Andor season 2: year 2 review (episodes 1-3)

Stellan and the rest of the stellar cast of Andor

Andor’s got a novel approach for season 2: each tranche of three episodes is set a year after the last, and covers only a few days. Then BAM: it’s a year later. The next set of episodes will be 3 years later, then 4, the five, which leads directly into Rogue One.

I admit I’ve been really looking forward to Andor season two. I didn’t have much, or anything really, to criticize about season one, so my expectations were extremely high. 

That was a mistake. 

Season two begins with Cassian (Diego Luna) stealing an experimental Imperial fighter craft. Everything, naturally, goes wrong. 

Meanwhile, Dedra (Denise Gough) is attending a Wansee Conference style pow wow led by Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), the lisping villain of Rogue One, and Mon Mothma (Geneva O’Reilly) is throwing a wedding party for her daughter, with (surprise!) Luthien (Stellan Skarsgard) in attendance. Banality ensues.

Oh dear God, not The Space Wedding!

The sets are absolutely astonishing. The production design is top notch. The costumes are sumptuous. The direction is solid. The acting is top notch.

You know where this is going.

The writing did not strike me as being as sharp or incisive as in season one.

The biggest issue I had with episode one came out of left field, and is admittedly an issue of personal taste: Krennic opens his nefarious conference by flipping on a big screen TV and showing… a cheesy Fifties style promo video, complete with anachronistic inflection style voice over. It took me completely out of the Galaxy Far Far Away and back to ours so fast I got universe-bubble whiplash. 

Is there an ambulance chasing lawyer I can contact? 

It brought back memories of that abominable Fifties-style diner in the Prequels, and I say that as someone who absolutely loves diners.

Obviously, there must be some kind of mass media in the Star Wars universe, and I am being unfair. Perhaps they are evoking a 1930’s style propaganda film (Star Wars is set in arguably set in a clunky high-tech analogue to earth in the 1930s/1940s). Yet everything else in Andor is SO pitch perfect! Great care is taken to present a universe that feels like a real place, one with fantastic world building integrity. They’ve made up language, machinery, architecture, technology, music, fashion, cultural practices, the works… and then they present a video that feels ripped from Fallout.

Ah well.

The wedding went on longer than I’d have liked, but that’s a wedding for you. Points for painful verisimilitude. The in-universe music was jarringly Top Forty. Another quibble, but I’d have preferred they used otherworldly, unusual music to play. That’s kind of a franchise thing, going back to the Catina band.

You need a drink? I need a drink! This wedding feels all TOO REAL.

Andor’s misadventure was… interesting. It touched on factionalism, but the depiction fell flat for me. It struck me as awkward and forced. 

The highlight of the first arc, to my great surprise, was my favourite Lives of of the Fabulous and Fascist pairing: Dedra and Syril (Kyle Soller). Turns out, Syril and Dedra have been shacking up since their high adrenaline escapades on Ferrix. Now, they’re preparing for something far worse: the dreaded introduction dinner to Syril’s ever charming mega monster mom (a gloriously cringe-inducing Eedy Karn).

Syril’s mom is all about layering in subtext… with a trowel. Or a fire hose.

Dedra mentions that she grew up in an Imperial orphanage, yet lacked for nothing, to which our gravel voiced terror-mom trolls: except a mother’s love. Not missing a beat, Dedra deadpans back: ‘We didn’t know what we were missing.’

I laughed and laughed and laughed.

It was, hands down, the funniest line in Star Wars since Han quipped, ‘I know’ (which, incidentally, is a line change dreamed up by Harrison Ford, who didn’t like the original, ‘I love you, too’ We owe a lot to actor innovation when it comes to George’s dialogue). 

Can Syril, Dedra, and his mom get their own spinoff sitcom? Pitch it as All in the Space Gestapo Family. Or is it more like Fascist Frasier?

Who knew they could be so funny?

The hit new sitcom spinoff: Fascist Friends

Genevieve O’Reilly also gets some juicy material to play with; sadly her character has to push feelings beneath the surface, so her performance is more subtle, and requires a lot of pained expressions. Poor Stellan has little to work with, and little screen time. He’s largely wasted. Diego is reactive, overshadowed by a random, rag-tag rebel rabble.

Other bright spots: the casual, day to day oppression of Imperial rule was convincingly depicted. Absolute authority leads inevitably to abuses; not everything has to be space battles, lightsaber duels and backflips. That’s not to say you don’t need them from time to time! It is called ‘Star Wars’ not ‘Daily Imperial Indignities’, after all.

So… would I recommend Andor season two, year two? Yes, but with caveats. It’s a slow burn, and there are some… jarring choices. As a peek into the day to day in the Star Wars universe, it’s a must watch. 

But season one was better. 

Let’s see what year three brings.

Recommended: Severance

Is that why I have a headache?

Severance follows the dual lives of people working for the mysterious corporation Lumon. They've 'surgically' (with some kind of chip implant) had their worklife and personal lives separated so that both are lived in isolation. It reminds me of a short story where a character only experienced driving. That was the only portion of that individual's life they got to experience.

Here it's thoroughly dystopian and gets increasingly weird as mysterious are piled on: the main characters wife, we learn, was killed, leading him, in his grief, to agree to being severed. Yet all is not as it seems, and Lumon is up to no good. 

