition, are escorted to the town. Jade’s friend is brought to the clinic to recover while Jade is brought into the Colony house. He is bound and restrained for his own good and not to compromise the safety of the whole house.
The monsters are not dangerous only physically; they can mess with one’s mind
In the clinic, Jade’s friend is recovering when a local girl Sara, lets the monsters inside the clinic on purpose. Sara hears monsters inside her head, and they tell her that killing Jade’s friend is one step closer to town release. Sara follows the orders and removes the amulet from the doors before she kills Jade’s friend in cold blood. At the clinic, the monsters kill Kenny Liu’s elderly father and the overnight nurse caring for him.
Sherrif Boyd and Donna try to explain the situation to the newcomers. Jade believes everything is just an elaborate setup made by his friend, a sort of “escape room” game. He is having fun until he sees the dead body of his friend, who Sara murdered.
Ken Liu and Boyd discover the massacre at the clinic overnight. Ken Liu is devastated and starts losing his will to live. At the Colony house, Ethan, a member of the newly arrived Matthews family, makes friends with Victor, an eccentric older man who is the oldest known resident in town. The two share a vision. They both see a boy in white skulking around town that no one else can see.
The newcomers in town have a hard time coping with the truth
We learn that Jade is a rich software developer with a chip on his shoulder. He finally realized what had happened to him when he had a strange vision involving a certain symbol he found while exploring the town buildings. Since Jade is a software developer, he started working on the solution to their problems immediately.
The Matthews family goes on a tour of the town with Father Kathri. He explains how the town functions and shows them certain places of interest around town, including the box, where people who have committed crimes go. As the name says, the box is a simple wooden box, and anyone who spends the night inside it has no hope of living until the morning.
Frank is scheduled to go inside the box; at first, Boyd doesn’t want to punish him, saying that living without his daughter and wife is punishment enough. Still, Father Khatri disagrees and thinks Frank should be punished as an example to other residents. This leads to a disagreement between the two. Ultimately, Frank refuses any help from Boyd and voluntarily goes inside the box without any help.
The Matthews family and Jade take part in the choosing ceremony. They must decide whether they will join the Colony house or the Township. Both Jade and Matthews family decide to join the Township, with Julie Matthews deciding to go to Colony house because she is annoyed by her family.
Upon moving in inside the house that was granted to them, Tabitha and Jim Matthews figure out that the electricity inside the house is fake and appliances are powered by seemingly nothing. Jade employs the help of Jim, an engineer, to construct a radio tower in order to make contact with the outside world.
In the morning, Boyd finds Frank dead inside the box, murdered by the monsters. He is so far the fifth victim since the show started.
Victor is connected to the mystery, and Jade hits a dead end regarding the location of the town
Victor, an eccentric from the colony house, is somehow connected to the whole mystery as we can see him as a young boy playing in the various buildings we have seen around the town. This would explain why he can see the boy in white. Tabitha and Jim are creeped out by Victor and forbid him from getting close to Ethan. Meanwhile, Victor manages to show Ethan that there are places around town that seemingly defy the laws of physics. He shows him a hollow tree trunk leading to another town location.
Jade asks Kenny about the town’s location, and Kenny reveals that the town is in the middle of nowhere, literally, as all residents wander into the town from different corners of America. They were all on the road when they saw a fallen tree blocking their way, forcing them to take a detour. The detour would leave them inside the town, and they would be stuck in an infinite loop driving around with no means to leave the town and its surrounding road.
Still, Jade and Jim attempt to make a radio tower, but their initial tests result in only static and nothing more.
Inside the makeshift diner, Sara meets Ethan for the first time and has another vision. This time, the voices tell her that she needs to kill young Ethan to free all residents in town and return them home.
Julie Matthews is growing increasingly annoyed by the residents of the Colony house who share everything and regularly invade her personal space. The only friends she has made so far are Ellis, Boyd’s son, and Fatima, his finance.
After his conversation with Ethan and yet another vision, Victor starts digging graves in front of the Colony house, claiming that they will soon need them.
