I have watched many TV Series over the past years, and I find refreshing series that build intrigue and suspense. Years ago, I watched the series “Lost” by J.J. Abrams. It is confusing, and the story builds up and slowly answers questions throughout multiple seasons. The series “FROM” by MGM has a few workers from the original “LOST” — including actor Harold Perrineau.
The series can be confusing and exhausting as you don’t know all the rules of this universe, or what’s going on in general. Later in Season 3, things start to make sense. There are some wild rules to this universe and different groups or factions in the background that are not always visible. There are monsters. There are ghosts. There are entities. Some are evil. Some are good or have ulterior motives.
For now, here is a full Spoiler summary, character quotes, over a hundred screenshots, and a few description notes (in blue boxes). You are warned. This page covers Season 1, 10 episodes. It took me a long time to put together over the past week. I’m not a writer, and my grammar isn’t great. Bare with me.
From TV Series – Spoilers: List of Secrets and Events
SEASON 1, Ep. 1: Long Day’s Journey into Night
1 — Sara asks a couple to go home. The night is coming soon. Sara closes the Diner and goes to the backroom. The jukebox turns on by itself and plays: “We Gotta Get Out of This Place.” The song says: “Now my girl, you’re so Young and pretty ♪ And one thing I know is true ♪ You’ll be dead before your time is due, I know ♪
This part of the song changes the camera to the girl named Meagan on the swing. [Meagan dies shortly after the song. This might mean the jukebox turns on sometimes to alert someone will die today.]
2 — A sign outside the Sheriff Station (Post Office) says: “Nights without incident: 96.” [No one had been killed for the past 3 months and a few days before Lauren and Meagan’s deaths.]
3 – Frank is drunk and passed out at the Tavern, and sleeps there.
4 – Lauren Pratt and Meagan wait for Frank, who didn’t return home. Lauren places the talisman on the door. Meagan prays upstairs and hears a knocking on the window. She hears the voice of her grandma who asks her to come to the window and to keep it secret. The old lady says she misses her. Lauren discovers this scene. The old lady says maybe I can come in. Meagan opens the window as her mother yells: “No!” The old lady transforms into a monster and lunges at Meagan as the camera fades out.
5 — Boyd confronts Frank Pratts for not being home to protect his wife and daughter. For being too busy drinking instead of nailing down all the windows.
6 – An RV drives along a highway. Julie has two figures attached to her point fingers as she tells a story to her brother, Ethan: “Norman, you will be ok. The secret fairies are on their way back from the Lake of Tears. They’re gonna fix you! No. The monster’s claws went too deep. Tell my friends I’ll miss them. Tell my parents I said goodbye. (Norman dies)”
[Julie starts episode 1 as a storyteller, and shortly after, they find the tree on the road. It could be interpreted that after Meagan and Lauren are killed by the monster, the Town chose a storyteller (aka Julie) to join the game. It seems new people find their way into the Town after people dies in the Town. The Town replaces or replenishes potential food sources for the monsters. It might be possible that this story told by Julie is not simply a story. The Town monsters or some of the non-violent ghosts might be these fairies and at some point, the show might show the Lake of Tears. It's one of the wild theories floating around in Reddit.]
The Matthews family finds a tree blocking the road. Shortly after, an unkindness of Ravens descend frantically above the trees, scaring the family away in their RV.
7 – Tobey and Jade drive in a car that almost collides with the RV, causing an accident. Jade is under the effects of drugs
8 – Kristi is driven by Father Khatri and Deputy Kenny to the accident to patch up Ethan’s leg which got impaled by a table leg. Boyd decides to stay overnight with a Talisman guarding the entrance to the RV.
9 – Ellis points out the car where Tobey and Jade arrived has New York license plates. Kristi says Sara and Nathan are from Boston.
[This is the first time it is implied that people who enter the Town come from different locations across the United States. All of them find the same tree blockage before entering the Town.]10 — Sara stabs Tobey through his neck. The voices demand her to do this and to leave the Infirmary door open.
11 — On their way back to the Colony House on the hill, the spike strip flattens the Pickup Truck’s wheels. Kenny forgot to remove the spike strip from the road. The night is upon them in a couple of minutes. Father Khatri suggests to Ellis, Kenny, Tabitha, and Julie to hurry up and run to the Colony House.
12 — Ethan recovers consciousness but suddenly suffers seizures. Seconds after this, an eerie howling is heard. The monsters are coming.
[It might be possible that Ethan's seizures are a response to the monsters waking up from their slumber. Ethan has a special talent for seeing ghosts in this Town.]SEASON 1, Ep. 2: The Way Things Are Now
1 — Jim Matthews hears someone knocking outside the RV and tries to go outside to meet them. Boyd forcefully stops Jim locking his arms around Jim’s neck to prevent him from being killed by the monsters.
2 — Father Khatri, Ellis, Kenny, Tabitha and Julie continue to run toward the Colony House. It is already night time, and it is raining heavily. Jade falls to the ground and is knocked out unconscious as his face hits a rock. Ellis and Father Khatri carry Jade.
3 — They reach the Colony House and knock frantically at the door asking to be let in. The monsters slowly walk around the corner of the Colony House. Alex panics at their sight. Julie looks at the people (monsters) coming toward them. One of them tells Julie: “Don’t you recognize me?”
[There are a few theories: The monster took the form of someone who Julie knows from the real world. Someone who possibly died some time ago. This theory is supported by what happened to Meagan. Meagan thought she heard the voice of her grandma, but when she lifted the curtain and saw the old lady through the window, she said the old lady didn't look like her grandma. A more obscure theory is that Julie will meet this monster in his past in one of her timey-whimey dreamwalking that happens in Season 3]4 — Jim Matthews asks Boyd what are those people. Boyd says he doesn’t know, but these talismans, are what protect the houses in town. You close doors and windows and they can’t get in. Boyd had never used a talisman in a vehicle before. With the talisman in the window, they can get in only if they let them in. This means the talisman is not effective if there is consent.
6 — EMT Kristi asked Jim Matthews if his son Ethan had ever had a seizure like this before. He said never.
7 — At the Colony House, Trudy asks Ellis if Jade is from the RV. Ellis responds he is from another car. They had an accident. Trudy says it is the first time that two cars have arrived on the same day. Ellis confirms he hasn’t either. It’s unknown at this point, how long Trudy has been around in the Town. However, Donna has been around for 3+ years. Victor, who has been in the Town for at least since the 1960-70s, says two cars on the same day haven’t happened in a long, long time. It’s special.
8 — At the Infirmary, Sara Myers is talking to an unseen entity: “I can’t do anymore. Are you sure? Okay.” — the viewer isn’t aware of what the other entity is saying, and it is not revealed what or who is talking to Sara. Sara continues to talk to this entity: “How? All of it?” Sara picks a scalpel from Kristi’s drawer. She aims the scalpel at Tobey’s mouth. The camera fades out.
[It is implied the entity asked her to remove his tongue.]She leaves the Infirmary door open. Curiously, the monsters don’t kill Sara. The monsters enter the Infirmary, where Tobey is death (Sara stabbed him in Episode 1). The monsters kill
Donna gives Tabitha Matthews a summary of all the things that happen in this Town, and she can’t believe it. Donna says her now-dead sister used to think the same way. She was no one to be trifled with. She’d kick the teeth off a bear it looked at her sideways. Donna and her sister were on a hunting trip when they saw the tree on the road.
[It's unknown if Donna's sister will appear in flashback cameos or as a spirit someday, but her photo is shown. It's assumed the shotgun the Colony House residents use is Donna and her sister's. Both shotguns are seen in the photo below.]
Donna confirms to Tabitha that everyone in the Town has seen the same tree and the crows. Donna and her sister arrived to the Town in the night. They looped back into the town at least twice until one of the monsters stood in the middle of the road. Her sister came out of the car and pointed a shotgun at it. He stood there still, smiling at her. After a while, it ripped her face in one sweep and proceeded to skin her. Donna froze but started running when she saw a second monster approach her. She hid in the forest behind bushes until sunrise. Donna has lived in the Town for 3 years, 6 months, and 17 days ago (1277 days).
[This indirectly suggests that Boyd had not arrived to the Town yet. Boyd is the one who finds the talismans that later allow people to live in the buildings. Before Boyd, everyone else had to survive hiding wherever they could]
9 — In the RV, Kristi and Jim Matthews talk. He says he is an engineer who builds theme park attractions: rollercoasters, drop towers, etc.
10 — Ethan awakes some time after Kristi removed the metallic table leg from his right leg. Ethan confirms that during his seizure he saw the Lake of Tears. Ethan says the Lake of Tears was a drawing on the wall. As he says this, the camera shifts to Victor’s room. The walls are covered with crayon drawings on pieces of paper and cardboard, pinned with tacks. Ethan saw in this wall crayon drawings of his family. That someone screamed because a spider came down from the ceiling.
[The fact that Ethan saw the crayon drawings that Victor draws means the Lake of Tears might be real in this Town, and that Ethan has a special talent to see ghosts and other paranormal stuff. The spiders do appear in an episode some time later.]
11 — In the Infirmary, Bing-Qian Liu (Kenny’s father) and Gina (EMT Kristi’s assistant) play chess. He gets upset wanting his son. She leads him to bed where he dozes off. She goes to check on Tobey, but finds him dead and blood all over the place. She runs to the entrance and discovers the door wide open with two monsters smiling at her.
12 — Kristi fell asleep in the RV and had a nightmare in which Jim Matthews grabbed the talisman off the front of the RV and asked how it worked. Kristi looks and panics. Noise is heard above the RV and a monster crashes down through the window. Only a nightmare. Kristi awakes. All is ok. It’s morning. Boyd leaves the RV and sees the Volkswagen van approach with Father Khatri, Kenny, Tabitha and Julie.
[Are nightmares just nightmares in this Town? Are these just torture mechanisms? Or something else?]
13 — Evidently, Sara managed to leave the Infirmary in the evening without being attacked by the monsters. However, Sara confesses to her brother Nathan Myers that she hears their voices: “They told me it had to look like it was the monsters.”
[Something strange going on here. Sara seems to be describing that a different faction, possibly Ghosts, are the voices and they are not the monsters, because otherwise, why would the voices want to make Tobey's death look like it was the monsters who killed him?]The voices told Sara that killing Tobey and leaving the door open was the only way to save the Town. The only way to go home.
[Unsure what Sara means by this. By killing Tobey, and letting Kenny’s father and his attendant die, the only thing accomplished is the arrival of new people. A bus shows up sometime later, which includes Randall. Randall is known to have visions, too. Same as Tabitha. It is Randall who leads Julie to the Tower Ruins in Season 3. Maybe this is what Sara means? Julie is revealed to be some sort of time-dreamwalker.]
14 — Kenny, Father Khatri, and EMT Kristi find the Infirmary door open and discover the corpses of Gina and Kenny’s father (Bing-Qian Liu).
15 — Kenny is axing a tree in rage to replace the bloody chess pieces. They weren’t barnished, so they got all soaked in blood. Kenny and his father had crafted the previous chess pieces together. One of the few things they ever did together other than play chess. Kenny says playing chess with his father, the game always ended the same way. With Kenny down to his last piece trying to escape his father. Kenny draws a parallel between this and the monsters and warns Boyd they are running out of spaces on the board.
16 — Boyd erases the “96” from the “Nights without incident” board outside the Post Office / Sheriff Station.
17 — At the Colony House, Julie is telling Ethan the Lake of Tears story: “Norman, they made it back from the Lake of Tears. It wasn’t too late! You are going to be okay.” Ethan looks out the window. Julie asks what he is looking at. She looks out the window and sees nothing. Ethan responds: “Nothing.” The camera looks through the window and shows the ghost of a kid that smiles back at Ethan and as he raises a finger in front of his lips, he “Shhh”s at Ethan.
Season 1, Ep. 3: Choosing Day
1 — Tabitha and Jim Matthews are sleeping in the Colony House for the day until the ceremony where they can choose where to live. Tabitha has a nightmare. In it, she relives the moment they arrive at the Colony House’s door and the monsters showed up. However, she sees the bride monster in close up — something that didn’t happen. Then she sees the guy that told Julie: “Do you recognize me?” and hears the gun shooting at the monster. Tabitha awakes abruptly from the nightmare.
2 — Boyd wakes up and he shows signs of a tremor in his left hand. Possibly a disease he hasn’t disclosed to the Townsfolk. He opens the window curtains and looks at the box, outside of the Post Office/Sheriff Station. Today is when Frank will be sentenced to the box — which contains no talisman to protect him from the monsters.
3 — Donna explains to Jade, who happened to wake up from his drug tripping, that he is in a town where he can’t leave, and at night monsters come to hunt them down, and that his friend Tobey is death. Jade laughs and believes Tobey paid a group of actors to play a joke on him. He thinks he needs to solve a puzzle and walks out of the Colonial Town and steals a bicycle from a resident thinking she brought it for him. Jade rides to the town Diner searching for clues to solve this prank paid by his friend Tobey. “Money well spent.”
4 — Victor opens his lunchbox and takes a note and a crayon. He reads the note and begins measuring with steps the distance from the corner of a house to the trees.
5 — Ellis and Jim Matthews arrive from the RV. They were picking up the family’s belongings. Jim brought Ethan his books. Among them: Adventures of the Grand Gooligog; and Flight of the Cromenockle. The latter is Ethan’s favorite.
6 — Donna informs the Matthews family that Father Khatri wants to talk to them about the Choosing Ceremony. All newcomers have to decide where they’re gonna live. They must pick either the Colony House or the Town. Tabitha and Jim wish to see their house at the Town to decide whether they wish to live there. Julie wants to come, but Jim asks her to stay to care for Ethan. She gets disappointed and left out.
7 — In the Diner, Jade continues to think he is in a prank among traveling actors and wonders what the next clue of the puzzle is. The residents are annoyed at Jade.
8 — Father Khatri explains Jim and Tabitha the talismans is what keeps the monsters at bay from entering the houses. However, they must nail down the windows in their new house, should they decide to stay in the Town, especially if families have children. The monsters try to convince them to let them in. Children tend to be more susceptible to opening a window. Cover the windows with curtains.
