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.]
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| SEASON 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