What happened to Boyd, and why is he so adamant about leaving town?
Boyd grows more and more nervous as the days pass. There is a sense of urgency in his attempts to figure out what stops them from leaving, and we soon discover that he suffers from early-onset Parkinson’s disease and, sooner rather than later, he won’t be able to do anything for the residents, despite his promise that he will get them out.
Following her vision that she should kill Ethan, Sara ends up in the “hospital.” Her brother Nathan is worried about her since he knows she is behind the earlier hospital massacre. Sara asks Kristi a hypothetical question, whether she should do just one bad thing to save the rest of the town. Kristi answers positively, unknowing that there is a more sinister thing at hand here.
After she is released from the hospital, Sara goes to kill Ethan, but the ongoing struggle results in her killing her brother Nathan instead. Father Khatri manages to restrain Sara, and instead of delivering her to justice, he keeps her locked up in his basement, where he recites bible verses to her and shares his theories that they are somehow part of God’s bigger plan.
Father Khatri’s backstory is revealed, and Tabitha wants to find out the source of the electricity
Sara is still stuck in Father Khatri’s basement. At first, he is skeptical about her visions until she mentions the contents of a bag that he buried when he arrived in the town. The bag’s contents are revealed to be chocolate, a bottle of alcohol, and a bloody cassock. It would seem that Father Khatri failed to protect one child that regularly attended mass from his abusive father, which resulted in the death of a child. Instead of calling for help, Father Khatri decided to kill the boy’s father and escape. After that, he seemingly ended up in this cursed town.
Boyd meanwhile discusses his plan to venture further into the forest with Kenny. Kenny considers him a madman, but Boyd tries to reassure him by sharing that talismans work outside of the houses as well, as long as there is some physical barrier between them and the monsters.
Jade and Jim develop a strategy to construct a real radio tower, but such a project might deplete the town’s resources, which are already scarce enough as it is.
Tabitha starts to dig a hole in the basement to find the source of the magical electricity that powers appliances and the town as a hole.
Julie finds a bouquet of flowers left on the porch at the Colony house. We later find out that another resident named Kevin has been leaving the flowers since he formed some kind of bizarre and grotesque relationship with one of the monsters.
Sara and Boyd brave the surrounding forest while the Colony house gets massacred
The Colony house starts the night with a celebration. It’s Fatima’s one-year anniversary since she arrived in town, and although by all means, it’s a grim affair, the residents of the Colony house would rather celebrate than spend their days depressed.
During the party, Kevin, the man with a relationship with one of the monsters, invites the female shapeshifter inside the house, which results in a good portion of the Colony house being massacred.
The survivors are soon scattered around town, seeking shelter wherever. Victor helps Julie escape by pushing her inside the hollow tree that teleports her to an abandoned root cellar. He was supposed to follow behind her, but he never made it. Meanwhile, back in town, Father Khatri reveals to Boyd that he holds Sara hostage and suggests that she should accompany him during his upcoming trip to the forest. After initial anger, Boyd accepts after Khatri shares his past with him and the fact that “voices” inside Sara’s head knew about it.
At that moment, van arrives in front of the Sherrif’s office, carrying the survivors from the Colony house. As Boyd and Father Khatri rush to help the survivors, the monsters kill the priest.
Jade discovers some old photographs and figures out that young Victor is on some of them, back when he was a child. Jade suspects that Victor is somehow connected to the town and wants to question him, but Victor is missing. The last person to see him was Julie, whose life he saved.
We discover what happened to Boyd and how he arrived in town
In the flashback scene, Boyd arrives with his wife Abby and his son Ellis to town just minutes before nightfall. Now-deceased Father Khatri saved them, and after some initial confusion, Boyd adjusted to the leadership role quite well.
Soon after arriving, Boyd started organizing the town’s resources and residents, and after a long time, they finally had hope to make it out alive and return home.
Still, Boyd’s day trips into the surrounding forest resulted in conflicts with his son Ellis, that noticed that his mother, Abby, was acting strange. Boyd dismissed this and promised to deal with it when he returned from one last trip into the forest. However, an accident forces him to spend the night in a cave, where he discovers the talismans and that they act as repellents for the monsters.
