Welcome to our weekly recap of the third and final season of the Leftovers. In The Myth of Sisyphus, the French existentialist Albert Camus argued that “there is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that.” That is the main question faced by Laurie, our main character in the episode, as we see her struggling to reconcile her rational, scientific worldview with that of everyone else around her. She is a psychotherapist surrounded by religious zealots (Matt), prophets (Kevin Sr.), apostles (Michael and John), and maybe even the Messiah himself (Kevin). We also see her struggle with her past in the Guilty Remnant: is she really a rationalist or simply a nihilist? And, either way, how can she reconcile those views with the Sudden Departure? As we will see, Albert Camus may offer some answers…
You can also read my recaps for The Book of Kevin (Ep 1), Don’t Be Ridiculous (Ep 2), Crazy Whitefella Thinking (Ep 3), “G’Day Melbourne,” (Ep. 4) and “It’s a Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt World.” (Ep. 5)
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Prologue: Are You Gonna Say Something?
The prologue takes place two years after the Sudden Departure with Laurie, still working as a psychotherapist, talking to the mother who lost her child in the opening scene of the very first episode of the Leftovers. The mother doesn’t know how to move forward, is her baby dead, alive, should she move on? Laurie remains silent, and the mother asks her “Aare you gonna say something? Tell me what to do!” and Laurie realizes that she can’t help her, her rational, scientific mind can’t explain what happened, and therefore she can’t offer any answers or any help. After the mother leaves, she tries to commit suicide but she finally stops herself from doing it. She doesn’t have the strength to go through with it, but she also realizes that her life as it existed pre-departure doesn’t have any meaning anymore. She also needs answers, she also needs someone to tell her what to do, that’s why she joins the Guilty Remnant.
The opening scene has “Wherever I may Roam” by Metallica in the background.
Opening Credits: 1-800 Suicide
If the credits, as Lindelof has said, function as an overture that sets the overall tone for the episode, here the music could not be more clear: 1-800 Suicide by Gravediggaz:
So you want to die, commit suicide
Dial 1-800-Cyanide line
Far as life, yo it ain’t worth it
Not a very subtle way to set up the episode…
We Asked Him To Die… Again
After the opening credits we find Laurie driving alone to a ranch outside Melbourne to meet up with Kevin and the others on the day before the 7th anniversary of the Sudden Departure. There is a time jump from the previous episode, and it is not very clear how Laurie got separated from the group. We find out later that she and Matt decided to stay in Melbourne to help Nora, and only after that, she decided to meet up with Kevin Sr. and Jr., Michael, John, and Grace.
Kevin Sr. tells Laurie that Kevin is not there since he has decided to go out for the day to think about what Kevin Sr. has asked him to do: to die again. Here we find the usual tension this season between Laurie and other characters (this time in opposition to Kevin Sr.). She is the rational mind facing those who have faith. No one there thinks she understands, to which she responds:
“I understand. You want to drown Kevin so he can go to this place where the dead people are, and while he is there, he is going to learn a song from one of the dead people, and he is going to bring this song back to you [Kevin Sr.] so you can sing it and stop the Biblical flood that’s gonna happen tomorrow. And you told all this to Kevin, and he is actually considering it”
If I Wanted to Kill Myself, I Would Go Scuba Diving
In a flashback that takes us to a few days earlier, Matt and Laurie are helping Nora track the LADR scientists who rejected Nora, and did not allow her to use the machine to be reunited with her kids. While they are on a stakeout inside of a van, Laurie calls the LADR mechanism a “suicide Machine,” but Nora rejects that notion. She thinks that the machine does what it is supposed to do, which in her mind is to give her closure, bring her with her children, even if that means death. She says that if she wanted to commit suicide, there are other ways, such as going scuba diving, in a clear foreshadowing of what will happen at the end of the show.
