It has been a long, winding, weird road between where we started in Season 1 to where we find ourselves in Season 4 of MGM+’s show FROM. And this season, the stakes are higher than ever as the danger increases and the only thing we can do is hope our queer babes make it to the other side.

As a (very) brief recap of what’s going on here: There is a town that is not on our plane of existence that lures troubled people to it and traps them there. When the sun goes down, monsters come and terrorize the locals, and anyone they find exposed and not protected by magic amulets will be promptly eviscerated. We learn about the strange, unsettling town by way of the Matthews family, who find themselves stuck alongside decades of prisoners to the dark magic of this place, people who’ve had to learn to survive what goes bump in the night… and, frankly, each other.

And, in this spooky scary town that puts everyone’s humanity to the test, we have at least four LGBTQ+ women doing their best to survive. Well, maybe 3.5 — Julie Matthews (Hannah Cheramy) had a brief encounter with bi-curiosity but I’m unsure where she landed on that scale. It was a brief moment of “do I want to be her or be with her” that resulted in some classic gay panic sprinting, but it doesn’t seem like she’s had time to unpack all that since then, what with all the threats of death running around. Then we have Fatima (Pegah Ghafoori), who was living her best pansexual life in Colony House (a commune of sorts that lives separately from the main town), making out with anyone she pleased until she fell in love with the sheriff’s son.

And then we have our main queer couple, Kristi (Chloe Van Landschoot) and Marielle (Kaelen Ohm) who are, essentially, this town’s entire medical staff. As a former med school student and a nurse, they are the only ones with the know-how to even attempt to keep everyone alive, providing stitches and as much medical care as they can with the supplies they’ve scavenged from abandoned cars and whatever people drove in with, all in a makeshift clinic that used to be a post-office. (Bonus, the actors for both of these characters are also queer, and in fact we have Chloe Van Landschoot to thank for Kristi being queer at all, and therefore for Mari’s existence.)

The fourth season picks up right where season three left off, and in that crucial transition from the events of the last season to the first few moments of this one, a lot has changed. Most importantly, the little hope they had that they could kill the creatures was dashed against the rocks. So now: chaos. The second scariest thing in this town is now the fact that people are getting desperate. They’re losing hope, and they’re flailing. And what’s not helping? A new car comes crashing into their Hotel California of a town, taking out a wall of a building and eliminating one of the few safe spaces they can go at night, and a stranger among them is threatening what thin fabric they still had holding them all together.

As much as things seem to be falling apart at the seams, there are still a few people with their eyes on the prize. Ethan (Simon Webster) is hoping he can channel that creepy kid knowledge he sometimes seems to have, Julie is using her time-visiting abilities to try to change their fate, and their mother Tabitha (Catalina Sandino Moreno) is trying to solve the mystery of the creepy kids she keeps seeing.

All the while, our dutiful queer couple keeps trying to Do No Harm and patching people up from injuries caused by the monsters or by their fellow humans.

Screenshot from the TV show FROM: Kristi stands with her arm around Mari's neck, Mari holds Kristi's hand that is over her shoulder. They are both looking off screen sternly.
Also Kristi is still in a medical boot so let’s hope there are no foot races against monsters in her future.

I’ve only seen the first few episodes of the season so far, and while Kristi and Mari’s stories are a little bit on the back burner for now, they don’t feel forgotten. They are still there when they’re needed, and called on quickly. Also, the show is continuing a pattern I really enjoyed from seasons past: giving them both their own storylines. One doesn’t exist as simply the other’s girlfriend. Kristi is patient and kind and sympathetic. She helps Boyd get some of his hope back (remind him that he’s a leader, and she “can’t stitch up the will to live.”) Mari is a little quicker to anger but passionate and dedicated. They are both medics who are sometimes needed at two different scenes, and they both have their own independent relationships with different residents… plus also they are girlfriends. And I do relish every brief moment we are reminded of that fact. On one hand, I do wish we got to see them alone together a little more often. On the other hand, part of me wants to prevent them from being too perceived, lest they get eviscerated by the night monsters. Maybe being cute background queers will keep them alive… because at this point, everyone seems to be fair game, and it’s making things all the more terrifying. I wasn’t joking when I said the stakes were higher: people are dying who I once thought had impenetrable plot armor. (Though, I suppose, when time bends in on itself and the supernatural roam the woods, how dead is dead, really? We shall see.) But this is an ensemble show, and the truth is, the camera will likely swing back their way soon enough.

The show has been renewed for a fifth and final season, so we just gotta keep our girls safe until then.

The scarier things get Out There in our real world, the more I find myself drawn to media about survival. About people pushing back against the horrors, about unlikely partnerships and creative solutions. About not losing hope and not giving up the fight, no matter how hard or scary things get. And that’s what FROM gives me. At the start of the show, the people in this town had all but given up trying to escape. They let their world be governed by sadistic freaks and just tried their best to endure it, made themselves uncomfortable, burdened themselves to comply, and told themselves it was the only way to make it through. But when the Matthews family showed up, they brought with them a spark. A spark that lit and spread and suddenly people didn’t want to just sit back and suffer, didn’t just want to get by best they could under their oppressor’s thumb. They wanted to fight back. It’s hard and it’s dangerous and they’re uncovering horrifying truths at every turn, but there’s no going back now. Whatever it takes. They’ll win or die trying, because they’ve finally stepped outside Plato’s allegorical cave and they know too much now; they can’t pretend the shadows are all there are anymore. There is only forward, only through.

And I, for one, am glad that in a story like this, where things are Very Bad but people — broken people, lost people, disenfranchised people — are working together to fight back includes a diverse cast of characters, including but not limited to queer people.

The fourth season of FROM is now airing on Prime Video/MGM+.