The ten-year anniversary of The Leftovers’ debut kicked my feeds into overdrive last month, and goddamn it if the smartphone content algorithms didn’t mobilize me. Back when it debuted, Jenn and I gave this show’s pilot a shot but bounced hard, repelled by its misery-porn vibes. Well, the frog-in-a-jacuzzi nature of the past decade must have inured me, because this time I persisted, and now understand why the show so frequently populates the higher echelons of modern best-of-TV lists.
Based on a novel by Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers examines the aftermath of an event called the Sudden Departure, during which two percent of the world’s population simply vanishes without a trace. The global event leaves the survivors in a heightened state of grief and spiritual crisis, trying to make sense of a senseless mass tragedy. The action centers on the small town of Mapleton in upstate New York, where local sheriff Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux) has watched his family shatter in the wake of the Sudden Departure. His wife, therapist Laurie (Amy Brenneman), has joined a cult called the Guilty Remnant, which has a perverse, unsettling obsession with reminding the surviving population of the world’s tragedy. His son Tommy (Chris Zylka) channels his trauma into devotion to “Holy Wayne” (Paterson Joseph), a cult leader in his own right. Finally, there’s daughter Jill (Margaret Qualley), who remains at home but hasn’t remotely come to terms with the dissolution of her family. Three years have passed since the Departure, and the town is attempting to move forward with a commemorative event – one that Kevin is worried the Guilty Remnant, led by cagey local leader Penny Levin (Ann Dowd), will use as an opportunity to provoke turmoil. Equally stressed by his job and his personal life, Kevin is a hot mess, but that all seems to melt away whenever he encounters Nora Durst (Carrie Coon), a local fraud investigator for the Department of Sudden Departure whose entire family was claimed by the event.
To a certain degree, The Leftovers’ first season earns the misery-porn label I’d saddled it with; the entire season is practically a content warning, with dog murders and a stoning among its more egregious triggers. But after the past decade of COVID grief, incessant mass shootings, political insurrection, and regular climate disasters, the surface of The Leftovers feels (sadly) more relatable, while the subtext resonates all the more strongly. Indeed, its somber, haunted atmosphere is strangely prescient, tonally. The post-Departure world is an upside-down one where nothing makes sense, and the show’s writers — led by Perrotta and Lost veteran Damon Lindelof — leverage that nonsensical new reality in inventive ways that intricately conflate the supernatural and the psychological. Indeed, The Leftovers echoes Lost in its anything-goes speculative approach, but in a more intentional way, thanks to the less-demanding rhythms of prestige cable. That intention is to examine the characters’ complex emotional responses to trauma, growing more powerful as the truth underlying each enigmatic scenario is revealed. This affords every corner of a brilliant cast opportunity to shine, but it’s Carrie Coon who scores standout points for her feisty, gutting performance as Nora. A turning point is episode six, “Guest,” in which Nora goes to New York City to speak at a conference; this is the hour that secured my addiction in the masterful way The Leftovers blends drama, compelling mystery, and character depth with its core speculative conceit. Watching this one reminded me a little of the fourth episode of Lost, “Walkabout”— the perfectly executed hour unveiling the backstory of John Locke, which carried my early curiosity into sustained obsession. The Leftovers improves on Lost, though, by elevating its surreal legerdemain with focused thematic purpose.
Season one ends explosively, and might have made a successful conclusion to a limited series. Instead, The Leftovers significantly reinvents itself for season two, relocating many of the principals from Mapleton to the town of Jarden, Texas — a community also known as “Miracle.” Mysteriously, the entire population of Miracle was spared from the Sudden Departure. It has since attained a Mecca-like status as a spiritual tourist trap, even as its outskirts grow cluttered with itinerants desperate to take up permanent residence. To the writers’ credit, this migration to a new milieu feels natural, moving key characters into town — thanks to an in provided by Mapleton’s gadfly priest, Matthew Jamison (Christopher Eccleston) — while also introducing new angles. The key newcomers are the Murphys — local doctor Erika (Regina King), her firefighter husband John (Kevin Carroll), and their children Michael (Jovan Adepo) and Evie (Jasmin Savoy Brown). Locals in Miracle who introduce new mysteries to the mix, the Murphys become entangled with those of our relocated heroes, whose post-Mapleton journey meets new threats and challenges.
Perhaps attempting to rebrand from its severe early tone, season two shifts gears slightly — still tackling the same themes, but with a more playful, tonally varied spin. In keeping with this, it adopts a slick-looking new title sequence backed by an upbeat country-and-western song that…well, let’s just say it’s my least favorite thing about The Leftovers. Aside from that, the second season is kind of a masterpiece, extrapolating beyond the book’s trajectory — perhaps the better for its new structural freedom. The series’ shape becomes less predictable, and it tempers its grim foundation with touches of surreal humor and whimsical tone. The results are easier to digest, but no less powerful, and afford the writers different ways to leverage the supernatural premise toward its nuanced, varied examination of the characters’ social, psychological, and spiritual coping mechanisms. It also has a finely crafted metaplot executes an impressive endgame for the season, but the fun is in the journey and the details, which reach their most inventive in setpiece episodes like “No Room at the Inn” and “International Assassin.”
The creative evolution continues in season three, which remains stellar as it provides a finely constructed exit strategy for the series. After a steady season opener to set the stage, the series winds down with seven absolutely first-rate episodes, closing the loop with a unique mix of speculative invention, offbeat humor, and deadly serious themes. The final year provides a satisfying season arc peppered with well integrated setpiece episodes, especially “Crazy Whitefella Thinking” (which gives Kevin’s father, played by Scott Glenn, an exceptional spotlight) and “It’s a Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt World” (which zeroes in on Christopher Eccleston’s Matt, who ends the episode with perhaps one of the most perfect lines of dialogue in TV history). And the finale? “The Book of Nora” is a great one, with an extended, coda-like sequence that focuses on much-needed emotional closure, but also manages, to a degree, to explain the core speculative conceit in a satisfying way.
Is it perfect? Alas, no; even through the charmed filter of a thoroughly enjoyable binge, nitpicky flaws made themselves evident. The Leftovers doesn’t always follow the speculative rules it sets for itself, for one thing, nor does it manage to tie off every loose end. From time to time, its grimdark provocation is excessive, and its self-seriousness can verge on off-putting melodrama. It also radiates Lindelof’s talent for blatant emotional manipulation. This is abetted by the series’ uneven deployment of music, which occasionally becomes intrusive. Annoying needle drops and the jarring theme song experimentation are big issues; more subtly distracting is the overuse of a specific piano arpeggio that, while gorgeous, is ruthlessly deployed as an audience-yanking emotional cue. I mean, yeah, we get it — it’s time to be sad!
But all things considered, I was enraptured by The Leftovers. When it stumbles, it’s because it’s reaching for something ambitious. It sustains a fascinatingly immersive ambience throughout, focused on its emotional and thematic resonance but without losing sight of the scene-level craft and season-level plotting. And the actors are brilliant — led by Coon’s exquisite breakout performance and Theroux’s courageous intensity as the lost, volatile Kevin, but almost uniformly exceptional up and down the lineup. There’s a reason people are still talking and thinking about this one ten years later, and I suspect it will join a very short list of rewatch shows I end up revisiting.