It's in the satirical aspects that this show really shines, repeatedly skewering corporate workplace absurdities. Little things like Waffle Parties and the bizarre Wellness Sessions, complete with rigid rules and penalty points, make the show a delight. 

Season two, which recently dropped, dives into the larger mystery. I didn't care much about it, as it all seems so senseless I'm not even inclined to speculate as to the what's and why's. There's not enough for me to hang a theory on, or even inspire me to.

On the other hand, there is a 'corporate retreat' team building send up, which is very fun. 

The acting is top notch; in many ways, Severance is an actor's playground. The cast gets to depict two subtly different versions of the same person, and do so with aplomb. One of the highlights of season two sees a character conducting a converation with his severed self via video camera. And you really get the two different viewpoints coming through. The acting, directing, and writing here is nothing short of fantastic.

The season two climax, while I don't get why the antagonists are doing what they're doing, still has emotional resonance, thanks to my being personally invested in the struggle of the characters. Their circumstances I may not fully understand, the conflict may be muddled, but their personal peril, trauma and choices have impact. 

On the downside, Patricia Arquette's character I cannot stand, and season two spends an entire episode with this loathsome former manager. She's meant to be unlikeable, I think, so she's doing a great job at that, but the writers need to give her more to work with if we've got to spend an hour with her. Hers was the worst written episode of the season, with noticeably clunky dialogue and painfully on the nose exposition. 

Having said that, it's still better written than a lot of shows out there. 

Ben Stiller's direction here deserves special mention. Apparently he's quite a tyrant on set, but the results speak for themselves. This is a stylishly shot show, with wonderful sets that border on the surreal. The antiseptic office space is Kubrickesque. I've never seen a show set in an office look so good. 

I don't have any expectations for season three. I don't have the faintest idea what is really going on, but I'll be tuning in to see what happens to the characters, and if their doomed romance(s) can defy seemingly impossible odds.

Half-lost comic jam continued

What does it all mean??? Your guess is as good as mine.

Why is there so little honesty in publishing?

Pinocchio: is he in music, film, TV, advertising, politics, gambling, books or comix? You decide!

Same reason there's little honesty in Hollywood, music, or advertising: it's a business, and the impression of success creates success. Fake it until you make it, as they say. It's about manipulating human psychology and presenting the proper facade to do so. Politicians, demagogues, and Demogorgon do the same thing. 

You only want weaponized authenticity in marketing. 

Roughly ten years ago I attended TCAF and took in a few panels, including a publisher one. I have never forgotten what they said: if an artist said, publicly on the internet, that comics was hard, that they struggled, that there was no money, etc, they would be blacklisted and declared persona non grata. These publishers were absolutely adamant that they would not publish such people. They only wanted people who put forward a sunny, optimistic happy-go-lucky impression of the comics publishing industry, and anyone who said otherwise would be banned from their imprints.

Fortunately, my own publisher believes first and foremost in publishing cool sh*t, and has never sought to muzzle me in any way. The art comes first. I have always respected and been grateful for that. 

But I've never forgotten that TCAF talk. 

And you know what? 

I get it. 

We 'artistes' can be emo. Moping, wallowing in our own conflicted and emotionally tumultuous nature, and outright depression is endemic in the arts and is not a draw for the general public. Well. For most, it isn't. I've listened to normies talk about poor souls who are quite obviously suffering from depression as 'freaks' to be ostracized, and worse. That said, some comics DO dive deep into analysis of the twisted human psyche, and have built healthy careers exposing their own innermost vices and flaws. 

The world is a funny place. 

Different strokes for different folks.

But for a general audience, positivity sells. Whether it's right or not to edit yourself publicly is not the point. The point is that, if you want a career in comics, you have to manage your public persona and appear (and act) in a cooperative way that makes you someone people want to work with. 

It's also good to remember that many, if not most, publishers are not necessarily artists themselves. Some are business people, and for them, comics are not art, they're a product, like shoe laces, widgets or flea powder. A commodity. The publisher wants to make money, hit the best-seller lists, and sell options to Hollywood; they don't want miserable, cantankerous 'artistes' spoiling the gravy train with all their self-indulgent whining. They'd rather shut them up with threats of excommunication.

The resultant sunny picture leaves publishers and the public happy, and with higher sales, hopefully the artist as well. At least with success they can afford antidepressants.

Have you ever seen Pleasantville?

The down side of all this is that young, aspiring artists (and actors and musicians) get an unrealistic idea of what their aspirational field is really like, having drunk deep from the hype machine. The hype machine, however, is NOT for artists. All the puff pieces and posturing is to help sell product. It's part of the game. It greases the wheels of commerce, it has a function, but it's got absolutely nothing to do with what it's like to actually work in the field.

Remember the Me Too movement? Good ol' Harvey, champion of independent films! Little bit of cognitive dissonance there now. Comics has its Harveys, too. And the music industry... the less said the better.

If you're an artist, don't pay attention to hype, fame or fortune. Those aren't good motivators for artists. Well. Many? I don't create according to spreadsheets, focus groups and audience analysis, and can't imagine authentic art coming out of such an approach. But then, I'm a small press indie kind of guy. I'm not doing billion dollar blockbusters. And if you're investing millions into a project, you want to protect your investment and make it as sure a thing as possible...

Have you seen Matrix Resurrections? 

