The following contians spoilers for The Leftovers.
“We are living reminders” is painted in thick black over the wall of the communal bathroom that Laurie Garvey (Amy Brenneman) shares with the other members of the Guilty Remnants. The Guilty Remnants are a group – some would say a cult – formed after The Sudden Departure, when 3% of the world’s population suddenly disappeared without a trace or explanation of their whereabouts. They believe in the stagnant refusal to “move on” in a post-departure world. They are self-proclaimed reminders of October 14, 2011. It was a day where many lost someone they loved, while others lost their grip on normalcy forever.
That’s what we are — living reminders of those we’ve lost, those we’ve had to let go, and ourselves. Inspired by Tom Perrota’s novel and developed for television by Lost’s co-creator Damon Lindelof, HBO’s The Leftovers is a profound and often brutal examination of humanity’s tenuous grip on mortality. This has been one of those intensely personal subjects I’ve repeatedly dissected for the last five years. How do we, as human beings, reckon with our mortality in the face of so much loss and death? How does one live day-to-day knowing that death is not just an abstract thought but a reality that many face and have no way of preventing?
June 29th, 2024 marked ten years since the series premiere, yet we’re no closer to answering any of these questions. However, amid so much confusion and uncertainty, there’s a feeling of hope to the series despite it spending three seasons dredging up so much pain through loss. Hope comes in the very same uncertainty through which Nora Durst (Carrie Coon) leaves its audience at the end of its series finale. Did Nora ever reach the “other side” where 3% of the world’s population suddenly vanished? Or was her final monologue the ramblings of a grief-stricken woman who finally found peace after her entire family disappeared in the Sudden Departure? The point is those unanswered questions, to live with the uncertainty along with those who were left behind, like Nora Durst and Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux).
The Leftovers also left unanswered questions on human existence. What are we doing here? What’s our purpose? What drives us to suicide in the case of Kevin Garvey? Is the impulse to leave this world simply the urge to move on to the next one? The Leftovers is the narrative land that explores all of these questions we are often too afraid to ask. We’re all afraid of dying. So what if we caught a glimpse of what’s on the other side? I pose these unanswerable questions with intent, much like the series did. There’s no “right” answer, but confronting our mortality in this world seems to lead us down dark and often violent roads.
In one of the show’s most memorable episodes, “International Assassin,” Kevin leaves the physical world after ingesting poison in hopes of finally defeating Guilty Remnant leader Patti Levin (Ann Dowd), whose ghost appears to be haunting him. That, or simply the delusions of a madman bogged down by both the weight of the world he inhabits and the guilt for his part in her death. Set in what seems to be a mystical, after-life realm where chaos and confusion ensue, Kevin, now an assassin in this world, is tasked with killing Patti, who in this life is a prominent politician running for President of the United States.
The episode is structured like one of those vivid dreams we all wake up to but with no memory of, yet our hearts are still pounding in our chests. It’s also the episode that most encapsulates the intersection of realism and fantasy, which works well to highlight the trauma endured by the characters of this series. When Kevin confronts a child version of Patti sitting by a well, knowing he has to push her in, he takes everything inside to make that final shove. He lets her go and, in the process, lets go of the guilt that comes with every loss of human life. Kevin wakes up. Patti is dead. She’s been dead the entire time. Who’s to say what happened once Kevin swallowed that poison? What would we do to exorcise our own moral conscience and grief?
There’s no rationalizing The Leftovers through our modern standards of logic. Once trauma occurs, all sense of logic is expelled from the room. Every space is permeated by the event that changed it all. Good or bad, we are all living reminders of our past, present, and future. Ten years later, The Leftovers still feels like a time capsule of a TV event, where no one watched as it aired. It felt as if watching it in real time felt like watching something profound and painful unfold, and it was only best seen through the rearview mirror of our memory, loved and understood in hindsight. I guess we’re still not ready to confront our part in the moral destruction of this world, always seeking new worlds to destroy. It becomes too unbearable to see the damage we wreck reflected back at us.