FROM Season 4 Episode 4, “Of Myths and Monsters,” exposed a lot with Sophia’s plan for Sara, Julie’s theories on story-walking, and Victor’s confession to Henry about Miranda’s death.
But a haunting that settled deep into the bones of the show was Abby’s presence.
A few people wondered online about Boyd’s storyline and the continued nightmares—relegating his haunting to mere hallucinations rather than a foreshadowing of something important he must heed.
But just as Jade told Boyd to stop asking “why” and to ask “why now,” FROM asks us to do the same:
Why Abby, now?
Season 1 Episode 8, “Broken Windows, Open Doors,” was the first time we saw Boyd’s entry into town and where we learned the source of his strained relationship with Ellis.
While Abby is mentioned earlier in the season, it isn’t until Episode 8 that we explore her state of mind prior to coming into town up until her mental decline and death.
Nicknamed “Iron Abby” in the Marines due to her unwavering resilience—the pillars set upon mental, physical, social, and spiritual foundations—her swift decline speaks to a psychological haunting the audience never witnessed but may be explained now in Season 4 in a foreshadowed decline of a current character.
In Season 1 Episode 8, we jump back in time to Boyd, Abby, and Ellis on a road trip with “If I Had A Boat” by Lyle Lovett playing in the background.
This is the first time we hear about the couple’s nicknames, with Boyd joking during the car ride that iron is “rigid and doesn’t know when to bend.”
In hindsight, this may speak to why she was targeted by the town, chipping away at her iron knowing she would break rather than become flexible or malleable to the reality of her surroundings.
“I was just thinking about this dream I had when I was a little girl.”
As we continue to see Boyd haunted by her memory more and more in the current season, we have to ask just two questions:
Are the events a warning from Abby?
Which one of the people will succumb to her fate?
The biggest part of Abby’s storyline is that the town is just a dream. Prior to her death, Ellis mentioned her mental decline and her behavior, but while Boyd was busy being Mr. Fish and Loaves, Abby’s iron began to break.
As we learn time and time again, FROM never does anything by accident, and Abby’s looming presence is anything but.
The biggest connection with her presence, however, doesn’t connect to Boyd, but to Tabitha.
When Ellis catches her in a daze, he asks if she’s okay, and she talks about a dream she had as a little girl—a dream that Tabitha has had her entire life that speaks to the connection to this place.
This also correlates to Julie’s hypothesis that this world seeps and leaks into the real one, causing people to dream of an impossible place just to be trapped within their own nightmarish imagination at a later time.
“The only way to go home is to wake everyone up.”
What makes Abby’s storyline so crucial is that her fate is not an isolated occurrence.
If we allow ourselves to believe Julie’s story-walking theory about the town being the point of origin that bleeds into the real world, then Abby’s claim that “things will be fine when we wake up” is an idea that sparks the beginning of something far more sinister and dangerous for everyone in town.
And if that belief spreads, infecting the minds of other townspeople, the outcome could be catastrophic.
At this point, everything is a giant question mark as we wonder how long it will take for Boyd to recognize the signs or if the town will keep him too off-kilter to notice—just like the wolf that kept him from getting back to Abby in time.
As we head into the mid-season finale, the question is no longer whether the town can break even the strongest of individuals, but how long before the town finds the next piece of iron to break?
If Abby’s strategic haunting means history repeating itself, Boyd may already be out of time to stop it once again.
Stream all episodes now on MGM+ or with your Prime Video subscription add-on. Check out the promo for Episode 5, “What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been,” below.
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© Kivonshe | So There’s That
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