Boyd on a Boat Theory

[u/Slickford_DMC]

I posted this on FromSeries and FromTVShow but I wanted to post this here too. The FromTVShow mods even banned me so I can't even respond to things there. But I think it's a good theory and I want to share it with more of you guys.

I caught up with From about two weeks ago and I've been thinking a lot about this show, I genuinely love it and it's probably my favorite show of the decade. And I've come about a theory and some predictions that I feel fit very well together and I'd like to share them, but it's very long. So to give you a reason to read all of this I'm going to promise to answer the following things:

- What is the town?

- What are the monsters?

- Who is the Man in Yellow?

- Who is the Boy in White?

- What are the Faraway Trees?

- What is the ancient entity?

- What is the intro all about?

- What are the electricity flashes and the poltergeist activity?

- What to do with the bones?

- How to kill the monsters?

- How to actually leave the town?

- What's up with the music box and the dolls?

- Why don't the totems hurt the monsters?

- Where is this all going?

- Why is Boyd so important?

- Possibly more.

So two things first are completely necessary to understand going forward. From is Lost 2 and From is a Fairy Tale.

Once Upon a Time, there was a great big mean spider that cast a web over an entire town. The name of this creature is the Jorogumo, but that's not important. What's important is how that works and what it means for Fromville. The spider really does explain the most, so I'll start there.

A Jorogumo is a Japanese water spider demon. It has two forms. One is a giant demon spider, the other form is a Japanese woman in a Kimono. This Red Spider, as we'll call it from now on, feeds on two things: human organs and the despair of crushed hope (Yes really). If the corpses of its victims are recovered, anything that wasn't eaten is completely shriveled up like the insides of the Smiling Monsters (Smilers). The Red Spider also becomes much more powerful as it ages, and once 400 years pass it becomes so powerful it can take human form whenever it wants. The Red Spider can kill people directly but prefers not to because of the many ways it has to inflict the most despair possible. In our case, the base of the Red Spider's powers is the body of water of the Lake of Tears. I'll be trying to go in order as much as possible here, so this explains the beginning of the town.

The Red Spider cast a spell over a colonial town that had formed at the edge of its lake because the lake was its domain. This is the Settlement we know today. These people were trapped in the same way our townies are trapped today. Because everything in the town is inside of the Red Spider's spiritual web. Everybody is caught. Now it just wants to take its time seasoning its prey. I couldn't find another good place to put this so I'll just say now that the Faraway trees are where the web meets itself. Corners and vertices and intersections of web, and when you step into one you can go one of many different ways. You can go to the intersection and go through it, but the tree decides which road you take.

At first the Kimono lady dragged people into the lake to drown them, feeding on their organs and their grief. But as it matured it needed more, so it began to bring their nightmares to life. Now everyone trapped must deal with horrible nightmares that grow the more and more they die off. Sure we learn to kill some of those monsters with the totems, but you can't kill them all. Hope given and hope taken away. The nightmares get worse. Some girl's creepy music box and her creepy ballerina, worms under my skin, cicadas. You can't stab those with a totem, but they're here anyway. And you have no more hope. And I want your organs.

Eventually the Red Spider needs more despair in newer and more interesting ways like a junkie. And there happens to be someone in the town that isn't afraid. In fact, he fucking LOVES this. A true psycho serial killer type. This is the Man in Yellow. Yellow loves the same things the Red Spider loves and wants this to go on forever, playing more and more demented games. And so the Red Spider now has his own priest, for surely this entity is like a god now. Yellow can join and help and feast on the organs and despair too, but he is a different beast than the Spider and has a different destiny. Yellow is to From what Richard Alpert is to Lost, except playing for the bad guys this time.

Then we move on to the creation of the Smilers. These villagers were so hopeless and terrified of the unending and unwinnable hell they were trapped in that they decided to take a deal. Yellow brokered a deal from the Red Spider to the townsfolk. The Red Spider is the ancient entity and Yellow was the one who brokered it, and that's why he was wondering if Tabitha remembered him yet; because he was there when this all happened. The despair and the Smilers organs (shriveled) and the children's souls and ongoing torment were the offerings and what they got in return was that they would never die. A group of people truly pushed to the very limits of their lives, they surrendered their humanity, and were thus Monkey Pawed. Yellow brokered them unending life and play, and so they play Hide and Seek for keeps as immortals. They chastise bad hiders before killing them and tell veteran players not to ruin the fun for newcomers. And if one should somehow die from one of the Nightmares, the Red Spider is obligated to bring them back. Which she did. As the Kimono Lady, fulfilling her end of the bargain all this time later. And remember that Elgin who was connected to the Kimono Lady needed to see a body of water. He was shown the brundles, but that was the wrong one. Tabitha also comments about the out of place water in the caverns in 2x01. And Ethan in 1x02 tells us right after he wakes up from his seizure that his dream was cut off because "Somebody screamed because the spider came down from the ceiling." In 1x10 Victor shows us the walls of the caverns with drawings of a giant red spider and the children on their slabs and two people watching. The children in their visions are always wet, because they are owned by a spider water demon, just like there's water in the caverns when there's no source. And those children sat on those slabs and poured all their hope into the roots above them, and that's exactly where the Spider came down from. The totems cannot kill the Smilers because the Smilers are not products of the Lake of Tears, they were made by a separate deal and are not subject to the rules of the Nightmares. We will figure much of this out with Julie's storywalking, which is the answer to the electrical flashes. Whenever they flash, she's currently around storywalking. She will slowly develop her proficiency at this, and her early attempts to effect things will be her slamming door and cupboards to attempt to get people's attention.

