This article contains a discussion of suicide and mental illness.
SPOILERS for Before episodes 1 and 2 are ahead!
Apple TV+’sBeforeepisodes 1 and 2 set up the storyline while revealing many fundamental details that could become important in future episodes. With Billy Crystal at the forefront, thecast ofBeforewas bound to bring in many viewers. It certainly doesn’t hurt either that the show debuted just one week before Halloween – the perfect time of year for any thriller or horror. Unsurprisingly, the show jumped to number 6 on Apple TV+’s TV Show list within the first 24 hours.
The synopsis explains that a child psychologist named Eli is mourning the loss of his wife when he meets a troubled child named Noah, who has a mysterious connection to him. Leading up to the release of the first two episodes, Apple TV+ kept all other details about the characters and show highly secretive.Episodes 1 and 2 ofBeforeraise many questions about the mystery at the center of the psychological thriller while providing basic information about the characters and their backgrounds.The episodes' reveals are enough to keep viewers coming back week after week.
8Eli Has A Recurring Nightmare Where He Jumps Into An Empty Pool But Doesn’t Die
Eli’s Recurring Nightmare Could Point To His Mental State In Apple TV+’s Before
The first scene in the entire series is an injured man with a broken ankle dragging himself out of an empty pool, limping to the diving board, and stepping off into the bloodied empty pool again. This is one of the most shocking and horror-esque scenes in the first two episodes. WhenBilly Crystal’s Elijolts awake, it’s clear the sequence was a nightmare. This doesn’t change how alarming the scene is. Rather than a one-off incident, though, the man has the same dream by the end of the first episode, showing it from a slightly different angle.
This time, an unintelligible figure who looks slightly like his wife pushes him off the diving board instead of him willingly stepping off. When the therapist brings it up, she points out that he never dies in the nightmares. It appears that his dream represents the loop of trauma that he’s stuck in as he refuses to confront the loss of his wife. After all, he constantly avoids conversations about her and refuses to talk about his emotions about the event in therapy. Alternatively, since the nightmare relates to water (or the lack thereof), it could relate to Eli’s mysterious connection with Noah.
7Eli’s Wife Lynn Died By Suicide Before The Start Of Apple TV+’s Before
Eli Refuses To Process And Resolve His Trauma Related To His Wife
One of the sadder revelations in Apple TV+’sBeforeis the event that negatively impacted Eli’s mental health and caused him to start grieving. While the marketing was very open about the fact that Eli lost his wife, it wasn’t clear that she was dead – due to the term “lost,” which can also refer to divorce – or how she died, if that was the case. The show fills in these blanks quickly intoBeforeepisode 1. Prior to the start of the show, Eli’s wife, Lynn, died by suicide.
Suicide is never the answer. If you or someone you love is experiencing suicidal ideation, please call 988 or visit988Lifeline.org(US) orFindAHelpline.com(international).
It’s unclear how long ago it happened, but Eli refuses to confront his grief about the tragedy. He won’t speak about it in therapy, has seemingly distanced himself from everything in his life that reminds him of her, and refuses to go anywhere near the bathroom where it happened. Unfortunately, the grief manifests in other ways, like imagining her everywhere he goes and having anger outbursts.
6Noah Repeatedly Shows Up At Eli’s House
Noah Is Drawn To Eli’s House For An Unknown Reason
InBeforeepisode 1, Noah shows up outside of Eli’s house, scratching strange markings outside his front door to the point of making his hand bleed. Initially, nobody else sees or responds to him, so it’s unclear whether he is real or a spirit. The question about his corporeal form continues when he shows up in Eli’s bedroom, watching him sleep. He doesn’t speak either, making the situation more mysterious. However, the show confirms that Noah is a little boy and very much alive when he takes Eli to his foster home.
Though Noah turns out to be real, theApple TV+ original showdoesn’t explain why exactly he started coming to Eli’s home. The child psychologist asks Noah whether he knew the apartment or if it reminded him of somewhere. However, this is while the young boy is nonverbal, so he never receives an answer. The likelihood ofBeforeanswering this question in a future episode seems high.
