HBO’s Darkest Sci-Fi Show Redefined the Apocalypse

On October 14, 2011, a shocking event that saw 2% of the world’s population vanish suddenly and without a trace. Planes fell out of the sky, beloved family members were never heard from again, and the world simply stopped making sense for so many among the survivors.

One of the best, most thought-provoking, and saddest TV shows in history, The Leftovers may be about the mysterious event known as the Sudden Departure, but the HBO series is far more interested in the humans who were left behind than what happened to those who vanished on that infamous day. Odd cults, hugging “healers,” and folks claiming divine answers pervade the post-Departure world, providing a complex ground to analyze issues of grief and trauma, and attempting to comprehend the incomprehensible.

Six years after the series finale — and 13 years after the show’s fictional Sudden Departure date — the complex answer to the question at its core may not explain what actually happened, but it does reveal the true meaning behind this incredible piece of television.

The Leftovers stars Justin Theroux as Kevin Garvey, the Chief of Police in Mapleton, New York, whose family was dramatically changed by the Sudden Departure — even though none of them actually vanished. His wife Laurie (Amy Brenneman), left the family for the Guilty Remnant, a silent, white-clad, chain-smoking cult seeking to keep the town from moving on. As a result, his daughter Jill (Margaret Qualley) is cynical and angry, and his son Tom Garvey (Chris Zylka) leaves to follow perverted cultist Holy Wayne (Paterson Joseph). Kevin also begins an on-again, off-again relationship with Nora (Carrie Coon), a woman who lost her entire family to the Sudden Departure.

The show lasted three seasons and quickly expanded beyond Mapleton. But even after it ended, our picture of the Sudden Departure remains both messy and ambiguous. So what’s the deal with the Sudden Departure?

As The Leftovers proceeds, we see that Kevin Garvey, basically, can’t stay dead. He dies multiple times, always ending up in an afterlife-of-sorts that’s not that dissimilar from our own world. This leads Reverend Matt Jamison (Christopher Eccleston) to see him as a messiah, but (as series creator Damon Lindelof makes clear in an interview with Esquire) it’s important to remember that Kevin doesn’t do anything particularly Messianic. He doesn’t bring back the Departed. He doesn’t know why they disappeared. And he doesn’t claim to have messages from the Divine.

The series does introduce a former Olympian, David Burton (Bill Camp), who also survived dying (and who Kevin saw in the possible afterlife). David came back to life claiming to be God and to be responsible for the Sudden Departure. While “God,” a cynical and callous individual, is present in our reality and Kevin’s afterlife, he also dies at the hands (paws?) of a lion-themed orgy’s caged lion in the series’ real world, so it’s a stretch to think his claims of divinity might be true.

There’s a lot that’s weird about this afterlife situation, but it isn’t the place where the Departed go, as far as we can tell. When Kevin ultimately launches nukes to destroy that afterlife reality (yes, seriously), it’s safe to assume it’s gone and Kevin is now mortal (confirmed by Lindelof in the same Esquire interview). Is the reality Kevin goes to after dying in his mind? Is it the (or an) afterlife? Possibly, but either way, we know the Departed weren’t Raptured into that afterlife.

In Season 3, Nora uses a machine that can supposedly send people to the place where the Departed have gone. In the series finale, after having supposedly used the machine, audiences discover Nora instead spent years living alone in rural Australia. An aged Kevin arrives, revealing he’s searched for her every year since her disappearance. Nora explains to Kevin that she’d traveled to another reality, hoping to get her children back, just to discover a world where the inverse of the Sudden Departure occurred. There, 98% vanished, but Nora’s family (minus her) survived. She returned upon feeling out of place, a “ghost” in that world, but never thought Kevin would believe her. Kevin replies “Why wouldn’t I believe you? You’re here.” While The Leftovers isn’t that interested in fully explaining the Sudden Departure, that response is the key.

There’s no foolproof explanation of what happened in The Leftovers, but here goes. Kevin’s journey allows us enough confidence to rule out that the 2% who Departed went to an afterlife. The world that Nora went to from their prime reality had an Inverse Departure, where only those 2% survived. The most likely solution is that perhaps realities split on that fateful day, with the populations separated unevenly between the two worlds. There isn’t really a reason for it, at least not a meaningful one, and the lack of answers is beside the point.

The Leftovers is about characters looking for answers to explain the traumatic and incomprehensible. But there aren’t any, so they turn to cults, holy men, and vice instead. Nora searched for her family until she discovered they were whole, allowing her to move on. Kevin searches for Nora, and what reunites them is Kevin’s acceptance of her unbelievable tale. He believes it because she does, she remains, and that’s enough. The Sudden Departure was a cosmic hiccup, and there is no relevant why for its occurrence. What The Leftovers, one of the most poignant and meditative series of all time, is trying to say about the mysterious Sudden Departure is simply that sh*t happens, and accepting what is is the only route forward.