9 – Tabitha asks about the box. Father Khatri responds the box is for punishment when a resident breaks the rules. The rules they live in are meant to protect each other and to keep everyone safe. When someone’s actions or negligence leads to the death of a resident in town, the only punishment for that crime is the box. There is no talisman in the box. Tabitha asks how many times the box has been used. Father Khatri responds tonight will be the first time. On Frank — for neglecting to come back home where Lauren and Meagan died because he didn’t nail down the windows. Frank was getting drunk, instead. Father Khatri reveals the house they are going to live in if they choose to be in the Town was Frank’s. The blood is still covering the walls.
10 — At the Colony House, Ellis builds a crutch for Ethan.
11 — Jade gives compliments to Kenny for making this escape room puzzle challenge for him. Jade doesn’t believe the monsters and nightmare thing because he doesn’t think they serve eggs and breakfast in a nightmare. Kenny reveals they don’t know where the cows and chicken come from.
12 — Victor is again measuring distances with steps from the corner of the house to the nearby trees in the forest. Ethan takes notice and asks Victor what he is doing and if he can help. Victor dismisses him several times, annoyed by Ethan. However, Victor gives all his attention to Ethan when he asks if he has seen the boy who lives in the forest. Victor reveals to Ethan that he is checking if the trees have moved. Julie comes outside the Colony House and scolds Ethan. He shouldn’t be outside the house. Victor asks Ethan to tell the boy that Victor says hello.
[This is a hint that Ethan is not the only one able to see the boy]
13 — Jade rides on the bicycle near the town and discovers a cellar in the forest. Jade opens a door inside the cellar and sees a bloodied corpse stuck inside a closet, trapped beneath a boulder. Suddenly, the corpse screams at Jade, who stumbles and falls on his back. Looking into the ceiling of the cellar, he sees an engraved red mark. Jade looks toward the room and the corpse and the boulder were no longer there. He looks to the ceiling and the red mark is gone, too. He didn’t realize it, but he saw his first vision.
14 — Father Khatri is surprised to see Boyd sitting on the bench inside the church. Not a sight he sees often. Boyd says he is not answering. Boyd says he can’t put Frank in the box. It was meant as a scary deterrent, not as an actual death sentence. Boyd gets frustrated at Father Khatri because he came to him for “have mercy” words. Instead, the Father encourages him to execute the punishment through. Otherwise, the people who believe Boyd will get them out of the Town will no longer trust him.
Boyd opens the box and sits inside. He realizes Frank won’t have a chance to survive. Boyd opens the cell in the Sheriff Station and throws a talisman on Frank’s bed. Boyd tells Frank there is a shack a few yards from town, in the forest. There he can live on his own.
15 — Father Khatri begins the Choosing Ceremony. Several rocks and flowers are on top of a flat rock. He gives each member of the Matthews family the choice to pick whether to live. Pick a rock to live in the Town or a flower to live in the Colony House. The choice is final.
Boyd interrupts the ceremony to announce something he has decided about Frank. Frank approaches and prevents Boyd from speaking any further. Frank has decided to enter the box without a talisman. Frank gives a speech to the residents about his daughter and Christmas. That he was a good dad. This Town, the monsters, got in his head and he began to drink. He forgot what mattered. If he had been a little stronger, his family would still be alive. Encouraged the residents to not forget what matters.
Jade broke into laughter, applauding at the drama of what he thinks is a traveling group of actors. Boyd gets angry and pulls Jade toward the flat rock and forces him to pick a rock or a flower. Jade picks a rock. Kenny arrives and asks Jade to follow him. Kenny takes him to Tobey’s graveyard — which hasn’t been covered with dirt yet. Kenny removes the sheet from Tobey’s face. Jade is still thinking this is a prank. Suddenly, the stench hit his nostrils. He looked closer and realized his friend Tobey was really dead.
Boyd asks each member of the Matthews family to pick. Tabitha, Jim, and Ethan choose Town. Julie chooses Colony House. Tabitha protests.
16 — Boyd and Father Khatri escort Frank inside the box.
17 — Tian Chen Liu closes the Diner in the dawn and locks it up. The jukebox begins playing: “If It Be Your Will.”
18 — Kenny tells his mother, TIan Chen Liu, that Jade will stay in their house for now.
19 — Frank hears whispers. The monsters approach the box. Boyd fights whether to open the curtain and peek or not. He decides to peek. The monsters surround the box. Frank is terrified and sits waiting for it.
Season 1, Ep. 4: A Rock and a Farway
1 — [Flashback] Victor is a child. He leaves the cellar. Bloodied and dismembered corpses are all over the place. The whole town has been killed by the monsters.
[Present] Julie awakes in the Colony House and startles. Victor was watching her sleep to draw her. He muses: “You know how sometimes you dream and you forget, but then, later, you start to remember, and you realize that it wasn’t a dream, and that all of it maybe really happens? I think I’m starting to remember things, things that I thought were dreams. I made you a drawing.”
2 — Boyd arrives at the box with a cart and blankets to transport Frank’s corpse to the graveyard of his wife and daughter.
3 — Boyd pulls the cart with Frank’s remains through the road and passes the Matthews family’s house. Jim and Ethan exit the house en route to the Diner. Ethan asks what’s inside the cart. Boyd tells him a lie and encourages them to hurry to the Diner. At the Diner, the jukebox begins to play: “The Monkees’ Last Train to Clarksville.”
4 — Jade asks Kenny to come inside the cellar to show him something. Jade tells Kenny he thought it was a CGI party trick. He explains he saw a weird symbol on the ceiling and a corpse trapped beneath a giant boulder. The corpse started screaming. Kenny thinks he needs some rest because it is hard on everyone the first day they arrive to the Town. Jade says he wasn’t hallucinating. He knows how that feels when he is under the effects of drugs, and this wasn’t it. Jade says he has a great imagination. He built a software company based on nothing but imagination. Jade thinks there must be an explanation for the things to happen in the Town and no one is looking for it.
5 — Ethan asks if they are going to live in this Town. Jim says no. He should think about it as a vacation. Ethan compares their stay here to a hero’s quest. Like Norman had to go on to the Lake of Tears. “We probably have to save somebody if we want to go home. That’s what Norman had to do. Sometimes I pretend that’s where Thomas went. That he’s on a magical quest, and if I try, I can help him save the kingdom.” Jim stood up and cried in the restroom.
6 — Victor arrives at the Diner, while Jim is in the restroom. Victor tells Ethan the trees moved 4 inches closer to the town and that’s bad. He asks Ethan if the boy looks like the crayon drawing. He confirms it. Victor realizes the boy is real. He thought it was his imagination. Jim comes back to the table and sees Victor sitting with Ethan. Jim forcefully kicks Victor out of the Diner and threatens him never to bother his son again.
7 — Back home, Ethan asks his father to leave him alone. Ethan didn’t approve of what he did to Victor. He is his friend.
8 — Tabitha tells Julie she misses her. Tabitha tries to Jedi-mind trick Julie into coming to their house in the Town and to tell Donna she changed her mind about living in the Colony House. Julie snaps at her and reveals she knows about the divorce before they come to the Town. That the trip was meant as a happy moment before breaking the news about their divorce. To stop treating her like a child. Julie short of called her selfish because they all feel the loss of Thomas, their baby, but she still has two.
9 — At the Sheriff Station, Kenny shows Jade a United States map on a wooden board on the wall. The map has tacks marking different cities. Kenny points at an area near Orlando, Florida. That’s where Tobey and Jade came from. Kenny points at Phoenix, Arizona. That’s where the Matthews family was before arriving in the town. Kenny and his family were in Austin, Texas. EMT Kristi came from Detroit, Michigan. Kenny reveals each tack represents the place each member of the Town came from. All of them saw the fallen tree and the crows. Jade says that is impossible. Jade says: “That’s the difference between you and me. I don’t do impossible. I don’t just sit around, accepting the world as it is! Someone is doing this, and I’m not gonna rest until I figure out how.”
Kenny tries to make Jade understand that if he doesn’t adapt this place is going to break him. The CB Radio interrupts Kenny with static. Kenny says the CB Radio does that sometimes. Jade grabbed the CB Radio and left the Sheriff Station.
10 — Jim and Tabitha talk outside their house. Jim explains Ethan is mad at him, but didn’t finish the sentence. JIm wondered why Tabitha didn’t finish unpacking as she said. Tabitha said she went to see Julie at the Colony House. That she knows about the divorce. Here Tabitha alludes to something that’s been affecting the family for the past 14 months. This is the amount of time since their baby Thomas possibly died.
11 — While Jim and Tabitha argue, Victor knocks on the window to alert Ethan to come out the back door. Victor tells Ethan they need to go find the boy. The boy has been gone a long time and they need to ask him why he’s come back. Ethan says he is not allowed to leave the house alone. Victor says he needs to because the boy chose Ethan. Just like the boy chose Victor once. Ethan asks: “Like a quest?”
At the box, Boyd is replacing the broken wood walls. Father Khatri comes to talk to Boyd, but he won’t have this discussion. Father Khatri then offers a sermon. Psalm 23 from the book of “Cut the Self-Pitying Bullshit and Be a Leader.” What happened to Lauren and Meagan wasn’t his fault. What happened to Frank putting himself in that box wasn’t his fault. What happened to Boyd’s wife either. Boyd got really pissed off calling him to be out of line. Here, Father Khatri reveals more details. Father Khatri was burying more people in a week than Boyd has seen die in the last two years. This places Boyd, his wife, and Ellis’s arrival at least two years ago. “But you were the one who found the talismans. You created order from chaos. You made it possible for people here to live again, not just survive. You saved this town, Boyd! But the price you paid… I can still see her face when I close my eyes — and I wish you had the luxury of grief, but you don’t, Boyd. These people need you. We went three months without a single death, and there’s been six in the last 3 days. People are scared. The edges are starting to fray. You need to be the one to tell them it’s gonna be okay. You need to be the one to lead these people home. Because if you don’t, she died for nothing.”
Victor reveals he saw the boy very long ago. He thought he dreamed of him. The boy arrived for the first time right before the two cars came when Victor was a child. Victor has lived here the longest. For a long time, there was nobody else in the Town but him. As they talked, a twig snapped nearby and Victor looked. They found the boy.
12 — Jim and Tabitha finished their argument and entered the house. Tabitha wanted to take Ethan to see Julie, but she couldn’t fight him. Jim found the back door wide open and discovered the crutch on the ground by the backyard.
13 — Victor and Ethan followed the boy and tracked them to a Farway Tree. Ethan asks him what a Farway Tree is. Victor grabs a stone and uses a crayon to draw a happy face. Then throws the stone inside the Farway Tree. Seconds later, the stone drops from the sky and lands a few yards from them.
Victor reveals a few details about Faraway Trees. People can use them, but they never know where they will end up. It could teleport you somewhere close, or somewhere far, or it could be that you end up stuck inside a mountain somewhere. They are temperamental that way.
Victor says there are a bunch of Farway Trees in the forest, but he has never seen this Farway Tree before.
Suddenly, Victor hears a dog barking from inside the tree. He covers his ears and gets a panic attack — as this reminds him of the dozens of corpses on the ground when he was a child. The very same dog was here now.
14 — Jim and Tabitha are searching the forest for Ethan. Suddenly, they encounter the same dog that was barking when Victor was a child. More dogs appear from all sides. Victor and Ethan find them. Victor opens his lunch box and shoots his gun in the air. All dogs run away.
15 — Victor returns to his room in the Colony House and frantically browses through many of his crayon drawings. He records every event in his life in these drawings to help him remember. Some of these drawings might show up in future episodes. Of all the drawings, two caught his attention: the dog and the massacre. The massacre drawing shows 6 people.
This crayon drawing below is blurred as he browsed through drawings, but seems to depict a large ship in a lake or an isle in the lake. I recall they found a lake in Season 3.
I'm sharing this image because it shows Victor has trophies of soldiers (from different eras?). There is an episode, later on, where one of the residents, possibly Jade, sees a 19th-century soldier in the forest. It might be relevant or not. Could some of the things in the show be from Victor's imagination based on things he owns? Or are they ghosts? Or time-displaced dreamwalkers like Julie in Season 3?
16 — Jim comes to Boyd, who is repairing the box, and complains about VIctor. Boyd deflects to the way things work in the town. That he should go to Donna because Victor lives there. Jim interrupts him because it is not about how things work. Victor has taken Ethan to the woods and gifts him crayon drawings, and he owns a gun kept in his lunchbox. Boyd didn’t know about the gun. Boyd will speak with Donna so that this doesn’t happen again with Ethan. Jim suggests to inform Donna about the gun, too. Before leaving, Boyd stops Jim to invite him to dinner. Things have been crazy since his family arrived and he hasn’t had a chance to get to meet them.
17 — Fatima leads Julie, covering Julie’s eyes with her hands, to Ellis’ bedroom. Ellis built a new bed for Julie to stay with them, a cozy blanket, and a pillow. Also curtains for her privacy. Julie hugs them both and thanks them.
18 — Boyd fixes up his beard with scissors. Looks in the mirror. Then screams at the mirror for 5 seconds. Later, he eats with the Matthews family at the Diner. As they are eating, the jukebox — which is … at the same table they are eating — starts to play Joni MItchell’s “Blue.” Boyd says the monsters do that sometimes.
Kenny interrupts them to ask Boyd to come with him about a matter. Ethan goes to the kitchen with Sara. Jim and Tabitha eat alone. It is unclear if the song is the same Jim and Tabitha listened to years ago when they were in Texas during a summer but she brings it up. Jim meditates and apologizes about their recent argument. He doesn’t know how to deal with things. He feels broken. Tabitha takes his hand and says they will figure it out together.
19 — Sara is serving food when suddenly she grabs her left arm. Her veins start to warp as she recoils in pain. Words slowly appear on her skin: “Kill The Boy.”
Sara faints to the ground and seizures. Boyd and Kenny’s mother come to her aid.
[Seizures in the show only happen when the victim is sensitive to visions or lucid nightmares while awake]
All Colony House residents are outside, disturbed while looking at Victor. Donna notices and sprints toward Victor. He is scaring the residents. Victor responds he was trying to get a head start this time. The camera zooms out to show that Victor has dug six fresh graveyards matching the six corpses of his crayon drawing.
[Victor has figured out why the boy and the dog have returned. They appeared during the massacre when Victor was a child. Their return heralds new deaths in the coming days.]