If you want authenticity, don't look to advertising. Go behind the scenes.

It's like sausages. 

You don't want to know how they're made unless you really have to. 

Recommended: American Primeval

Wait... is he using that kid as cover?

American Primeval follows a young woman and her son as they try and cross the Rockies, to reach her husband on the West coast. Well. That's what she says, at least. Between her and her destination are mountains, Indians, the US Army, and the Mormons. 

Guess which faction is worse?

The show is gritty and grounded, although some of the characters are unreasonably kick-ass, but they stop short of going the full John Wick. 

The wilderness is a character unto itself. The wilderness is beautiful... but everywhere humans settle, it becomes a disgusting pig sty. The inhabitants are covered in mud and shit, and only the West Coast immigrants are, momentarily, clean. 

It a grimy, messy, essentially lawless place, where life is cheap, and people are murdered over a nasty look. Hell, the cold, indifferent wilderness looks like a cuddly tabby cat compared to the treacherous monsters living in the forts.

Which tracks with Pinker's The Angels of Our Better Nature. Violence in the American Midwest was insane, both against the Indians and inside the initially male-only settlements of frontiersmen. Once women began to migrate out west in larger numbers, the levels of violence fell dramatically. 

The Mormons present as civilized and devout, but only on the surface. It makes them even more horrible than the brutal pioneer savages they look down upon. 

For the Mormons (at least as they are depicted in the show), God is a fig leaf.

I confess I've never really looked into the early days of Utah. I knew the Mormons settled there, but I had no idea they fielded their own army, or that they were quite so irredeemably nasty. It's a story that's not been told before in a big budget Western, far as I know.

Highly recommended, if you like gritty and uncompromising dramas. I'm not keen on Westerns as a genre in general, but this one was captivating.

I don't think the Mormons are going to be terribly keen on it. 

Rex Libris vs. The Zombies

Rex vs. The Mob

I always rather liked this shot from issue... 6, I think? 

Feels like a lifetime ago.

It mixes modern vector with a little lithograph grain, for a slick stylized look. 

So where are the pictures of this new mystery book?

(That's me drawing my book. I've really changed over the years.)

Good question, convenient imaginary interlocutor. 

In the age of AI, when Google and Meta scrape everything online to feed their insatiable AI beast, which gobbles information to grow ever larger and more formidable, is it a good idea to put anything, personal or professional, online? 

It's a conundrum. You need to promote, but to promote exposes your work to being eaten by the AI.

AI is the first form of (virtual) 'life' that feeds on information to grow. For some reason, it triggers a connection in my mind to an old Star Trek episode with a monster that fed on emotions. 

I can't seem to find the place in Instagram to turn off the AI training, it's such a convoluted tunnel and the screens I see eventually don't match the instructions. So... I'm just not going to be posting on social media much anymore.

For my wondrous random thought blog, I intend to keep it light, post little, more a hint than a full set of material. 

Look, a hint! Or is that showing too much?!?

If AI keeps improving at an exponential rate (a dubious proposition but nevertheless possible) it will eventually surpass us, at which point what I do will be obsolete whether it's trained on my crap or not. It'll produce material better than the greatest human writer, far far ahead of anything I'm capable of.

I'm betting it won't, that it'll hit a ceiling, at least for awhile, until new models and quantum computing eventually put AI over the top. 

That'll hopefully leave me time to pump out at least a few more books before they take me out behind the barn. 

Old collaborative comic jam

 One done from... 2017 I think. Intercontinental!

]

Surprising what you find on old hard drives... 

Print prep progresses positively!

I'm sure you are all relieved.

A work around for bitmapping the artboards has been found that doesn't involve spending thousands of my hard earned blood-and-sweat stained dollars. 

Someone notify Secretary of State Rubio!

No, I'm not running Photoshop from an external drive, you shouldn't do that, it's not right and proper, or advisable, so of course I tried that. Adobe wouldn't let me choose where to download the program. Fastest cancellation evah. 

No, no, no, instead I brought an old laptop back from the dead, complete with it's installed copies of Photoshop and Illustrator. All the way from 2015! I kid you not. It's like that movie Ice Man, or whatever it was called, where they resuscitated a frozen cave man. Timothy Hutton was in it, and he was very good. It didn't end well though. Oh, yeah: spoilers. Hopefully my revived laptop from The Before Time will fare better than that poor, out-of-time caveman.

If you're as disinterested in tech minutiae as I am, you may not be aware of this, but all the ports and connectors in the last ten years have changed. Not only that, AirDrop wasn't a thing back then. Positively hyperbolic pre-historic!

Hopefully I haven't brought back long dormant viruses that will destroy civilization. 

Whatever. 

My need was greater! 

So I've been porting pages back and forth between iPad, desktop, ancient laptop & Photoshop, desktop & Affinity, Dropbox all day. 

My double spread working format has panned out. It'll make the layouts feel more connected. Affinity positions layers exactly in place when the file dimensions are the same, which has been helpful. 

I've also streamlined my system a great deal since the last time I did this. Good file construction hygiene is key! Of course, I ALWAYS do things properly, with utmost attention to detail, never, ever cutting corners. Why, I don't even know the meaning of cutting corners (it means to do things in a half-assed expedient way out of laziness)! Never have I done that, which is why this process is so pain free and requires no milk & Reeses Pieces to motivate me. No, I'm eating an apple and guzzling V-8. 