What seems clear in this exchange is that both, while Matt, Kevin and the others are looking for meaning, Nora and Laurie are looking for closure. Matt and the others are people of faith, and they have been able to forge a narrative that makes sense of what is happening. But Nora and Laurie are not people of faith. Even in the case of Laurie, the Guilty Remnant was never about faith. The Guilty Remnant is a religion without a theology, there is no doctrine there, only acceptance of the undeniable events of the Sudden Departure, but not explanation as to why they happen or what it all meant. So it makes sense that for Nora and Laurie, suicide seems like the best form of acceptance: it allows you for autonomy, and control of your own narrative until the end, and you do not need to accept the narratives of others. In a way, it is not suicide in their minds, it is taking the meaningless of it all to its ultimate and logical consequence.
A small but meaningful incident occurs when Nora is trying to light a cigarette in the van and Laurie lends her a lighter, the one that her daughter Jill gave her when she was still part of the Guilty Remnant. When Nora doesn’t want to give it back (since Laurie does not smoke anymore), they fight and Nora gives Laurie a black eye. I think the scene points out to the last attachment that Laurie still has, her kids, but it is an attachment that she is going to also give up in order to leave this world in her own terms.
“I Want Her To Know That She Was Loved”
Next we have a scene that offers closure to the relationship between Laurie and John. John tells Laurie that he still believes that Evie is “alive,” maybe not in this world, but in another, and he wants Kevin to deliver a message to her: “I want her to know that she was loved.” He seems very aware of the fragility of his faith. He tells Laurie the story of the ark built in Grace’s property, the one we’ve seen in the outside of her house in various episodes. John has found out that one of Grace’s sons, adopted from a local aboriginal group, loved boats, so when he died (how Grace’s children died is explained in the episode Crazy Whitefella Thinking), the local community decided to build a large boat with the wood from the Grace’s church in order to memorialize him. That story has no religious connotations, it is simply a boat, and the fact that it is being built with the wood from the church points out to the loss of Grace’s faith after finding out how her children died. But when Kevin Sr. showed up and was rescued by Grace, he saw the boat as Noah’s ark, as a symbol of what was going to happen.
The point is, the ark has no meaning in and on itself. Meaning is created by context, what is a boat for one person is a Biblical ark for another. But the narrative we construct around those objects do matter, since they give the necessary meaning to our lives. When we cannot create narratives, or our narratives fail us, we risk getting lost in the world. John decides to embrace the narrative, he needs to believe that Evie is alive in a different world, and that the next day there is going to be a great flood that may end the world if Kevin does not die and bring an aboriginal song to Kevin Sr. Laurie, on the other hand, cannot accept those narratives, and realizes that it is time for her to go.
“Not Much Of A Last Supper Without Our Jesus”
That night, Laurie, Kevin Sr., John, Michael, and Grace are having dinner, The Last Supper, indeed since most of them think this is the day before the end of the world. Kevin Sr. openly jokes about it, and points out that this is “not much of a Last Supper without our Jesus,” referring to Kevin Jr. who still has not come back.
Kevin Sr., continuing with the Biblical references, wants to identify everyone at the table with an apostle: he is Peter, John is, obviously, John, Matt, who is not there, is Matthew. Laurie thinks that she is Mary Magdalene, but when Kevin Sr. points out that that would be Nora, and that she should be doubting Thomas, Laurie simply states that she is Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus:
Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” So when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas son of Simon Iscariot. After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “Do quickly what you are going to do.”
John 13:26-27 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
The Judas statement comes at a point when it has become clear that Laurie has poisoned the food with Grace’s dogs pills, which makes everyone at the table fall asleep. Before they do, she is confronted about her statement identifying herself as Judas, to which she responds forcefuly:
“I am Judas, doubting is easy because it doesn’t cost you anything, but Judas, he was surrounded by people who went on and on about how special Jesus was, but he betrayed him anyway, because he was sure, he believed in something and acted on it”
Here, I am not really sure about what this all means. If we take the analogy literarily, it seems that she is going to betray Kevin, but that is not really what happens. It seems to me that the Laurie who joined the Guilty Remnant is briefly back here, she sounds harsh, almost evil, employing any means necessary in order to get what she wants. As we will see, she only drugs the group so she can spend some time with Kevin and say goodbye, but maybe there is more to the scene that I am missing here. Any thoughts?
