u/InsufficientYogurt

This post is a long theory about the show, so if that's not what you're looking for, just keep on scrolling. This theory isn't about solving any mysteries, but it is about analyzing the show, and looking at it through the lens of growing up, or coming of age.

Clearly, this show is about a lot of things, but I'm beginning to think that perhaps the core, most central theme is growing up. It would be a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age tale, except that there's no single central character to come of age. Instead, I'm going to lay out a theory that it's not just happening to all of the characters in the show who are children, but also to the ones who are already adults.

First, before I talk about anything else, let me define "growing up" in a way that will make this post make a lot more sense, contextually. Growing up can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but while there can certainly be a physical connotation of someone getting older/larger (and that is definitely happening to Ethan and the Boy in White), what I'm primarily talking about is wisdom and experience.

That is, growing up isn't really about physically getting older, but rather it's about a change in how you see the world and the other people in it, and that's what typically differentiates children from adults. Children are often described as being "innocent", but that doesn't have anything to do with their bodies; instead it means that their minds are free from some of the absolutely soul-crushing truths about the world that we learn as we age.

Yes, that's right: "knowledge comes with a cost", and that cost is your innocence. It's the thing that adults lose when they get older and more experienced. So in this sense, knowledge isn't something you pay for in advance like you're buying something from a store, but rather you gain the knowledge and then afterward you have to deal with the price of knowing that thing. You can't purposefully forget it, after all (unless you're Victor lol), so it will shape who you are from that moment on and there's nothing you can do about it. That's the real price we pay for knowledge.

Practically every character in this show has lost their innocence, and in many cases the creatures (and other beings) have seemingly delighted in tearing that innocence away. I feel like this statement should be self-evident, but let's have a look at some folks who used to be more idealistic in the show, and now very much aren't: Elgin, Fatima, Boyd, Kenny, Ethan, Sara, Randall... Nearly all the main crew. The only exceptions that immediately spring to mind are Donna (she's been a badass right from the start), Jade (he's seemingly retained some child-like qualities), and Victor (he's an exception because he clearly couldn't cope with the knowledge he gained and so blocked it out, effectively refusing to "grow up").

Second, now that we know what I mean by "growing up", let's dig into childhood in this show! It's absolutely everywhere, when you start looking for it. There's the obvious stuff like all of the childish drawings that Victor (and also Ethan) drew, the playground equipment in the town, the Anghkooey kids, etc. But there are also some much less obvious references to childhood.

For example, the buildings in Fromville seem like they were made by someone who knows what a house looks like but doesn't understand how it actually works (the lack of infrastructure for electricity/water), which is exactly the understanding a child might have. There's even an actual school building in town, not to mention a broken down school bus somewhere.

But wait, there's more! The ballerina music box is a thing a child might be gifted, and it even came with a nursery rhyme. The show literally opens its first episode with Ethan and Julie, the town's only two children at the time. Storywalking, faraway trees... It's all covered with the facade of fairytale language.

Not to mention that the show is *heavily* themed after the 1950's: the Creatures have 50's-era costumes at least at first, the opening song "Que Sera Sera" was popularized in 1955 (and the song is about growing up), the diner and school (and probably post office) are from that era, etc. There are probably more references to the 50's in the show than there are to any other decade in the last century. A lot of things happened in the 50's, but *generally speaking*, the mass/pop culture of the 50's was very "childish". Purity culture reigned, and everything was sanitized for children, creating a world for them that never really existed before.

Oh, and let's not forget the Man in Yellow, who in the frame of childish things reminds me of another character with a similar name, the Man with the Yellow Hat from the Curious George series of children's books (his whole outfit is yellow, not just his hat). In that series, Curious George is constantly seeking knowledge to satisfy his curiosity while the Man with the Yellow Hat (his real name is never given in the original works) constantly brings him back home and extracts him from whatever mischief he's gotten himself into. That is, he's the antagonist (or shepherd) in the Curious George books because he tries to prevent Curious George from acquiring knowledge. Sound familiar?