Trust me; Would I lie to you, anonymous imaginary internet reader? Never!

I should be done this messy process sooner than I'd thought.

Which brings me to a little lie I told earlier: Print prep is not the worst part of the process. 

That would actually be promotion!

Ah, what necessary evils we must endure in this crazy universe of ours...

Now... more caffeine! 

Random demon designs

For Rebel Angels, I had to come up with an entire murder worth of demon designs. I'm talkin' a helluva alot. Nothing too mainstream, mind. I didn't just want a bunch of boring bat winged, horn headed uglies. No, sir! I wanted deeply weird, Hieronymus Bosch type monstrosities that mixed horror with humour, that wore pointed hats and had frogs emerging from various orifices, replete with hands on legs and feet on heads and roses instead of noses. I wanted cats and dogs living together!

That's Bosch. 

Yet he is not the only dark conjuror of trippy demonic beings that aren't. Who dares challenge the King of WTF? Why, none other than the esteemed Louis Le Breton, who matched his fiends with sins and The Lesser Key of Solomon. 

Oh, how well I know these gentlemen in my imagination.

Between Bosch and Breton lie all my favourite demons. Well. Most. Everyone can be inspired at least once, after all. 

This is a selection of unsung background demons from Rebel Angels, for no particular reason whatsoever, other than I found them on my hard drive. They aren't top line (hence their background status), but hey, even a mediocre character has to make a living. 

Pre-decapitation evil chicken running with axe

A Furry in hell

Guilt hack

Helmet clanker

Pattern pate

Wheelscreecher

Slime hat

Mr. Spiketail

Forget the Roman Empire, why do I keep thinking of Harrison Bergeron?

It is a mystery.

But it's well done, and has Sam from Lord of the Rings in it (somehow he's taller here, must be trick photography), as well as that Austrian Prince from The Sound of Music. 

Give it a watch!

Time to tighten my headband...

Cover of the new book... done!

Tis done, baby! Other than some text refinements and t and i dotting...

And yes, it is upside down. 

This went through a number of iterations. My first approach didn't work at all. Neither did my second. Not even my third. It burned down, fell over, and sank into the swamp.

But my fourth attempt! Ah, that started to come together. Embellishments built up until voila, it was rolling into the flow state and done before I knew it.

The title text still needs to be worked out. Alignments and such. And the colour... it's gonna be dicey, doing a purple cover. Like the Spanish Inquisition, purple never turns out as you expect.

I haven't done a purple cover, though, other than one issue of Rex Libris, and that was more magenta. I've had black and white covers, red covers, green covers, yellow/gold covers, but not a purple cover. Okay, I haven't had a blue cover either, but I wanted an Imperial Purple for this. Well, at least purple, the colour of so-called royalty, for... reasons which will become apparent. 

Now, back to my print prep nightmare. This is the part I hate the most. And I mean I really, REALLY hate it. Alas, it's a necessary evil, and we must all suffer for our art.

Apparently, Photoshop on the iPad doesn't cover bitmapping or greyscale or anything, you know, useful. Downloaded and deleted the app immediately. Totally useless. 

At least it was free.

The new book interiors are done: booyah!

I finished the interiors of my new book on the weekend. 

Whew. 

It's taken significantly longer than I'd hoped. 

Now I have to do all the print prep (and the cover).

Unfortunately, ProCreate is an RGB program only, and doesn't do bit mapping, so the files can't be used to print from without adjustment.

I also have some tones, and gradients, in the images. Those parts have to be separated out from the black and white parts, so they don't get polarized, and then laid back in.

Ugh. 

My machine doesn't have room on it anymore to install Adobe Photoshop, so I'll need a new machine and a Photoshop subscription, just to prep the files. Of course Adobe charges you for an entire year, even if you're using the program for a month, which I would be. 

Why? 

Because that's Adobe for you. 

Rebel Angels promotion page

Came across this in the ol' archives: 

These days I'm working more in ProCreate and ink than I am in Adobe Illustrator. 

The medium definitely shapes the creative process.

Predictions for From Season 4: Change is coming!

"We may even get a new cork board!"

As Season 3 of the Paramount Plus TV show From ends, the town is engulfed by winter, after 50 years of stable, consistent warm weather. This cannot portend 50 years of winter... as all the inhabitants of Fromville would die of starvation, being unable to grow anything. We did cycle through fall pretty quick, so I imagine spring will arrive early in Season 4... along with a lot more. 

I believe the seasons are now changing because the system is about to update its roughly 50 year cycle. 

Remember the changing of the weather comes shortly after the arrival of the two cars on the same day (50 years since this last occurred), as well as the explorations of Tabitha, Jim and Jade. They've pushed the limits of the web laid by the emotion vampire-spider that created it. This could also cause the emo-spider (or Man in Yellow) to update the trap's dressing to something more contemporary.

When this happens, I suspect that some new modern buildings will appear, that the overall geography may alter in some way (not the core area which is built on a real site in Nova Scotia, but perhaps areas around it). There was once a river in the area (as shown in the cave drawings), which is now gone, presumably replaced by the road. The lighthouse was there even then, which assumes a sea or ocean nearby, but that's long gone. So the land itself changes over time. Think about Victor measuring the movement of the trees.

