‘From’ Season 2, Episode 8 ‘Forest For The Trees’ Review: The Metamorphosis

From continues knocking each episode out of the park as we approach the end of Season 2. While it slumped a little in the first have of the season, it’s back to form these last few episodes. In Episode 8, “Forest For The Trees”, we learn some startling revelations, get a few more clues and teasers, and end on an intense cliffhanger.

The episode opens to Kenny and his mother talking when suddenly their phone rings. This has never happened before. Kenny answers it gingerly, and on the other line a quiet, muffled voice says:

“They touch, they break, they steal. No one here is free. Here they come, they come for three, unless you stop the melody.”

It repeats this and Kenny hangs up. Then he sees a pot on the stove filled with cicadas and rushes over to it. One of the bugs lands on his arm and he cries out—and wakes up. There’s a burn on his arm.

This is the third dream, and I think we can pretty easily guess who the “three” are in the little rhyme that Kenny hears: Maryelle, Elgin and Kenny, though why these three specifically I’m not sure. For his part, Elgin woke up from his nightmare soaking wet, as though he really had been pushed underwater, even though all of that was just a dream.

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.” ― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

The cicadas also show up in the waking world. When Boyd and Kenny go downstairs to check on Smiley’s corpse, the bugs are all over the body. Did the worms transform into cicadas? And what will these creatures do now? Later, when Donna shows up the bugs are gone. “We need to burn that thing,” she tells Boyd. No kidding.

Perhaps the biggest revelation in this episode is Victor’s memory coming back to him when he looks at some pictures he’s hidden away in the trunk of his mother’s car. Throughout the episode we see him remembering his mother. She tells him to stay in the cellar and to be brave. She tells him to make his drawings. This is the last night he sees her. Only when he finds the pictures and realizes that he didn’t draw them, does the memory of his sister return. Now, in the flashback we see them both. His mother was telling his sister, Eloise, to make the drawings, not him. After their mother leaves, the girl runs after her—never to return.

Victor weeps as the long-buried memory returns.

Tabitha learns another interesting tidbit from Victor. He shows her a tower that looks like it could be the lighthouse. He says that’s where the grownups were headed. To the tower to rescue the children. Tabitha has had visions of both a tower (where she was walking up the staircase) and of children—though not the kind of children you’d want to rescue. Still, these could be the nightmare ghosts of the children who were previously trapped in the lighthouse back when Victor was a boy.

Earlier, Jade confronted Victor about the symbol, since Victor hadn’t told him about the ones in the caves. He tells Tabitha later that people shouldn’t ask questions about this place. It only leads them into danger. But when Jade angrily confronts Victor he tells him that every little detail is important, that it could help them get home. “Don’t you want to go home?” he asks him.

“This is my home,” Victor replies.

Oof.

Elsewhere, Jim and Randall try to get the drone to work as a radio transportation device, but it doesn’t pan out. They talk about the notion that this is all a setup. Randall asks Jim if he’s actually seen anyone get killed, and Jim hasn’t. Randall seems to fully believe that they’re being tricked, that there isn’t really any killing going on. Even Sarah’s brother, Nathan, could have been staged. Jim isn’t convinced, but you can see he’s thinking about it.

At the end of the episode, he goes to sleep in the crashed RV so he can better observe the monsters, but when he gets there he finds Randall and Donna. Donna is tied up to a tree. “New plan,” Randall says, and the credits roll.

All told, another fantastic episode, though not as scary or intense as some. I’m glad we’re getting some answers, however small, and that the show isn’t just dropping things like the lighthouse that we really haven’t touched on since Season 1. Victor continues to be absolutely fascinating. His story is so terrible and sad, I just want to tell everyone in Fromville to give him a damn hug! His gift of a jacket to Ethan was really sweet. I am a little worried about Ethan, however. All this talk of children trapped in towers makes me nervous.

I was hoping we might learn more about the Faraway Trees this week given the title of the episode, but no such luck. No boy in white, either. Two more episodes left this season, so hopefully we do get some more answers and keep up this forward momentum with the plot. Then the long, agonizing wait for Season 3.

What did you think of this week’s episode? And does anyone have any theories about the rhyme Kenny hears on the phone? I’m not sure what to make of the first line. I think it’s clear that in order for them to get free of this curse they have to stop the music box somehow. But “they touch, they break, they steal” has me puzzled. Let me know your thoughts on Twitter or Facebook.

As always, I’d love it if you’d follow me here on this blog and subscribe to my YouTube channel and my Substack newsletter so you can stay up-to-date on all my TV, movie and video game reviews and coverage. Thanks!