Season 2, Ep. 1: Strangers in a Strange Land

1 — In the Diner, the jukebox plays the song: “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” by Bob Dylan.

Boyd walks along the road ringing the bell. Night is coming. His right hand is trembling due to his Parkinson’s Disease. As a consequence, the bell is frantically ringing faster at the pace of his hand tremors. A storm approaches and quickly rain overcomes Boyd. It is a nightmare. Boyd wakes up. He is trapped in the hole.

[Observation: The hand that has tremors is the left hand. In the dream, it is the right hand. Boyd wakes up in the hole. In Season 1, Ep. 10, he got to this hole because the Boy in White told Sara to survive the Storm by entering the Farway Tree. Sara helped Boyd get through the Farway Tree. Then he landed inside this hole. As I mentioned in the Season 1 summary, later in Season 3 this very scene where Boyd is trapped in the hole will be briefly revisited. In Season 3, there is a chicken and the egg situation where a person's present will interact with Boyd's present in the hole. The rope. However, in Season 3, for the viewer and the Season 3 person -- that's Boyd in the past.]
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2 — Elgin is on the bus that arrives in Season 1, Ep. 10. This scene is minutes before the bus arrives in the Town. Elgin is listening to the same song: “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”

[Intriguing. Could this happen to other Townsfolk? They are listening to the music in their cars, and the jukebox plays it as well right before they find the fallen tree? Just a question to put out there, but this is the first time that the connection is made in the Show. I remember Julie had some sort of iPods in her ears. But I don't recall they revealed what song she was listening to. Now that I think about it, Boyd and Abby were listening to the Boat song before they found the fallen tree. Hmm...]

3 — It is raitninig. Bartender Tom exits the bar to empty his trash bucket on the side of his porch and sees the bus arrive in the town.

4. Something unique happens in the Series. Elgin yells at the bus driver to stop the bus. This means he knows what’s going to happen. Another passenger protests his request. Elgin insists they should turn around. They can’t be here. Randall locks Elgin with his arms to prevent him from reaching the bus driver. Elgin is desperately asking the bus driver to stop the bus. “You don’t understand. Bad things are gonna happen if–” Elgin vomits on Randall’s shirt. Everyone is disgusted.

The bus makes a stop in front of the Diner. The bus comes from Michigan.

5 — Outside the Colony House, Jade and two residents try to save as many CB Radio components as they can from the hard rain. Inside the Colony House, chaos. All lightbulbs are shortcircuiting and exploding. Clara’s right eye is injured. Kristi assists her. Clara has multiple glass fragments impaled around her eye.

6 — Jade carries the CB Radio up the stairs to enter the Colony House, but the wet stairs cause him to slide and fall to the ground. He curses. As he gathers himself and turns his body to stand up, he sees the bus in the town, down the hill.

7 — Inside the Colony House, Julie asks Donna why her father ran out in a hurry outside. Jim had told Donna to take care of his kids. Donna witnessed when the voice in the CB Radio called Jim by his full name and threatened his wife Tabitha shouldn’t have dug that hole in the basement of their house.

Donna asks Fatima to get the kids upstairs. As Fatima gathers Ethan off the sofa to take him upstairs, seconds later a very large lumber plank comes crashing through the window. It would have hit Ethan and possibly hit Fatima in the chest had they not left the area.

All around is chaos, and Donna yells out orders. Donna ignores all the shouts coming from Jade. He is fed up and yells louder at Donna. There is a bus parked outside the Diner. Donna stands there looking at Jade in disbelief.

8 — Jim reaches his house and finds the entire living room and furniture has sunk into the basement’s hole. Jim is not aware of the sinkhole. He screams Tabitha’s name and obtains no reply.

9 — Victor guides Tabitha through the tunnels beneath Matthews’s house, where the monsters sleep in the daytime. Tabitha asks where they are going. Victor replies she shouldn’t talk now. They are close. She is going to wake them up. She doesn’t know who he is talking about. Victor insists and tells her they are beneath the town and this is where the monsters sleep. The Boy in White showed him the way. Victor went through the Farway Tree and then he was beneath Tabitha’s house, awaiting for her arrival as the Boy in White asked him to do.