Nora, Laurie and the Beach Ball
We go back to the flashback with Laurie, Nora, and Matt. This time, they have followed the LADR scientists and have found where they have their machine. Nora turns around and tells Matt and Laurie the story of when they were children and, after their parents died, someone took them to a baseball game. Someone in the audience brought a beach ball and people had a great time whacking it around. But then someone working at the stadium took it and deflated it while the people booed:
Nora: “He just ruined it for everyone. We just wanted to hit the ball, and he ruined it. Why would he want to do that job? Why would anyone?”
Laurie: “Because if he doesn’t, the ball is going to go into the field and it’ll be fucking chaos.”
Here, the parallel story lines of Nora and Laurie converge. Both of them have been like the usher at the baseball stadium trying to grab that ball, that narrative that everyone is playing with, having fun with it, and destroyed. Nora was doing it with while working for the DSD (Department of Sudden Departure). We saw her doing it in her episode this season “Don’t Be Ridiculous,” when trying to make sure that the death of The Man On the Pillar, or the story of Kevin are not mythologized or canonized. Laurie has done that as a member of the Guilty Remnant, reminding people of what happened, and not allowing them to move on with their lives. They both, in many ways, have lived parallel lives, and those parallel lives converge in this scene and in their possible outcomes. Nora decides to go through with the LADR machine (even if the scientists rejected her, she seems to imply that she is going to go through anyway). Laurie has a similar outcome in mind, using different methods…
It was a beautiful scene, heart wrenching, but also giving closure to these two characters. Obviously, we are not sure what’s going to happen to Nora, since we saw her in the epilogue of the final episode and she seems to be still alive, but for now, this is it.
I Came Here To say Goodbye
We return to the night before the 7th anniversary of the Sudden Departure and, while Kevin Sr. and the others have passed out due to the drugs that Laurie put in the food, she finally gets to talk to Kevin alone when he returns. It is another goodbye (first John, then Nora, now Kevin). They tell each other some secrets that they kept from each other during their marriage: Kevin hated their house, Laurie never told hem that she was pregnant and lost the baby during the Sudden Departure. Kevin tells her that he only feels alive when he is in the other place, and that’s why he is not afraid to do it again, to die to see his story through.
“Miss, Now or Never”
“There is only one really serious philosophical problem,” Camus says, “and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that”
Albert Camus, The Myth od The Myth of Sisyphus
The end of the episode shows us Laurie on a boat getting ready to do some scuba-diving or, as it is clear by now, she is going to commit suicide. Before she does, she receives a phone call from her kids, Jill and Tommy (another goodbye) and then she does it. She seems at peace with herself and with the world.
What’s interesting here is that, Laurie seems to be offering a response to the famous question posed by the French existential philosopher Albert Camus: Should I kill myself? This is not such a crazy question from the perspective of Camus but a very logical one:
Camus sees this question of suicide as a natural response to an underlying premise, namely that life is absurd in a variety of ways. As we have seen, both the presence and absence of life (i.e., death) give rise to the condition: it is absurd to continually seek meaning in life when there is none, and it is absurd to hope for some form of continued existence after death given that the latter results in our extinction. But Camus also thinks it absurd to try to know, understand, or explain the world, for he sees the attempt to gain rational knowledge as futile. Here Camus pits himself against science and philosophy, dismissing the claims of all forms of rational analysis: “That universal reason, practical or ethical, that determinism, those categories that explain everything are enough to make a decent man laugh” (MS, 21).