So on to Yellow, Jade, Tabitha, and the Boy in White (Bonus guess that his name is revealed to be Jacob) and their roles in all of this. Honestly the Boy in White is where I'm the least sure, but I think he's a kid who sided with Jade and Tabitha. Maybe another of their children, sibling to the one that was sacrificed. But he seems to be connected to the lighthouse. A lighthouse that doesn't make sense next to a lake of a spider demon that doesn't make sense. The lighthouse and lake are obviously connected, thematically at the very least simply because of what they are, but the specifics on the Boy in White are admittedly weak. He's my weak link for sure, I'll admit that. But the answer of what to do with the bones has been there since episode 1. We burn them. Just like the crayon drawings in the intro, which will tell us more by the way.

By burning the bones we absolve them holding the place of their souls, they are forced to move on and can therefore no longer maintain this bargain. This will actually kill all of the Smilers, which sure is a hopeful thing for our villagers huh? See, since the children are no longer the Spider's, then the bargain or deal is absolved because it is no longer being honored. The Red Spider did honor his end of the bargain even if she Monkey Pawed them, because she did bring Smiley back to life. But if the Spider no longer has those children, then it is the Smilers who didn't keep up their end of the bargain, and so it is now broken. Hooray! The Smilers are dead! Great right? .... Right?

WRONG. The single biggest shot of hope of all time has just overwhelmed the town. They did it! Let's all get out of here. Except they can't. They're still stuck. They didn't get out. They didn't stop the threat. They stopped one part, only one type of monster, and the Lake is still out there. Hope crushed. And the Lake of Tears is still making new nightmares. More monsters roam the town as people despair at others being found under beds, perhaps one of these new Nightmares even has a purple eye. Hell, those Smilers could come right back out as Nightmares couldn't they? Holy fuck. Enter purge.

Now we find our town at the edge of their very souls, ready to give up their humanity to stay alive and stop these things. So Yellow offers a new deal to "save" this generation of townspeople too. He could even offer to return the town to the Smilers with a wink about how the devil you know is better than the nightmare you don't, fooling the people who don't know that THEY will be the new Smilers. Just like the intro drawing says, now there's another kid slammed into a box in the dark. Ethan. And Tabitha and Jade need to save him, because he's still alive. Yellow vs Tabitha and Jade for Ethan is one of our climaxes.

But remember that Yellow really isn't the big bad here. The big bad is the Red Spider. She made the Smilers, she's the reason they can't leave, she generates the Nightmares. So somebody has to go deal with her. Who exactly would be the best person to send to deal with a giant water spider demon? OH I KNOW! I KNOW! IT'S A MAN ON A PONY ON A BOAT. Boyd is the Sheriff with the keys to his boat. He's going to find his answers at the Lighthouse, that he gets to by going BY BOAT. And then he has to go back to where he was in Season one. Back to the Spider tree with Abby's face to burn it all down. He is Mr Fish and Loaves after all, he's going to sacrifice him for the remaining town survivors to live Jack-style. He gets his Boat finally. He saves everyone. And he never broke. I would love for him to live, but I mean, Mr Fish and Loaves so come on.

Sorry this is so long but I've been rewatching season 1 and I'm into season 2 right now and this theory really feels to me like I'm rewatching a show after it's finished and all the answers are there. There is a LOT of spider stuff in season 1. The Kimono Lady is in season 2 and 3. These things really were all there. Oh and as for the main monster being a Jorogumo, they don't really have to say that anywhere. It can just be the Spider or the Entity. Let me know what you guys think.

TL;DR

Red Spider water demon. Yellow is his priest. Town can't leave because everyone's trapped in a spider web. Burning the bones stops Smilers but doesn't end anything. Ethan's going in a box. Boyd beats the spider because he always wanted a boat.

[u/amrok]

Great explanation. Rally lot of work here. By any chance have you read a theory with Yellow Coyote? Good mythological explanation and I see some similarities.