SEASON 1, Ep. 5: Silohuettes
1 — Nathan Myers, Sara’s brother, serves food and water to six goats. You can see seven chickens in the background.
An afro-american resident bolts down the road toward the barn to warn Nathan that his sister Sara is at the clinic. Nathan sprints toward the clinic.
2 — Sara asks EMT Kristi to tell her brother she is asleep if he comes knocking. She doesn’t want him to worry about her and doesn’t want to talk to him. EMT Kristi notices Boyd at the door pacing back and forth while grabbing his shaking left hand. Boyd asks about Sara’s condition and whether she has ever suffered seizures. EMT Kristi says Sara has never had seizures before. Boyd points out that Ethan and Sara now have both had seizures without a previous history of having them. He asks whether she thinks both patients have a physical reaction to this place. She doesn’t know without an MRI machine, but Kristi responds: “Look, Boyd, if you asked me this six months ago, I’d have said anything that we’ve seen here was impossible.”
[This suggests Kristi arrived in the town 6 months ago.]Kristi confronts Boyd about his obvious hand tremor. She wants to see him tomorrow to check his hand. Boyd says no need. He already knows what the diagnosis is.
[Either Boyd learned his diagnosis from a doctor before they arrived in the Town 2 years ago, or it's hereditary and he recognizes what his parent suffered a time ago]3 — Jim gives Tabitha and Ethan a Sharpie and brings them to the hallway to write on the wall. Tabitha talked at the Diner about figuring things out together. They are going to play a game. They are going to engage in problem-solving by asking questions. This will help them visualize and figure out what they know and what they don’t. It’ll be like telling a story, he says. The first question: “Where are we? There’s where we begin.”
4 — Nathan is at his home. Looking worried in the face at the bloodied dress on the table. The same dress Sara wore the night she killed Tobey and let the Infirmary door open that night.
5 — Sara stands up from the clinic bed and opens the drawer. She looks at the same scalpel she used to kill Tobey. She remembers the words on her skin at the Diner: “Kill the boy.” She grabs her left arm as if remembering the pain. This means she is struggling with whether to grab the scalpel to kill Ethan or not.
Kristi returns to the room and brings a cup of tea for Sara. She says Kenny and Kristi make a cute couple. Kristi responds they are just friends. Sara asks why. He loves her. Kristi responds it is complicated because she has somebody at home. Kristi thinks her fiancé Mariel might be still waiting for her return. Kristi wonders if she might think she abandoned her. Kristi asks Sara if she has someone back home. She responds: “No. I was with someone, but he wasn’t. It’s better that he’s not around anymore. It’s just me and Nathan now. He’s all I got in the world. Before we got here, things weren’t really very good for me. Nathan was the one who saved me.”
[This is cryptic, but she doesn't explain.]Sara Myers diverges from talking about her life and asks Kristi: “I wonder sometimes… about this place, what it means… why we’re here. If someone came up to you right now and said, “Do this one bad thing and everyone gets to go home,” would you do it?”
[This is in reference to Sara feeling pain in her left arm, and suddenly seeing the words being written: “Kill the boy” while she was at the Diner. The viewer didn't get to listen to the voices. Now we know what she was asked to do in exchange for what.]6 — Jim is looking at the hallway wall. Tabitha and Ethan are exhausted on the sofa. They have been busy writing questions and theories about this place. The image is blurry, but a few things can be read: “Tree/crows, the road, vortex? Dimensional Portal? The Earth map has question marks on South America and Africa as if they think they might have teleported to any of those continents through a dimensional portal. Creatures: Where do they go? day/night. Do they sleep? Alien? Biological? Real? Do they feed?”
Tabitha asked Jim if he figured it out. He responds he did and the answer is 12. She laughs.
Jim recaps: “Everyone enters from different parts of the country, on different roads and different places. They see the same road, the same tree, the same crows.
Tabitha says every townsfolk asks the same questions over and over. How does writing them on the wall make any difference? Jim says: “Because there are plenty of things in the world that don’t make sense. Something here is missing. We just can’t see it yet. But we will.”
Tabitha says: “Well, there’s a question we haven’t asked.” Jim gives her the Sharpie, but she refuses to write it down. He asks why. She responds: “Because I don’t want to know the answer.” [cryptic]
7 — Julie is writing a list of everyone that might be missing them in the world: her grandparents and friends. No boyfriend or girlfriend. Fatima asks about her list, then storms out saying enough about this we need to have fun. Fatima talks to Ellis and informs him Julie is making the list. They need to show her the Brundles.
8 — Jade walks across the road pondering special relativity and other ideas to explain this place. Jade mentions Klein (Oskar Klein) and Hardy’s (Lucien Hardy). Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen.
[In physics, the Kaluza–Klein theory (KK theory) is a classical 1920s unified field theory of gravitation and electromagnetism built around the idea of a fifth dimension beyond the common 4D of space and time and considered an important precursor to string theory. Hardy's is a reference to Hardy's Paradox. The latter refers to the 1935 Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox paper titled: "Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality be Considered Complete?" Einstein wasn't satisfied with the EPR paper and revealed most of it was written by Rosen. Something mentioned in Einstein's argument against the EPR paper was the quantum nonlocality outside reality.]
9 — Trudy asks Jade why he has a CB Radio. He responds it helps him think. She says he looks cuter awake. That she watched him during his sleep when he arrived. She flirts and says: “Too bad you chose to live in the Town. I’d have rode you like an alabaster dragon.” Either Jade is too deep in his relativity thoughts or he is gay. He didn’t even flinch at the sexual advance.
10 — Jade enters the Gasoline Station and discovers it is a Bar. Jade takes a drink from Bartender Tom and asks the people in the bar why the hell they are just sitting there instead of trying to figure out what this place is — but he couldn’t finish the talk after tasting the drink and spitting it out. “What is this shit?” Tom responds: “Just consider it your poor man’s potato vodka.” [lol]
[Note: David Alpay (Jade) is a voice actor in Diablo IV]
Jade says: “You know, you guys are like rats in a maze, sitting there, contentedly nibbling on your cheese. This [place] is a paradox. That’s the problem. The immediate question is, how do we get home, right? How do we get out of here? Cause unless we know where “here” is, we can’t get out of here. It’s like hitting a bullseye with your eyes closed, right? You’re just throwing them blind! You don’t even fucking know where the fucking target is!”
Tom: “So let me guess, you’re gonna be the guy who figures it all out.”
Jade: “You’re goddamn right I am. People like me, we design the maze. We place the cheese. I don’t know what you did before you got here, but I just sold a company for an obscene amount of money based on a quantum computing algorithm with the potential to– [sighs] I’m not supposed to be here.”
Jade: “To solve the paradox, you gotta understand the paradox. You gotta identify it. You gotta frame it.”
Tom: “Schrodinger’s cat.” [reference here]
Tom taught Intro to Philosophy at USC (University of South California). Tom poses that they are the cat. This place is the box. To their family and friends in the real world, they don’t know if they are alive or dead. In the real world back home, they are both things at the same time.
Tom says he doesn’t know a thing about computers. But if Jade is so smart, he could make the radio broadcast. If the cat turns on the radio, he can be damn sure the people outside the box are at least going to know the cat is still alive. Jade is stunned by the idea, and gets lost in deep thought.
11 — Sara walks down the road with the Matthews’ house in the background. She inspects her pocket and reveals the scalpel.
12 — Tabitha changes Ethan’s bandages. He only feels sore. He’s recovering well. Tabitha wonders he is healing so fast.
[Note: This is implying the place might be doing something to accelerate his healing. Unless “Time” is passing differently in this place, resulting in her perception that he healed faster than it would naturally.]
Ethan responds he thinks this place is special (referring to his fast healing). He knows it tries to hurt people, but maybe it tries to help people too. Maybe that can be one of the questions on the wall: “Is there anyone trying to help?”
Jay announces Ethan has a visit. Sara and Ethan step outside to the Merry-Go-Round with seats (Radical Rotator equipment in playgrounds).
13 — Nathan enters the Church to talk to Father Khatri. He doesn’t find him.
14 — Ellis, Fatima, and Julie jump into a pond. [I guess this is the Brundles mentioned by Fatima earlier]. Fatima tells Julie if she closes her eyes and listens to the ambient, it is as if they were back home in the real world. Julie wonders how Fatima is so positive. Fatima responds “Well, I didn’t come to the U.S. until I was 11. I grew up in a small village in Iran with my parents and two older brothers. My father, he was a very outspoken cleric, which wasn’t always the most popular thing to be at the time. One day, it was my birthday. Actually, we were getting ready to go see my uncle. These men showed up. They were angry, shouting. I remember my mother told me to hide. But I was so confused because we were just laughing. My father had told this story about– [silence] He was a good storyteller. I think that’s what made him such an effective preacher. Anyway, I could tell my mother was afraid. My brothers had run to the door and now they were shouting too, and my mother just kept saying ‘Hide, hide.’ But I just stood there, I couldn’t move, because it was all so strange. I mean, we were just laughing so hard. It was going to be the best birthday ever. The sun was so bright coming in through the door that my father became a silhouette when they dragged him outside. And then, there was this pop, like a firecracker, and the silhouette fell down. The point is, there are always going to be monsters in the world. It doesn’t matter where you are. But I promised myself I would never let them scare the life out of me.
[Odd. In the series, every resident who has visions or is sensitive to the place seeing ghosts or having seizures comes from a storyteller background.]
15 — Ethan asks Sara how long she has lived in this place. She responds just a few months. Ethan says: “his “My Mom and Dad are trying to figure out where we are so we can go home. That’s what the Cromenockle would do. Sara asks what a Cromenockle is. Tabitha interrupts and asks Ethan not to force Sara to sit on the filthy Go-Merry-Around. Ethan asks permission to go with Sara to see the goats and chickens at the barn. Tabitha agrees and says she is coming. Sara abruptly interrupts her to say they don’t need to come. They should continue doing whatever they are doing and she can care for him at the barn.
16 — Inside the Matthews’ home, Jim walks back and forth with his Sharpie. Overlooking the hallway wall’s writings.
[I can read more stuff here.
Talismans: How do they work? Where did the talismans come from? How many talismans? Can we make new talismans?
Creatures: Can they be killed? Does light kill them? Why are they so slow?
The Town: Old buildings - Root Cellar, Church, Etc.
Livestock: Why don't creatures kill/eat them? More?? (Meaning are there more animals out there?).
Far to the bottom-right, I can barely make out "Gasoline: How much?" I can't understand the next word. Maybe it says "Stored?"]
17 — Boyd visits his wife’s graveyard. The cross reveals she was named Abby Stevens. He talks to Abby about what has happened the past few days: Meagan and Lauren’s deaths, etc. He says his hand tremor began a few weeks ago: “Same way it started with my Dad, which means the clock is officially ticking.”
[The hand tremor is a symptom associated with multiple sclerosis (MS), and dystonia. But the way Boyd says the clock is officially ticking suggests the harshest culprit: Parkinson's Disease.]
18 — Nathan Myers, Sara’s brother, finally finds Father Khatri at some sort of ancient circle of ritual stones, meditating. Nathan asks about the rules of confession. If it stays between them, especially if it is something very bad.
19 — Tabitha and Sara are in the barn showing Ethan the goat Alma. They talk about this place. Sara mentions they thankfully have the talismans. Before them, people used to hide in the forest hoping they would survive the night. Sara suggests that Tabitha should learn the location of these hiding places. One of them is inside the barn. She asks Tabitha to follow her inside the barn.
[This is a lie. Sara came up with the idea of the barn hoping Tabitha would let her take Ethan away to be alone with him. The scalpel in her pocket is a clue that her intention is to follow the voices' command to "Kill the Boy."]20 — Father Khatri tells Nathan he should have come to him much sooner to confess what he knew about Sara. She killed Tobey and then opened the Infirmary door at night to cover the crime so people would think the monsters killed him. Nathan grabs Father Khatri and reminds him he gave his word that the confession stayed between both of them. Nathan doesn’t want his sister punished to go into the box. Father Khatri just wants to make sure the people are alright. Nathan says she should be back at the Diner. Both head toward the town.
21 — Sara and Tabitha enter the barn. Deep in the barn, Sara pulls a fake wall that works as a small door.
Tabitha: “People used to spend the night in here?”
Sara pushes Tabitha inside the dark room, seals the door behind her, and bars it with a barn tool.
22 — Nathan enters the DIner calling for Sara. Bartender Tom tells him she is not here. He saw her with the Matthews lady and her boy heading to the barn.
23 — Sara enters the corral and approaches Ethan. The camera angle reveals the scalpel on Sara’s hand, which she hides behind her.
Sara asks Ethan to approach her. She has to tell him something. What’s about to happen will save everyone. Just like in one of his stories. Ethan will be the hero. The camera view zooms in on the hand holding the scalpel behind her.
Sara grabs Ethan and places a chokehold to swing the scalpel across his throat. Nathan asks: “Sarah, what are you doing?”
Sara responds: “This is how we go home. They [the voices] told me, this was the last one, then everyone gets to go home!”
[Later in the series, it is revealed there were seven children sacrificed but one escaped and a ritual was not consummated. I assume the voices want Ethan dead to complete the ritual. But this is revealed much later. Hey, you clicked a link to an article with Spoilers in the title.]
Ethan kicks Sara’s leg. Amid her sudden pain and surprise, she releases Ethan’s hand. Nathan yells: “Ethan, run!”
Nathan lunges at Sara from behind and grabs her right arm. He attempts to take away the scalpel from her hand. Sara struggles to free herself from his grasp and rotates clockwise. As she did, she accidentally slashed Nathan’s throat with the scalpel.
[At this point, we can agree that the jukebox playing songs by itself without any interaction is connected or announce upcoming deaths.]
24 — Father Khatri witnesses as Nathan falls to the ground, in his last throes for air as he bleeds to death.
25 — Ethan keeps running and finds Julie, Ellis, and Fatima returning from the pond.
26 — Screams are heard in the barn. People run toward the barn to find out what the tumult is about, including Jim Matthews. He knows Ethan and Tabitha were there. Jim hears Tabitha’s screams and knocking inside the barn. He removes the tool blocking the dark room’s door.
Tabitha is desperately searching for Ethan. Julie, Fatima, and Ellis arrive to the barn. Ethan carried in Ellis’ arms. Tabitha hugs Ethan. Jim hugs Julie.
