If you’ve been tuning into all three seasons of the smash MGM+ psychological thriller series From, you know many things aren’t easy to explain. For instance, the show’s entire premise is coming upon a fallen tree on the road and then becoming trapped in a small town with flesh-eating creatures that emerge from the woods at night. Some characters seem to bring up more questions than answers; the manchild Victor Kavanaugh (Scott McCord), the longest-tenured member of the mysterious place, has just as many questions surrounding him as any character on the show.

Another one of those characters has only appeared in a handful of scenes but is probably shrouded in more mystery than the rest of the cast. Martin (Robert Verlaque) is the emaciated bearded man chained to the dungeon walls who was introduced in Season 2 and appears again in Season 3. We dug a little deeper to see what there is to know about the rarely seen but impactful prisoner, and what he could mean for the future of Boyd (Harold Perrineau) and the forsaken people of the township as the end of Season 3 approaches.

When Did We First See Martin in ‘From’?

The audience is first introduced to Martin in Season 2 Episode 1. When Boyd walks through the portal in the faraway tree, he ends up at the bottom of a well with no way of climbing out. After crying out and trying to scale the well walls, Boyd finally hears the voice of an elderly man coming from above. The voice asks, “Are you real?” Boyd is able to convince the man to throw a rope down to him and climbs out. An exhausted Boyd is met by Martin, who is barely clothed and shackled to the wall (so how could he throw the rope down the well?) in a dim, torch-lit dungeon.

The Musicbox Monster has imprisoned him there. Boyd draws on Martin, and the haggard prisoner looks relieved. Martin tells Boyd that he wants him to use his gun to kill him. He has been there longer than he can remember and warns Boyd to hurry before “they” return. As Boyd tries to return the favor and help Martin free from the chains, he sees a “Semper Fi” tattoo on his arm and deduces that Martin is a former United States Marine. He then expresses again how he wants Boyd to put him out of his misery by killing him. Boyd offers to carry the malnourished Martin to town. Martin tells Boyd that the night creatures are “the tip of the spear.”

Why Does Martin Infect Boyd With His Blood?

Once Boyd frees one of Martin’s hands, Martin questions him about whether Abby, Boyd’s late wife, was right in believing the town was just a bad dream. Boyd is taken aback at how he could know of these events. When the music box stops, Martin unexpectedly lunges at Boyd, knocking him off balance, and placing his open wound onto Boyd’s wound, transferring his infected blood. He tells Boyd, “My blood is your blood” before collapsing to the ground. Boyd takes a torch and goes through a heavy door that leaves him outside the dungeon and back into the forest.

It is unclear why Martin was intent on giving Boyd his blood, but the result is that Boyd is now a prisoner of the Music Box Monster as well. The same eel-like creatures course through his veins, and he begins to have strange and painful nightmares that feature a dancing ballerina. Boyd starts to behave erratically along with the horrific visions to the point that Kenny (Ricky He) thinks he may have early onset dementia like his father. It isn’t until Episode 6, “Pas de Deux,” that the blood Martin infused into Boyd can kill the night creatures. This would seem to indicate that Martin is, at the very least, a neutral force and maybe one for good.

Julie Mathews Encounters Martin Again in ‘From’ Season 3, Episode 8

At the end of Episode 8, “Thresholds,” Julie Matthews (Hannah Cheramy) is out for a hike with Randall (A.J. Simmons) when she starts to feel some entity pulling her toward the same spot that Boyd emerged from the dungeon in Season 2. Randall talks her out of continuing, but in the next episode, she returns to the spot with her younger brother Ethan (Simon Webster), and they summon the courage to go through the portal. Julie ends up alone in the same dungeon room where Martin is still shackled to the wall. Her experience with Martin is just as puzzling. After seeing Marielle (Kalen Ohm) in the throes of a painful episode, we see that Julie’s physical body is still outside the portal, and she is violently seizing. In her mind, she is inside the room witnessing Boyd’s experience with Martin from Season 2, suggesting some temporal loop in the town’s faraway portals that has yet to be explored. It may also explain how Martin ended up chained to the wall; he could have walked into a faraway tree and found himself in shackles.

Martin somehow knows Julie’s name, and it turns out that she was the one who threw the rope down the well. He then implores her to leave, saying she is in danger. As she leaves, she turns toward Martin again, and he has disappeared. Again, from his warnings to both Boyd and Julie and the tainted blood he delivers, it is difficult to ascertain whether Martin is good or evil. His advanced age indicates that things have been going on in this bizarre town for a long time, but there isn’t enough information about his character yet to determine his ultimate purpose. But it would seem likely that he will be making another appearance before Season 3 concludes.