The Leftovers isn’t a TV show; it’s a mystical experience… and I’m not just talking about the overtly religious storyline, nor that season three was resurrected on Easter Sunday. HBO’s most underrated hour-long is the most beautifully crafted TV show I have ever seen – S03E01 reduced me to tears. Twice. Here's a recap and deeper dive into The Book of Kevin.
PAST IS PROLOGUE
Just as season two’s prologue, Axis Mundi, transported us to cavewoman times, season three began with another dialogue-free flashback. The year is 1844. White-clad, Guilty Remnant-predecessor townsfolk of an Australian Millerite community desperately await The Rapture, as calculated by their prophesying, insane scientist priest and his doves.
From the opening establishing shot, Mimi Leder’s direction shines, effortlessly conveying one female settler’s desperation as she stands atop her straw roof hoping to be whisked away to heaven. The scenes are so hypnotic, it’s impossible not to be sucked into the mid-19th century, feeling like one of those poor villagers suffering eternal damnation. Damon Lindelof is the only television writer who consistently puts his viewers through the wringer with as many conflicting emotions as his characters.
Here, Lindelof employs his love of short bursts of quick-cut repeated scenes to perfectly capture the villagers’ hopelessness as their charlatan spiritual leader wrongly calculates the date of The Rapture again and again. This imbues we viewers with humor and pathos; everything great TV should be: ultra-efficient, highly emotive, audio-visual storytelling.
Convinced she’s going to be swept up, our main Millerite woman stands atop a barn roof in a lightning storm. But The Rapture never arrives...
From 1844 Australia, we segue seamlessly to characters we know and love. Evie Murphy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Meg Abbott (Liv Tyler) are holed up in the Jardin Visitor Welcome Center on the morning after the Guilty Remnant’s season two finale revolution. It was both sad and thrilling to see Evie’s final seconds before being blown up by a drone strike, but entirely necessary for what followed…
KEVIN AS KING
After a three-year time jump, what followed was a glorious half-hour of Lindelof’s World-Building. Beginning with our hero Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux) staring into a very familiar hatch-like missile crater/abyss, it quickly becomes clear he’s the king of the newly renamed town of Miracle.
For the next 30 minutes, we see everyone’s new lives. Respected Sheriff Kevin rides across town on a white horse like a returned king, putting out fires and problem-solving with intelligence and empathy. For the first time in six years since The Departure, everything is right with the world.
The town is still a messed-up tourist spot, but it’s not the Wild West Sodom and Gomorrah Circus Freakshow of season two. Kevin’s stepson Tommy (Chris Zylka) is his deputy, and rekindled lover Nora Durst (Carrie Coon) has her old job back at the Department of Sudden Departures.
Meanwhile back on the ranch, Matt Jamison (Christopher Eccleston) is still preaching, only now he has a huge congregation which spills into the street and includes his miraculously healed wife, Mary (Janel Moloney), who’s about to leave for New York, taking their three-year-old son, Noah.
Angst-ridden John Murphy (Kevin Carroll) is reborn as a hippie. With help from his new wife, Kevin’s ex, Laurie (Amy Brenneman), he poses as a psychic, bringing his customers messages from the departed. After giving lost souls hope, he shreds their money.
Everyone has moved on and is happy and fulfilled. Even Jill! When she briefly returns from uni in a Nirvana T-shirt, using her own benchmark, Jill (Margaret Qualley) is okay. Grunge generally signifies characters falling into a teenage, emo, depression, but this is Lindelof, so that Nirvana T-shirt has a higher, spiritual meaning – for Nirvana is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘liberation from the cycles of reincarnation’.
In short, everything is groovy in Groovetown. Kevin is king, has found purpose, and equanimity abounds in “the house where the fucked-up people live,” but this is The Leftovers, and if there’s one showrunner who understands the never-ending reincarnations of the saṃsāra – where this present incarnation (dhukkha) is full of pain and suffering – it’s Lindelof.
THE BOOK OF KEVIN
Jardin’s peace is interrupted by Kevin’s old hunting partner Dean (Michael Gaston), even more insane than season one, and spouting apocalyptic, end-of-days conspiracy theories. But at least Kevin knows Dean is a real human being and not a delusion, right? Our boy no longer hears the fell voices of the dead or sleepwalks. Kevin’s no longer mentally ill, right?
Well, things are about to get real strange in Strangetown because Dean uses a dog whistle to summon Kevin’s black dog back into his life. And before you can say "death wish," Kevin’s tying plastic bags round his head.
Out of town at Miracle Springs, protestors in Evie T-shirts disrupt Matt’s baptisms by dumping drums of toxic waste in the water. Kevin’s death wish makes him wade into the water, only to reveal the drums are not toxic. Finally giving himself to God, Kevin is baptised by John's son, Michael Murphy (Jovan Adepo) in the water.