EMT Kristi comes to Nathan’s corpse. It’s too late. No breathing. No heartbeat. Kristi looks at Boyd. Boyd looks at Father Khatri. A tragedy.
27. Father Khatri tells Boyd what happened. Jim demands to know where Sara is. Father Khatri says she ran into the woods. If she returns before night, they will handle her. If she doesn’t then it’s handled. (meaning the monsters will kill her)
Jim is very angry. Sara came to his home. Played with her kid. He yells at Boyd and Father Khatri. They sold this Town community as a family. “Are you fucking kidding me?” Jim leaves. Both look at each other with shame.
28. Julie tells her parents that she found Ethan running toward the Colony House. She brought him home. Jim thanks her. She did good. Julie takes Ethan upstairs. Tabitha meditates briefly. Then stands up and asks Jim for a Sharpie. She needs to write something down.
Tabitha: “Ask every question, right?” She writes: “Did we survive the crash?”
29 — EMT Kristi shares with Boyd her conversation with Sara. About bad things she would do for everyone to go home. Kristi didn’t realize Sara would try to kill Ethan. Boyd says it is not her fault. Kristi cries. It was nice to spend the night with Sara and talk and have a good time. Kristi rationalizes that if Sara took the scalpel from her Infirmary then it is her fault. If not hers, whose?
Boyd responds Kristi didn’t bring people to this place and didn’t plant thoughts into Sara. Kristi simply does the best she can, and a few days ago saved a boy’s life and she will save more lives before this is all done.
Like clockwork… the jukebox plays a song by itself: “If I had a Boat” by Lyle Lovett.
Boyd responds to the jukebox playing this song that he has just gotten the sign he looked for — (after he visited his wife’s graveyard.)
Season 1, Ep. 6: Book 74
1 — Sheriff Boyd and Deputy Kenny bury Nathan. Father Khatri gives a sermon at the Church in honor to Nathan. Jade is salvaging technology from cars and materials such as cabling to fix the CB radio or to amplify its broadcast; and an umbrella (I guess if he removes the cover he can use an umbrella frame as a mesh petal dish parabolic antenna).
2 — After the sermon, everyone left the Church to return to their homes. Tabitha entered the Church to talk to Father Khatri. She asks if he can know whether they are dead or alive. Father Khatri says what does it matter whether they are dead or alive. For argument’s sake, if they were dead, they would be stuck in this sort of purgatory. They’d still be stuck. They’d still be searching for a way to go home. All that would change is the home they’re searching for.
Father Khatri tells Tabitha they saw them come to the Town long before their RV crash. He knows her family is alive. She can scratch the “Did we die in the crash?” question from her list.
Tabitha departs and Father Khatri closes the Church’s door. He turns on a lantern and heads to the Church’s basement. The truth is revealed to the show viewer: Father Khatri forced Sara to hide in the Church’s basement and tied her up.
3 — While burying Tobey, Kenny talks to Boyd about how disappointed he is about Sara. She is so nice and thoughtful. His mother thinks of her as the daughter she never had. It’s been hard on his mother to learn what she did.
Boyd tells Kenny he has been thinking about their recent conversation about running out of space in the chess board that is this place. He’s been thinking about the talismans. It didn’t occur to Boyd the talismans could work outside of the Town and the Colony House. The talisman worked at the RV. Boyd’s signal with the jukebox song came to him as an idea to find a way out of this place. He’s gathering supplies. Boyd is going out into the forest with a talisman to explore the boundaries.
Kenny drops the shovel and begins to leave. Boyd screams at him to stop and not walk away from him. Kenny asks if he’ll go alone into the forest and how far away. Boyd responds as far as it’ll take him. He’s doing this to find a way home. Kenny leaves disappointed. If Boyd is so desperate to die, go ahead and do it.
4 — Jim is trying to find answers or flaws in this place. He asked himself how they have lights. Electricity. He unplugged some appliances and started to cut into the cabling and inspect the plugs. They make no sense. The cabling coating has no copper wiring. Nothing. Just rubber coating. The plug has missing parts and is in the wrong position. The lamps and appliances shouldn’t be able to work without copper wiring.
Jade suddenly breaks into the Matthews house with the CB Radio, cabling from the cars, and the umbrella. Jade calls Jim the Rollercoaster guy, I need your help. Come here. Jim confronts him. You don’t knock?
Jade reveals Tobey was the one driving and he was his childhood best friend since Fourth grade. He challenges Jim and Tabitha. Do you want to play house, or do you want to go home? Because I have an idea. Jade pulls out some electronic tools.
5 — In the Church’s basement, Father Khatri talks to Sara, still tied up to a chair with her mouth bound with a towel gag.
Khatri: “Did you know there’s not a single copy of the Bible in town? In our little traveler’s library in the diner, there’re at least a dozen Robert Ludlum and Judy Blume novels, yet not a single copy of the world’s most popular book. I imagine you wonder why you’re here. You’ve done such unspeakable things. And by the rules of the town, you should be in the box. Nathan told me about the voices. Sara, what if I were to tell you that despite the horrible things you’ve done, you can still help the people of this town? You could still do something good. I think Nathan would like that, don’t you?”
[It seems Father Khatri figured out that the voices are real, and not in Sara's imagination or a mental disease influencing her horrible acts. To him, Sara is connected to whatever forces are behind this place. He wants to learn more and use her to find out a way back home.]6 — Jim and Jade are salvaging cabling, technology, and mechanical parts from Tobey’s car. Jim complains why not salvage any of the cars back in the Town? Tobey’s car is all the way where the RV and his car almost collide, far from town.
Jade educates Jim that this is an Audi Q5 with parts sourced from– (decides to switch to down-to-earth speak) — you really wanna pin our hopes to some peasant model jalopy?
[Not sure what he brags about. Audi Q5 parts are sourced from Mexico, India, and China at low labor costs. Of course, premium certified OEM quality parts, but whatever.]Jade and Jim leave back to town with their hoarded Audi Q5 parts. Jade is happy and confident. They are going to play science FTW.
7 — At the Diner, Tabitha and her son Ethan bring boxes of stuff to store in the back of the Diner, which is used as storage for things belonging to past and present residents.
Ethan says this storage room reminds him of the cavern of the Lonely Dragon. When the Cromenockle was lost in the rainbow sky, she found a cavern where the lonely dragon lived and it was full of stuff that nobody wanted. But for the lonely dragon, all the stuff was treasure. And guess what? In one of the big piles of stuff, there was the map of the rainbow sky. So, the lonely dragon gave it to the Cromenockle and then she wasn’t lost anymore. So maybe we’ll find a map in here.
Tabitha responds with a smile: “Yes. Maybe we will.” Suddenly, Tabitha’s eyes look high at the top of the shelf. There is a hand-crafted leather bracelet with copper wires and objects that catches her attention. She won’t say what it is, but it’s obvious she recognized it. Someone she met in her past? Something she saw in a dream? I guess it’ll be revealed eventually.
8 — Jade and Jim Matthews go into the woods with their cabling, antenna, and CB Radio. Jade located the tallest tree in the area. As an engineer, Jim tells him it won’t work. The tree is not high enough for a broadcast. Jade mocks his experience with rotating cups in the park attractions. Jim takes offense and starts to leave. Jade apologizes and reaffirms that he truly needs Jim. He confesses he suffers from vertigo and he’s unable to climb the tree to test the CB Radio. Jim agrees to climb the tree with the cable in tow.
9 — Boyd goes to the Infirmary searching for Kristi. He knows Kristi and Deputy Kenny are close. He wants to know if he is ok. Kristi responds he is still trying to adapt to his father’s death and tries to be this person he thinks the townsfolk need, but that he’s barely managing. Kristi is very honest and crude and tells Boyd that Kenny right now doesn’t need a Sheriff. He needs a Dad.
That hits Boyd like a wave of bricks to the face. He realizes Kenny looks up to Boyd as a father figure, and he has failed as a friend.
10 — Father Khatri continues to talk to Sara, still tied to the chair, but now without the gag. “People think the Bible’s a fixed object– something written, completed. But how can the story be finished if all the players remain on stage? We call it the ‘Good Book,’ but … did you know the Bible is actually comprised of 73 books? Did you know that?”
Sara has not spoken yet but shakes her head to signal she didn’t know.
Father Khatri: “All filled with tales of miracles and wonder. But there is also darkness in the Bible. Gruesome, horrible things. Since the night I arrived, there seems to be a question I keep coming back to. 73 Books. What if we, the people of this town, are living the book that has yet to be written? What if this is Book 74? And, Sara, what if we were chosen?”
Sara: “For what?”
Father Khatri: “I don’t know. Which is why I need you to tell me about these voices. Please.
[A little context here: The large book or binder on Father Khatri's hands is a partial transcript he put together from the Bible from memory. He wrote it while in the Town. It had been borrowed by Lauren. After Lauren and Meagan's deaths, the Matthews family moved into Lauren's house. Tabitha found the Bible transcript and brought it back to Father Khatri early in Season 1, Ep. 6. (Number 2 in this article.]
11 — Tabitha is home. Playing around with the leather bracelet. Pondering. Ethan comes into the dining room and asks if she is ok. He also asks about his dad, who is with Jade. Jim will be back soon. Ethan notices the lamp turn on and off. Tabitha suggest a treasure hunt game. Tabitha grabs a hammer and begins to demolish the dining room’s wall in search of how they have an electric utility to turn on the lights if there is no copper wiring in the cords. The wall interior might answer the question.
12 — Jim climbed the top of the tree and secured the cable to the tree. Jade is connecting the cable to the CB Radio and connecting it to the battery pack.
Suddenly, Jade places his hand on the tree and blood starts to pour out onto his left hand. He panics and looks above toward the canopy. He sees a vision where 3 corpses are hanging from the canopy, bleeding all over his face and chest. He is in shock.
[Upon close inspection, I identify that the corpses are wearing 19th Century U.S. Civil War Union hats and uniforms.]
The same symbol Jade saw in the cellar’s ceiling can be seen engraved on the tree.
[The meaning of the symbol is revealed later in Season 2, when Jade finds the physical location that is the source of the symbol.]Jade turns around and encounters a live U.S. Civil War Union soldier aiming a rifle at him.
After the rifle shot misses, Jade runs like hell to escape the soldier. The soldier shoots a second time and misses again. Jade falls to the ground, and the soldier catches up and stabs him with the blade at the end of the rifle.
Jim calls out to Jade, who is horrified on the ground. It was another vision or lucid waking dream. Jim reaffirms that whatever it is he is seeing is not real. Jim asks what he saw. Jade ran away and told Jim to fuck off.
[Whatever that was, it successfully prevented the test run of the CB Radio kit they salvaged from cars and materials. Looks like foul play.]13 — Sara tells Father Khatri that the voices wanted to help. That they’d been here a long time and had been waiting for someone to come who would hear them, and could help them escape to go home. They said they were like us.
Father Khatri asks why she believed them. Sara responds that they knew things they couldn’t know. The voices told Sara those two cars were coming and asked her to stand out near the edge of town to witness their arrival. The voices said the arrival of two cars in the same day had happened before, long ago, and everyone died. The voices said everyone died because of the people in the two cars, but if Sara did what the voices said, the townsfolk in the present would be safe and could get to go home.
Father Khatri asks how, but Sara doesn’t know. He asks if she still believes that the voices are telling the truth. They promised that Nathan would be okay but now he was dead. She screams.
Father Khatri says if these voices are real, if something here is communicating with her then that means she’s connected to this place in a way that no one else here is and that makes Sara incredibly valuable but both need proof to be able to go to Sheriff Boyd to tell him with absolute certainty that Sara’s voices are not a product of a troubled mind.
Suddenly, Sara cringes in pain. She needs a piece of paper. The voices want to show Father Khatri something.
14 — Back at the Diner, Jade is obsessed with the symbol. He is drawing it over and over trying to find the correct shape. Kenny’s mother serves him tea. He rejects it, and she scolds him in Cantonese. He says he can’t understand her and gives up. He tasted the tea and liked it. She looks at his drawings, takes one, and leaves.
Jade follows Tian Chen Liu into the Diner storage area. She is searching for a notebook. Jade is surprised to see this large storage room with shelves filled with stuff from people who have lived here in the past. One of the books he moves to make room for her search says 1972. Jade asks her what she is looking for, and she “shhh’s” him while she browses through an old notebook. She places his drawing on top of a page of that notebook and turns it around so that Jade can see and compare them.
15 — Sara whimpers in pain, no longer tied to the chair, but this pain is caused by the voices as she frantically moves a pen on a piece of paper. The voices guide her hand and the pen to communicate with Father Khatri what they want him to see.
Sara made a drawing that Father Khatri doesn’t understand. Sara says the voices said they watched him on the day he arrived here. They watched him as he buried the bag and that this was proof that they are real. Father Khatri’s eyes open wide in disbelief.
16 — In the Sheriff Station, Boyd searches drawers until he finds a baseball ball and glove. He took to heart Kristi’s words. Boyd visits Kenny. He is carving new Chess pieces from the wood he axed down. Boyd invites Kenny to throw the ball and help this old man get the rust off. Kenny refuses and continues to carve the wood.
Boyd drops the glove and since the game idea didn’t work out, he decides to open up instead with the truth. Boyd confesses he is sick. His father had the same symptoms at Boyd’s age. Doctors said he had a low probability of inheriting Parkinson’s disease, but here we are. Soon enough, Boyd won’t be able to protect the townsfolk anymore and he needs to find a way out of this place before that happens, while he still can.
The only way he can do this is if he knows the people will be in good hands when he is gone. There are a lot of people who are alive today because of Kenny. Boyd knows Kenny’s father isn’t around to tell him so, but he knows his father is proud of Kenny. He is proud of Kenny, too. “But if you tell me right now that you are not ready for me to go, that you need more time, then I ain’t going nowhere.” Kenny doesn’t respond. He stands up and grabs the glove. “Are we ready or not?” Both go outside to play baseball.
17 — Jim Matthews returns home with the CB Radio and all the gear. He gets no response. Suddenly, he finds the dining room’s wall demolished with all the internal electrical cords in plain view.
Ethan appears with a bucket of dirt. He is helping his mother dig up in the basement.
Jim tells Tabitha he got the CB Radio operational and got some static. It’s a start.
