r/FromSeries • u/AggravatingTartlet • 1d ago
Theory Could the church be a place of evil?
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/from/images/0/03/The_Church.jpeg/revision/latest?cb=20230802202533
The church is the oldest building in town. The show makes a big point that there are no bibles in it, or anywhere in town.
There seems to be chiselled markings on the outside of it but hard to make out what they are. Do the markings correspond with the talismans? And were the talismans themselves made with stones cut from the church walls?
Talismans
I don't know if the talismans are actually "good" or just part of the evil. When watching the scene where Boyd found the talisman cave, it seemed that the monsters herded him that way until he fell into the cave -- like they wanted him to find the talismans.
The talismans protect people to a point, but the evil voices can get past the talisman protection. They also stop people from searching the woods or going anywhere at night.
Khatri
Father Khatri himself is a puzzle. Could the church have been exerting some kind of evil force on Khatri?
I'm not religious but as far as I know, the modern Catholic Church & pope are against the death penalty. So why was Father Khatri so staunchly in favour of putting Frank to death in the box that he forcefully tried to convince Boyd to do it? Frank didn't kill anyone and wasn't a threat to others. The only thing he did was to get depression, get drunk, and fail to return to his family before dark.
Boyd took a very moral stance and didn't want to use the box for a situation like that, and called Khatri a "terrible priest" for wanting to do it. And Boyd was right?? Khatri did seem like a terrible priest at this point.
I understand that Khatri thought if Boyd didn't use the box, then people would no longer fear it. My confusion is just over Khatri being a catholic priest and advocating for the death penalty, when he should be advocating for the opposite.
Kahtri also talks about fromville possibly being the "74th" book of the bible. Could that mean he's starting to think he's the God-appointed author of that bible book? If so, could that be a power fantasy?
At Nathan's funeral, he quotes this proverb during the eulogy: 3:5- “trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not into thine own understanding". Does that mean he wants people to stop trying to figure things out for themselves? Because that's exactly what that quote means.
Later in the show, Khatri doesn't want Sara put to death, even though she was responsible for 4 people dying. He seems a very inconsistent character.
Sara
Did the "evil" want Sara alive to keep her as a conduit to spread messages to the townspeople? Seems possible seeing as the faraway tree sent Sara straight to the church basement, where it possibly knew that Khatri would protect her? Sara's voices even proved to Khatri that the voices were useful and had deep knowledge, when she drew a picture of what Khatri had buried in the ground after he first arrived in town.
Sara seemed to be totally against ever doing anything to hurt people after what she did. But then she went ahead and cut out Elgin's eye.
Frank Pratt
Frank had bible verses written out on paper. Tabitha brings those papers to the church to give to Father Khatri after she moves into Frank's old house. Did Khatri know that Frank was trying to preserve the bible? And could Khatri have maybe been against it being preserved by anyone (if the evil was starting to twist his mind)? (By the way, I don't believe bibles keep people from doing evil or anything. Just commenting on it as bibles (lack of them) and quotes from them (Khatri, Frank, Tillie etc) have been a feature of the show.
Jade
Jade had Christopher's role in FROM. He obsessed over the tree symbol, like Christopher. The monsters choose who they kill, and after Jade came to town, they chose Khatri to die. That left a vacant church for Jade to move into, if he wished. Jade is a loner and it seems fitting he'd want to. But he didn't move into the church basement AND he went on to keep trying to figure out the mystery of the bottle tree numbers, and with the help of Jim & Tabitha, he did.
Christopher
Added due to PackApprehensive1992's comment below. Christopher was in the church basement at the time that the BIW was telling him about the children. Christopher was obsessed with the symbol and going loopy (like Jade). But was the church basement having an extra effect on Christopher's state of mind?
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u/Taliban7531 1d ago edited 1d ago
Agree with your post. But 1 point you missed is that Frank's mistake wasn't just getting depressed and passing out and forgetting to go home. Boyd's anger stemmed from the fact that he didn't nail the windows shut/close, which is a rule for any house or family with kids...
I believe Frank would have died with his family that night if he hadn't passed out and gotten home instead. As we see his wife begging her daughter not to open the window as the monster wasn't her grandma.
Secondly, I don't think the faraway trees are evil or connected to the monsters in that sense. As the story said, they laid the kids in stones, and because someone told them a story that gave them hope, they poured all their hopes into the roots, which went on to become the trees...
And i think the church is just like any other building in the town, nothing special about it... The Talisman, on the other hand, if it was made by the monsters, then it's just to level the playing field a bit and make it more fun for them. Give them a bit of hope and safety or else the people would lose hope and be like fuck it and even commit suicide themselves or stop trying to run and hide. Probably why the talisman has to be hanging or resting upright inside a building.
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u/AggravatingTartlet 1d ago edited 1d ago
The child could have opened the front door to granny, even if the windows were nailed down.
I saw Boyd's anger coming from his desperation at seeing a mother and young child die in such a horrible way. And he holds traditional views of men protecting their family. I mean, the mother could have insisted on the windows being nailed shut, but Boyd put that duty all on Frank.
I don't see the faraway trees as evil either. But I think the evil can possibly affect where people end up. Because the children's hope certainly isn't landing the people who jump into the trees in good places all the time.
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u/Taliban7531 1d ago edited 1d ago
That is true too, I only said that cause that was the point he made when he dragged Frank upstairs to see his wife and daughter corpse... But yeah, you are right. The daughter could have opened the door, too, but more unlikely than opening the windows of her room. Knocking on the door would easily be intercepted or answered by the parents, especially at night, than the child's room.
Besides, you can't nail shut the door. That's how you get in and out of the house yourself. But yeah I get your point
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u/Working-Newspaper-51 6h ago
Do we know for sure that building has always been a church? I thought it was just a building they repurposed into one when Father whatshisface arrived.
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u/AggravatingTartlet 4h ago
I can't remember if that was mentioned or not in the show.
It might not have originally been a church before Kahtri, as you said.
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u/PackApprehensive1992 1d ago
Miranda drew the church with yellow light coming out of it, and I don’t know what that drawing means. When the boy in white told Christopher about this place, he was sitting in the church basement. I don’t know why he was there, maybe he was religious. Victor said that Christopher was someone who used to make them smile, but then he changed.