The new buildings may even get modern appliances... flat screen TVs and perhaps even WIFI! Actually, no, that would be too useful, and the phones there already don't work, unless it is to be leveraged by the web's evil entities. But there will be more modern stuff... perhaps only there to torment.

The changes will extend to the monsters, too, which will upgrade to modern attire, as they are not really from the 1950s. The cave drawings don't fit that at all: these beings are ancient. The drawings suggest the tragedy of the sacrifice of the children occurred centuries ago. As such, the monsters are 'updated' to reflect the images in the minds of the trapped humans, whether they present as pioneers, civil war soldiers, or 1950's archetypes. 

In Season 4, they'll present as modern people, but be just as creepy. And if they do update, that will explain the disconnect between how ancient the drawings in the cave are, and the much more recent attire of the monsters. It's just a replaceable facade... or more accurately, camouflage. Their dated garb right now is a dead giveaway to survivors: it signals stay away! But if the vampies are in modern dress, will survivors know to run, before it's too late?

More importantly, this will give the Man In Yellow a chance to update his god awful, tattered wardrobe, and return in a slick billionaire's suit, the better to exploit and torment ordinary citizens.

Papa needs a new suit!

The faces the monsters wear may also change, becoming the loved ones of the surviving trapped humans, the better to deceive and demoralize them. They are lures and deceivers, used by the vampire-spider to trick survivors. It used Tabitha to lure in Victor's dad. That's why she wound up in Maine... that's where the vampire-spider wanted her to go, it knew she'd contact Victor's dad, and that allowed it to bring him into the nightmare, too. This was it's plan all along; the gravy on top is that her return caused even greater despair amongst the Fromvillians. The Entity (spider-vampire, Man in Yellow, whatever) also brought in the significant other of paramedic Kristi Miller (Chloe Van Landschoot), presumably to cause her emotional turmoil and crush Kenny's spirits. The vampires get great pleasure tormenting Boyd and trying to break his spirit... that's far more important to them than just torturing and eating him. Jade is going mad thanks to how senseless the whole place is... so the next iteration of the town may make even less sense than it does now.

It's all a great big deliberate mind f_ck... which could be a fun meta commentary on Lost.

The Man in Yellow / vampire-spider, if they are in fact the same entity and not a group (the Boy In White certainly seems autonomous, but also linked to this hell bubble... yet he was the only entity Tabitha saw in the real world), seems to feed on suffering. It doesn't want to eat everyone, not physcially; rather, it feeds on their fear, despair and emotional turmoil. 

When it updates its web/trap, it will offer a mix of positive and negative. The buildings are like decorations in a fish tank (which is why they have no functional wiring, it's all a front, a Potemkin Village; this is also why there is a motel sign and pool and no motel). It wants the inhabitants to remain in the box, feeding it delicious fear, and to keep that fear feast going, it has to give them enough tools and resources to survive.

When the two cars arrive, bringing back Christopher / Jade and Marina / Tabitha, it marks the beginning of a new cycle. When that happens, the reincarnated pair are coming back once more to save the children. As such, they are a threat to The Entity, and might end the Hell Bubble (Don't let Ellis hear you calling it a pocket universe), so it upgrades things to make it all more difficult.

That's my guess, at any rate.

What do you think will happen in Season 4 of From? Plunk your theories in the comments!

"I'm out."

From: Analyzing the symbols in the cave

I tried lightening and increasing the contrast on some frames to see if that helped clarify things.
It doesn't, at least not much.

I love symbols, and From has a bevy. Not only do Victor and Miranda paint up a storm of pictures, the evil creatures paint their narratives in their caves. At least, Victor assumes it was the monsters who painted them. 

Some of the pictograms are easy to decipher, others... not so much.

This is my take on what they might depict.

Let's take it as a given that the tableau goes from left to right. 

The far left side of the mural, showing the river. Has this been supplanted by the the road?

At far left, we see a river with three boats carrying 2-3 people each (8 in total). There is forest on either side of the river, and 3 large conical objects that might be stones, all in white. They may reference the red stone circle (prior to it becoming red). Below this is a large red structure that looks a little like an Inukshuk, but has rays going from either side of the top: this is the lighthouse. 

At the right end of the river is a massive tree, taller than any of the others, and in black, rather than white; possibly the tree the children poured their hopes into, for all the good it did them. Above are two red curves cupping an empty centre, matched at bottom by two similar curves, but this pair is ringed by trees. Possibly cave entrances/exits. Could be Faraway Tree exits, too, but then, why would one have trees around it, but not have a tree motif incorporated around the curves?

The boats (canoes?) are the only mode of locomotion depicted in the entire tableau, which suggests this was the original way to enter the Hell Bubble. The river has since been replaced by the road we know so well.

At the end of season 3, it groes cold and snows, after decades of warm, stable weather. That there is a landlocked lighthouse, and no longer any river (or sea) nearby, suggests that the changing of the weather might extend to the geography itself. The buildings may be replaced, and new buildings may appear. 

We already know this is a curated space (Tabitha was let go to snag Victor's dad and bring him back, Boyd was brought in to organize the survivors, the priest to give them hope, animals appeared out of the forest to provide sustenance, etc), and the geography has changed before, so why not again?

I don't think the monsters painted the mural. This was painted long before the 1950s, likely back in the days of fur traders and Courier de bois. The drawings look more like tribal pictograms than what an educated person from the 20th century would scribble. 