He asks Tabitha what she is doing. She responds it’s like what you were saying this morning. The electricity has to come from somewhere. There are no power lines and all the wires, all the cords, they just go straight down.
Jim asks her to stop digging and to tell him what’s going on with her. She finally reveals what bothered her about the leather bracelet. “Do you remember the bracelet I made you after our first few dates, from the laces of your father’s boots? Remember you lost it at the hospital the night Julie was born? Turn around. Look what’s sitting there.”
Jim argues it is not possible. This is simply a similar bracelet. Tabitha insists it is the same bracelet. She shows him a detail in the bracelet that she accidentally ruined. She reminds him how he responded to her when she told him about that crafting mistake. It is those mistakes that make it unique. He looks closely and realizes it is the same bracelet. She insists that if something impossible is staring at them, then she should continue digging to see where those impossible electrical wirings lead to.
18 — Father Khatri is at his favorite meditation spot in the middle of the circle of ritual stones in the fields. He is digging the bag he buried when he arrived at this place a couple of years ago.
Father Khatri opens the bag and compares Sara’s drawing with the Cosmo Chocolate bar he removed from the bag. The bag had a priest’s garment with a clerical collar. The garment had dried blood.
19 — It is evening. Almost everyone is asleep at the Colony House. A resident named Kevin walks upstairs. Opens the curtain, and looks at one of the monsters holding flowers. This reveals where the flowers Julie encountered earlier outside the Colonial House are about. Kevin has been dating one of the monsters every night in front of this window. She asks Kevin when he will let her in.
Season 1, Ep. 7: All Good Things…
1 — Fatima and Julie talk in their Colony House room. Fatima is celebrating her first anniversary in the town. The residents want to celebrate it with a party. Julie compliments how positive Fatima is. She is the soul of the Colony House.
2 — Kevin leaves another floral bouquet on the porch railing. It is a daily routine. The flowers are for the beautiful female monster that visits him outside the window every evening.
3 — Boyd walks the road, ringing the bell to announce night is approaching.
4 — Tabitha reads Ethan the Cromenockle book and he is falling asleep. “There was so much joy on the faces of all the new wondrous friends she had made, so much magic in all the marvelous places she had been. Yet the Cromenockle had a feeling there was still more yet to come, and that her adventures in this strange new world truly had just only begun.”
Ethan now sleeps on the sofa. Tabitha closes the curtains as the night approaches.
5 — Kenny says his mom wants Jade to help get dinner started. Jade is busy drawing multiple sketches of the symbol that obsesses him. Kenny takes the book Jade was sketching on and scolds him. Kenny was reading that book. Jade had ran out of paper and took the book instead. Jade yells if he wants him to draw on the walls like a psychopath.
6 — Boyd finishes his bell-ringing round and meets Father Khatri outside the Sheriff’s Station. Father Khatri tells Boyd they have some things to talk about. Father Khatri holds the bag he buried when he first arrived at this place. Boyd tells him to come back in the morning, but he insists it must be now. Boyd invites him in for a sleepover, then. Father Khatri looks at the large amount of supplies on Boyd’s desk and perceives he is going somewhere. Boyd confirms and says he was going to talk to him about it soon.
7 — Jim is putting his engineering knowledge into a diagram of a twin tower construct at the Colony House, the highest point in this place, for the most efficient CB Radio broadcast possible.
Tabitha and Jim talk about Ethan. He passed out. Jim jokes about Tabitha breaking every child labor law making him empty outside many dirt buckets from the basement. She is still reeled about Sara’s actions and can’t let Ethan out of her sight. Jim is confident the windows and doors are shut in the evening and Ethan couldn’t open them if he wanted to. Tabitha worries about Julie in the Colony House, though. Jim convinces her that Donna is a tough person and won’t let any shenanigans happen in the house.
Jim tells her he plans to inform Sheriff Boyd he needs all the materials he can spare to build the twin towers and drain every single battery they’ve got in broadcasting the CB Radio signal to find out if they can communicate with the real world. They also need to convince Donna to allow them to build the towers outside the Colony House. Enough annoyance that he guarantees everyone hating on him when the broadcast fails.
8 — At the Colony House, the party continues. Ellis is drunk and moody when confronted about it. Donna talks long about Fatima before the residents and thanks her presence in their lives. Julie feels uncomfortable when she sees a female resident kiss Fatima on the lips and she reciprocates for several seconds.
9 — Father Khatri tells Boyd he buried this bag the day he arrived and asks Boyd to open it. He finds a bottle of alcohol. Boyd jokes: “Holding out on me?” Next, he finds the bloodied priest’s garment. He asks if all the blood belongs to him. Father Khatri ignores the question and asks Boyd to search for another item in the bag. He finds the chocolate bar. Boyd grows agitated with the nonsense and asks what the fuck is going on.
Father Khatri says they have never really discussed who they used to be before arriving at this place. He begins a story about a young boy in his congregation and how excited he was when his mother allowed him to place a dollar on the collection plate. One day he found the boy lingering outside the rectory. It was strange to see him alone because his parents were strict. The kid asked him to let him stay a while. He couldn’t because he was getting ready for late mass and he didn’t want the parents to worry.
Father Khatri went to his drawer and pulled out a candy bar. He always kept a stash for the neighborhood kids. He could see the boy didn’t want to go home. But he handed the candy bar to the boy and sent him on his way home. Later that evening, he went by the boy’s house to check on him. He wasn’t in the habit of making house calls. The boy’s mother came running hysterical. He could smell the alcohol the moment he stepped through the door. The father was standing there with this panicked, dumbfounded look on his face. “Get up! Get up!” He said. I walked over and I stepped into the room, and there he was. This sweet, innocent boy, just laying there, broken.
His neck was bulging in a way — it was… and I could see, in his pocket… the candy bar. “He’ll be fine.” That’s what the father said. Sounded indignant. The next thing I knew, I was on top of him. I smashed his face as hard as I could. I couldn’t stop. I kept hitting him over and over again. I was the one who was supposed to listen and defend the defenseless. That sweet little boy came to me begging for help and all I could do was give him a candy bar.
The next thing I remember, I was holding that bottle in my hand, standing on a bridge. The first time I heard the voice of God. He told me to get in the car, that there was another path for me to follow. Two hours later, I was here.
Boyd: Why are you telling me all this, now?
Father Khatri: Because I have Sara tied up in the basement of the Church. I have always known that there’s a reason we’re here.
Boyd gets angry and points his gun at Father Khatri. He panics and asks if he is gonna shoot him. Boyd cusses him out and says not too long ago he convinced Boyd he had to lock Frank in the box, and now he is harboring Sara, who killed 4 people.
Father Khatri argues that Sara might be the way they all go home. Boyd asks him to keep talking.
[Damn. This guy deserves an Oscar nomination.]10 — At the Colony House, Kevin sneaks into the room he visits every evening to talk with the beautiful monster in front of the window. He calls her Jasmine. She says she only came to say goodbye. Why won’t he let her in? He responds she knows why. He can’t. She says you said you like me. She guilt trips Kevin, that he feels disgusted by her. Kevin always tells her how lonely he is in there. She says he doesn’t know how lonely it is for her to be out here. It wasn’t her choice to be this way. She says farewell to Kevin.
Kevin stops her. There is a party of people downstairs, but she is the only one he wants to be with. The only one he can really talk to. Kevin asks Jasmine if she promises she will be the only one getting inside the room and nobody else. She responds she promises not once they shut the window.
Kevin uses a tool from the drawer to remove the nails from the window.
Downstairs, Dale — the a-hole guy who always handles the shotgun — is drunk, talking to a lady. He is babbling about String Theory and other science stuff. How many dimensions she think are out there? Bosonic string theorists believe there are 26 dimensions, but superstring theorists say there are only 10.
Stacey asks if he thinks this place is another dimension. Dale answers no. This is a pocket universe. Ellis is drunk too and had enough of the conversation. Asks him to shut the fuck up. Suddenly, Ellis slaps the alcohol bottle from Dale’s hand. Fatima intercedes to stop Ellis.
As Fatima succeeds in pulling Ellis away, Dale comes out with a snarky comment. Take him upstairs before he starts shooting people. Ellis doubles back and lifts his fist. Fatima and now Donna stop him.
Ellis goes upstairs alone. Dale cusses out and calls Ellis an animal. Like mother, like son — he says. Donna turns around and punches Dale straight to the face landing him on the ground on his arse.
Kevin opens the window, and Jasmine (the monster) enters the room.
They kiss passionately, and she slides her arms around his back, lifting his shirt. Her fingers and nails shift into large horrific claws and cut the skin off his back. He is in pain but can’t pull back. They were French kissing. She has got a hold of his tongue, rips it out of his mouth, and spits it out. He stumbles backward as his mouth bleeds. Her face transforms into a monster.
11 — Kenny knocks at Jade’s door and announces dinner is ready. Jade isn’t hungry. Kenny says he has been staring at the book for a day and a half. Jade asks him to fuck off. Kenny’s mother walks into the room and scolds Jade in Cantonese. Jade can’t understand a thing but gives up and agrees to come eat dinner to make her stop.
Kenny recommends not to take too long (knowing his mother well). Jade rolls his eyes and says something in Cantonese. Stands up and heads to the dining room.
12 — Upstairs, Fatima finds Trudy on a sofa alone and sad. She tries to cheer Trudy up, and she brushes her off because she doesn’t mean to be nice to her. She knows Fatima doesn’t like her. Fatima stays silent for a few seconds and decides to give her favorite yellow sweater to Trudy to demonstrate that’s not true. Trudy can’t believe Fatima gave away her favorite sweater and gets all cheered up. She tells Fatima now she needs to gift her something back. Asks her to wait until she gets back from her room.
Julie shows up at that moment and asks Fatima about the kiss with Stacey. Julie thought she was with Ellis. Fatima responds that Ellis is her man, but that she and Stacey just fool around. Julie asked if she could kiss Fatima. Fatima turned around concerned — and Julie read that as a rejection and ran away saying she was only kidding.
13 — Boyd is angry. So Sara says she’s hearing voices and you just believe her. Father Khatri explains that he was skeptical too. But then, Sara showed him this sketch. Boyd recognizes the logo of the Chocolate Bar. Father Khatri says he arrived here almost three years ago. Sara and Nathan have been here 4-5 months.
Boyd rationalizes that Father Khatri told someone else and that person told Sara. He responds he never told a soul. There is no possible way she could have known. Something was watching him that day, the same thing that told Sara. Boyd interrupts and asks if he thinks this voice is trying to help them by killing an old man and a child.
Father Khatri says that whatever it is, it’s a part of the fabric of this place. Whatever connection Sara has with this thing makes her valuable in ways they might not understand yet. He encourages to put Sara in the box if he wants, but the fact Boyd is preparing for a journey at the same time this connection with Sara is revealed, that’s not just a coincidence. That’s providence.
Father Khatri suggests that Sara and he accompany Boyd on his journey. To use that connection to their advantage.
Boyd jokes: “So a Sheriff, a Priest, and a murdering psycho walk into a bar. Father Khatri responds yea, something like that. Boyd laughs and takes a sip from the alcohol bottle.
14 — Tabitha has been digging the basement of her house all night. The hole is 6 feet deep. Jim walks down to the basement and whistles. If she digs any deeper, they will need a taller ladder. She responds she will dig as deep as they have to.
15 — Jasmine (the monster) finishes feasting on Kevin and opens the window. All the monsters approach the Colony House.
16 — Julie knocks Victor’s door. She asks if she can come in. Victor prefers not to let her in. Julie pleads this is the only room in the house where she can be alone. She’s having a really bad night.
Julie asks why he dug those graves. He prefers not to say. She asks if all these car plates are from all the cars that have come into town. He confirms yes. She reminds him that the first night she arrived he told her that two cars hadn’t come to town on the same day in a really long time and that it was special. Why? Do you know what this place is? Victor ignores her.
17 — Kenny and his mother wash the dishes. Jade continues to look at the old notebook with the symbol. Kenny scolds him for staring at it. Jade notices one of the pages feels wrong. Upon close inspection, he discovers the page is two pages stuck together. He tries to unwrap both pages and a polaroid photo falls on the table. The polaroid shows a man in his 40s-50s. Kenny’s mother talks to warn them. Victor. Victor. Kenny tells Jade in the edge of the polaroid, that boy with the lunchbox is Victor.
18 — At the Colony House, Trudy talks to her pillow. She plans to gift her favorite pillow to Fatima. As she walks toward Fatima’s room, she hears a woman laughter. She asks the woman what is she laughing at. The door closes behind her loudly. It is the monster with the big smile.
Jasmine (the monster) says Hi to Trudy. Trudy asks how she knows her name. Jasmine says they all know their names. All 3 monsters bite into Trudy’s throat. Blood splashes the pillow.
Bale is sitting on the stairway with Stacey, complaining that he’s been here longer than Ellis. The disrespect. Suddenly, he feels something on his arm. He inspects it. Blood? Another drop hits him. He looks up and sees one of the monsters. They sound the alarm that they are inside the house. Chaos ensues as everyone runs. The monsters slowly walk down the stairs with smiles. Fatima tries to run and sees shadows through the main entrance’s mosaic door.
Julie hears the screams and ask Victor what’s going on. He says it has started. He grabs a thick and long rope from one of his cabinets and ties it to the frame of the wall. It’s an escape route through the attic window.
Many residents make it into the van or run down the hill toward the Town.
Julie climbs down the long rope from the attic, with Victor next. Victor sees the boy in white.
19 — Victor says they will hide in the woods, but Julie is scared. Victor says if she wants to see her family again she has to trust him.
Ellis is the last in the Colony House and he is slow walking the stairs. Ellis finds Turdy’s corpse. But because she is wearing Fatima’s favorite sweater, he thought it was Fatima. Turning her around, he discovers she is Turdy. Ellis turns around to see one of the monsters behind him.
20 — Ellis throws a large object through the window to break an impromptu exit to the side roof of the porch. He jumps onto that roof. Then he jumps down and lands badly on the grass from such a height. Fatima finds him and helps him. Monsters approach them and he barely manages to stand up and walk.
Ellis is badly hurt. Possibly some broken ribs as he landed on his back. Fatima decides to enter the Colony House. She closes the door behind them, and closes a second door near the first one. Then holds the talisman and wishes with all her heart for protection. Somehow the monsters weren’t able to enter this small room between the entrance and the house.
