Summary
“The Calm Before” is proudly a penultimate episode, which you’d think would frustrate viewers already upset about filler, but it also has an escalating sense of dread that feels just right.
Given that people have already been complaining about From Season 4 dragging its feet and biding its time, the fact that Episode 9 is titled “The Calm Before” feels almost like a deliberate provocation. To be fair, though, things aren’t all that calm. Sure, not a great deal actually happens here, and nothing that does happen dissuades from the notion that we’ll have to wait until Season 5 to get to the really good stuff, but there’s a very palpable sense of escalating dread that I personally found really effective. This is a show that relies on us not knowing quite what’s going on, but what we know for certain is that whatever it is, it’s going to go badly wrong and get much worse before it gets any better.
With the Man in Yellow having tipped his hand to Tabitha, things are really starting to kick into gear. She rushes straight to Boyd and tells him that it’s time to get moving, since not only is the MIY back, he must have been in her house to retrieve Ethan’s drawings. Even Tabitha, the most frustratingly sceptical character in the entire show, sees the issue there. After a reanimated Roger went rampaging through Colony House, this is only further evidence that the talismans can’t be relied upon to protect the residents of the Township from anything. And if their defenses are failing, they have to go on the attack.
This is the dramatic impetus for the entire episode. Boyd finally reconciles the idea that any potential plan is never going to be perfect, and at some point, he’s just going to have to risk getting people killed. As Fromville prepares to retrieve the bones, the MIY transforms back into Sophia and resumes working on disrupting this plan. First, he reveals himself to Clara to cash in on their prior arrangement. There are also some clues here, if you’re looking for them. The Man in Yellow indicates that the residents are on the right track in going after the bones, but since the Township was built on ritual, it matters how you do something, not just what you do. As long as Boyd and the others seem likely to do the wrong thing, the MIY is quite happy to let them get on with it.
In the meantime, Sophia and Clara carry out a little blood pact so that the MIY can worm his way into Clara in the same way he did Henry (more on him shortly). Clara then drips some of her tainted blood into a flask and gives it to Fatima under the guise of a family recipe that will help her heal. Quite to the contrary, that night Fatima wakes up with crippling stomach pain and her hair falling out. Fans think she’s transitioning into the Kimono Woman, and this might well have hastened that process.
Sophia also offers to help to create the rope ladder in the diner, but naturally she secretly sabotages it. All seems to be going well for her, at least until it isn’t. Clara arrives with some bad news (more on this, also, below), and Elgin finds a photo in the back of the diner that seems to show Sophia in an earlier cycle. When he confronts her, she realises the jig is up and confesses that she can only transform into people who died in the town. A confused Elgin doesn’t realise why Clara is closing the diner door until it’s too late. We don’t see what happens to him, but we can assume it’s nothing good.
We mustn’t forget about Henry, either. He’s still having visions of an idyllic alternate life thanks to the MIY’s influence, and the characters in that vision, including Victor himself, are continuing to push him towards severing his anchor to the hallucination. In other words, they’re asking him to kill Victor. Like the Fatima stuff, this is for the finale to deal with, but From Season 4, Episode 9 wants to make sure we don’t forget about it. I’m sure we won’t.
As for Fromville Victor himself, he has another encounter with the Boy in White, who tells him that he can’t let the others pull down the bottle tree, which is a necessary part of Boyd and Jade’s plan. Victor tries to intervene, but it’s no good; Boyd, even though he isn’t as dismissive as, say, Tabitha usually is, points out that the Boy in White could just as easily be trying to hinder them as help them. When Victor doesn’t agree, Boyd and Kenny have to arrest him and lock him up to keep him out of the way.
Sadly, I’m probably going to have to stop complaining about Tabitha now. After that encounter with the MIY, she’s firmly on the side of getting things done. She tells Ethan and Julie about it, and the fact that he probably killed Jim as punishment for her and Jade discovering their own importance, and Julie tells Tabitha about her story-walking, which, uncharacteristically, she doesn’t even question. She even goes so far as to listen to Ethan when he gives her advice, which is to stop being so afraid. Fromville makes them afraid, so they don’t believe in the things that might help them. This prompts Tabitha to see the ghosts of the children pointing at her, which compels her to go to Boyd and tell him that she and Jade need to be the only two people who descend into the tunnels to retrieve the bones. The talismans, after all, depict two people, and she believes they depict her and Jade. This may very well be the ritual element that the MIY was alluding to earlier, and it’s this news that visibly throws Sophia for a loop when Clara shares it with her at the diner.
Nevertheless, Tabitha and Jade head into the tunnels, using only a bit of plastic and a talisman to separate them from the Creatures. Boyd and the others, meanwhile, are ready to uproot the bottle tree. The plan gets underway, and Jade and Tabitha find the bones in a shallow grave under a giant stone. But the Creatures are at the door, the rope ladder is sabotaged, pulling up the bottle tree might be a mistake, Henry might be about to kill Victor, Elgin might be dead, and Fatima might be turning into a monster. There’s no way this can go well, is there?