Tabitha finds a suitcase on the ground.

The suitcase has a sticker that contains the words: “New York Fair 1964” — with a planet Earth and two crossed rings. Tabitha opened the suitcase. It only contained a woman’s gown.

[This sticker might refer to a science fair. I checked the other stickers in a photo editor and rotated the upside down image. Some of the stickers in the suitcase I could see: Las Vegas and Texas. One of the stickers is severely washed out. I can only make "llowstone" which might refer to Yellowstone. "Come again soon." Yellowstone is a national park in the northwestern corner of the state of Wyoming, mostly. The park extends into Montana and Idaho, but mostly Wyoming. The park is known for its indigenous archeological sites, the geysers, and the caldera. A dormant giant super volcano. The park is also known for its fauna -- which includes the Bison. Some partial words can be seen in two stickers -- which I assume stand for Alaska and Arizona.

Whether coincidence or not, the Show is drawing parallels or clues. If this suitcase belongs to someone who went to a science fair in 1964, then there might be a relation to the townsfolk that arrived recently. Jade is not only a software programmer, he knows physics. He quoted Einstein and at least 3 other physicist names recently.]

10 — Donna asks everyone who is not hurt to secure the windows. She requests to bring the shotguns. Kenny protests about the need to bring shotguns. Donna confronts him. That bus might have a lot of people unaware of the shitstorm they landed on. They might react to the news they can’t leave. Boyd picked a hell of a time to go on a safari. If things go sideways, she tells Kenny he better step up. He is the Sheriff now.

11 — The bus passengers are outside the Diner in the rain. Randall announces the Diner doors are locked.

[The rain stops. There are 17 people outside the bus. A view of the back of the bus shows there is nobody else in the bus -- except Bakta (the bus driver), Mari (Kristi's fiancé, a pediatric nurse), Elgin, and this other young man named Brick. I counted 21 newcomers, but in Season 2, Episode 3 (00:15:20), Donna says the bus driver answered the bus had 25 passengers.]

The young guy, Brick, asks Elgin why he screamed like that earlier. Elgin says he had a bad dream about this place. He is interrupted by Randall who came with a guns-blazing attitude on Elgin for vomiting on his shirt earlier.

12 — Julie reaches her house. Ellis comes right behind her but he stops to talk to Bartender Tom who is walking toward the Diner. Based on the question, the Bartender has been in the town longer than Ellis. He asks if he ever seen something like this: a bus with 21 people.

[I don't know if there is a pattern or rule of this place. 14 people died at the Colony House in late Season 1. 21 people arrived now in the bus. What caught my attention is that Kristi's fiancé happens to be in this bus. That doesn't feel like a coincidence. The monsters know everyone's name in this place and know personal details somehow -- as revealed at the end of Season 1 when Trudy asked a monster how she knows her name. They know everyone's name.]

13 — Julie storms down the basement stairs and asks her father if he thinks her mom is down in the hole beneath the pile of wood and furniture. Jim asks her to go find help. He freezes in place, worried about her mom. Jim stops his effort to remove debris and hugs her. Jim tells Julie it is time for her to be strong and look for help. Her mom needs her.

14 — Julie reaches Ellis outside the Diner and says her mom is trapped in the basement. Bartender Tom offers to help Julie. Ellis can help the bus passengers. After all, Ellis arm is in a sling and won’t be of any help to Jim and Julie. Tom tells the bus passengers there is a woman trapped in the basement of that house that needs help. He wants volunteers. Of the 21 passengers, only Randall and Brick volunteered.

15 — Donna, Kenny, and 3 people arrive at the Diner in the Volkswagen van. Kenny will unlock the Diner door and bring all passengers inside. Donna will talk to the bus driver. Before Donna gets to her task, Ellis informs her they have some problems. Tabitha is trapped in the basement, and 3 guys are helping out.

Tom calls out to Jim and he is thankful to hear help is coming. However, Jim startles when he sees two strangers with Tom. He didn’t know a bus had stopped at the Diner. Tom asks if she has talked. Jim says no. Tom asks what the hell she was doing in the basement and this hole. Jim merely says she was digging a hole to find out where the electric wires came from. Tom asks an interesting question. What caused the hole that sunk the living room above them.