Ellis slides down to the ground in disbelief, looking at Fatima. He asks how she knew it was going to work. She responds she didn’t. She remembered Boyd, the talisman, and the RV.
21 — In the forest, Victor asks Julie to enter a Farway Tree. She refuses. Victor says she will be safe. He promises. She has to find her brother and warn him. He pushes Julie through the Farway Tree and says he will be right behind her. She goes into darkness and hears his last words far away.
22 — Julie appears inside the closet in the Root Cellar. Victor’s hideaway place as a boy.
23 — Boyd tells Father Khatri that both may come with him but if she even blinks the wrong way. Both are startled by a car blaring its horn. Donna arrives in the van with many residents. Both come outside to find out what happened. There is no time. Everyone runs inside the Sheriff’s Station. Father Khatri looks to his left and sees a group of monsters slowly approaching. As he turns toward the Sheriff’s Station, a monster he didn’t see coming from his right flank slashes his throat. Boyd shot at the monster, and pulled Father Khatri inside.
Father Khatri didn’t want the end to be like this. He asks Boyd to pray with him. They start the “Our Father” prayer as he gasps for air. He dies as Boyd finishes the prayer. The screen goes dark.
Season 1, Ep. 8: Broken Windows, Open Doors
1 — Boyd packs several supplies and tools inside his camping bag, including the keychain his wife gifted him. Father Khatir’s blood still dried on his shirt. Kenny enters the Sheriff’s Station. He informs the Colony House people are squared away. Each house has a basement mostly unused. Each house will take two or three residents to live there. Some are at the clinic and last three will stay with Kenny and his mother… and Jade. Townsfolk are boarding up their windows.
With the Colony House residents now living in the Town, Kenny suggests gathering everyone together for a common ground set of rules. Boyd suggests Kenny to do that, but Kenny thinks it would mean more coming from Boyd, as everyone looks up to him. Boyd seems to be in shock still. He tells Kenny that Father Khatri saved his life the night they arrived in the town. Boyd grows emotional and breaks up his talk and asks Kenny to give everyone his regards. He tells Kenny that he needs to do something very important. Boyd just remembered Father Khatri revealed he had Sara in the basement of the Church, but didn’t tell Kenny. Sara was responsible for the death of Kenny’s Dad.
Kenny insists it must be Boyd who talks to the people. Boyd scolds him. He needs Kenny to start pulling his weight and learn to talk to people in a way he sounds half convincing as practice for when Boyd is no longer around.
2 — Boyd walks down the stairs to the basement. Sara is standing there looking at Boyd. Her dress still has Nathan’s dried blood.
3 — The camera view from a drone perspective looking down 40 degrees angle shows an old car pulling a move trailer cart along a rural road. The song “If I had a Boat” by Lyle Lovett plays in the background. This is a flashback scene. Boyd, his wife Abby, and a younger Ellis are in this car.
[This confirms why Boyd concluded that hearing this same song at the Diner was the sign he was waiting for. He was playing this song in the car the same day they arrived in the Town.]Boyd tells his wife how peaceful this song sounds. The man is riding a pony on an ocean because he has a boat. Abby says no matter how many times he talks about this song, Boyd still can’t afford a boat. Ohh… Boyd mansplains to Abby that if [they] manage the payments– she interrupts him right away and makes a joke about one of the key roles of management options is deciding not to pay the payments, because [that’s] the option [they] will be taking. She laughs. Ellis chimes in and says: “Yea, I’m pretty sure most lenders frown on that option. Boyd snaps at him: “Nobody’s talking to you.” Boyd and Ellis laugh.
Boyd asks them if they know what they used to call him in the army. Mr. Fish and Loaves. They’d send him to any base to set it up with any resources. He would make it work. Ellis responds if they didn’t call her Iron Abby.
[This reveals that Boyd and Abbey met in the army and fell in love while serving the country.]Boyd continues to be playful about buying a boat. He says Iron is rigid. Unable to bend. Drawing a parallel with Abby on buying a boat. He’s served his country for many years, is highly decorated in his career, ready to retire and leave behind the hardships of his career to enter the civilian life. A boat would do nicely to accomplish that. Abby ignores him and keeps digging into her purse. She complains she is unable to find her chapstick in that bag and resumes digging deeper. He is concerned and looks. Suddenly, Abby asks Boyd if he can hold this thing she removed from the bag for her to have it out of the way while she searches for her chapstick. Boyd grabs it, and it is a big orange keychain object.
Boyd looks at it and asks Abby: “This looks like a boat key.” Abby and Ellis say simultaneously: “What?”
Boyd repeats, why is he holding a boat key?
Boyd looks at Abby in astonishment. Did you buy the boat?
Abby and Ellis laugh. They had planned this a while. Abby jokes she thought to herself if she had to listen one more time to this man sing about Tonto and his pony one more time, she would throw herself into traffic. Boyd goes: “Oh snap!” Ellis congratulates his father with: “Happy retirement, Dad!” Boyd is so happy and thanks his wife. Ellis yells for his father to stop the car. They encounter the fallen tree on the road and hear the crows cawing.
2 — In the present, Boyd and Sara walk through the forest. Sara asks if Boyd can tell her where they are heading and where Father Khatri is. Boyd ignores her and begins his own line of thought. The monsters used to shriek all night long, driving people crazy. That stopped once he found the talismans. Then they started to whisper. He always wondered about that. He mocks Sara whether the voices tell her anything about that. Sara says no. “Of course not. God forbid they tell you anything useful.”
Sara refuses to continue walking until Boyd answers what’s going on and where Father Khatri is. Boyd breaks the news that he is dead. Boyd tells Sara the monsters got into the Colony House. Father Khatri tried to help, and a monster killed him along with other people. She asks if Ellis is okay. He responds he is at the clinic with other people. Sara cries.
Boyd mocks her that now she cries. Did she cry like that for Bing Qian (Kenny’s father). Boyd says the only reason Sara is alive is because Father Khatri thought she could help everyone get home. The second Sara proves him wrong, he will put a bullet in her. He commands her to keep walking. She asks where they are going. Boyd cocks his gun to prep it for shooting. Sara obeys.
3 -Kenny walks three Colony House residents into his home and instructs them where things are and to ration the food. Other people will work at the Colony House to get it ready for everyone to return once done.
Jade is in Kenny’s porch, sitting and tinkering. Jade is holding the old Polaroid with the man and Victor as a boy in the photo. Jade asks why are these guys here. Kenny informs him they will have a few more house guests for a little while. Jade doesn’t like the idea and sounds rude.
Jade asks the lady if she knows where Victor is. She responds she saw Victor and Julie run into the woods last night. Victor heads out in search of Victor. Jade seems to have tinkered all day about the polaroid photo and its connection to the notebook with the symbol his visions have bothered him.
4 — Julie tells her father she couldn’t understand what happened last night. One second everyone was having a good time, and out of nowhere, monsters were inside the Colony House chasing them. Jim asks how she got out of the house. Julie responds she was in Victor’s room and they climbed down the attic with a rope. He was stacking this bunch of drawings that he handed to her to help carry his stashes. It looked like he was getting ready to leave the Colony House with them before the monsters arrived.
She says Victor asked her to follow him into the woods, and they ran into this tree and he pushed her inside. Victor said, “It was starting.” Jim asked what he meant by that. Julie didn’t know, but one second she was in the tree and suddenly she was inside a giant cabinet in a root cellar. Tabitha loudly wonders how that is possible. Ethan says Julie went through a Farway Tree. Jim says “Huh?” Ethan explains that Victor said you can go all sorts of different places. So maybe Victor landed somewhere else. “We have to find him!”
Julie stands up and freaks out. She moves to the hallway and asks what’s happening to them. She is confused. Now their house’s walls are broken. Ethan chimes in. They are digging a big hole in the basement. They are going to find out where the electricity comes from. Julie continues to cry. Nothing makes sense.
Jade breaks into their house without knocking, demanding to know if they have seen where Victor is. Jim forcefully pushes Jade out of the house and asks if he knows what she is gone through. Jade explains that he discovered something last night. There is a symbol that he’s been seeing. The same symbol is in this notebook. Inside the notebook, he found this Polaroid photo. Jim slaps the notebook off Jade’s hand and lands on the ground. He doesn’t care shit about this. “Just stay the fuck away from my daughter.”
Jim snaps at Jade. “You led me into the woods, have me climb a fucking tree for some stupid idea, and then you run off like a psycho before we even have a chance to try it.”
Jade apologizes for that. Jim responded: “It worked. All I got was some static. But it worked. I think if we get it up over the tree line, and we get it enough power, I think we could get a signal out.”
Jade asks Jim how he proposes to get up over the tree line. Jim says they start by going to the high ground. They look toward the Colony House up on the hill.
5 — [Flashback] Boyd and his family continue driving and find the Town. The sun is still up. Father Khatri runs into the middle of the road and stops their car. He asks them to listen to him. There is not much time. This is going to sound very, very strange, and you aren’t going to believe me, but if you don’t come with me right now, you are all going to die. Abby pulls out her gun. Father Khatri says it is good that she has a gun and she is welcome to keep it pointed at him but he begs them to follow him.
Suddenly, they all hear a loud shriek. This was long before Boyd found the talismans, so they had to hide in places to survive. Father Khatri responds that the shriek they heard is death and it is coming right now. Boyd, Abby, and Ellis leave the car and follow Father Khatri.
Donna welcomes them into a sort of basement or hidden room. They stay the night. They can hear the monsters shrieking and a man screaming in agony as they feast on him.
6 — [Present] Ellis is in a clinic bed. EMT Kristi checks on his arm and slowly pulls his socket back into place and places a sling to hold his arm. She asks Fatima to make sure he doesn’t leave the bed until she can finish up later. She needs to tend to other guests.
7 — Donna picks up dismembered arms and legs from the Colony House’s front yard and drops them in a cart. Jim Matthews and Jade approach her.
Donna asks how Julie is. Jim says she is okay, but that’s not what they are here for. They need Donna’s help. They want to build a tower and place it on the roof. Jim thinks they can broadcast a signal high above the Colony House that can reach other areas. Jim says the Colony House is the highest point in the highest hill. A broadcast from a tower above the house will be able to broadcast a signal to avoid any interference from the forest canopy. Donna agrees to let them do it. Jim is concerned and asks if she is sure.
Donna squares off in front of him and asks if he knows how many people died last night. She answers 14. Body parts of all of them are still on the ground all over the hill. She doesn’t think any of the surviving residents will return to the Colony House any time soon. They have the Colony House to focus on their project.
8 — Boyd and Sara find a shed in the forest. He wants Sara to wait inside while he goes back to town for his supplies. They are going to explore beyond, farther than they ever dared to for a way out of this place. Sara tells Boyd he doesn’t need those cuffs. She will stay in the shed until he returns. She wants to help.
9 — [Flashback] Boyd removes a fake door disguised with grass. Donna, Father Khatri, Abby, and Ellis were hidden in a hole below the ground. A makeshift underground room surrounded by wood panels.
Boyd sees other people come out of their underground hidden places similar to the one he is in. He sees dismembered corpses all over the place. Donna sarcastically tells them welcome to your worst nightmare. Father Kathri says they have a lot to unpack. He will explain more at the Diner down the road. They have many questions, but the father only has limited information about this place.
With Boyd’s military experience, he tells Donna and Khatri how to organize, create a system, make sure everybody is covered at night, and gather resources. Build new hiding places and switch locations constantly so they don’t repeat the same hideout twice.
As time goes by, Boyd guides the people to perform tasks. He assigns his wife Abby to draw a system for where to spend their nights. They are going to dig up new underground hiding places and constantly rotate where they stay at night to make it difficult for these monsters to find them. [This was how it worked before Boyd found the talismans]
10 — [Present] Julie sits on the edge of the hole her mother dug in the basement. She is sad, staring at the hole. Her mother, Tabitha, comes down to the basement. Julie wishes to know whether they will still get the divorce if they leave this place. Tabitha doesn’t have an answer. Julie reminds Tabitha that she said they love each other. Then why get a divorce? Is Julie the reason? Did Julie do something wrong? (she asks her mom). Tabitha hugs and kisses Julie. No. It is not Julie’s fault.
Tabitha explains many things lead to a divorce. But she can only understand once she becomes a parent. Their only job is to love and protect their children. When baby Thomas died, something inside Tabitha broke. She has no idea how to fix it. She keeps reliving that day. Ethan and Julie were in their bedroom. Jim and Tabitha were with Thomas in the kitchen. Thomas was on his changing table. The phone rang. Jim picked up the phone. Tabitha grabbed a diaper. They turned just for one second. Before they knew it, Thomas rolled off the changing table. Julie’s father is the love of Tabitha’s life. But sometimes she sees Jim and she hears the fucking phone ring. Julie asks why she never told her that.
Tabitha responds that no matter how grown up Julie is, she will always be her little girl. So they pretended everything was fine. It made things worse. Both apologize and hug.
11 — Outside the Diner, Bartender Tom, Eli, and five Townsfolk argue. Tian Chen Liu (Kenny’s mother) yells at them in Cantonese. Tom says there will be trouble if she doesn’t allow them to enter the Diner. This happens during daylight. Boyd intercedes and asks what’s going on.
Tom complains they have Colony House guests in their houses, eating and using their supplies. If it comes down to letting Colony House guests raid the Diner for food and supplies, then it’s going to be him doing the raiding. Boyd scolds them for behaving like animals and assures them they will figure things out. No need for raiding. Go back to your homes till they come up with temp plan.
12 — [Flashback] Boyd and Father Khatri talk about the monsters. They come out at night. Do the monsters walk around in the forest during daytime? Boyd thinks there might be resources out there. He plans for the townsfolk to scavenge during daytime. Father Khatri asks how long he spent in the military. Boyd served for almost 30 years. He set up operations in some of the biggest, baddest clusterfucks on the planet. Abby was a Marine. She is the badass in the family.
Ellis worries about his mother, Abby. She is staring into the distance. Distracted in thought. Abby tells Ellis she was thinking about this dream she had when she was a little girl. She drifted off and said nevermind.