As we see at the end of the episode, we know what Laurie’s answer to that question is…
Previous Episodes Recaps:
You can also read my recaps for The Book of Kevin (Ep 1), Don’t Be Ridiculous (Ep 2), Crazy Whitefella Thinking (Ep 3), “G’Day Melbourne,” (Ep. 4) and “It’s a Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt World.” (Ep. 5).
Next on The Leftovers
“On a mission of mercy, Kevin assumes an alternate identity.”
Lost Among the Walking Dead 
I’ve been meaning to write this for a bit: For the last 3 or 4 episodes of the Leftovers, I’ve been coming over from Alan Sepinwall’s recap to read your analyses afterward. As someone with a collegiate background in theology and philosophy, I have to say your insights and ideas about this series are wonderful to read and have become a ritual for me every Monday morning after an episode. Really great work! Thank you for taking the time to analyze this show and make all these fascinating connections. I’m sure I will be perusing your site further for other critical pieces. : )
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Thanks Ryan for your kind words and for taking the time to read my analysis of the various episodes. I love watching the show and writing about it as if it was this modern and popular form of scripture. The writing in the show definitely invites to do that.
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I have read all your Leftovers re-caps since seeing your link on Vulture. They have all been eye opening, mind bending, and just plain fun to read. Keep up the great work and thanks again!
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Just saw your comment that for some reason went into my spam folder. Thanks!
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Brilliant analysis. I think that Laurie decided she was more like Judas because she constantly betrayed those around her by having no hope for her family, for her patients, for herself, for the world. She was tired of being the one preventing the chaos from happening (parallelism to the stadium man that deflated the ball) despite having no answers, so she went to the opposite side when she joined the GR. She then saw the results of her betrayal and started trying to make amends by returning to practising therapy, which failed again. She doesn’t have doubt, like Thomas. She has certainty that there is no hope and cannot cope being the only one that feels this way. Even Nora, within her immense tragedy and loss, still has something to hang on to…that tiny tiny possibility of joining her children. Laurie now knows that her children are in a good place and will be ok even after she is gone. If the rapture happens again, she does not want to be there and perhaps lose them too. If the rapture or the flood does not happen and everyone thought that Kevin was the one who saved the world, then she knows that she will never be able to believe it and she would have to be the one to betray him and admit him to a mental institution, like she did to his father. She does not want to do that, so unlike Judas, she kills herself before she has to harm him. She was afraid of being proven right but was also afraid of being proven wrong. Laurie was, perhaps, the loneliest of all…
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Nice. Yes, I agree with your view of Laurie. There is really no place for her in this world, although I would argue that all of the characters are lonely in their own ways. In the case of Laurie her loneliness has a tragic ending.
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Hi Manu,
I got to your blog through the link in the NYTs. I really enjoy your analysis and must say reading it has mellowed my thoughts about Laurie in my NYT’s comments below. I’d be interested in hearing your feedback my criticisms of this season and this episode.
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What does Kevin really believe happened to him? That is the main problem I have with this season. Does he believe he died twice and came back? Why doesn’t Lindelhof explore this in any way? Does Nora believe that he died twice and came back? If not, why not? If yes, wouldn’t that be a miraculous event that might lend credence to Kevin being “chosen”? Why doesn’t she ask him about his attempted (and I still think he really does die again each time) suicides with the bag over his head?
Laurie and Kevin and the kids – if they both think having kids was the best thing they ever did then why don’t they talk to them about their possible double suicide? What has Kevin told them about his dieing twice and coming back?
How did Matt get such exquisite details about Kevin’s experiences in purgatory – or wherever he went last season? If Kevin sat down and told him everything, then why is Kevin surprised to learn that he is the subject of the book of Kevin? He must have had some idea of what Matt was thinking.
Nora probably hopes she will be visiting her husband and children but I bet there’s a very large part of her that believes she will just be committing suicide. As stated previously, why oh why isn’t Laurie, a therapist, and Matt, a preacher and her brother, talking to her about her very probable suicide?
This whole season and this episode in particular is just poorly written.
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Hi David,
Let me address your questions one by one.
