Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Before!
Apple TV+ Episode 4 Before continues to move the psychological thriller forward, revealing more details about the mysterious connection between Noah and Eli. The new episode is one of the slowest in the series so far, and the revelations aren’t as noticeable as those in previous episodes. However, they are still crucial to Before’s main characters and the overall narrative.
While Before leaned more heavily into the psychological part of its genre, the episode takes the strange connections and possible supernatural elements to a new level. Although Noah seemed to have a connection to Eli in previous episodes, this episode presents a possible connection between Lynn and Noah. The episode also reveals more about Eli’s mindset after the loss of his wife, worsening his isolation from family and friends.
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Noah disappears from the therapy room early on Apple TV+ before
Apple TV+ Before There haven’t been many scary moments so far, but one of the most stressful is when Noah disappears from the play therapy room. Eli goes out to get water, talks to Noah’s mother and is about to leave when Eli looks out the playroom window. Although anyone in this situation would panic, the expression on his face when Noah disappears shows how close the connection he has with his client is.
After frantically looking around the psychiatric ward, Eli hears scratching inside a linen closet. Since Noah previously did this to the table, the child psychologist assumes it is his missing client. Fortunately, he is right and is able to get Noah back to safety. The show never clarifies what exactly caused Noah to run away. Since he says he wants to go home, the initial assumption is that he is trying to escape the hospital. However, Noah seems petrified when Eli finds him, so it’s possible he was scared by the woman he drew drowning or swimming.
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Noah doesn’t have Dutch or a farmhouse in his former foster homes
The first thing Eli asks his assistant Cleo to research is whether anyone has ever referred Noah to him as a client. When Cleo finds no connection between them, Eli asks his assistant Before episode 3 to examine Noah’s history and see if his former foster homes could explain the boy’s strange behaviors. At the beginning of episode 4, Cleo comes back to Eli with an answer about Noah’s history in the foster system. She could find no evidence that he lived with anyone who spoke 17th-century Dutch, and he never lived in a farmhouse.
Cleo’s findings raise further questions about the origin of these abilities. She suggests that the Dutch and farms came from cryptomnesiaa psychological phenomenon where a subconsciously forgotten memory resurfaces without recognition that it comes from a previous experience. For example, Noah could have heard Dutch on TV and then repeated it for years, without realizing he had heard it before.
However, there is also the possibility that his ability to speak archaic Dutch and his memory of a farmhouse may have a supernatural explanation. The child could have some kind of Dutch spirit from the 1600s that lived in a farmhouse linked to him for an unknown reason. In any situation, Before we will need to explain how these characteristics connect to Lynn’s photo of the same farm.
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Sophie thinks Lynn is into her lizard
When Eli and Sophie spend the day together in Before In episode 4, she reveals to him that she believes her grandmother Lynn is inside her stuffed lizard. This belief of Sophie’s can be interpreted in different ways. She could think that her grandmother’s spirit actually possessed the plush, or it could be more of an imaginary friend situation. Anyway, Whenever Sophie brings up the subject, Eli becomes angrier, as if her comment was a personal slight to his grandfather and his values. He repeatedly pressures her to abandon the belief that Lynn is in the Lizard.
Unfortunately, he finally explodes when they are in church as the priest tries to justify Sophie’s beliefs as being a faith-based form of grief processing. Eli’s outburst, motivated by his belief in science and rejection of faith, significantly damages his relationship with his granddaughter. She feels like he doesn’t care about her feelings. Furthermore, his rant against the priest shows his general mindset about religion, the afterlife, and souls. If Before becomes supernatural, Eli may be forced to reject his deeply held beliefs.
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Lynn sends secret emails to Jackson
In each episode of the Apple TV+ original show, more details emerge about Eli’s late wife, Lynn. Perhaps the biggest reveal yet comes in Before episode 4, when Eli finds secret emails between Lynn and Jackson, a close friend of the couple, which include photos. Initially, it seems like there may be a hidden relationship, as Eli doesn’t bother to look at the image attachments. However, Eli discovers the truth after confronting Jackson at his party about the emails.
It turns out that Lynn was writing a children’s book on the topic of death in order to emotionally process her terminal cancer. Instead of revealing her book to Eli, she hid it because he encouraged her to engage in all the experimental treatments, despite her desire to process what was coming. Based on the explanation, it seems that Lynn didn’t want to continue fighting, but he pressured her to do so.
In addition to contextualizing the dynamics between the couple, the emails between Lynn and Jackson feature images she drew that could suggest something sinister is happening. Lynn’s drawing shows two children walking through a snowy forest with whirlwinds at the top. While this could mean wind, the whirlwinds look almost identical to the ones Noah drew at the beginning of the Before episode 4. Considering he is also seeing ice and his breathing is visible, there appears to be a connection between Lynn and Noah’s drawing.
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Noah starts hallucinating about ice again
At the beginning Before episode 4, Eli confirms that Noah is taking new psychological medications, and he is not shown having hallucinations like dark water or ice breaking. The lack of horrific visions makes it appear that they may have been a symptom of a psychological disorder that is being adequately treated. However, at the end of the episode, the visions are back.
Noah sees a tentacle wrapped around the nurse’s neck and ice breaking across the ceiling, explaining his fear at the beginning of the episode. Plus, he has a new vision element – snow falling on him. The biggest takeaway from this revelation is that Noah’s hallucinations are not psychological in nature or he is not taking the right medication to control them.
Additionally, the snow, visible breathing, and ice promote the idea that there is a connection between Lynn and Noah. After all, not only does he draw swirls that look like hers, but Lynn’s drawing includes a boy who looks a lot like Noah walking in the snow. The biggest question is how exactly the two are connected. Each episode does Before it feels more like a supernatural thriller than a psychological thriller. Either way, only time will tell how and why Lynn and Noah are related.
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Noah is hiding Toy Man from sand therapy
At the beginning Before episode 4, Noah disappears from the play therapy room after using a pen. Since the pen is missing, Eli assumes his client stole the pen and is hiding it. The episode leans into this assumption, showing Noah hiding a pen-shaped object wrapped in a pen under his bed. He is extremely attached and protective of this object, clutching it close to his chest when he holds it. However, at the end of the episode, it is revealed that Eli never took the pen and has no plans to hurt anyone with his prized possession.
Instead, the object on the napkin is the sand therapy dummy. Although he buried the object in the sand during the therapy session so it wouldn’t hurt anyone, he never seemed afraid of the doll. During the fight at the end of the episode, he refuses to let go of the toy willingly, and Noah calls the man with the toy “Eli.” This moment shows how attached he has become to the child psychologist, even though he has said a few times that Eli hurt him without further explanation.
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Eli’s breathing becomes visible like Noah’s
The last scene in Before episode 4 is one of the most bizarre moments of the first four episodes. After Noah starts seeing snow and ice again, his lips turn blue and his breathing becomes visible. This would not be notable in itself, as it falls within the established hallucinations. However, the strange part occurs to Eli at the same time as Noah’s hallucinations. The child psychologist looks at Lynn’s drawings in her house. His lips start to turn blue and his breathing becomes visible, just like Noah’s.
The scene clearly has some sort of meaning, but it’s unclear what it means as the episode ends shortly thereafter. Considering Before episode 5 is titled “Folie à Deux”, Eli will likely begin to experience the same symptoms as Noah, and this scene could foreshadow what’s to come. After all, the title phrase is a psychological term for two individuals who experience the same delusions. Alternatively, some viewers speculate that the ending of episode 4 means that Eli and Noah are somehow the same person, which would unquestionably bring a supernatural element to the story.