The second season of From ended with the closest we’ve been to answers. Tabitha Matthews had seemingly been pushed into the world she knew before being trapped in the show’s haunted town. The season premiere, entitled “Shatter,” finds Tabitha and the family (both blood and found) she had to leave back in town struggling with this development.
*SPOILERS AHEAD!*
The season premiere dives head first into these surprising struggles. Despite leaving the splatter fest behind, Tabitha is clearly still traumatized on top of figuring out how to rescue the others she left. The demons who physically hunted her family are now metaphysically haunting her as she wanders around what we’ll soon learn is Camden, Maine. Catalina Sandino Moreno is riveting as a survivor looking for answers. Even in broad daylight, she’s still haunted by that town. Inside, you can tell Tabitha is wrestling with the memories of those who may as well be dead as far as she knows.
Tabitha’s pool of resources isn’t exactly deep right now which leads her to go to the obvious place people go to when thrown out of their homes… church. This show’s relationship with religion has always been interesting (hi, Father Khatari’s ghost!). We leave Tabitha as the priest urges her to open the lunch that Victor made her in the lunchbox that he has carried since childhood. The heavy emotions she has been feeling are lifted when she sees an address that ultimately leads to Victor’s father (Robert Joy).
Photo: Jesse Redmond/MGM+
Again, religion provides some clarity as Father Khatari (Shaun Majumder)’s maybe ghost appears to Boyd (Harold Perrineau) who is struggling with his encounter with the town’s monsters last season. Alarm is the best way to describe what’s in Boyd’s voice as he reckons with surviving being tortured (and that they couldn’t “break him” as he put it in the finale) and decides to fight back.
Dark times just get darker as Boyd contends with the town’s crops going bad on top of a food shortage. Night begins to draw as Boyd discusses eating the livestock that has provided them milk and eggs with Donna (Elizabeth Saunders). This leads to my favorite part in the episode after young Ethan (Simon Webster) walks in on this conversation. Ethan’s reaction is to ask them to kill his favorite goat first, so it doesn’t have to watch his friends be killed. It made me wonder if the monsters ever had similar conversations about the townsfolk.
The livestock storyline also gives the monsters a chance to lay a trap for Boyd and Tian-Chen Liu (Elizabeth Moy), where they end up killing Tian-Chen in front of Boyd. The monsters did this in response to Boyd’s boast that the monsters didn’t break him. It is shocking to end the premiere on such a targeted attack from the monster who have been known for their ambiguity.
New episodes of From air Sundays on MGM+.
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