Side theory: If it's true that the Man in Yellow is a twisted version of the Man with the Yellow Hat from Curious George, then many of the antagonists may also be twisted versions of something that a child didn't like. We could have the core Creatures group who used to be human, and then the collection of "other things in the forest" that are largely based on childhood fears. Perhaps a child found the music box creepy, the man with the yellow hat stifling, cicadas scary, spiders scary, etc. That would explain why the creatures don't seem to work together with the other monsters in the forest; they may be part of different factions entirely. Though I wouldn't feel right without mentioning that it could be the other way around; that is, the man in yellow in Fromland might have been the inspiration for the character in the Curious George books. If so, it would invalidate this side theory!

But lastly, now that my Curious George digression is over, we've defined growing up and talked about some references to childhood, so now it's time to address what evidence we have for growing up as a theme of the show. It would be easy to say, for example, that what I'm describing for the adults is simply character development. Not growing "up", but just growing as people. And for the record, it is definitely a possibility that I'm reading too far into it and forcing the general metaphor of change into a mold of human emotional maturation. But I think there's a case otherwise, so you'll have to let me know what you think.

The biggest indicator, I think, is that the Boy in White is aging. We all know the actor is aging, obviously, but there's no way they didn't know that when they were making the show. Note that the anghkooey kids haven't seemed to age, they're just a collection of children, still. Always have been. If they'd intended for the Boy in White to be an unchanging child, they could have brought in different-looking kids that were similar enough. That'd be creepy in its own right. But they kept him on purpose, knowing he'd age. So for me, I think his growth is hugely important because while it isn't itself super important to the story, fom a storytelling perspective his growth symbolically represents the growth and change within the Fromland space as a whole (changing seasons, moving trees, etc.)

But let's talk about some not-so-symbolic growth (eventually, sorry, I'm long-winded). In a sense (innocence, lol), if innocence represents the lack of knowledge, then maturity represents the possession of knowledge. That is, there is a watershed moment between innocence and maturity when the rose-tinted glasses are stripped away, and one is confronted with the raw truth of reality. Coming-of-age trials are, after all, possibly as old as humanity itself. A child goes in, and given that they don't crash and burn under that weight, they emerge an adult.

In this show, I believe that the abovementioned "coming of age" is experiencing complete and total despair and lack of hope. That's the "trial" they have to go through, because not everyone comes out the other end unscarred -- some literally. And if they fail real bad, some "being" or force then takes advantage of that condition to make them hurt themselves or others (Sarah, Fatima). But if they pass, they live, and move on. One could potentially call this event a "baptism", immersing someone in total and complete despair, and then seeing what happens afterward. Maybe more like a baptism by fire than by water, but okay, maybe that one's a stretch, idk. But if we're talking about a threshold of despair being the gatekeeper between life and death, then we have to also acknowledge that anyone who comes out the other side of that kind of total despair will be forever changed one way or another. Either they'll be hardened like steel, or they'll crumble and fall apart.

So if we consider total despair to be the ritual one undergoes for maturity, then we can point out some folks who are specifically being targeted to undergo that ritual. Boyd, Elgin, Fatima, Kenny, Randall, probably some other folks. And right now it's not going great for them. Boyd is PTSD'd af, Elgin hit rock bottom HARD but I think he'll come out a stronger person so idk (same is true for Sara), Fatima dealt with some of her trauma this week and we'll have to see if it's enough, Kenny is Kennying so maybe sussing out Sophia will in some way help him regain his self confidence, and Randall may be the closest to "good/mature" of any of them. Randall reached the absolute bottom pretty quick and built himself back up from there: a manchild has become a man. Both physically and emotionally scarred from his experience, he's also become a more reasonable, reliable person.

When everyone enters Fromland, they're like scared children. Scared children will turn on each other, fight each other, and act in their own self-interest. We've seen this play out before, but right now it's playing out most clearly with Acosta. True adults in both age and wisdom know that during times like these, the most important thing is to band together because as human beings, we're stronger together than apart. It's the broken people who seek independence or personal gain during disaster.

