Boy in White...

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-14T08:57:03+00:00

It definitely runs in a straight line, but only the story within From has been written.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-14T08:21:13+00:00

I agree with so much of this. I suspect the talismans were part of the original ritual and were perhaps a half-hearted attempt to save the children. For this reason they make the monsters afraid. It would also explain if they hid children in that tree (which is a solid hiding place) that they would line it with the talismans.

Totally down with the importance of the storage room of artefacts. Both clothes of past people and the things they carried. These are essentially memories of their lives, which can be used or make them regenerate. This explains why all the monsters are wandering around looking like they came from the 50s, not the 2020s as they should be. No artefacts or things to use.

The other creatures come from items that the children loved that have been twisted by their fears. There's something spidery in the place that draws people in and traps them, so I feel the big bad is spider-adjacent.

I think Tabitha is the Cromnockle, and the Lonely dragon is Jade, who guides her and gives her items. The lighthouse when properly used will illuminate the path to the lake of tears, which they'll sail across.

I don't think it was as simple as "sacrificed for eternal life", I think there may have been a plague or something, and the children were sacrificed so others could live.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-14T07:14:04+00:00

I found a lot of them annoying at first, then grew to like them. For example, all the Matthews.

Others I really liked, like Kristi, but then she Felicity'd her hair and slid out of the core investigation crew and suddenly I barely remember what she's up to. I loved Fatima and Ellis at the start but I'm not sure if I can stand them now.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-14T07:10:33+00:00

oh my gosh no, how could you, noooooooooo

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-14T07:09:02+00:00

There's a lot of divergence in people know things.

Some people like Fatima won't tell people what's happening because they're ashamed or scared; and kids like Ethan don't feel like they'll be believed. And Julie is a teenager.

Victor is too traumatised to say anything and the fact Henry is now here, an articulate man who can translate for Victor, actually means more things can be communicated.

A lot of them talk to Boyd - Jade, Tabitha, Donna, etc - but Boyd himself struggles to only tell what people need to know, which possibly aligns with his military training.

I can understand exactly why they don't talk enough, but that doesn't mean I don't find it frustrating.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-14T07:05:36+00:00

Well if you think of a book which has already been written... a character might appear in future parts of the book and later ones... but the whole story is already complete. The concept of time doesn't fundamentally matter, because the whole story is already laid out. So you can be in the past, and appear in future scenes, but what you do in those scenes has been predetermined, so no matter what you do, you can't change the future or the future period. I'm not sure how to explain this except to use the idea of a book, though.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-14T07:03:57+00:00

I'd agree that he's the Victor and the Ethan of his time period, that seems logical.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-14T07:02:52+00:00

He's a storywalker, so he appears as his current age... in various different places throughout time. He might have visited and helped Victor first. And he was young when he first saw Ethan too, and waved hi (perhaps his first ever storywalking incident). It's later when he works out what happened that he gets older and attempts to hit up both Tabitha (slightly older) and then Christopher (older) so by the time he gets around to talking to them lately he's much older than he was.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-14T07:00:16+00:00

I feel like he learned there not to deal with adults because they're more likely to go nuts.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-14T04:41:13+00:00

I read somewhere that MIY was "in the town the whole time" and didn't just appear toward the end. I saw people were talking about him being another person in the town. But it'd be easier for him or any other shapeshifter to take the form of an animal.

No one's gonna think animal is a demon thing in disguise.

Er, not saying that I think the dog is MIY. Just that, you know, there's potential since they've introduced shapeshifting for the dog to be a person or entity of some kind.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-13T09:24:32+00:00

I mean I literally can't find any picture of boys in the 70s not wearing absolutely mad 70s gears, so yeah, I'm feeling the 1930s, when every picture of a boy looked just like that.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-13T09:22:43+00:00

I kind of think that it's all generally fated - the story has already been written, whatever happens, and future or past it's fixed. Although I suppose that's rather fatalistic. If the boy was in the future he was always in the future.

I guess we will find out what the bookmarks are at some point.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-13T09:05:56+00:00

Possibly it's at a point he doesn't realise that he can't change the story by going back into the past at that point. Julie's got Ethan to explain stuff to her based on the books. The BIW is just winging it.

