Who Is the Man in Yellow and Other Things We Learned From the Season Three Finale of MGM’s ‘From'

(Warning: Spoilers ahead. Obviously.)

So. That’s it. How could that be it?

How could that be it for another year?!

::Gets handed From season four release date::

Two years??!

Well, why don’t you just shove me through a Faraway Tree and let me hibernate in concrete?

Now, to be fair, the official release date for the next season of From has been simply given as ‘2026’, which could mean as early as January 2026 (please?), so perhaps we won’t have to wait quite that long. Regardless, it will feel long, because in typical face-punchingly frustrating From fashion, the season finale of season three packaged some of the answers that it finally deigned to give us with oh-so-many more questions.

So, like any good emotional support group, let’s process some of this televisual trauma together!

Thanks, as always, go to my From peeps on Reddit, in the r/FromTVEpix, r/FromTVShow, and r/FromSeries subreddits, for being a place to vent, reflect, and speculate about who or what Martin is (maybe he’s the friends we made along the way!).

We’ve had theories galore, so now here are some things we learned in the From season three finale.

The Man in Yellow!
We might as well start with the big one. First glimpsed in Miranda’s painting collection in Camden, Maine, the Man in Yellow was an instantly and obviously threatening, yet-to-be revealed presence. Martin’s ‘tip of the spear’ comments about the monsters have now had some follow-up, as an old man with black eyes, wearing bedraggled yellow clothing, sauntered out of the woods in one of the show’s most effectively unnerving scenes, to threaten Jim and Julie. As we’ve seen previously, the town of From seems to operate on some sort of tit-for-tat/balance maintaining dynamic, as efforts by the townsfolk to escape or fight back are met with targeted violence or terror that aims to restore the status quo. We don’t know quite who he is (demonic evil middle management?) aside from the voice on the radio in season one, but the Man in Yellow’s appearance is almost certainly a part of that dynamic, as he himself tells Jim that knowledge comes with a price, before effortlessly ripping his throat out as punishment for…

The bottle tree numbers
RIP, Jim. You died doing what you loved: Not listening. So goes the meme, anyway. I don’t actually agree with it! I’m one of the people who doesn’t think that Jim necessarily deserved all that contempt he got over the past two seasons. Yes, he became quite short-tempered and could come across as dismissive, especially towards his wife, but you know what? Let’s not forget that at the start of the show, Jim was one of the most innovative and determined inhabitants of Fromville, constantly brainstorming and trying to come up with a way of escaping. And what did the town do in return? It possessed his daughter, almost had his son stabbed, and it made him think that his wife had disappeared and most likely died (at best). And this is a man who has already lost one infant son! No wonder he regressed a little bit and became somewhat tunnel-vision obsessed with protecting his family! RIP, indeed Jim, you briefly returned to your best self before your end, helping Jade and Tabitha figure out a key component of the town’s mysteries: The numbers in the bottle tree weren’t dates or coordinates—they were musical notes; musical notes corresponding to a lullaby that used to be sung/played to one of the doomed children of the town.

Anghkooey means ‘remember’
Finally, finally, we know! The cryptic word ‘anghkooey’ that the ghostly children have been badgering those who can see them with for several seasons finally has a meaning. It means ‘remember’. As hilarious as it was watching the show MVP that is Jade (alongside Boyd, natch) snap and throw a tantrum this episode, yelling at the town/kids for not being more clear with their cryptic instructions, it was a relief to have the answer to this riddle. The children want those who can see them to remember. But remember what, exactly? Well…

Tabitha and Jade and the town that went bad
One of the biggest reveals in an episode full of them was that Tabitha and Jade are reincarnated versions of not just Miranda and Christopher, respectively, but of a couple from the original iteration of the town (dun-dun-duunnnnnnn!). As we find out, some of the inhabitants of that town (we still don’t know when that might have been exactly) made a type of infernal pact: In exchange for immortality, they would sacrifice their children. In all likelihood, this damned the town, and it explains the slabs the ghostly children are seen lying on in Jade and others’ visions. The original incarnations of Tabitha and Jade refused to go along with the sacrifice, and tried to save their daughter. They failed, and she is one of the ghostly children now. The bottle tree lullaby is one they used to sing to her.

The Kimono Lady is not good, nor is she Fatima from the future (lol)
I just couldn’t help myself in referencing that second, far-fetched theory. Regardless, there did remain some ambiguity up until the very end over whether the kimono lady was a force for good or not. Spooky appearance and near-drowning him aside, she certainly had poor Elgin fooled. Lessons learned: Nothing the town conjures up should be trusted (even Father Khatri’s apparition—at first clearly just a manifestation of Boyd’s conscience—is proving a bit sus). Instead of being a guardian angel helping to get the townsfolk home, Kimono Lady is actually a demonic doula, helping to shepherd along the twisted process of immortality that the town was granted/cursed with…

The monsters can’t die
Yeah, sure, it looked quite final when Boyd took out Smiley with some killer blood worms. Plot twist: When one of the monsters dies, they’re simply reborn through a warped and accelerated pregnancy process that—as poor Fatima found out—one of the town’s human residents has to go through. I guess that’s one way to be immortal. We wanted immortality; you said: ‘Best I can do is pocket dimension, horrible monsterdom, and hijacked pregnancies.’ Fair enough.

Julie is a ‘storywalker’
Hinted at in a previous episode where Julie tripped back through the timeline and bootstrap paradoxed herself into throwing Boyd the rope in the dungeon well, it has now been all but confirmed by both Ethan and the Man in Yellow sequence that Julie has the ability to travel (at least) backwards through time. Ethan is convinced this makes her a ‘storywalker’—someone who can visit, but not change the events of, other chapters of the story they’re all in. Judging by Julie’s comments during the Man in Yellow’s ambush, she doesn’t take that as read, and she spends considerable effort trying to save her dad from a lethal case of open throat. Will she succeed in the end? I for one hope so: Justice for Jim!

There’s no way Eloise is dead
In a wrenching and tremendously acted scene (take a bow, Scott McCord), Victor poured his heart out to his father over the guilt that he’s been carrying for decades: He blames himself for his mother and sisters’ deaths. In all that sea of raw emotion, however, a nugget of story hint bobbed: Victor admitted that he is not entirely sure that the bits of body he buried in Eloise’s grave were actually from his sister. There simply wasn’t much left. We know what that means: Eloise is still out there somewhere. Maybe somewhen! Could she be a storywalker too? Victor did say a lot how she was always good at hiding.

I’m sure there’s plenty I’m forgetting here, as this was an ludicrously packed season finale of a show that has many of us firmly in its grasp, but all these answers—alongside the clear ways the town is changing, for perhaps the first time (the Man in Yellow’s appearance, snow, the Boy in White growing older, Tabitha and Jade anghkooeying)—makes me even more excited for the next season of From than I was heading into this one. We just have to wait until 2026 to see how things develop, including the most important matter of all: Just how long will Jade’s beard get?!