We can actually see Boyd going through this struggle right now, too; first season Boyd ruled through fear, using The Box to enforce the rules, making the victims (the folks in the town) into the perpetrators (you left the door open, it's your fault your family was killed). Literal victim-blaming, probably offloading his anger about his wife's death to avoid coming to peace with it. He's also the sort of person to think "I'll do anything to keep everyone together", but that isn't realistic, Boyd can't carry all that weight on his own shoulders. It's hurtful to him, and also to those he's protecting. And now that he's done "anything" (eg, what he did to Elgin) to keep everyone together, he's found that he could unintentionally fracture them all apart with the truth about himself. What this community needs isn't one strong man keeping them all together and safe, what it needs is for everyone to grow and mature to the point where they can all take care of themselves and each other.

Thus, I believe that the Man in Yellow's task is to measure the ratio of children to adults in the group -- not physically, but emotionally. That is, are there more people who can be easily manipulated, or more people able to stay calm and controlled? His method is his tool in trade: information. And information is power.

Further, I believe that the larger goal of the Boy in White is for the villagers to reach mental maturity without destroying themselves. For example, when Miranda went to the tower, she hadn't regained her memories, meaning it was pointless for her to go because she wasn't emotionally prepared to handle what she'd find, and she'd break, probably like she had done many times before. And if we think about it in that regard, then the BiW shoving Tabitha out the window absolutely did its job. It's easy to think about that arc being about Victor because she was led to Victor's dad, but what if the actual important part was for her to learn about Miranda? Perhaps the BiW initially hoped Victor would tell her or remind her, but Victor's so messed up that *the only way* was to expose her to information that wasn't available on the inside. That whole series of events led directly to her regaining her reincarnated memories, and perhaps that was the intended outcome all along.

That is, the trick here is to handle the human psyche in such a way as it will gain the knowledge necessary to go from childhood to adulthood without breaking the person along the way. Even the language I just used, "from childhood to adulthood" includes the name of the show. "From" implies two things: an initial state, and a different state.

That is, "from" is a transitional word. "Where are you from?" means that you're from somewhere that isn't here; that is, you were originally in one place and now you're in a different place. In the community, we've *mostly* considered this to mean literally. Like, physically where people are from, where they were born, where they lived, etc. But there's another way to interpret it, which is what I've done above. This post is about the show featuring the growth (or not) of people FROM childhood to adulthood, or at least from one significant emotional state of being to another.

So quite literally, if the characters want to survive this show, they're going to need to get real cool with lots of stuff real quick. Boyd, the most stubborn among them, has been getting hit with stuff all along that's slowly put him in a mental state where he could hit rock bottom (which I think we're seeing play out this season), as opposed to Tabitha who got a full-on brain dump and somehow managed to still be a better parent than Jim, lol.

As I mentioned, you could just write this off as character development and I wouldn't say you're wrong. But I feel that this watershed division between those characters who are scared children and those who are adults with agency who were forged in the fires of despair is akin to a coming of age, and while we'll likely see this play out in Ethan, Victor, and Julie perhaps more literally, I think there's a certain coming of age that these adults have to do, too, as I described above.

In conclusion, the point of this post isn't to "solve" the mystery or reveal any secrets, but I think it may be helpful for us as the fans to consider character growth in this show as more than just part of good storytelling technique. Rather, it's likely a literal plot requirement for our main characters in order to break the cycle. To put it more plainly, it matters less which monsters are attacking the villagers (what their goal is, where they came from, etc.), and more how the villagers react to them: do the characters learn healthy coping mechanisms and become stronger through adversity (aka "no pain no gain" lol), or do they crumple faster than a Volvo?

We've seen a mix of the two over the course of the show, and I think that while the literal adults are rescuing the literal (dead?) children (lighthouse, anghkooey, etc.), the figurative/metaphorical adults will also be rescuing the grown-ass people who are still acting like children, helping them stay calm and navigate these dangerous situations.

I've gone on about this long enough, I think y'all get the idea. But I'll be in the comments for y'all's thoughts. ☮️

Hear me out: what if Julie is accidentally a villain?

What if the big bad is someone in town?