[This is a sign that the show writers revisit. Later in Season 3, Tabitha also mentions she had dreams in her childhood where she saw the same 3 red stones they are at now in a remote settlement they find in this place. Tabitha thinks she was destined to find this place.]13 — [Present] Boyd decides not to venture into the forest searching for a way home. This time around, Kenny is the one insisting that Boyd goes out into the forest journey. He asked Kenny to lead. That’s what he is going to do. So get your supplies and get out and search for a way home. Kenny addresses Donna. And you, get over what happened last night at the Colony House and be the scary hard-ass lady you have always been because that is who these people need you to be right now. If they aren’t going to fight like hell to go home, then we might as well swallow a fucking bullet right now. Kenny unsheaths his gun and hands it to any of them to make his point. Kenny leaves the Sheriff’s Station to let both leaders think about his words.
Donna tells Boyd she didn’t know that little bastard had that in him. Boyd laughs. “Now how about you explain what the fuck he was talking about.” Boyd had not shared this journey into the forest plan with Donna yet.
14 — [Flashback] Boyd shows Father Khatri what he found. A goat. Boyd found it about half a mile out eating some grass. He also found chickens out there. Boyd said he would build some traps to capture them. Father Khatri couldn’t believe there were chickens out there in the forest. Boyd asks the father to gather volunteers to rebuild the pen outside the old barn. They will need it.
Ellis calls his father aside and tells him he needs to stop going out there into the forest. It is his mom, Abby. She is not doing well. Boyd has been going out for weeks into the forest, and he doesn’t know what’s happening to her. Her mind is deteriorating. Ellis thinks this place is starting to get to her. Boyd counters his argument. This is Iron Abby. She is tough as it comes. What Boyd is doing is important to the community. Ellis scolds his father for not listening to what he is saying. Boyd says they are still 4 hours away from nightfall. Tuck your mother and townsfolks away to safety. He will return before night and then they can talk. He promises. Ellis pleads to please stay to give company to his mom. Boyd brushes him off: “We will talk tonight.”
Boyd goes into the forest and starts carving a tree side with a knife. Suddenly, a dog growls behind him.
[This is the same dog Victor saw as a child and again in the present when he was with Ethan in the woods. The dog is now here before Boyd weeks after Boyd arrived to the Town.]
Boyd talks to the dog. Where did you come from? Well, you must belong to someone. Does that person live in the forest somewhere? Boyd approaches the dog. Squats and offers both his hands, palms up. The dog humbly reaches out with his nose, but a twig-snapping noise startles the dog and he runs away. Boyd runs after the dog to see where he is heading. Suddenly, the dog disappears out of his sight. Boyd now realizes he is in trouble. He lost his way. He is never been this deep into the woods and doesn’t know what direction the Town is. Nightfall is coming in a couple of hours and he has no hiding place to survive the monsters.
The night catches up with Boyd. The forest is dark. Pitch black. He hears the monster shriek in the distance. He pulls his gun aiming nowhere, expecting a monster to approach him any second. As he moves between the trees backward, he trips over and falls on his back. He lands among ruins.
Laying on his back on the ground, he hears steps nearby and suddenly the monsters’s faces come into his view through the gaps between the foliage.
This is where Boyd found the talismans. The monsters didn’t attack him inside the ruins. He figured out the talismans around him protected him from the monsters. Boyd brought the talismans with him in the morning and gave one to each house for protection.
15 — [Present] Boyd visits Ellis in the clinic. He tells Ellis and Fatima that he will begin his journey through the forest to search for a way out back home. Ellis mocks his plan because it helped them so well last time. This in reference to Boyd brushing off Ellis’ concerns about his mother Abby that time he went into the forest. It led to her death. Boyd asks Fatima to leave them alone for a few minutes.
Boyd tells Ellis if he wants to be angry at him and hate him, that’s fine.But he is going to say a couple of things and you are going to listen whether you want to or not. If something happens to Boyd and he doesn’t make it back, he never wants his son to regret what he didn’t say to him. He says he loves him and is proud of the man he has become.
Donna and Boyd meet outside the clinic and say their farewells. Boyd thanks her for what he’s done for his son. She asks him to return from his journey into the forest. Otherwise, she won’t have anyone to argue with. Donna hugs him. Now get the fuck out of here before people start thinking we are friends. Yes, ma’am.
16 — Fatima tells Ellis he shouldn’t be so hard on his Dad. What happened to Abby that awful day wasn’t his fault. It was this place. It got to Abby. That Boyd let Ellis hate on him and put all his anger on him because that’s what parents do. Can you imagine what that day was for him? Fatima had not arrived to the Town back then, but she’s heard what happened from other people who was there.
17 — [Flashback] In the morning, Boyd gathered all the talismans he could from the ruins and carried them in his jacket, bundled up as a makeshift bag. Suddenly, he heard multiple gunshots. In the Town, everyone is running and scattering in different directions. Abby is shooting at Townsfolk. Boyd arrives to the town and sees Abby shooting at people. He pulls out his gun and aims it at Abby. Ask her what’s going on baby? Abby shoots another woman. Donna runs toward the woman that fell to try to keep her alive. Abby points the gun at Donna who ask why she is doing this. Abby says nothing in the Town is real. It’s a nightmare. The only way for us to go home is to wake everyone up. You can’t die in dreams. Everything is going to be okay.
Boyd asks Abby to stop. She turns around and looks at Boyd and says no. Boyd tries to explain that he found something [the talismans] that he think might help the people in this town. Abby said he didn’t come back before dark. There is no way that Boyd had survived out there. She insists it is time to wake everybody up. Boyd pleads with her to stop. She begins to sing the boat song. Boyd smiles at her and sings along. He almost had succeeded in stopping her shooting spree.
Suddenly, Ellis came running to assist the woman on the ground. Someone must have told him that Abby was shooting people on the street and hurried up to stop her. Ellis called out at his mother, Abby. Abby turned around and aimed her gun at Ellis. Boyd yelled no, and he had to shoot Abby in the back before she could shoot Ellis. In her mind, she was simply waking Ellis up from the nightmare.
18 — [Present] Boyd removes his Sheriff badge and puts it on the bed. He grabs his old orange jacket. A lighter was in its pocket. He tested it worked still. Took hold of one of the talismans, grabbed his backpack, and headed into the forest to meet Sara at the shed.
In the forest, Ellis caught up with his father and shouted at him. Boyd asked him what he’s doing out here. Ellis said he’s been following him since he left town. “I have been trying to find to find the courage to say something to you. Last night when those things got inside the Colony House, Fatima and I, we would’ve died. I mean, there was no way that we could’ve survived that. But the one thing that saved us, that saved her… was the talisman on the door. I’ve just been so angry for a really long time… and I didn’t know how to — But, you know, if you didn’t do what you did, if you didn’t bring those talismans back… it wasn’t your fault, Dad. What Mom did, it wasn’t … your fault. Look, I’m sorry, Dad.”
Boyd and Ellis embrace each other.
Ellis says he didn’t want his Dad to leave without saying Goodbye. Boyd said this isn’t Goodbye. The Shed’s door opens behind Boyd. Sara comes out of the shed. Ellis looks at Sara in disbelief and asks what she’s doing here after what she did to Nathan, Tobey, Kenny’s father, and Gina. What she intended to do to the boy, Ethan. Boyd tries to convince Ellis that he needs Sara for the success of his journey deep into the forest. Boyd promises to explain the whole thing when he returns. For now he needs Ellis to trust him. No one in the town must know that Sara is with Boyd.
19 — Outside the Diner, Kenny gives a speech to everyone. Boyd is out there in the forest risking everything to find a way out of this place. In the meantime, they will conduct themselves differently. No more Colony House or Town factions. Everyone is together on this. A community. Donna warns her people not to be shitty houseguests. During daytime they will put the Colony House back together (repairs and cleanup).
Donna brings up that Jim has an idea to build something that might broadcast a signal to the out world to get them out of this shithole. Asks volunteers to help build his tower.
Jim says they will need supplies, batteries, and anything with a charge. But most of all they will need people to build this thing.
20 — Boyd and Sara leave the shed. He cuffs Sara willingly. He won’t take any chances.Boyd doesn’t trust her, but Father Khatri said they need her connection to the voices to find their way out. He will respect his wisdom.
Season 1, Ep. 9: Into the Woods
1 — Sara and Boyd walk deeper into the forest. Sara asks how he knows where to go. He replies he doesn’t However, he finds the place where he found the talismans. Boy said they will set camp here. Sara complains it is not nightfall yet. Boyd says this place is as far as he ever wandered into the forest. Anything beyond this point is uncharted territory. He’s not going to keep exploring just two hours away from dark. This is where he survived the night he found the talismans. In the morning, they can explore further into the forest.
2 — In the Diner, Kenny and his mother talk in Cantonese, with English subtitles: “It’s divided into three projects: one large group builds the tower, then two smaller groups work on the radio and the power source. That last group is basically just Jade.”
Tian Chen Liu: “Has he found Victor yet?”
Kenny: “No. But if Jade mentions that symbol one more time, I think Jim might kill him.” (Chuckles)
Tian Chen Liu: “I’m just glad he’s finally working. He’s very selfish and lazy. I don’t like him.”
Kenny: That’s the kind of thing you always say about people you like the most.
Tian Chen Liu smiles. “Go ring your bell. Be a good sheriff.”
Outside the Diner, Kristi returns Kenny’s book. She finished Chapter 6. Same Chapter, Kenny read before handing the book to her.
3 — At the Sheriff’s Station, Donna let some Colony House survivors enter the building to sleep through the night. Dale complains in his usual asshole attitude. She says they will sleep here until they finish reparations and building the tower. Dale doesn’t believe the broadcast will work referring to it transmitting into neverland. Donna says not to spread his bullshit. The other people need to think in something positive after what happened recently. Fourteen people died in the Colony House.
4 — In the Matthews house, Tabitha finishes digging deeper into the hole in her basement. Takes the lamp and walks up the stairs. She feels disoriented. The stairs is now a tower stairs in spiral shape. She stumbles upon the finger figures Julie uses to tell stories to Ethan. She yells at Ethan to clean up his mess, stuff he left on the stairway — toys, cards, books. Tabitha hears a land telephone ring in the distance. She hears a baby crying (Thomas). She calls out to Jim to grab the kids. Something is wrong. The ringing and the baby cries continue. This is obviously a nightmare or vision. Briefly, a scene shows numbers scratched on concrete. Year numbers: 1506, 1609, 1672, 1752, 1793, 1864, 1883, 1931, 1978.
Tabitha looks up to the ceiling and sees Jim hanging from his feet. Suddenly, he looks at her and yells with the sound of a car horn blaring instead of his voice. She sees the RV crashing into the side of the road and turning. Tabitha wakes up from her nightmare. Jim and Julie are still sleeping.
5 — Donna wakes up in the Sheriff’s Station to the screams of a woman. “He kept saying he was fine. He was making jokes about the tower.
6 — Kenny and Jim continue building the tower. He needs more wood. Kenny will send some guys to the barn to scavenge some extras. Jade is finishing up the wiring and the batteries.
Donna arrives at the Colony House. Jim asks how’s she doing. She had a rough morning. Kenny asks if Eric is with her because he needs him to go on a supply run. Donna turned around and said Eric is not coming.
Inside the Colony House, people are working on cabling for the broadcast tower. On the sofa, Ellis and Fatima talk about Eric hanging himself. Ellis didn’t see that one coming. Fatima changes subject to the tower, as she cuts wiring with a knife. She is terrified more about the tower working than not working. She keeps thinking about how they go back now after everything they have seen and the things they have done. They aren’t the same people anymore.
Ellis says when his Dad came back home from Afghanistan, he said that coming home from war is like traveling from another planet. And then when you come home, you can’t tell if everything is different than it was when you left it or if it’s you. If you are the one that has changed.
Fatima asks what it will be for them if they go back to the world they came from. This is the only place they have ever known together as a couple.
7 — In the forest, Boyd stops to carve a tree. He carved an arrow in the direction he came from. Sara asks what he is doing. He replied making sure we find our way back.
Sara asks how he knows they won’t be walking and walking in a loop as it happens in the Town with the road. What if they end up back in the Town? Boyd says he doesn’t know. Guess we’ll see.
Boyd asks Sara… she said those voices told her that killing those people would get everyone home. Do you ever stop to think that maybe they were lying? What did the voices say that made her willing to kill that little boy (Ethan). Sara says he wouldn’t understand. The voices told her that the Matthews family, Tobey, and Jade were coming. The voices told her there would be two cars coming to town. The voices said that if she didn’t do what they said, her brother Nathan would die. That everyone would die.
Boyd meditates on what that means. Sara asks why he didn’t put her in that box. He doesn’t know. He stops talking and removes her cuffs. Boyd says he has seen this town make people do bad things.
8 — At the Matthews house, Tabitha browses through Victor’s stash of crayon drawings. She doesn’t understand. Julie says Ethan thinks it is a puzzle. Ethan corrects Julie. Not a puzzle. A story. All the drawings fit together and tell a story. Once they figure out the story, we will know what to do next. That’s how it works.
Tabitha suggests they stop viewing these crayon sketches. Ethan says they can’t. They can’t finish the quest unless they figure out the story. Ethan is not scared. He promises.
9 — At the Colony House, Jim and Jade put together the batteries daisy-chain, but they are trying to figure out how to get the most power efficiency considering some of the batteries are expired and some are low in charge.
Jade asks if he has heard whether Victor has returned. Jim looks at him annoyed. Jade pleads with him to open the notebook and see the symbols. Jim refuses and thinks he is smoking weed. Jim is willing to keep working alone without him if he is going to pursue this symbol stuff or search for Victor.
10 — Donna is drinking alcohol. The sight of Eric hanging himself hurt. She looks at her photo with her sister. Kenny comes into the room and offers condolences. He heard what happened. He came to see if she was doing okay. Donna is blunt. She says so now you are a Sheriff and want to offer words of wisdom? Something I like about Boyd is that he minds his own damn business.
Kenny ignores that and informs that he will gather some people to salvage wood from the barn. Donna is definitely drunk. She walks down the stairs blurting out loud, you want wood? We have plenty of wood. I’m saving you a trip. Donna walks past the kitchen and grabs an axe from the closet. Donna starts to axe away at the kitchen floor to provide wood for the tower. Kenny and Jim try to stop her. She says why do we need the kitchen floor if the magical tower will get us home? Eventually, she calms down and storms out of the house.
