From the beginning, Victor’s history in the Township has been well-established and understood among the rest of From‘s characters. Sympathetic to what he’s been through, everyone accepts his social struggles, stressors, and unique relationship to the Township. When Victor measured the mysterious trees, Henry helped him, understanding its importance to Victor even if he didn’t get it himself.

Henry, Tabitha, and others even encourage Victor’s friendship with Ethan, recognizing that the trauma Victor has experienced makes their friendship positive and compatible despite their age gap. Yet while Victor is accepted for who he is, From has spent surprisingly little time exploring the devastating circumstances that deeply impacted his growth.

Victor arrived in the Township as a young boy with his mother, Miranda, and sister, Eloise, during the Township’s previous “cycle.” That cycle ended with a massacre that killed everyone but Victor, who witnessed the Man in Yellow eating Miranda’s body. The show has kept exact dates vague, but Victor was then completely alone for roughly 40 years until players in the next cycle began to arrive.

From Kenny losing both of his parents to Fatima’s baby proving to be a monster, all of From‘s characters have experienced hardship, yet arguably no story is as deeply tragic as Victor’s. To cope with it all, Victor has blocked out many of his memories of the time, making him and the show rather tight-lipped about what he experienced, but season 4 finally dug into the topic in depth in “Heavy is the Hand.”

From’s Evil Forces Prioritize Psychological Torment Over Death

Fearing that Ethan would face the same fate this time around, Victor shared his survival techniques with him. Interestingly, though, Victor’s advice had nothing to do with survival itself, save for giving Ethan a makeshift can opener. Instead, Victor focused on the mental struggle of loneliness, which he found to be the “worst part.“

Victor was clearly smart and resourceful, but he was also alone at a time when no one knew about the talismans. It seems unlikely that the monsters, Man in Yellow, or any other evil force would have been unable to kill Victor had they really wanted to. In fact, Victor’s ability to make dolls and eat peaches in a big, empty trailer feels completely at odds with everyone else’s pre-talisman survival experiences.

Donna and Boyd have recounted their early days in the Township as a full-fledged horror story, evading monsters night after night in a constant battle to survive to the morning. Yet the monsters didn’t even come up in Victor’s retelling. This radically different experience suggests that the monsters allowed Victor to live, choosing instead to subject him to decades of loneliness.

This wouldn’t be the only time the monsters have toyed with the survivors rather than killed them. Though they brutally killed Tian Chen, they left Boyd alive, completely rocked by having witnessed it all. In one of From‘s most sadistic twists yet, the monsters went out of their way to trick Julie and Ethan into being the ones to discover Jim’s body.

Together, all these things suggest that the battle the townspeople face is more complex than one of mere survival. To truly conquer the Township’s evil forces, the townspeople will need to overcome psychological threats as well as physical ones.

Victor May Be The Reason This Cycle Ends Differently

As far as we know, this is the first time a cycle has included a survivor from the previous cycle. This could be the difference that finally stops history from repeating itself, especially considering the amount of information Victor has in the depths of his mind. Though he struggles to remember and discuss the past, feeling safe with Ethan and Henry has, at times, helped him resurface his memories.

Victor understands the Township with more clarity than any other survivor, and even when he doesn’t talk about things, his reactions have been extremely telling. He clearly has a sense of what is coming and when, with the distance of the treeline and changes in weather seeming to mean something to him. Victor’s hard-earned knowledge might turn the tide in the townspeople’s favor.

It’s also possible that Victor’s role in this cycle is what prevented him from being killed for all those years. One of From‘s more prominent fan theories asserts that the characters have predestined parts to play in the show’s events, which the characters themselves have referred to as “chapters” in a “story“.

In this theory, it’s the Township itself that makes the rules and its evil forces are just as beholden to them as its positive ones. Jim’s death, for instance, came moments after he helped Tabitha and Jade unlock the meaning of the bottle tree, suggesting that that was the moment he fulfilled his role in the story and thus became vulnerable to the Man in Yellow.

If this is the reason Victor was allowed to survive into this cycle, it’s almost certain that, one way or another, Victor will play a key role in the events to come.

Is Ethan Destined To Share Victor’s Fate?

Chris Reardon/©MGM+/Courtesy Everett Collection

Victor’s solo survival tutorial was born out of the realization that, without Jim, the Matthews family is now a mother, a daughter, and a son, just as Eloise, Miranda, and Victor were when they first arrived. With Tabitha and Jade’s knowledge of the Township’s cyclic massacres, Victor and Ethan became concerned that Victor’s fate would be repeated as well through Ethan.

However, Victor’s fate seems more like an anomaly in the cycles than a part of them. Unless other, older cycles have also ended with lone survivors, Victor’s boyhood survival was in fact the first inkling of things beginning to go differently this time around. Nonetheless, it may be the very fear of Ethan being left alone in the Township that allows the characters to prevent it from happening.

If Ethan were to find himself in Victor’s shoes, it would mean that they failed and that this cycle ended in a massacre like all the ones before it. Exploring the emotional horror of this fate raises the stakes of their success as From begins to close in on this cycle’s conclusion.

Release Date

February 20, 2022

Network

Epix, MGM+

Directors

Jack Bender, Brad Turner, Alexandra La Roche, Bruce McDonald, Jeff Renfroe

Writers

Vivian Lee, Kristen Layden, Brigitte Hales, Jeff Pinkner, John Griffin

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  Harold Perrineau

  Boyd Stevens

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  Catalina Sandino Moreno

  Tabitha Matthews