That raises the question: are the monsters the originals, or new iterations? If they were created centuries ago, is their Fifties garb an affectation? Do they 'reskin' themselves to unsettle more modern inhabitants of the town? 

The circle with three roots, the iconic symbol Jade sees in his dreams, and that Miranda paints, is next. Beneath it are 7 white rectangular sacrificial slabs, one for each of the seven children. Below the slabs are 2 figures slightly to the left, and 8 figures to the right. Note there are also 2 more figures in the upper left, just above the circle symbol, which are easy to miss. They may represent the archetypes Miranda and Christopher, in their 'original; past life, fleeing from the sacrifice. They may also be the two below who are to the left, perhaps suggesting they were trying to undermine the sacrifice. 

There are 8 white figures in the canoes, and 10 figures beneath the circle (albeit 2 are slightly separated from the 8). The number of figures varies across the tableau, so it's hard to say if this has any significance. 

Next we have, at bottom, a tree, out of which fly four crows or ravens; beside it, towering over everything, is the Big Bad: a crude, menacing shape that seems to have 4 legs and two stubby arms. It's blood red and outlined in black. This is the demonic being to which the children were sacrificed. Did it also create the pocket universe? Or was it trapped here by another power? Not sure. But the pocket universe could be akin to a spider's web, designed to trap prey, so the Big Bad can feed off their fear and pain. 

To the upper right of the Big Bad is a black square, out of which fly 11 white birds. Not sure if the colour use here is significant or not. 11 does not match the number of any of the previous figure sets. These are likely the crows that appear at the fallen tree on the entrance road.

Below the box are two figures, holding hands. They are off on their own here. Likely MIranda and Christopher ancestors, continuing their flight. 

To the right of the Big Bad: crops, red figures, and infinity

To the right of them is a forest at top, with a white house, and beneath it rows of crops, surrounded by red figures, some of which appear to hold spears. These could be aboriginals, or they could be red because they are the monsters. There are 14 figures in total. Why are they surrounding the crops? Are they farming, or are they raiding? Not sure. The white house could be one of the abandoned houses by the second food source, the one with the freaky warding heads on sticks. But there are 3 houses there, not one. So I am not sure. 

I think the mural was painted long before the modern town was plunked down, like decorations in a fishtank. This seems to represent the original tragedy, which occurred hundreds of years ago. The big problem with this reading is the garb of the monsters: if they are immortal, you'd think they'd be wearing pioneer garb, but they aren't. If the Big Bad grants immortality to people who sacrifice to him, what happened to the earlier generations of monsters, the ones from centuries ago? Did they make a different compact? And yet, it is explicitly stated that the children were sacrificed so their parents could live forever, so the monsters are the original sinners. Their costumes then make no sense, unless they are projections or something. 

In the far upper right are two figures painted in white, holding hands. Again, Miranda and Christopher. Beneath them is an infinity sign with a sidweays line through it surrounded by 'glow' lines. I suspect this represents Miranda and Christopher being tied together as the two sides of infinity, jointly recycling through this ancient trauma/crime. 

The lighting is honestly terrible, and my fidgeting in my phone app hasn't helped much. It's hard to make out detail, and I may have missed things. 

Finally we have the talisman stones (below). It depicts two people overlapping, with what could be a large belly, possibly pregnant. On the left side is dawn, on the right side, sunset. Around them is a ring of trees. The figures protect people in houses/structures from attack, so it could be the spirit of life/birth, or it may just be the merging of Miranda's and Christopher's spirits. Note the monsters twisted pregnancy into birthing Smiley, so it could be a larger thematic element.

From: The New Lost

Oh no, it's The Joker!

Yet another Mystery Box in a Bottle show in the same vein as Lost, Dark, 1899, Yellowjackets, and their great grandaddy, the kids show Land of the Lost.

All throw mysteries about like confetti, but not all deliver satisfying answers.

Part of the fun of watching a show like this is trying to put the puzzle pieces together and gain a deeper understanding of what the show is about. Lost famously dropped the ball at the finish line, 1899 got cancelled after one season, while Yellowjackets burned through my goodwill even faster; Dark is the only one that stuck the landing.

Will From?

I have no idea, but it’s a highly addictive, bingeable show: I went through all three seasons over Christmas break. 

It’s about a town from which there is, seemingly, no escape. The road goes in, and as you leave, you find yourself entering again. It’s impossible, a mind bending mystery for both the audience and characters to ponder. 

Google Maps image of the town of Fromville; it includes production facilities and other roads out. It was built from scratch in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Yet another Mystery Box in a Bottle show in the same vein as Lost, Dark, 1899, Yellowjackets, and their great grandaddy, Land of the Lost.

Not being able to leave unfortunately is the least of the drafted inhabitants problems: of higher concern are the smiling, easy going fifties archetypes who stroll about town at night, issuing bland platitudes and inquiries… until they get close to you, and then they morph into lamprey mouthed horrors and rip your face off. Okay, okay, they actually leave faces intact, they just disembowel their prey, sometimes after playing with it, like a cat with a mouse. A deep rooted sadism lies behind their cheery demeanour. 

Aerial shot of Fromville: Colony house on the hill at top, and from right to left on the main strip: the church, various houses, the diner, the post office, the gas station, the barn. Production facilities are along the bottom edge.

