Season 3 of From premiered in September 2024, and after two seasons that had me fully hooked, this one landed as the weakest of the three so far. It is not a bad season by any means, but compared to what came before it, it felt like it was running in place for a good chunk of its runtime. The town is colder this season, the residents are more desperate, and somehow, after everything they have survived, they still cannot manage to talk to each other properly.
This post contains spoilers for season 3.
The Plot
Boyd opens the season feeling the town slip away from him as the weather turns colder and the people around him grow more desperate by the day. Jim and Kenny head into the forest looking for Tabitha, who is off on her own frantic search, and that separation sets the tone for a season where everyone seems to be chasing something on their own instead of together. The town says goodbye to one of their own early on, Fatima's health starts to decline in a way that worries everyone around her, and Tabitha ends up finding help from an ally nobody expected.
From there, the season moves through Kenny leading a group into the forest hunting for food while Donna and Ellis try to talk Boyd out of a plan that could get people killed. Tabitha makes a discovery that genuinely messes with her sense of reality, and Fatima starts questioning whether her unborn baby is even safe in a town like this. When new arrivals show up at nightfall, Boyd is forced into a decision he clearly does not want to make, and Victor spends this stretch digging into memories from his past, hoping they hold some kind of answer.
The middle of the season slows down to deal with the emotional weight of everything happening. Victor has to face something painful from his history, Julie is left trying to cope with her own trauma, and Boyd starts losing the trust of the people he is supposed to be protecting as his judgment gets questioned more openly. Fatima and Ellis are forced into a major decision about her pregnancy, tension builds inside the Matthews house, and Randall, of all people, opens up to Marielle about what actually scares him.
By the final stretch, concern over Fatima's pregnancy reaches a breaking point, Jade follows a trail of clues into the forest, and Julie and Randall try to grab a moment of normal life in the middle of all the chaos. A tragedy forces accusations into the open, Victor manages to recover memories that had been buried for a long time, and Julie and Ethan start digging into the mysterious ruins out in the woods. The final two episodes turn the tension all the way up, someone from the town goes missing, Boyd gets pushed to his absolute limit as time runs out for someone he loves, and Tabitha's journey ends the season on a genuinely shocking turn.
What worked:
Victor's storyline continues to be the strongest thread the show has, and this season gave him some of his best material yet. Watching him dig through buried memories from his childhood in the town, and finally face a painful piece of his past directly, hit just as hard as I expected it to. He remains the character this show does the most right by, and I will keep saying that every season if it stays true.
The season also deserves credit for at least attempting to address the communication problem I have been complaining about since season 2. When Tabitha comes back, there is a moment where it genuinely looks like the show is going to let its characters actually talk to each other and share what they know. That is progress, even if it does not last, and I will get into why it does not last in a second.
What didn't:
They tried the whole communication thing when Tabitha came back, and then nothing came of it. These town people are honestly insufferable at this point. I do not fully blame them, they are traumatized and scared and stuck in a place that keeps killing people around them, but come on. They do not even do anything useful with the information they have, and they still cannot manage to listen to each other when it matters. At some point this stops being a character flaw and starts being a writing crutch the show leans on to manufacture tension that should not need manufacturing anymore.
Ellis is a waste of a character this season, and I will die on this hill. He is only attached to Fatima and barely exists outside of that connection. It is honestly a little pathetic watching him have almost nothing going on beyond his relationship to her, especially when the show has other characters doing so much more with far less screen time. Kenny is more of a son to Boyd than Ellis will ever be, and the show does not even seem to be hiding that anymore.
The season also ends with another massive cliffhanger, which by this point I expect, but my issue still stands. Communicate! My goodness. This season drags a lot in the middle stretch, the questions keep piling up without matching answers, and word going around is that a chunk of the delay and pacing issues might trace back to the 2023 writers strike affecting the writers room before filming started. I cannot confirm that fully, but if it is true, it would explain a lot about why this season feels less tight than the two before it.
Rating
7.2 out of 10.
Season 3 is still watchable, still has Victor doing the heavy lifting emotionally, and still ends on a cliffhanger that makes me need the next season immediately. But the pacing issues and the refusal of these characters to just talk to one another are dragging the show down in a way it was not doing in season 1 or 2. I am hoping season 4 course corrects, because the bones of this show are still strong even when the execution slips.
PS: Kenny is more of a son to Boyd than Ellis will ever be, and I said what I said.
Am I wrong for thinking Ellis has wasted his entire arc so far, or does anyone actually rate his storyline this season?
Tell me if I am being too harsh on him.
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