When he returned to town in the morning, he found his wife Abby, opening fire upon the residents. She was convinced that she was stuck inside a nightmare and that she would be able to wake up by killing everyone. Abby was getting ready to shoot their son Ellis, but Boyd instead shot her dead. From that day, Ellis and Boyd are not on speaking terms, with Ellis blaming his mother’s death on his father’s neglect. It’s one thing that Boyd can’t forgive himself for, and Ellis can’t seem to either. This is the reason why Ellis decided to move into the Colony house instead of following his father to the Township.
In the present, everyone knows that Boyd is planning a trip to the wilderness that he might never return from. He is taking Sara with him as well. Kenny is made the new sheriff, and Fatima convinces Ellis to reconcile with his father. Otherwise, he might spend the rest of his life in regret if something happens to him.
Township works on building the radio tower while Sara and Boyd and terrified by what they find in the forest
Jade and Jim manage to convince the town to share their resources with them. They likewise manage to convince Donna to give them access to the colony house since it is the highest building in the vicinity, and it seems like a perfect location for the radio tower.
The only problem is energy. They seemingly don’t have anything to power the radio tower with except for draining all car batteries, which might prove to be unwise in the long run. Kenny’s mother tells Jade to simply use the “magical” electricity in the houses, and Jade is ecstatic by such a simple solution. For the first time in a long time, the residents now have something to hope for, but not everybody is convinced that building the radio tower is such a good idea.
Sarah and Boyd are slowly progressing through the forest; at one point, they go farther than everybody has ever gone and set up the point of reference to return if the need arises.
They stumble upon a tree that has messages in the bottles hanging from nearly every branch. The scraps of paper inside the bottles date as far as 1864, indicating that people have been getting stuck in this town for centuries.
At that moment, Sara has yet another vision, a new female voice telling her to turn back that the forest is inhabited by dangers even more monstrous than the monsters they have been hunted by. Boyd refuses to acknowledge these visions as real, and they proceed with their trek.
After nightfall, Boyd and Sara are holed up in their tent when a commotion outside of the tent disturbs them. They can hear a sound that resembles a really loud horn, and some strange lights are pointed directly at the tent. The tent starts getting dragged around like they are under attack; however, by morning, the attack stops, and Sara and Boyd find themselves lost at an unknown location surrounded by forest. This time, the trees are covered by spider webs.
From season 1 ending explained: What happened to Boyd & Sara, and who was the voice over the radio?
Exploring the spider webs, Boyd seemingly sees his wife Abby cocooned in one of the webs, and he approaches a really large spider nest. He is bitten instead, and soon after being bitten, his health deteriorates rapidly. He starts talking nonsense, but the two manage to make some progress after all as they discover that the light that was illuminating them came from a lighthouse. This is the point where Boyd cannot keep moving anymore, but Sara refuses to leave him alone in the forest. At that moment, the same boy in white that Ethan and Victor have been seeing appears to Sara and instructs her to use the tree portal in order to save herself.
Sara pushes Boyd first, but he is left stuck inside a shaft from which seemingly there is no way out. He is left to die with no way to be saved and discovered.
Back at the Colony House, the residents manage to set up the radio tower, and they manage to power it as well. Suddenly, a strange storm starts brewing over the town, and they need to hurry before everything they have worked for is destroyed by lightning or blown away by winds.
Jim manages to contact someone “on the other side.” The voice on the radio appears to know him and warns him that his wife, Tabitha, should stop digging the basement hole or something horrible might happen.
Jim rushes back home. The tunnel that Tabitha has been digging collapses at that moment, and she finds herself stuck in the same place where Victo is. Victor warns her to keep silent because the underground is where monsters sleep. This fact might explain how monsters are able to move across town by seemingly supernatural means.
The town is still stuck in the storm, and the final shots of the final episode are inside the diner. We can hear the radio turning on by itself and a whole bus filled with passengers parking at the center of the town.