They begin to remove debris to search for Tabitha, but Jim warns them to make sure they aren’t removing something that is supporting something else or they might trigger another cave-in.

16 — Victor and Tabitha continue to slowly traverse the underground tunnels toward the exit. Off-screen, the Boy in White gave Victor instructions on how to reach the exit. Victor finds 3 rats chewing on what looks like a crow corpse. Tabitha panics and wants to go back to the sinkhole. Victor says no. The Boy in White said they should traverse the tunnels while the monsters slept. Both must be brave.

17 — Boyd yells. He asks if Sara is out there at the top of the hole. She said they would be safe inside this tree. He laughs. This doesn’t feel very safe to him. Suddenly, Boyd hears a man’s voice at the top of the hole. The man asks if he is real. Boyd responds he is real. Is the man above real? — Boyd asks. The man says he can help Boyd if he helps back. The voice asks Boyd to wait. A few seconds later, a rope is thrown down the hole for Boyd to climb.

[As mentioned earlier, the rope was not dropped by the man above. That man is chained to the wall. A person in Season 3 is revealed to be the one to throw the rope down the hole. That person doesn’t know that Boyd is down in the hole. The old man chained to the wall asked that person to throw the rope down the hole. Boyd did not see nor was aware there was another person up there. But from Boyd’s point of view that person would be from his future — which raises many questions about the Series, this place, and how this tower works. So far it is common knowledge that the Farway Trees can teleport you to different locations. The Tower and maybe the tunnels seem to have their own set of rules — but it is not common knowledge yet until Season 3, and not even I know if it is the tower itself. Another theory is the person who dropped the rope down the hole has the ability to dreamwalk through time while suffering seizures. That doesn’t explain how that person can physically throw a rope in a dreamform while at the same time that person’s body was tended by friends on the other end (being in two places at once in different time eras). At the time I am writing this, Season 3 is barely halfway broadcast on MGM — one episode per week. So I haven’t learned the rules of how this happened.]

18 — At the Colony House, Clara shares with Jade an interesting thought. She asks Jade if he thinks they made something angry. The way the storm came out of nowhere while they were broadcasting in the CB Radio and the way the lights exploded felt like they made something angry — she says.

Jade replies he only has one piece of paper left. So he is getting stoned. (Hmm, I see now what he was cutting down to small pieces. Weed. Rolls eyes.) Clara stands up and leaves. Jade tongues the paper to roll his weed, when suddenly he sees the symbol appear on the wall in front of him. A lucid waking vision.

[This symbol's meaning is revealed in Season 2. Jade will find the source. That's a core reveal to the series and to the place's ancient lore.]

Jade rotates his head to the left, after looking at the symbol. Now he looks at an old and dusty puppet on the next sofa. The puppet opens its mouth and screams. Jade is startled and he screams back (the asshole he is) and the vision vanishes. The puppet is no longer on the second sofa next to him. The symbol is no longer on the wall. Jade hasn’t even started to smoke his weed.

[Interesting. I didn't remember Jade saw this puppet in the lucid waking vision. Victor will search for this puppet in Season 3 to attempt to trigger a long-buried memory of his childhood. The puppet belonged to a person he met in his childhood before the massacre caused after two cars arrived in the town.]

19 — Tian Chen Liu (Kenny’s mother) is cleaning the lightbulb debris from the floor and sofas in the Colony House. Ethan gives her a dust pan he found to help. Ethan says there is a lot of broken glass. She asks him to be careful. Ethan asks if she thinks the people who ran away in a hurry are okay and return soon. Tian says he shouldn’t be afraid. She will protect him. He replies he is not afraid. Well, maybe a little. “Sometimes a quest can be scary. And when it gets close to the end, that’s when it gets really scary.” — he says.

Jade comes downstairs and says he guess they are going to sleep here in the Colony House tonight. Jade walks outside, sits by the porch, and lights up his weed to smoke. Ethan comes outside after him and annoys Jade. Ethan informs him that smoking is bad for him. Jade replies it is not [that type] of cigarette. Ethan asks what’s wrong with him.

