Be brave, they said. Be brave? IN THIS ECONOMY?!

The one thing you can't say about any of the unlucky residents of the worst town in existence is that they aren't brave! And yet FROM Season 2 Episode 1 called on so many of them to be even braver than usual, as things were spiraling steadily throughout the hour.

Welcome back, #FROMily! I've missed you.

One thing about FROM is that they will give you that detailed 'Previously On…' montage, and I, for one, will eat it up every single time. Because it's been a minute since we left things, and I needed the reminder about the character's various states of distress.

The main one being Boyd, who hopped in a tree and ended up in what looked like a chimney of some kind.

Not much had changed since we left him there, and the series decided to spend pretty limited time with him here, dedicating most of the story to the fallout from the failed radio experiment and the bus arrival.

But Boyd was hallucinating and struggling, and if it wasn't for the mysterious voice and the perfectly placed rope, there was no way Boyd would have made it out of there alive.

Boyd and Sara's search through the woods had been filled with riddles, and I'm still not sure what any of it meant or what they were supposed to learn from their trip to help find the way home.

To this point, they'd only found more riddles, but Boyd's new friend looked like he'd seen a thing or two in his time, so maybe we'll actually get some answers he can take back to the town.

Is it possible the man chained up looking like Jesus is, in fact, a hallucination? I mean, it's FROM. There is an excellent chance of that.

But does it matter if he has some good information to tell before Boyd shoots him?

Everything in this story happens for a reason, and everything is connected, so Boyd meeting him is important one way or the other.

One intriguing thing was the absence of Sara during this hour. We saw not a trace of her, and there's no way she's dead because that wouldn't be a death we'd see off-screen, but if she somehow made it back to the town, Boyd will have A LOT of explaining to do when he eventually gets back there.

Imagine he fights for his life and returns to town only to be public enemy number one because Sara isn't dead.

Speaking of town, no one had a chance to mourn the radio failure because too much was happening in the immediate aftermath.

Tom: Ellis! Pretty crazy, huh? Maybe the magic tower summoned them.
Ellis: You ever see something like this?
Tom: No. These people are fucked.

• Permalink: No. These people are fucked.

The most pressing of which was the emergence of that bus, which had a decent amount of people on it and totally bucked the previous trend of how people ended up in the town.

With Boyd gone, Donna and Kenny became the de-facto leaders, and it shouldn't have been as funny as it was watching the two of them try to handle things, but somehow it was.

Donna was having a crap day. Her house and her people were hurt, and all that hope they'd managed to conjure up with the radio tower was washed away in the storm. She was angry, and she had to be exhausted, and there just wasn't time to go in and sit someone down calmly to explain to them what the hell they were about to experience.

Kenny was about to go through his first actual test as sheriff, and you could see the weight of that responsibility plastered across his shoulders.

They made for an odd pairing, but so do a lot of people on FROM.

The bus passengers were an interesting bunch, as most random assembly of humans are, but there were two standout passengers in the premiere; Elgin and the pediatric nurse.

Elgin had a visceral and physical reaction to the town like his body could sense the evil or something. He and Sara need to link up and share war stories because it felt like he was feeling (and potentially hearing) all sorts of things but wasn't being truthful lest people call him crazy.

It didn't seem like Elgin knew much beyond that his body and mind were telling him something, and at least he had one person willing to listen to him.

If we got her name, I never heard it, but her kindness and competence made it all the more apparent why she was connected to Kristi!

I'll be honest, this feels like a wrench the series perhaps didn't need, though I'm very willing to see what they have in store here because there are many different directions for things to go.

Romance is such a low C-plot of the series, and I mean that in the nicest way possible because the show is so good, even without the romantic pieces.

That is very hard to pull off in a character-driven series.

But Kristi and Kenny were slowly finding their way in FROM Season 1, and now that progress will most likely be stilted, if not completely stopped, now that Kristi's fiancée is back.

What's most exciting about this storyline isn't the potential for a love triangle, but seeing how someone within the town can reconcile with someone from their before life while acclimating them to the new reality.

So much has changed for both of them, so who are they now as people? Are these same people in love? How do they now exist in this town? How does their relationship evolve? Can it even evolve?

It's fascinating, and if it leans heavily into that aspect and not so much into giving us any soap opera vibes, then I'm all for it.

The idea that the town would push back harder when the residents tried to leave felt very accurate here with the arrival of this bus.

Look how long it took them to get to the place of "normalcy" they found themselves in when the Matthews came.

Trying to indoctrinate a family of four into their way of life was not without its challenges, but somewhere around twenty or thirty people at one time has the potential to be catastrophic.

I felt for the position Donna and Kenny found themselves in, only made worse by the immediate danger Jim and some others found themselves in when the house collapsed. It's not as if there was much they could have done differently, but the way everything went down was infuriating from the outside.

Everything was descending into mass hysteria, and when things are like that, guns are just about the worst thing to pull out, but to save their lives, Donna couldn't let them get back on that bus.

Getting back on that bus was a death sentence because once the sun went down, no one would have been able to go outside and help them, and they would have been slaughtered on that bus.

But now half of them are scattered around, they're all scared, and the initiation process into their new normal is starting in quite possibly the worst way imaginable.

Circling back to Jim, I admired his gumption, but trying to dig down there with his bare hands, considering how uneven that structure was, didn't make much sense. I know he was fueled by his desire to rescue Tabitha, but getting himself killed in the process and leaving Julie and Ethan alone wouldn't help things at all.

Now he, Tom, and one of the bus people will be trapped outside overnight, which means the next hour will be incredibly tense.

He's passed out currently, but when that guy wakes up, how do you calmly and quietly explain that he can't scream for help or try to wiggle out from under a house, or they'll all get eaten alive by monsters?

I don't envy the night Jim and Tom are about to have.

Loose Ends

• Jade and Ethan were an improbable little pairing. But Ethan's musings got Jade to think, which is what he needs to be doing. I will take Jade thinking and trying to solve things over sulking and bitter Jade any day.

• Victor and Tabitha's trip in the tunnels was very eerie, and seeing them walk by the monsters ad try to make their way was terrifying. They kept seeing many familiar things that eventually have to mean something.

• It takes a lot for Victor to be scared so that mannequin must be heavy-duty evil. And when will Jade and Victor FINALLY get their long-awaited chat?

FROM is back, and there was a lot here to get you pumped for this next season! So, please let me know in the comments what you liked and what you're looking forward to this season!

After you comment, go and watch FROM online so you can join the conversation!

Whitney Evans is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. She is a lover of all things TV. Follow her on X.