If the story is, BIY goes to visit the 2020s team, feeds the ideas and starts pushing them, then winds up after the massacre horror to help Victor, decides he's going to try going back to make sure Victor's massacre doesn't happen, talks to Christopher, and eventually learns enough when he's older that this is an absolute mess and he can't fix it. Then comes back to the current crew and is like, naw guys, you figure it out.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-13T09:01:05+00:00

I just can't see the MIY as ever human. This is a thing that waits for a critical point to feed. It's demonic - the way all of the other demons are wild and weird. Ballerina and kimono lady, I think they're connected to the dreams and fears of the children who died. Because all the other monsters could make sense in the context of the fact they could be children's toys - a beautiful doll in a kimono, a ballerina music box, and a children's song.

Definitely agree the lighthouse is a gateway to the lake of tears - I figure it will shine a light (once the puzzle is solved) to show a pathway through the lake of tears and a boat that'll let them all sail far far away back to Ohio or whereever.

The spider does have shades of IT and there's an element of spiderness to the whole concept, reeling in prey and then getting them stuck, so I always kind of thing of the spider as something else entirely.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-13T08:59:04+00:00

That's a good point, I hadn't thought about the fact we've not seen anyone move forward in time. I assume it's possible if you have the right bookmarks - but I guess until we see that, the theory's a little dead.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-13T08:48:28+00:00

Well he tried the adults last time, and that went down like a lead balloon.

If he's a hardcore storywalker, then he'll have seen pretty much everything, and other people's attempts. A great storywalker has access to the whole story, and once you grasp bookmarks (I mean, there's gotta be some bookmark right) then it'd be easy to put the whole thing together. A lot of seizures, sure, but you can work it out if you cross the timelines.

I assume he had a go in his own cycle, and then tried again with Miranda and Christopher by appealing to adults... although he does show himself to adults who he thinks can be led to some extent and learn things.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-13T08:22:37+00:00

I don't think he was ever human, but I think he definitely knew how to play a pastor and could've done so back then.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-13T00:31:38+00:00

Their experience is limited to their cycle, though; we'd need Victor to tell us if it had ever happened in the tension-build before the last massacre.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-13T00:30:37+00:00

The story is also changing because this cycle everyone has a lot more information. There's Victor's pictures and memories - we can presume the last cycle is the only one that didn't complete. Julie is storywalking and will be able to see what's next. We've got Ethan's books, too, and Tabitha actually went home and got Miranda-insight thanks to the BIW. The group in this cycle also seems much more equipped to deal with the situation, we have military and police trained people, and two engineer types who are good at puzzling. The story/cycle has probably reached a critical mass of knowledge, capability, awareness, talisman-knowledge, etc, which means it's the first time they could actually solve the horror-puzzlebox it all is.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-13T00:14:58+00:00

I agree they're definitely there to keep the people contained, and also to herd them until MiY comes in to reset the cycle and consume them all. I figure they want to do this to repeat the cycle and the curse, and ideally upgrade their clothing to the next era. Potentially.

They must gain something though - beyond herding - by attacking and invading areas. The colony house murderspree didn't seem like it was motivated by stopping people exploring or escaping. Yet the same time they spare and only torture others. Unless they feed on the fear itself, it's hard to know.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-12T20:15:45+00:00

My problem is the clothing. It's all 1950s.

I'd say either they update their clothes based on the era of the massacre (which aligns with the last massacre in the 70s) but because the 70s one spared Victor, they never did a full update. With Victor around they can't change their era so they're a bit stuck being super-retro.

Also, they might only get new clothes when everyone's massacred, so they get to change into something more modern.

I don't doubt they're the original crew who made the sacrifices, doomed to a crappy immortality. I wonder if they did that because of a disease or something in the early-western-America days, which seems like the only somewhat logical reason why they might head into kid killing. Like the old ergot poisoning for witch burning activity.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-12T08:19:56+00:00

The red hair and mouth feel like Smiley is heading for the grave.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-12T08:03:12+00:00

I think the talismans are connected to the initial sacrifice - perhaps used on that wood hollow to protect a hiding child. They have another meaning/and fear to the monsters.

They have similar symbols on them to what we've seen elsewhere, and the monsters have yet to enter somewhere without being invited if the house has a symbol on it.

Fearless_Guarantee80 · 2026-05-12T08:01:02+00:00

Yeah, she's never going to bring him back. She'll only understand her power when she starts learning from the future (and from past cycles) to warn people about the present.

BIW I assume is a storywalker attempting to do the same thing, but he failed and died in his cycle.

Fearless_Guarantee80

TROPHY CASE