WARNING: The following contains spoilers for From Season 1, Episode 9, “Into the Woods,” which aired Sunday, April 3 on Epix.While audiences await the sure-to-be frightening Season 1 finale of Epix’s horror series From, one of the most unsettling mysteries remains unanswered: who — or what — is the little Boy in White? From has been carrying the Wayward Pines torch by way of Lost’s mystery box and there are far too many loose ends to tie up neatly in just one remaining episode. Why are people getting trapped in the town? Where is the town, anyway? Are we on an island? Was that a lighthouse beacon and horn at the end of the last episode? Just what are the monsters in the woods? (Probably not the newly designed Godzilla.)
But the Boy in White stands out in stark contrast to the rest of the nightmare. Seemingly undeterred by the violence around him and living without fear outside the safety of the town and its talismans, the Boy in White presents an outwardly innocent and kind facade — which is also his biggest red flag. In a show where there are yet more questions than answers, it seems farfetched to take him at face value.
Within the cursed, seemingly inescapable town in From, a resident named Victor has been there the longest. As the show progresses, it’s revealed that Victor survived another total massacre within the town that happened some decades ago, when he was still a child. And what seems to be key to his survival is a mute, smiling young Boy in White. He never speaks to Victor but seems to usher him to safety while also heralding that a bigger doom is about to come. With the arrival of the Matthews family, there is a new little boy in town: Ethan, who also seems to be the only other one who can see this supposedly benevolent friend.
Looking like a near-carbon copy of the iconic frozen ghost from Are You Afraid of the Dark?, the Boy in White seems to control who he is seen by, namely another child — or, in Victor’s case, a man who saw him as a child and who, because of his trauma (something the horror genre often covers), never grew too far out of childhood himself. The Boy smiles and waves and ducks into the forest, inviting his friends to follow. At times, it seems like he’s inviting them to safety, but what if he’s really drawing them more into his web? There’s no shortage of spider imagery and metaphors in the show, from Victor’s drawings to Ethan’s dreams, and also no shortage of villains.
So though he looks innocent enough, ushers Victor to safety and wears the stereotypical “good guy white,” there is something sinister beneath the Boy’s smiling outward appearance. Just as hazy summer afternoons and the romanticized vintage Americana of the town mask its true terrors, the Boy in White could very likely be putting up an act, serving as a costume for the evil at work. Not only does he only show himself to children — who are likely to be more trusting — but he is seen as blissful amid the carnage of Victor’s childhood massacre. The Boy in White walks among the ravaged bodies in the street, smiling, and gleefully tries to wave Victor onto the carousel with him. It’s an unsettling scene and not an attitude toward violence that a guardian angel would have.
His true identity, though, is even more of a mystery than his motivations. Going back to the extensive spider imagery, it’s possible that the Boy in White is an illusion or a false form of the entity, and is really a spider himself. Or playing into the 1950s and 1960s aesthetics, along with the themes of the power of childlike imagination, could he be something more akin to little Anthony from The Twilight Zone Season 3, Episode 8, “It’s a Good Life”? It’s not impossible that the town is his own manifestation, and he is the one controlling everything, like a game with innocent people involved.
Whatever his true nature is, whether he’s feeding off of children’s imagination and sense of wonder or actually trying to help them, there is more than meets the eye with this character. Just like the nature of the monsters themselves and the unknown rules governing the town that are much less explicit than other horror series, nothing about the Boy in White as it seems.
New episodes of From air Sundays at 9 p.m. on Epix.