End game: There is a resolution to ‘From.’ Honest.

“There’s a version of this show that’s six seasons. There’s a version that’s five seasons. There’s a version that’s four seasons,” says Executive Producer Jeff Pinkner. “It’s really how much story we get to tell along the way.”

Now in its second season, “From” chronicles the lives of people caught in a town looking for a way out. On the outskirts: creatures who are determined to keep them in.

Harold Perrineau, who plays a leader in the town, had a similar experience with “Lost.” A mysterious plotline kept audiences guessing. Here, he says, “I don’t want to know how it ends. The torture (my character) is feeling is easier for me to embody if I really don’t know. What’s going on? I feel like that’s constantly what they’re all asking.”

A busload of new people who arrived in “From” at the end of the first season offered new possibilities. “We have a condition where, hopefully, the audience is falling in love with the characters,” Pinkner says. “I don’t think anybody is getting home any time soon.”

Unlike “Lost,” “From” doesn’t have 22 or 24 episodes a year to make its points. “The storytelling now is so much more concise,” says Executive Producer Jack Bender. “They can go into these dark alleys they didn’t anticipate because they see a moment (an actor) might do brilliantly.”

“From” writers have gotten ideas from a host of sources — including the series’ production designer. “We sort of put these chess pieces on the board and steer everything in the right direction,” Pinkner says. “But it’s been incredibly exciting and gratifying to have ideas come from all different places and then filter them into the story we’re telling.”

When he was a writer/producer on “Lost,” Pinkner liked taking characters on side journeys. “If television storytelling is just about, ‘What’s the answer?’ you’re either going to be really excited because it’s something you never imagined or you’re going to be frustrated because you’re disappointed. If the show is really about the characters’ journey, you kind of feel when it’s meant to end.”

Perrineau says he can see parallels between the pandemic and the situation his character and others are in in “From.”

“I wanted to get out of my house and there was nowhere to go,” he says of the months in quarantine. “It was easy to bring it to set.”

Similarly, the politics in the series reflect the politics in the country. “It’s been an upheaval,” Pinkner says. “We’re in the middle of a reckoning and we have yet to come out the other side. How we all choose to spend our time, who we spend it with, we get to explore that via our characters and it’s been just thrilling.”

Those scary creatures keeping “From” characters from leaving are frightening, Perrineau says. “And I’m from Brooklyn. I don’t like walking around that town. If I’m faking fear, nobody’s going to respond, so I do feel fear. There’s a lot of, ‘OK, Harold, just breathe…it’s a TV show. We’re going to make it.’ I hope the audience gets to feel it.”

In the first season, a younger member of cast started crying when he saw the show’s monster. Bender talked with him and helped him through it. In the second season, the young boy had a similar fright. “It had to do with his sister and she was doing a beautiful, scary job at screaming and he was just watching.

“Jack, I’m really scared now,” the boy said. “I didn’t like the way she screamed. Is she OK?”

“We stopped everything,” Bender says. “We took the time to let him know we’re pulling rabbits out of a hat.”

Movies in a Minute: “Fast X”

The Journal’s Top Stories for the Week of May 14, 2023