Residents avoid being torn to bits at night by putting a small rune stone (otherwise known as talisman stones) by their door: so long as its hanging, the ‘vampires’ cannot get in. How very convenient! A show about unwashed, smelly, dishevelled, desperate people hiding in dirty bolt holes would be unappealing. The vampires don’t even try to force the windows, even though they have superhuman strength and are practically invulnerable: they shrug off bullets like raindrops. 

The town is presided over by Boyd Stevens, a 30-year army veteran who’s got a lot of experience at managing chaos, having set up and managed bases in the world’s worst trouble spots. Boyd sets the place in order: he’s the one who finds the stones that allow people to live in the houses, rather than trying to hide in random nooks and crannies, with nothing but hope and crossed fingers to protect them. 

Map hanging on the wall of Boyd's Post Office/Police Station. Note the circles in the top half by the sides. Not sure what those represent. The water holes perhaps?

So as insane as the circumstances of the town when the show starts, it’s a step up from what it’d been. We enter the story 96 days after the last ‘incident’ (ie. horrible death), with two vehicles: one carrying a tech founder, Jade, and his minion, and the other a camper van carrying the Matthews clan: Jim, Tabitha, Julie (16?) and Ethan (6?). They almost crash into each other, naturally: this show thrives on drama and danger as well as mystery. 

Victor knows this best: he's been in town since he was 8, when his mom and sister, and all the other residents, got butchered in the streets. Victor, now middle aged, is really weird. Go figure.

The Town

The town is very small: one main street, with a church, several houses, a diner, a motel sign beside an empty swimming pool (other than the crashed truck in it), a gas station, a post office that serves as a police station, and a barn without a farm house. It’s an odd mix of buildings. 

They’re augmented by Colony House, up on a hill outside town, and a small high school that serves as a hospital. Season 2 adds an automated lighthouse and ruins that revert to a building when entered by Boyd or Julie. Season 3 introduces 3 abandoned long cabins further out, surrounded by spooky wards.

The church is the oldest looking structure in town, possibly hundreds of years old, going by the look of it, probably the same era as the abandoned log cabins. The diner and post office look the most modern; the decrepit gas station is maybe 1930s. Colony House looks like turn of the century architecture, while the high school is probably from the 50’s or 60’s. 

The town can be viewed on Google maps, but it’s not quite the same as the in universe one. You can see a model of town differs from the real world, eliminating roads and adding rugged terrain behind the gas station. Or is the model a giveaway that this is all an experiment presided over by Kenny?

Model of Fromville. Note the deletion of the road going south (lower left) and the addition of rugged forested terrain north of the gas station. The high school can be seen upper right, but it's not in the same position as it is on the map in Boyd's office.

At first I thought this might all be some kind of virtual simulation, like Harsh Realm (oh yeah, spoilers), but season 3 has disabused me of this now quaint notion. The show’s firmly set in the supernatural, which means no logical explanations are necessary. Fantasy can do anything, but that said, it’s far more satisfying when the fantasy world follows rules we can make sense of.

So let’s join Dale and dive into the mystery pool!

SPOILERVILLE AHEAD

Spoilers, I say spoilers, ahead!

What we know:

We learned at the end of season three that the vampires (Yes, I’m going to call the creatures vampires) sacrificed children to a demonic being in exchange for immortality. Like a classic genie, the demon gave them what they asked for, but not quite what they wanted. 

Jade and Tabitha are reincarnations of a married couple that died trying to liberate the children from their purgatory, the last time two cars came in on the same day, some 50 years earlier. I had been betting on Tabitha actually being Eloise, but she has a mom (introduced in season 3, on the phone), and as yet there is no indication she was adopted.

According to Victor, when the seven children laid on the stones to be sacrificed, 'they poured their hopes into the roots above that formed the symbol, and the roots became the (Farway) tree." The Boy in White tells (Christopher) he has to go through the tree, but Christopher wouldn’t listen, that jerk. So Victor tells his mom, and she goes off and gets promptly killed by Smiley the Joker fan. Cue 50 years later, when Tabitha and Jade arrive, reincarnated, to do the whole cycle all over again. 

...yet mysteries still abound: 

1) The number of people in town seems larger than the number of houses available. Is there another street somewhere? Doesn’t seem to be. The extras seem to change from show to show, too. This may simply be an issue with sloppy or difficult production issues.

2) Boyd and Kenny both carry badges, but there was originally no police station in town: it was post office. So where did they get the badges? Where did they get their guns? Where did they find the keys to the buildings?

3) Why is there a motel sign without a motel? Were the buildings pulled at random?

4) Why don’t the creatures set fires and burn the town residents out of their homes? One good fire would take down the rickety wooden Colony House. There’s no fire department. The creatures are clever and will lay traps. They seem to understand technology. They also seem somewhat robotic, like they are running on limited scripts, which limit their initiative. They could smash the greenhouse, kill all the animals, burn the crops, but they don't. Do they need the humans as a food source? They went 96 days without any fresh meat, though, so it doesn't seem to be a sustenance issue. So why do they kill people? Shits and giggles? Are they simply sadistic? They live such incredibly empty, barren lives, wandering around town tapping on windows and making banal comments, trying to lure people outside so they can eat them. What a seriously crappy immortality. 