Jade chuckles and replies: “Gee, I don’t know. Maybe I just spent the last week thinking we might actually get out of this shit box, only to see our entire plan come crashing down around us. Literally.” (asshole lol)

Ethan responds: “So? We try again. Maybe we can try something else. Whenever the Cromenockle failed, he always found–“

Jade: “What the fuck is a Cromenockle? No. I don’t care. You are friends with Victor, right? Do you know which room is his?”

20 — In the underground cave tunnels, Victor and Tabatha reach a cave room with a 1920-60s wheelchair, a 1920s-style bicycle for an age 8 girl or boy, a bird cage probably the same era, and the frame of a child’s cart. In the other image, I can see a baby stroll, a sewing dummy, two tall storage trunks on top of each other, and above them is the puppet,

There is also a very old TV with antenna and two more storage trunks. On top of one of them are 5 dusty books.

Victor discovers one of the monsters sleeping behind the old TV.

To the left, Victor finds one of the male monsters sleeping. Then points the flashlight to an old tower-style clock. It stopped working at 9:12.

Finally, Victor finds the puppet and recognizes it. Victor dropped the flashlight and ran scared — leaving Tabitha behind. She grabbed the flashlight from the ground and searched for Victor. He can no longer see where he is going in the dark. So he sits on the ground, scared. In a trance.

Tabitha asks Victor which way to the exit. He replies he doesn’t know. He got scared. This isn’t the way the Boy in White told him to go.

21 — Back at the Colony House, Jade is desperately looking through Victor’s furniture drawers searching for his crayon drawings. Ethan scolds Jade. He shouldn’t be here. Victor wouldn’t like that. Jade snaps at the boy and says Victor is likely dead. They are silent for a few seconds. Jade apologizes. He shouldn’t have said that. Ethan responds it is ok because he is wrong. Victor is alive. Wherever he is, he is doing his part. Jade asks: “His part of what?” Ethan responds: “The quest.” Jade is confused.

Ethan says: “That’s what this is. It’s a quest, and everyone has a part to play. Even you. Why do you care so much about Victor?”

Jade explains to Ethan that every time he sees something really weird, he sees this symbol.

Jade says he didn’t draw these symbols. It is a notebook he found in the Diner’s storage room. It’s a very old notebook and whoever the notebook belonged to kept drawing the same weird symbol he sees in his visions. The other night, he noticed two pages stuck together. Within, he found this photo of an old man. The child with the lunchbox in the edge of the Polaroid photo is Victor as a boy. Ethan doesn’t know what a Polaroid is.

Jade asks Ethan what does he see in the photo. Ethan notices the old guy is holding the same notebook with the symbols. Jade asks him to continue looking at the photo. What else? Ethan notices that’s Victor’s lunchbox. Jade tells him that the boy is Victor.

Ethan determines if that boy is Victor, then he might know what the symbol means. Now he understands why Jade is in Victor’s room and why he wants to talk to Victor.

Ethan says symbols are important. Especially on a quest. But Jade needs to figure out if they are good symbols or bad symbols. Jade is confused. What do bad symbols mean? Ethan says bad symbols might make people do bad things. Jade says he is a creepy little kid.

22 — Mari helps Elgin out of the bus and stands at the front of the bus to breathe. Donna is explaining to the bus driver, Bakta, what is going on in this town. Bakta asks if she is out of her mind. Donna warns the bus driver if these people leave on her bus when the sun goes down, they will all die. The bus driver is skeptical. She is done.

23 — In Matthews’s basement, Randall, Brick, Tom, and Jim continue to remove furniture and debris from the hole. Jim can now see there is a chamber underneath the hole. They startle when some more debris crashes down from the living room above them.

24 — At the front of the bus, Mari places Elgin’s arm around her neck and helps him walk toward the Diner. However, few steps away from the bus Elgin collapses into seizures. Mari screams for help. Kenny and Julie come to assist her.

