re: The Leftovers - Season 3 - early reviews are coming in / Season thread

Here's an article with Damon Lindelof about the finale LINK

He answers some questions and explains why he won't answer others

God. What a great finale. Excellent ending.

Also, epic series, it's up on the Mount Rushmore, no question.

Cool to see they also answered every major question... well almost.

"The Leftovers" took a whole new meaning after Nora's confession. Them and the departed are synonymous depending on whose POV you are looking at

Still some big questions left. There's no way that Kevin was visiting the other world, right? Still think it was some sort of purgatory. The only way he was visiting the other universe would be if people in the 98% stayed world would go to the 2% world when they died, but not vice versa. The 98% world never really had people coming back. The few that did were pretty well proven to be frauds that faked their disappearance.

After having time to digest this last episode, I truly feel it was a perfect send off for the series as a whole. Let's be honest, there could have been a million different ways they could have ended it. I won't go into tl;dr details of my opinion, but I will say that it's primarily based on the show's week-after-week excellence and the show runners' ability to stick to their original goal. It is a rare thing when a TV show can accurately portray some of the hardest trials and lessons we all face in life as humans, such as unexpected loss, coping, lack of closure, purpose, and the power of belief. Not only that, but these topics are brought to the forefront without giving off a sense of dread, fear, sadness, etc. If I had to choose one word to describe this show and it's impact on me, I would say Cathartic.

As the episode initially aired, I did start to have some doubts as to if there was enough time left to give viewers at least some closure for the ending (Thoughts of Lost's finale started creeping in my head for a moment). If the writers could somehow take such a thought-provoking, deep, powerful, and emotional ride that The Leftovers gave us and still manage to metaphorically bring their viewers and series out of the deep as shite rabbit hole the journey took us, they deserve a huge round of applause, IMO.

I am happy to see that Damon Lindelof did learn from some of his mistakes, as terrible as they were. Knowing this show was always meant to be character-driven first, even with an intense crisis like the Departure weighing heavily on the entire world, I commend the entire cast and crew for keeping that their main focus. The crisis and science the Leftovers framed their world around on screen encompassed so many topics from God, religion, and death to physics, cosmology, and quantum mechanics. So many shows and movies take these major talking points, and basically prostitute them out as their all-encompassing McGuffin I would have never expected The Leftovers to tread gracefully over so many differing world views/religions/sciences without developing and pushing an agenda.

Finally, I am satisfied with the sci-fi ending that Lindelof went with. We all basically knew he would tie in time travel, parallel universes, etc in some way, and I think he could have just as easily had success had Nora said that it was all a scam, and that it made her disillusioned in life all those years, but he found a coherent story for her journey to tie it all together.

quote:

---

My big question is - is Nora really telling the truth? Did she actually go to The Departed World? Or did she make it up, like the nun said "to tell a better story"? Did she just finally let go and let the mystery be?

---

She lied. The truth/lie dynamic played throughout the entire finale. The only thing that mattered was Kevin believed her. She was even kind of shocked he believed her. Truth is he didn't even care. Although with all the shite he'd been through why not belive her. It didn't matter. He just wanted to be with Nora and she wanted to be with him.

Nora didn't lie.....

Did anyone notice that when they danced at the wedding that whole song was about dreaming and they mentioned the word dream 20 times.


Also, So for Nora to go to the other world and that guy to have time to build the machine, that would have taken forever. she would have been there for years right?

The one thing that makes me believe she might be telling the truth is obviously had she not gone through she would still have been with Matt. If thats the case then why would he have returned to Texas and died if Nora was still in Australia?