As Tommy drives his father home, he calls bullshit on the “gas leak” that killed Evie and the Guilty Remnant. But their conversation is interrupted by a bullet whistling through the windshield. Dean ambles up the street like To Kill A Mockingbird’s rabid dog, yelling: “You changed, you son of a bitch…” and trains his gun on Kevin, whose soaking-wet police gun jams…
But just as Dean is about to redecorate the road with Kevin’s brains, Tommy turns into Jardin’s equivalent of Maycomb County’s Atticus Finch, and shoots and kills Dean. In the aftermath, Kevin tells Tommy that he, too, has killed someone… in the afterlife.
When Kevin asks Mary to give Matt time, she tells him that Matt is writing a gospel about him as “He thinks the New Testament is getting old. He got pretty excited when you rose from the dead.” Kevin confronts Matt, John, and Michael, who – after Kevin was poisoned, buried alive, journeyed into the underworld, and got shot in the chest – inform him that they believe he’s the second coming, immortal, and the hero of The Book of Kevin.
Matt predicts a biblical event will arrive on the seventh anniversary of The Departure in 13 days. Writers say “a ticking clock creates tension,” and in any other show, this might be a countdown to a terrorist attack, but not in this show. The Leftovers’ ticking clock is the end of the freakin' world.
Kevin scoffed at Matt, John, and Michael’s notion that he's the second coming, but when push comes to shove, he can’t bring himself to burn The Book of Kevin. Looking into the sky, he sees a plane has written a message.
A seamless transition from the skywriting transports us back to Australia, luring us into thinking we’re watching a grey-haired, ponytailed, dove-wrangling Kevin Garvey Sr. (Scott Glenn) cycling through the countryside. But it turns out not to be Kevin's dad; it’s actually someone called Sarah…
However, Sarah turns out to be an elderly Nora Durst. This is another of Lindelof’s flashforwards, but if you think you know what’ll happen next, I’ll bet you my house it won’t be as straightforward as you think. It never is.
In the space of an hour, The Book of Kevin took us back in time to 19th-century Australia, and forward a few decades to Australia. Just like how every season of Lost 'zoomed out' to reveal more of its crazy universe, this episode reframed everything from the first two seasons. Now, we've gone from asking is Kevin mad, to asking... is Kevin the second coming?
And as for Damon Lindelof, he's not the Messiah; he's a very naughty boy!
WHAT MAKES THE LEFTOVERS SO SPECIAL?
Always expect the unexpected with The Leftovers. The show never fails to subvert even the lofty expectations set by Tom Perrotta's original book. And I don’t mean the normal police procedural, “The wealthy, respected banker was the murderer, not the street urchin” red herrings. I mean, screaming at the TV, “Oh. My. God. WTF just happened? Don’t end now!”
Lindelof subverting expectations is one of the many reasons he is hated by so many. People loathe being so many steps behind this writing mystic, and the themes he rips off like band aids terrify them. Like the Guilty Remnant in the form of a writer, he suggests that viewers are not nearly as in control of their lives as they like to believe. They can’t handle the truth…
However, Lindelof’s channeling his hopes and fears into out-of-this-world writing, plus his understanding of Eastern religion, mythology, allegory, and putting loveable, flawed characters through hell, are not only what makes the show so special. The entire cast’s acting is perfect.
Director Mimi Leder’s unparalleled visual storytelling nous and perfect framing of every single second elevate the show to Emmy-worthy.
Max Richter’s haunting score and Music Supervisor Liza Richardson’s inspired song choices, especially with Jardin’s Gospel atmosphere, are religious experiences in themselves. But that’s not what made me cry; my tears were down to my sense of awe. Hundreds of writers, actors, directors, technicians, assistants, execs, and runners all brought their A-game to feed my eyes, ears, and soul. This show is my Manna from heaven.
Stories are meant to wake us up… like Dante's The Pilgrim and Kevin’s guide, Virgil, in the greatest episode of TV ever made, season two finale, International Assassin. We’ve just been drinking from the River Lethe for too long and have forgotten. Luckily, Lindelof is here to remind us.
All Hero’s Journeys deal with death and rebirth; metaphor for winning the battle against the ego; casting off the old paradigm and dedicating your life to something bigger than your old, ‘selfish’ self. This ‘awakening of the self from illusion’ idea can be found everywhere, from the 3,000 year-old Hindi Upanishads talk of Maya (the illusion of reality) to Jesus’ Easter reincarnation story, and from Alice in Wonderland’s journey down the rabbit hole to The Matrix’s red and blue pill.
HBO airing this beautifully crafted hour of television about rebirth in a town called Miracle on Easter Sunday was my own little slice of heaven. If you’re not already a Leftovers convert, make it your daily bread and watch all 21 previous episodes before next Sunday!
The Leftovers airs on HBO at 9/8c, Sunday nights. Miss it and go straight to TV Hell. Do not pass The River Styx. Do not collect two pennies for your eyes.