What does Kevin really believe happened to him? That is the main problem I have with this season. Does he believe he died twice and came back? Why doesn’t Lindelhof explore this in any way? Does Nora believe that he died twice and came back? If not, why not? If yes, wouldn’t that be a miraculous event that might lend credence to Kevin being “chosen”? Why doesn’t she ask him about his attempted (and I still think he really does die again each time) suicides with the bag over his head?
I think this season we see Kevin coming to grips with the fact that what happened to him is not only in his head and that there maybe more to it. I would say that he is a reluctant shaman/messiah. (Reza Aslan has already addressed the issue of both Kevins as shamans). So the problem now is not if what happened to him is real, but what does it mean. Matt and the others want to believe that his resurrection means that he fits within the overall Biblical narrative of the second coming, but if this show has proven something is that no single narrative/explanation can account for what the characters are experiencing. So, yes, what happened to Kevin is a miraculous event, we are just not sure what it all means. I would not say that Kevin is trying to commit suicide, he is just trying to induce a near death experience that would allow him to go to “the other place.” I think Kevin feels that “other place” is more real than this one and therefore he just wants to go there to feel something.
Laurie and Kevin and the kids – if they both think having kids was the best thing they ever did then why don’t they talk to them about their possible double suicide? What has Kevin told them about his dieing twice and coming back?
Not sure what to say here. I think both kids have had their own struggles with the aftermath of the Sudden Departure.
How did Matt get such exquisite details about Kevin’s experiences in purgatory – or wherever he went last season? If Kevin sat down and told him everything, then why is Kevin surprised to learn that he is the subject of the book of Kevin? He must have had some idea of what Matt was thinking.
I have the same question. I am not sure why Matt would know so many details about Kevin’s experiences (including the girl in the well). I would not be surprised if this is addressed in the final episode, but I agree that, as of now, is quite a narrative hole.
Nora probably hopes she will be visiting her husband and children but I bet there’s a very large part of her that believes she will just be committing suicide. As stated previously, why oh why isn’t Laurie, a therapist, and Matt, a preacher and her brother, talking to her about her very probable suicide?
I think at this point in the show, all characters have accepted that they don’t have an answer for what happened but have made up their mind about what to do about it. Kevin accepts that he may be the messiah (albeit a reluctant one), Matt accepts that his God is an indifferent one and there is no need to pursue further his plan of bringing Kevin back to Jarden, Laurie understands that she doesn’t have a place in this world, one in which her scientific, rational training as a psychotherapist is of no use since she is surrounded by people who believe in prophets, messiahs, etc, and Nora just wants closure, even if that means suicide. A great part of the show has been about coping with the unthinkable and the narratives we create in order to make sense of what happened to them. Suicide, although difficult to accept, is part of that mis of possibilities.
This whole season and this episode in particular is just poorly written.
I disagree here. I did think that some episodes this season have some narrative challenges (they are trying to wrap up the series and sometimes it is not always a smooth transition getting from point A to point B in each of the storylines), but some of the episodes are incredible. The episode dedicated to Nora, with the Perfect Strangers joke made part of the plot of the story, the Wu-Tang Clan-trampolin bit, was simply brilliant. And the episode with Matt and Frazier the Lion was really great storytelling, particularly Matt’s conversation with God.
I also would argue that, as Lindelof himself has said, this show is not for everyone. Unless you buy into the main premise of the show (that something extraordinary happened, and we will not know the answer to it), The Leftovers can be a very challenging experience. This is not Westworld, were the premise of the show is predicated on the audience spending the week between episodes looking for all of the clues in the episode in order to access the larger narrative/mythology of the show. The Leftovers is more of an intellectual/emotional ride, and you just need to go with it.
Anyway, these are some of my thoughts. I hope they help!
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How did Matt get such exquisite details about Kevin’s experiences in purgatory – or wherever he went last season? If Kevin sat down and told him everything, then why is Kevin surprised to learn that he is the subject of the book of Kevin? He must have had some idea of what Matt was thinking.
