Lessons From "The Leftovers"

Released almost a decade before a global pandemic that would upend our lives, the show’s thematic grappling with grief, faith, and collective trauma eerily parallels our current moment.

Still from the show’s title sequence.

“What's a person to us / but a contortion / of pressure ridges / palpable / long after she is gone?” - Rae Armantrout, ‘Missing Persons’

“Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.” - Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

The Leftovers begins not at the moment of the Sudden Departure, when 2% of the world’s population suddenly disappeared without a trace, but rather in its aftermath. Created by Damon Lindelof of Lost and Watchmen fame, The Leftovers ran from 2014 to 2017, a piece of information that was, frankly, surprising to learn when I first started watching the show in 2021. Released almost a decade before a global pandemic that would upend our lives, the show’s thematic grappling with grief, faith, and collective trauma eerily parallels our current moment.