[There is a pattern here. Whoever is luring people to find the fallen tree and the crows to arrive to this place is not bringing random people. Ethan's talk is not merely a child's imagination. Ethan talked to Jade about a quest and that everyone has a role to play. Think of archeotypes: caster, warrior, etc. So far three people have had seizures: Ethan, Sara, and now Elgin. Each of them seizure when voices talk to them as a method of communication. In Season 3, Julie also seizures. That's a bit of a spoiler. Other type of people have visions but no voices: Jade and Tabatha. However, later in Season 3, Elgin and Fatima have visions as well. Both see the same mummified spirit in a kimono dress. There are many people that are sensitive to visions, dreams, and such. None of them have died so far. They are part of whatever game or quest is going on in this place. You will learn some interesting stuff in Season 3. Especially, Tabatha and Julie.

As proof of concept, as Elgin's seizures continue merely a few feet away the Matthews's house collapses and traps Jim, Tom, Randall, and Brick.]

Ellis manages to find Randall and helps him out of the crumbled house. Kenny, Donna, and Julie are trying to find a way into the rubble to help the remaining survivors. Kristi and Kenny help Randall sit down nearby. Jim is stuck beneath debris. Tom as well. Brick is unconscious.

25 — In the underground cave tunnels, Tabitha and Victor find another chamber. This one has a strange monolithic tower made of Jenga-like positioned stones. A round ball is thrown by an unseen something. It rolls along the ground and topples the monolithic structure. This disturbs the sleeping monsters far inside the cave tunnels beyond.

The ball rolled from this hole. It seems like some kind of makeshift jail cell.

[Recap: So far we know this place has people-like monsters. We know Sara's voices that commanded her to kill Tobey and Ethan -- their deaths would have helped everyone and also the voices escape this place. Those voices are likely spirits. However, there is another voice that Sara heard that sounded different and allegedly that was Abby's spirit (Boyd's wife) helping them get away from that distant part of the forest. We also know that Boyd saw Abby's spirit in the webbed tree near the Lighthouse. So far between Season 1-2, we have knowledge about 6 different factions in this place: Monsters. Voices. Abby. Giant Spiders. Boy in White. Old guy chained to walls in a tower that doesn't exist in the present. Now we see the introduction of a 6th: this jail-like area in the cave tunnels is probably where the children spirits are trapped. The ball rolling from there means it was a child. Later, in Season 2 and 3, you will discover that Tabitha is able to see children spirits while she is awake. They want her help. Jade will not interact with the children spirits, but in one of his visions he will see their deaths. The symbol is tied to these children spirits. You will learn more soon in these summaries, when I get there.]

Victor finds another monster sleeping. This one likely is in a deep slumber, because the toppled monolith didn’t even bother it.

Tabitha approaches the jail-like cell and a girl spirit shows herself through the bars. Tabatha screams and pants. Victor scolds her. She shouldn’t have screamed. One of the monsters wakes up. As they walk away, Tabatha wonders where the water on the ground is coming from.

The monsters stand up and slowly walk after Tabatha and Victor. Both run away from the chamber in search of the exit.

26 — At the Matthews’s collapsed house, EMT Kristi finishes checking on Randall’s well-being and as she is putting away her tools inside her backpack, she crosses eyesight with Mari, her fiancé, across the road — aiding Elgin outside the Diner.

27 — At the tower ruins, Boyd climbs up the hole thanks to the rope thrown to help him escape.

28 — Tabitha and Victor find the exit and escape the underground tunnels where the monsters sleep during the daytime.

29 — Bakta, the bus driver, asks everyone to go inside the bus. The passengers protest. They are helping the people trapped beneath the house debris. She says they will alert rescue services in the next town. Donna warns that if all passengers don’t enter the Diner right now when the Sun comes down in a few minutes, everyone will die and that will be her fault. The bus driver ignores Donna. Donna walks to the Volkswagen van to grab her shotgun. She shoots the front wheel of the bus. Some people run away scared of Donna. Kenny shoots his gun in the air as well and asks everyone nearby to walk inside the Diner right now. Fatima runs after the people who ran away.

30 — Jim, trapped underneath debris in the basement, tells Julie they must leave them beneath the debris until the morning. To be strong.

31 — Boyd finally reaches the top of the long hole and lies on the ground to rest. The voice says he finally made it. That was such a long climb. Boyd is startled and points his gun. Boyd discovers an old man chained to the wall.

The old man asks if what Boyd is pointing at him is a gun. His eyesight is not what it used to be. The old man says it will make it easy then and asks Boyd to kill him.

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