I got addicted to From over the pandemic. It was a fresh concept that showcased a group of individuals that get caught up in a strange town in which there is no escape from. At the same time, a strange series of events take place within the town at night. Beings lurk the night in search of people to kill, they take the forms of people. Usually manipulating people into thinking they're friends or loved ones, luring them outside and gaining their trust. Within this isolated town are people that are familiar with the concept, to which they've discovered that certain talismans manage to keep the beings outside at night. The only way for them to enter is if someone opens a door or window to let them in. It had a slightly vampiric nature to it. And I loved the ways in which the atmosphere was built within the first two seasons. So little was told to the viewer over those two seasons but the show felt like it was fast in motion, on the brink of opening up some larger aspects of the narrative. Discoveries were being made. More ambitious actions were being taken as survivors were finally trying to make a stand rather than accepting their fate in this strange place. With this were people that came to the town with no real understanding of what was going on; nobody knew what they were doing there or how to get out. Many refusing to believe the warnings of what this place was.
Though we still don't really know. There are odd locations being displayed. Certain words in languages being said. A greater story at fold here. I enjoyed the build up of these things, the hinting and the curiosity. The ways in which the characters tried to piece things together themselves yet so little was actually acknowledged. It kept the second season a bit more fresh while the idea of the main theme was slowly removed. And I think that was handled quite well. After all, there's only so much of people being inside and the beings lurking the night that we can see, and the story had to choose a direction sooner or later. There was a long break between seasons, and I think many ended up feeling as if From was going to get cancelled, with so little information being released about its production. Tales of it continuing were heard, though not much else. And in that era of mass streaming cancellations, From seemed destined to never get that third season. Even if it was already in production. But suddenly, here it is! Season three. And with one episode out already, I had to watch it as soon as possible. With expectations all over the place, I had no idea what I was jumping into. I assumed it would be a totally different show in many aspects given how much time it took to create. Shows these days tend to experience quality degradation when there are lengthy periods of time between seasons, after all.
Episode One
I expected a greater introduction to the third season. And by that I don't mean that this episode was disappointing. But that it'd have that typical structure that shows tend to have per season: your epic introduction, the problem, and then the attempt to solve the problem with the season's climax. This didn't seem to have that at all and it was a great start as a result. The first episode just jumped back into things as if it hadn't left. A brief recap was played at the start of the episode to quickly remind us of the prior seasons and their most important elements. That started with a character arriving back in the real world and now having to figure things out having left hospital. Back in the other world where everything seems broken, the main problem seems to be a food shortage as the ground has started to kill off the crops. A storm in the prior season also dampened the ground to which the remaining crops ended up rotten. The food shortage problem seems to be the next main problem for the group to solve, and I'm curious as to how that will go about transitioning into the next episodes.
This episode was mostly dialogue driven in how it had characters interacting with each other. A lot of personal drama has been unfolding as tensions arise within the town. People's personal problems getting into the greater scheme of things as everyone wants to pursue their own directions. Lost family members, the food shortage, and the grasp for power. The episode switched between the real world and the town with a more gradual shift, though it didn't really reveal much. You can tell that things are still slowly being dripped down to us in attempt to stretch out the real answers to the questions we have. But I wouldn't say I mind it much, given the balance between the rest serves as a good counter without it feeling like it's just filler. The aforementioned character development coming in for such moments. And there's certainly a need for some more of it, with little being known about these characters which brings the question of how they ended up here in the first place.