With From Season 4 hurtling toward another finale, there’s an expectation that, eventually, major answers to the most important questions will arrive. Viewers are understandably expectant. However, the elephant in the room is that Season 5 will be the final part of the story. As such, it’s likely that, for the most part, Season 4 will leave audiences hanging.
LOST Has Come Back to Haunt From Fans
The DNA of the show also supports the notion that Season 4 may not be as satisfying as we’d like it to be. Executive producers Jack Bender and Jeff Pinkner are LOST veterans. This raises doubts about whether From can pull off an explosive ending, and how you feel about that depends entirely on which camp you sit in. I, for one, am a huge fan of LOST, and as such, have a deep appreciation for what was achieved in that story — time proves some things, and LOST is now considered a legendary series.
As one viewer pointed out in a From community forum, viewers need to calm down and understand that the team behind the series will likely want to ensure the biggest pay-offs arrive in the final season:
“I need everyone to get this fixed in their heads that we won’t get any clear big answers this season at all. These are the same people who made LOST and answered mostly all the questions in the final season and did it well, some even in the last few moments of the show.
So stop complaining; we aren’t gonna get answers to bigger questions this season. It will answer some smaller ones and give us a few bigger questions, and then answer them all or most in S5.
(People are seemingly thinking I am saying that we have gotten no answers. We have gotten tons; I just mean people who complain about filler episodes and how they aren’t answering bigger questions – we won’t be getting any of those till S5.).”
Another viewer agreed:
“It would be weird to get the answers now and then have an additional season, so yes, I agree.”
Obviously, this encouragement is refreshing in an age where most audiences have little patience for slow storylines. However, it’s probably not unreasonable for me to highlight that a lot of viewers — mostly those who were less engaged in the connections, timeline, and lore — either misunderstood or did not enjoy the ending of LOST. From is making a similar gamble, running a high risk that regardless of how good the writing is, many will simply not like the conclusions.
For prestige and well-respected TV shows, this is always a risk. Look at the disastrous Game of Thrones finale (which has put me off rewatching it forever). But sometimes, it works in the writers’ favor — the Succession series finale is widely considered a masterpiece and a perfect, devastating end to the story (and I have to agree).
“We’ve Learned a Lot” vs. “We’ve Learned Nothing”
Just because there is an anticipated fifth and final season on the horizon does not mean nothing has been learned in From Season 4. It would be foolish, for example, to provide zero answers until the very end. But I guess the important question is: what constitutes an answer in the From universe?
Season 4 has at least given viewers several puzzle pieces to build with, such as:
- Realizing that characters like Jade and Tabitha are essentially caught in recurring, generational cycles tied to historical massacres.
- Clues suggesting the monsters swapped the lives of children for their own dark immortality.
- Pinning down elements like the cicadas and dolls as literal nightmares brought to life.
But sometimes, certain answers just are not good enough. One viewer highlighted that there are still far too many lingering questions to feel satisfied, which is contributing heavily to the frustration in the fanbase:
“The people that are frustrated are frustrated due to episodes not moving the story along. The pace is extremely slow. What have we learned that is extremely significant? Do we know where the lake of tears is? Do we know where Eloise is? Do we know who wrote the books? Do we know if the monsters can actually go out in the day and choose not to? When will they discover Sophia is MIY? What can they do about it? There are more questions than answers.”
Whether we have learned anything or nothing in From Season 4 is up for debate, but it could be argued that “nothing” is an absolute argument rather than a place of reason. Still, I get it — to this day, LOST still feels like it left us with more questions than answers.
Things like Jade’s recent, harrowing mushroom trip in Episode 5 — which led him and Boyd to a hallucinated cavern of sacrificed children, only to wake up right back in the sheriff’s station — felt like an exercise in style that keeps the plot running in place. We are getting more rules to the nightmare, but we eventually have to just let go and put faith in the writers’ plans.
From Season 5 Looks Promising
Regardless of the anxiety in some quarters of the viewership, it’s clear that with Season 5 being the final chapter, Season 4 is the ultimate setup. Plot points like Julie’s “storywalking” abilities, the looming presence of the Man in Yellow (MIY), and the origin of the talismans are being stretched to their absolute limits.
Because of that, we should expect a major cliffhanger to close out Season 4, but we should also stay positive. MGM+ greenlighting Season 5 ahead of time as the final chapter is a major signal. It proves they know the show has a definitive endpoint and that we are pacing toward an actual conclusion.
However, if you are waiting for the grand, unified answer to what Fromville actually is, you’ll just have to wait until Season 5.
