What The Leftovers Meant To Me
I’ve never believed in God. I don’t think there’s an afterlife, I don’t think our actions here will dictate where we go when we die because I don’t think there is anything after this life. So then why do things like Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass, or to a lesser extent The Haunting Of Hill House, and a series I’ve finally caught up on, The Leftovers, effect me so much? I think it has to do with the fact that none of these shows try to definitively answer the question of whether or not there is an afterlife. While wrestling with existential questions of what is the purpose of each of our lives is at the core of The Leftovers philosophy, even attempting to answer the question of where we go when we die is something the show is not at all interested in doing.
What The Leftovers is about, in my eyes, is community, comradery, and family, and the wildly different forms, configurations, and arrangements a family can be. Throughout the series the main characters are butting up against a religious cult called the Guilty Remnant, a group of people who believe that the rest of the world has moved on too quickly from The Sudden Departure, an unexplained event during which 140 million people (2% of the world’s population) vanished without explanation. ‘There is no family’ is a phrase that is repeated several times throughout the series by members of the GR, and it can interpreted in many different ways.
For the purposes of this post, I see ‘there is no family’ as the GR saying that their version of family, a female and male parents, 2–3 kids, a pet, a white picket fence, is gone. What has replaced it, and this is backed up by the evolution of the makeup of Kevin Garvey’s (the main character) family from the beginning of the series to what it is at the end, is a much more diverse configuration. Before The Sudden Departure, Kevin’s family was him, his wife, and two kids (one from a previous marriage). At the end of season two, Kevins ‘family’ has grow to encompass a new girlfriend, his wife Laurie (who he was in the process of divorcing who is now living with them), a baby they adopted from a former cult member, their daughter, and his previously estranged son.
At one point, their family was also comprised of Kevin’s friend Matt’s comatose wife. This is all to say that what we think of as a ‘normal’ family makeup is rarely what is reflected in reality. Now, is there flare-ups and conflicts within this complicated family dynamic? Of course there is, there’s always some sort of conflict arising in even the most ‘ideal’ family scenario. But when people come to Kevin or Nora (his girlfriend) their always ready to give anyone their shirt off their back, or a room to crash in for a while.
And that really is the crux of what I took from the three season, Damon Lindelof created series. No matter what people would want to believe we really are all in this thing together. We all need a helping hand from time to time, and there’s no shame in asking for it. Do we all need to go out and work at soup kitchens to make a difference? No, not at all, but just understand that everyone is going through something, everyone just wants to believe in something, and everyone just want to feel seen, respected, and given the resources they need to live a decent life.