11 — Sara and Boyd continue their journey through the forest. Sara hears a clinking noise. They find a tree with bottles hanging from the branches. Boyd tries to get one of the bottles. He sees something inside the bottles. Sara asks if that’s a good idea. Suddenly, she covers her head in pain. She says she can hear them. Then goes into seizures.
Sarah says she thought he said no one had been out this far before.
12 — Tom serves potato vodka to Donna in the Bar. He asks how’s the magic tower going so far. She ignores him. Tom says of all the time he has been in this place, it is the first time she comes to the Bar. She replies that’s because he serves piss water. His distilling is shit. She says at least here I’m alone. Kenny enters the Bar. Needs to talk to Donna. She is not mad for Eric taking his own life. She is mourning what this place almost become. For 90+ days, everything was alright. Once people realize the magic tower doesn’t work, everyone’s hope will be gone. Everyone will start to die.
13 — Kristi is sad. Eric was a close friend. He arrived in Town around the time she did. He was Celiac Disease. Always bloated and visited regularly. Kristi made Kenny promise that if the magic tower project failed he would come talk to her. Implying Kenny might lose hope and take Eric’s route.
14 — Jade complains in Kenny’s kitchen with Tian Chen Liu cooking there about Jim driving him out of the Colony House. Jade the weed degenerate. Tian Chen Liu talks in English. Jade, you always complain, complain, complain. Do you want electric? Here! Tian Chen flicks the light switch on and off. Jade said that won’t work. They can’t use any of the plugs and the cables have no copper wiring. Just rubber. He looks up to the lightbulb. Suddenly, he had an idea. He knows how to make it work.
15 — Jim gives up for the day and returns home. He calls Tabitha, and she replies she is in the basement. Julie comes up with a bucket of dirt and asks her father how the tower project goes. He replies things are really shaping up. Julie calls him a bad liar. Julie changes the subject and thinks they may have been meant to come here. In this place, they have come closer to each other. How about you stop the tower work for today and help us dig the hole in the basement? She convinces Jim to help.
16 — Evening has arrived. Boyd set up a camping tent and placed the talisman hanging from the center. Sara wakes up from her post-seizure unconsciousness.
Boyd was able to grab one of the bottles from the tree. Inside, he found a piece of paper with the words: 1864. That’s it. Every bottle has a piece of paper.
Sara says they should go back to Town. The voices sounded different this time. It was a woman and she was screaming. She said that she was wrong. That we shouldn’t have come. That there are things out here that are worse than the monsters. She kept saying (ugh) — it doesn’t make any sense. She kept saying: “Tell Mr. Fish and Loaves that I was wrong.”
[Holy krap. Boyd told Abby and Ellis in the car that in the Army, his guys called him "Mr. Fish and Loaves." The woman -- one of the voices -- in Sara's mind is Abby's spirit.]Boyd and Sara hear a loud twig cracking nearby in the forest. Suddenly, their camping tent is pulled and turned upside down. Something big is out there.
17 — Ethan says there are drawings of scarecrows, bogeymen, and giant spiders. This is definitely a quest. Jim and Ethan are helping remove dirt from the hole while Tabitha and Julie dig. They used a piece of a bicycle as a pull system with rope to ascend and descend the bucket through the hole.
Tabitha’s shovel makes a clanking noise. She thinks she reached the bottom.
18 — Boyd and Sara continue to get tossed around inside the camping tent. Then it stopped. Boyd asks where the talisman ended up. He looks around and locates it. Then place it back at the center of the camping tent. Sara says they shouldn’t have come here. They aren’t safe. Boyd insists they are okay. Immediately, a very loud horn is heard in the distance. Then a very bright light shines through the tent’s fabric. Almost as bright as daytime.
Season 1, Ep. 10: Oh, the Places We’ll Go
1 — Ethan is on his bed, playing with the finger figures: “Let’s go to the tower. Behold, the tower.” Julie wakes up and asks if he wants her to tell him a story. He said it is okay. He can tell his own stories now. Julie replies: “Hey, look at you. You’re all grown up now, huh?”
Jade knocks frantically at their door (a miracle he doesn’t barge in as usual). Jim opens the door. Jade says he figured out the Power problem. He asks where is their less favorite lamp. “Oh, this one. This is ugly. Jade drags the table closer to the electric outlet to place the lamp on the table. What is the biggest problem we have with powering the signal? Can’t plug anything in, right? There is no wiring inside the cords. By all means, these lightbulbs shouldn’t even turn on. But it does, right? Which means no matter what’s going on with the outlets or the wires, what comes out here is the electricity that lights the bulb.”
Jade removes the lightbulb to expose the interior of the lightbulb base. Now this hair blower came in the back of someone’s car and by all accounts it is useless. Electric plugs don’t work in this place. But… if we take the exit wires and fix it to the socket to where somehow actual bonafide electricity is somehow being delivered and we screw our little lightbulb here back in, and then turn on the lightbulb… Ma’am?”
Tabitha turns on the hair blower and it works.
Jade: “Ahh, see? With enough lamps and enough wire–“
Jim: “We could turn Colony House into a giant battery.”
Jade: “I bet you would have figured it out. Do you guys have any snacks? I’m feeling peckish.”
2 — Boyd and Sara open the camping tent in the morning. They figured out what dragged their camping tent during the night. They are now in a forest covered by massive webs.
3 — In the Sheriff’s Office, Donna looks at the USA map with all the pins marking the location everyone who ever comes to the town came from. She argues with Kenny how we know the radio signal will work when everyone comes from different States. Kenny says radiowaves might behave in a way they can’t and get past whatever makes them loop back to town.
4 — Kenny walks to the Ambulance to help Kristi. She is salvaging all its cabling. Kenny carried a lamp with a world globe as a base from the Sheriff’s Station. He separated the globe section and split it in two. He hid inside receipts and wrote the names of countries on them. He asks Kristi if she has ever been to Iceland. He says if the radio works and they ever leave this place, he would like to go to Iceland with Kristi. She hesitates and tells him that she is engaged with someone. He excuses himself to deliver the box of Ambulance wiring to the guys up at the Colony House. She apologizes.
5 — Bartender Tom and Tabitha open the door to a shed with lots of tools. He lets her peruse. As he leaves, Tabitha asks Tom why he isn’t up there at the hill helping the guys at the Colony House. Tom mocks her: “To help with the magic tower?” She asks if he doesn’t believe the radio broadcast will work. Tom says he has heard a lot of people with ideas on how to get out of this place over the years. Do you know what all of them have in common? They all end up in the Bar. Happy hunting.
Tabitha looks around and finds a massive pickaxe. She smiles and goes back home with her prize in tow.
6 — In the Colony House, people have plugged multiple cords to the lightbulb bases and plugged the lightbulbs back in.
Ellis asks Fatima to talk privately elsewhere. She says they are busy working on the wiring tasks. He insists and she follows. They stop near the greenhouse. Ellis says: “This is the spot I stood on when you arrived a year ago to this place. You were driving that Volkswagen bug around and around for hours. You hadn’t had your tires blown up yet. But you pulled over right over there. You stepped outta your car and looked around.”
Fatima: “I remember. I asked Corey for directions.”
Ellis: “I have been thinking a lot about what you said about going home, about who we would be and I realized I don’t remember any more about who I was before you stepped out of that car. And I don’t want to find out who I am without you.”
Ellis kneels before Fatima. “You are the love of my life. And we could be anywhere in the world, but it would not matter because you are my home. And would really like to be yours.
Ellis places a ring made of wires down her finger. He apologizes that all jewelry shops are closed. She asks if the wires are from her pile. He says yes. She smiles. They kiss.
7 — Boyd and Sara move quickly through this part of the forest covered in spider webs. Sara asks where they are going. Boyd says the light last night came from this direction. She doesn’t think it is a good idea after what her voice warned her. Boyd says last night they got dragged by who knows what to this webbed area. He doesn’t even know where the direction back to town is anymore. All he knows is that someone shined a light from that direction. That wasn’t a flashlight. That was a floodlight. Maybe a searchlight… which means that maybe there’s someone or something out this way that can help us. So we’re going that way.
Sara warns him the voice she heard was different than the other voices and whoever that was warned of the danger if we stay on this path. Sara asked who is Mr. Fish and Loaves? Boyd says it is me. A nickname given to him in service. The only people who know that nickname here is my son and—
Sara: — and your wife. Do you think she–
Boyd: What? Did my dead wife send you a message? Is that what you want to know?
Sara: You brought me out here because you thought I could help. OK? Look where we are! Whoever or whatever that voice was, it told us to go back. It told us what would happen if we stayed out here.
Boyd: Well, in that case, if she told you what direction to–
Boyd hears a woman talk nearby. Sara asks Boyd where he is going. This means only Boyd can hear the voice.
Voice: Someone, please. Help me! I’m over here. Help!
Boyd goes deeper into a tree heavily surrounded by giant webs. He finds Abby wrapped in web fluid.
Abby grabs his arm tight, but he manages to detach himself and run away from the webs. Tiny spiders start to climb his legs. Boyd removes his shirt in panic. He is swatting away spiders climbing his belly and chest. One stings his belly. Another is in his back. Sara removes it. Sara asks what did he see. He replies nothing.
8 — Jim pulls a large cart with cables and wiring up to the Colony House. Julie and Ethan tag along with Jim. Jim looks at the finishing touches of the tower which is now erect vertically on the ground. It will soon be lifted to the top of the house. Ethan asks how they are going to get the tower up to the roof. Jim says they are going to hoist it. Once they get the antenna up in the roof, it will be tall enough to broadcast a signal out over the treetops.
9 — Boyd is in a bad spot after the spider bite. He is in pain. His mood is erratic. He is hopeless. He thinks there is now way out of this place and that all of them are going to die. Sara tries to calm him down and put him back on track to the mission. She reminds him that he wanted to go in the direction of the floodlight to find its source. Do you want to see your son again? — she asks.
Boyd calms down and cooperates. He allows Sara to help him walk. A storm is coming. They’ll need to reach their destination quickly before the weather gets bad.
10 — The guys in the Colony House aren’t aware of the storm coming yet. Two men are on the roof pulling a rope to lift the tower to the roof with the help of the hoist.
Jade mounts a bicycle and Jim stops him asking where he is headed. He says he is going to the town to help transport the remaining wiring. Jim said the last batch arrived a while ago. Jade has no other excuse and tells the truth. He wants to grab some paper from his bedroom for his weed. Jade arrives at Kenny’s house and sees Kenny’s mother at the altar with her dead husband’s photo. He thought she would be at the Diner right now. Didn’t expect her here. He walked past her, then backtracked. His tone changed. He said they might go home soon if the radio works. But he doesn’t see her excited about that. He begins to tell her a story of his childhood. He lived in France with his grandma. She died when he was 12. He had to come back to the United States to live with his Uncle. He had to go to the airport on his own because he had no one in France. He wanted to stay because no one lived in France to care for her tomb. He didn’t want to leave her alone. I mean she was dead, but. I was crying at the airport. This nice lady, I told her what was wrong and she said to me they come with you when you go. What i am trying to say is don’t be sad. Don’t feel guilty. He will come with you when you go. She struggles her tears back and places her hand on his chick. She asks him to pray with her.
11 — At the Colony House, Jim explains to Ethan how the radio works. They touch the coil with the screwdriver and that determines the frequency. Now if we move the screwdriver along the length of the coil that simulates changing the channel.
Ethan: And that will connect to this? (the microphone/receiver)
Jim: Yes.
Donna says they are ready on the roof to place the top of the tower. Jade arrives with a cooler filled with snacks for everyone.
Jade and his team completed the tower in position. Everyone turns on the lightbulbs to power up the CB Radio. Jim tests the CB Radio and it is working. He got a signal. They are ready to transmit any second. A woman on the roof points behind and asks if anyone has seen the big stormy clouds heading toward them. Jade cusses out. Not good for the tower.
12 — Boyd and Sara are almost at the top of the hill in the forest. Boyd tells Sara to keep going to the top. He needs to rest a little bit. She refuses and asks him to continue. They are almost to the top, and the storm is upon them. They need to take shelter. Both continue to the top. Suddenly, the loud horn is heard again. It is a lighthouse.
13 — Jim sends a broadcast: “Mayday. Mayday. Can anyone out there hear me? This is an SOS call. We need help. Mayday.” Jim waits a few seconds, waiting for a response. Nothing. He repeats the broadcast message. Seconds later, no response. Jim asks Ethan to move the screwdriver to switch to another channel. Jim repeats the broadcast message.
Someone responds: “Hello? Is there someone there?”
Jim: “We don’t have very much time.”
The voice on the radio: “Whoa, whoa, slow down. Is this Jim Matthews? Your wife shouldn’t be digging that hole, Jim.”
Jim panics and runs to the town for Tabitha.
14 — In her basement, Tabitha continues to dig the hole with the pickaxe. The hole begins to crack and rumble. The hole crumbles and caves in. Tabitha falls down the sinkhole.
Tabitha wakes up and sees a flashlight coming her way in the dark.
Victor welcomes her. “He said that you would come. The Boy in White. He said that you would come, that I should wait. We have to go. It is not safe here. This is where they sleep. You see? They make drawings too.
15 — Jim runs into town and enters their house, but he is too late. The entire basement and even the living room above caved in into the sinkhole.
16 — Rain is pouring down heavy on Boyd and Sara. He is exhausted and asks Sara to go. If she stays, both die. She refuses to leave him alone.
The Boy in White talks to Sara. He says: “Nathan was right about this place. It’s angry now. You have to get inside. Over there.”
The Boy in White points a finger in the direction she must lead Boyd. “You will be safe in there.” The boy pointed toward one of many Farway Trees scattered throughout the forest.
Sara tells Boyd they will be safe in the tree. Boyd is confused. Sara says she will be right behind him. Boyd steps inside the tree hole and appears in a hole underground.
[This is a game-changing checkpoint in the series. Later in Season 3, this very scene with Boyd in the hole is revisited creating the paradox of the chicken and the egg. Who throws the rope for him to escape? Stay tuned to Season 3.]
17 — The Diner is empty. Raining outside. The jukebox starts playing the song: “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere” by Neil Young.
A passenger bus arrives to town with many passengers.
