From Season 2 Episode 8 Forest For The Trees Explained- Locust Symbolism, Nightmares, Victor’s Memories, And A Dangerous Randall

We are missing something. In the idiom “Missing the forest for the trees,” you are hyper-focused on the details and miss the big picture. It means you need to step back and look at things differently. This is especially crucial considering trees are moving all over the place when not teleporting people to and from locations with abandon. Instead of everyone focusing on their individual problems, they should share information and work together. It has been a complaint of the season as a whole. This town of maddening individuals hides too much from each other, and it is beginning to bite them in the ass hard. By the end of From Season 2 Episode 8 everyone is in peril, and one character has snapped.

Everything is about to change. We have known for a while that things were changing in Fromville. We just didn’t know what that meant or how drastic the changes would be. Things seemed pretty bad before with nightmare creatures walking through town at night, but there were rules and talismans that kept people safe if they strictly adhered to them. There were wild cards with Sara breaking down and Boyd’s blood worms, but primarily those were self-contained problems. From Season 2 Episode 8 changed all of that when the monsters at night became the least of the town’s problems. We are building to the season finale, and all roads lead to nightmares of the sleeping and waking variety.

Everyone is working in teams again to find a way out. Kenny and Boyd are reluctantly working together. Tabitha and Jade work together until he scares Victor, and Tabitha calms the troubled man. She gains his trust and finds he has a lot of terrible secrets he has been keeping since he was a child. Victor had a sister named Eloise, and she ran out the night their mother died. He couldn’t save her and has felt sad and guilty since then. This explains why he is so traumatized. It would be bad enough to lose your mom, but feeling as if you failed to keep your sister safe would be horrific. Everything he has done since has been to keep her spirit alive subconsciously. She was the one who drew, and he took up the mantle after she died.

When Victor takes Tabitha to the pictures his sister drew in the car graveyard, he remembers what happened on the night everyone died, which is heartbreaking. It also is illuminating. Tabitha sees a picture of a tower just like the one that Boyd saw in the woods. Vicor says this was where his mother went. He said she went to save the children who were trapped there. Is this tower the same place Boyd met Martin? Is there another tower where children might still be imprisoned? Are the creepy children Tabitha sees projections from the minds of the children stuck in the tower? What if the children’s nightmares fuel this terrible place? They act like a battery that becomes stronger the more children are connected to it. If this is true, Ethan is either in big trouble or the key to saving them all.

What dreams may come

Something is causing the town to have nightmares that are of the Freddy Krueger variety. The music box that Boyd saw now appears to many people. Kenny sees it, and Elgin, Sara, Boyd, and Mari have all seen it now. Whatever is happening in town, it is using their minds against them. It’s almost as if the town has leveled up, and now they have to fight against themselves as much as the night creatures.

Kenny dreams about someone calling him on the phone in his home at the beginning of From Season 2 Episode 8. That person tells him to change the melody before something comes that steals and breaks everything. After he hangs up the phone, locusts fly out of the pot his mother is using, and one lands on his arm. When Kenny wakes, he thinks it was just a dream until he realizes he is burned where the locust landed on him in the area.

Later when Boyd and Kenny investigate the strange noises coming from the basement where the monster’s body is kept, they find locusts swarming just like the ones Kenny dreamed about. Their dreams are coming to life. Later when Boyd tries to show Donna, the locusts have disappeared, and she tells Boyd to burn the body. Kenny and Boud do, but it begs the question of why she suggested it. Is she scared and has seen way too many episodes of Supernatural, or is she trying to cover something up, as Randall suggested?

Elgin didn’t get in the tub last week, or nearly get drowned by a desiccated monster who looked like Fatima. It was yet another dream that almost killed him. They are no longer safe inside, protected by the talisman. Something has found a way to reach them behind their protected walls. When they all discuss it, they decide they need to sleep in shifts now to protect against nightmares coming to life. Is this the next level in experimentation or something even more significant, as posited by Jade, who poses Chaos Theory as an explanation?

The symbolism of locusts

In many cultures, locusts are considered harbingers of bad luck and disease. They bring death and destruction to livestock and crops and precede disaster. Locusts are also considered punishment by God, as in the bible. Curiously in other cultures, they are good luck. When they come to us in dreams, they mean disasters are coming and to turn away from self-destructive behavior. Considering that those in Fromville aren’t ever safe now, I’d say the bad things aren’t just coming. They are inside the house. The locusts in From Season 2 Episode 8 don’t appear to be signs of prosperity but of death.

What is wrong with Randall?

Randall and Jim work together to try and contact whoever Jim talked to earlier. They are a strange and dangerous duo. Both are paranoid and rush into action, but Jim is a thinker, not an aggressor. Unfortunately, sometimes the brightest minds fail to see how their actions affect others. This is why Jade is less than patient with Victor and why Jim fails to see that he is planting seeds in Randall that can’t be unsown. It’s like an evil inception that, once inside, wreaks havoc. Jim should have seen the warning signs. Randall told him he wouldn’t show restraint and joked about his crazy ex-girlfriends, but what if it wasn’t a joke?

By feeding Randall’s paranoia, he has created a ticking time bomb. He has inadvertently set the unhinged man on a deadly path to prove that none of this is real. Randall is questioning everything from Sara to Donna and the dead bodies they have found. Jim may think they are going to spend the night watching from the safety of the RV, but Randall has other plans. He kidnaps Donna and ties her to a tree. Is he intent on torturing her for information she probably doesn’t have, or does he intend to use her to prove no one ever really dies in Fromvile? Will Jim be able to talk him into letting her go?

Boyd and Kenny have a plan. They are going to make poison bullets and hope they prove that the tainted bile can be weaponized. It may not matter as much as they hoped now that their nightmares are coming to life. How do you fight against something that doesn’t exist? They all hear locusts as a man covered in blood runs out of his house, asking for help. Did the locust relocate to this man’s house and attack someone else living there? Did Randall go crazy and kill someone? Whose blood is on the man? Did the man have a nightmare and kill his housemate? All of these horrible things are possible.

Hope and despair are opposite sides of the same coin in From Season 2 Episode 8. It gives some strength and makes others desperate. It galvanized heroes like Kenny and Boyd. It makes Jim and Jade think harder about solutions. It fills Victor with dread, and it drives people like Randall mad. Ideas are tricky things. As frustrated as I am with Donna and Boyd keeping secrets, maybe they are right to do so.

The only thing everyone has going for them right now is their advanced healing abilities. Even that could be seen as a problem, though. Why do they heal so fast here? Is there something to what Randall says? Maybe he’s deranged, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. What if it is all a dream designed to scare them into extreme behavior? Executive Producer Jack Bender assures us at the ATX TV Fest, there is a plan. We will just have to trust and hope that the writer’s strike is resolved soon and MGM+ greenlights the third season. Find all our From coverage here.