5Noah Keeps Seeing Dark Water Creeping Towards Him
Noah’s Has An Intense Fear Of The Dark Water
WhileBeforeis marketed as a psychological thriller, the show seems to blend genres, such as the opening scene and Noah’s disturbing visions, which lean toward horror. Throughout the first two episodes, it becomes clear that the young boy’s fear, anxiety, selective mutism, and anger outbursts aren’t just manifesting without a clear cause. He’s seeing visions of murky water. They typically start in the top corner of a room, as seen with his bedroom and his classroom. However, the water quickly starts dripping down the walls and moving towards him.
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The water isn’t without disturbing elements. The water that comes toward Noah in his classroom takes the form of a tentacle. When it appears in the MRI machine, a worm drips down from the water onto Noah’s skin, wriggling into his wound. Since the genre is psychological thriller, rather than supernatural horror, it seems likely that his visions are related to some kind of psychological concept, such as trauma.
4Eli Agrees To Act As Noah’s Child Psychologist
Eli Is Taking A Break From Working As A Child Psychologist Before Noah
When Eli receives the request to act as a child psychologist for a child in the foster care system, he’s skeptical about the idea. However, he eventually decides to help because the social worker keeps hounding him. Eli doesn’t realize that the young boy is Noah, who has already shown up at his apartment twice, and he once again questions whether he should take him on as a client upon learning his identity. Ultimately,he agrees to accept Noah as a client because he’s been through so many foster homes and faces the risk of getting sent to a state hospital.
This agreement is the foundational component of the entire series, since the pair only gets closer during their sessions together. Before that, he was just a strange little boy who appeared at Eli’s house. Additionally, Eli would never have realized he had a peculiar, as-of-yet-unknown connection to the little boy. They both share the same anger outbursts and hallucinations (though Noah’s is water and Eli’s is his wife), and they both seem fixated on the same farmhouse.
3Noah Gets Placed In The Hospital For Attacking A Classmate
Noah Thought He Was Attacking The Water Tentacle
When Noah is in class, he grabs his pencil box for the usual school reasons. However, he drops it when he sees the dark water in the corner of the room. His facial expression is one of pure, unadulterated fear. When the water gets to the ground, it takes tentacle form and wraps around his classmate’s neck. Believing it to be real, he grabs a pencil from the ground and stabs the tentacle with it. He didn’t realize he had actually stabbed his classmate in the neck until after the tentacle disappeared, at which point he lost consciousness.
Consequently, Noah is admitted to a hospital as he is a danger to himself and others. Since he is unable to communicate through words, he cannot express to anyone why he stabbed his classmate or what he’s afraid of. However, this scene explains to the audience a potential source of his aggression and anger outbursts. It’s possible he doesn’t intend to hurt others, but he can’t differentiate between his hallucinations and reality – if that’s what’s causing him to see the murky water.
2Noah Starts Talking For The First Time In Months
Noah Has Been Non-Speaking Since Early In His Foster Placement
One of the first things Eli learns about Noah is the fact that he’s non-speaking, communicating through gestures and drawing instead. After speaking to his foster mother, he finds out that Noah wasn’t always silent, using words to communicate when he first got to the foster house. However, he quickly started having screaming episodes, where he wouldn’t be able to speak. Eventually, he stopped using this mode of communication altogether. The exact reason hasn’t been revealed in the first or second episodes of Apple TV+’sBefore.
In episode 2, he speaks for the first time in months, shocking everyone. He says the sentence, “I want to go home.” From this point forward, he’s shown speaking more frequently, though only around Eli. He also doesn’t say a lot without prompting. Further episodes may show him feeling more comfortable verbalizing through spoken language instead of other manners of communication. It also seems probable that Before will explain why exactly Noah’s ability to speak out loud regressed.
The last part of Before episode 2 shows Eli and Noah playing The Mad Game in the hospital during a session. The Mad Game is an actual therapeutic technique used in play therapy to teach children that anger is a normal and healthy emotion that’s okay to feel and express. As shown with Eli, the psychologist starts with minor annoyances and continues progressing toward therapy-relevant answers. His follow-up questions regarding Noah’s answers help get a better idea of the little boy’s mental state and perspective on the world.
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Unfortunately, what is a relatively ordinary therapy session in Noah’s hospital room turns tense. Noah gets into a highly distressed state after saying, “People who hurt other people” make him angry, scratching his table. When asked what makes him the most mad, he responds by saying, “You know what you did” in Eli’s voice. The little boy then has a nosebleed and starts screaming, ending Before episode 2 in a disturbing way.