5) All the vampires wear 1950’s and 1960’s themed clothing: milkman, cheerleader, librarian, nurse, mechanic, sixties twiggy, cowboy, jock. Yet there’s no postman in the set, no diner cooks, no waitresses, farmers, priests, high school teachers, or police officers. There’s no medical building in town, yet there's a nurse. So… are the town buildings a mish mash lifted from different eras and plopped down together in a pocket universe? Did the post office workers not go along with the immortality thing? Did the nurse work out of town? Would it have been common to commute in rural mid-century America? Why don’t the buildings match the vampires roles? Do the vamps have names? One called herself Jasmine. What about the others? Why not label them? How many are there? I have so many questions.

6) Father Khatri arrived first. He gave the few desperate residents hope. Boyd came next: he provides order and some measure of normality. Jade and Jim follow: one a tech guru, the other an engineer, who can empower the residents in all new ways. Were they chosen for that purpose? Is there a deliberate selection process? If so, why did the gods that be get angry when they started to experiment? Or were they chosen by different entities (The Boy in White?), ones at odds with the powers that be? 

7) Speaking of which, who’s the Boy in White? He looks like he walked off a cricket field, and not at all like a child who escaped being sacrificed. Is he a good spirit in opposition to Yellow Suit?

8) The old white guy in the cheap yellow suit seems to be the dark power behind the whole place, and he’s as worn and rough as the boy in white is clean and sparkly. Yellow Suit looks like he just stumbled out of a dive bar after a week long drinking binge, with an attitude born of a hangover from hell. This bodes well for next season: they’ll very likely toss out a few crumbs relating to his nature, now that he’s appeared in the flesh. Who is he? And more importantly, why is he orchestrating all of this? It seems like a lot of work for someone who can't be bothered to have his suit cleaned. Just saying.

9) Jade had a vision of an angry Civil War soldier, along with a bunch of dismembered troops hanging from a tree in bits. He also saw an early English colonist (circa 1660) nailed to a tree, and, later, drinking blood out of a skull, because that's just what you do when you're an apparition. This area has been messed up for a long, long time. 

10) What was lurking around the log cabins at night? It wasn’t the vampires, so what? Mystery goats? Giant spiders? Ghosts? Production staff? Fans exploring the site? Moose? There are a lot of moose in Nova Scotia.

11) What’s with the spiders? Boyd goes through a forest wrapped in webs trying to reach the lighthouse, rather like on Guam, which is overrun with the eight legs. 

12) What the heck is with the whole music box subplot, and the ballerina? That has to be the whackiest, random thing in the show so far. It was more goofy than spooky. And why did it bring 3 new people into the not-ruin, and subject them to yelling? 

13) Who the hell is Martin the Marine, the guy tied up in the ancient ruin (in its intact state, which can only be accessed by collapsing screaming and having an epileptic fit, apparently). What’s with his magic worm infested blood that kills creatures and births cicadas? 

14) Why is Randall the only one to keep seeing the cicadas? 

15) Who's maintaining the magic lighthouse, and why was there a toy ambulance on the stairway along with playing cards? Is it because that's what will bring Tabitha back to From in the following season? It's a portent, right? Why does getting pushed out of the lighthouse teleport you to a park in Maine, even though it's clearly Nova Scotia?

16) Why is the place shifting to winter from fall so suddenly, after being stuck in summer for 50 years? It wasn't winter outside Fromville... is it now winter there? Is this going to be more of a giveaway that something's not right, when newcomers arrive and find themselves switching from summer to winter, all of a sudden? Mind you, instantaneous temperature shifts can be very hazardous to one's health...

17) Why do the lamps and telephones have no wires, just wire wrappings? Why do these empty tubes go straight down into the earth, to the caves inhabited by the monsters? Why are the electrical outlets useless?

18) They have running water... where do the pipes go? Are the stoves and ovens electrical or gas?

19) What do they do for soap? Shampoo? Toothpaste? Cleaning dishes? Laundry? Why are there no laundry lines outside, or drying clothes inside?

20) Why doesn't every house have a garden? 

21) Animals simply appeared in the woods, a few cows and a bunch of goats, but where did they come from? There are only 2 cows, which is not sufficient as a breeding population, and it's been 50 plus years since the massacre of the town when Victor was a child. Those would be some very old cows, inbred younguns, or out-of-towners. It's like the place is being stocked occasionally, like pouring food into a fish tank. Something introduced the animals. Who? Or what? And why? Are they trying to establish some kind of (semi) functional equilibrium between the vampires and the towns people? 

22) Why are some people seeing ghosts of dead characters? Khatri and the bartender, for example?

The whole thing with the music and the bottle trees, into which the children poured their hopes, is pretty… bonkers. Jade worked out the tune from the notes in the bottles, then played the music on Victor's violin, which summoned both the children and the Man in Yellow. So.. the bottle tree mystery is kind of sort of solved, but I don’t feel particularly satisfied. Maybe an apertif would help? If this is the kind of answer we can expect for the rest of the show’s mysteries, I’ll be nonplussed. 

That said, I have enjoyed the acting, the mysteries, and the drama so far, so maybe this is all about the journey, and not the destination. 

From: The Drinking Game

Every time someone says to another character, 'it's not your fault' or 'everyone's just doing their best', take a swig. You'll be drunk in no time.