Didn’t Kevin tell John’s son everything after he crawled out of the grave. John’s son told Matt everything.
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That makes sense, but it is still strange that then Kevin was so upset to know that they wrote it all down. It is something that they could have made a bit more explicit.
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I guess because all this time had passed, life moved on, and he was shocked that Matt actually wrote it all down in details that he probably didn’t realize he had told Michael? Let’s not forget, the man did things and didn’t remember any of it.
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Someone else on a response to a passed recap suggested that, and I think that’s a possibility.
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I don’t think Kevin forgot any of it. In “The Book of Kevin” he had several brief flashbacks to it. He even told Tommy about killing Patti, though not about where or when it happened. I think he told Michael about it, because of Michael’s grandfather’s (and Michael’s own) involvement in it. But then he wanted to put it behind him. And maybe worried if he told anyone else, they’d just think he was crazy (and he may have had doubts about that himself).
I followed a link here from Uproxx, and I just want to thank you for your recaps. I have very little knowledge of all the biblical and other religious references, and your recaps have been very helpful to me.
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Or they’d think he was “just another asshole who thought he was God”. Matt basically was building a new cult around him, in a post-Departure world where there’s a government agency dedicated to eradicating cults with bombs and guns. Why would Kevin want to deal with that?
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I really think that Kevin is a reluctant Messiah. He just wants for everything and everyone to go back to the way things were before the departure. Not that he was happy then, but things were not complicated.
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What you say makes sense, and maybe we’ll hear about it again before the end of the show (my guess is that the issue of the book of Kevin will be addressed again in the finale). Glad you are enjoying my recaps, I definitely enjoy writing them.
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I saw her suicide as her not fitting in ANY of the narratives, because of her rational explanations of everything. The kids will be fine, Nora has Matt and John’s wife as support, John has his son, Kevin has his deaths with his father leading the way. Everyone has something to do during this “Apocalypse” except her. These last 5 years that she has tried to live some type of normal life have been futile. She should have gone with her plan of suicide after the first 2 years. She never fit into any narrative, as much as her character and the writers tried to make her.
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I agree with you that poor Laurie was not table to find a reason to live. She could not develop any coping mechanisms or narratives that helped her deal with the realities of a post-departure world.
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I’ve been wondering about the hotel/after-life experienced by Kevin in International Assassin and the Season 2 finale. It seems like we will return there in the next episode and perhaps the next 2 episodes.
There was a mixture of people who were dead and alive. Virgil, Patti, and Patti’s assistant (the GR lady who had been stoned) were definitely dead. Kevin may or may not have been dead, depending on whether one believes his heart stopped when he consumed the poison or when he was shot. I guess the same can be said for David Burton. He may or many not have died in his fall. Matt’s wife was not dead. She was in a comatose state. Kevin’s dad was high on a hallucinogen – God’s Tongue.
My working theory has been that the hotel/after-life is a Purgatory-like waiting area where some sins are purified and some aren’t. In that sense, Patti’s dead-beat husband didn’t make the cut. Kevin’s international assassin was the purifying fire that sent the dead-beat husband on to hell. Kevin’s international assassin also sent Patti on – but did she go to heaven or hell? It’s up for interpretation I suppose.
But what to make of those who weren’t dead – Kevin Sr., Matt’s wife, David Burton? What to make of the water’s ability to wipe one’s mind clean?
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Let me start by saying that there is only two episodes left (this is a short, 8 episode season) so, after this Sunday there is only one more episode.
I agree with you that the hotel is a purgatory/bardo/in-between like space. Lindelof has said as much in some interviews.
I do think that, in the context of the show, Kevin did die and went to this “other place.” So did David Burton. They are prophet/shaman like figures, although in the context of David Burton they take this a bit further and he believes he himself is God (he is the same character we saw in the bridge in international assassin and the same character who asked Kevin to sing that song that allowed him to return to our world).
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