10 episodes that prove The Leftovers is the best post-apocalyptic TV show

Named in reference to the religious parable about a man waiting to be saved by God during a flood, this is the first episode of The Leftovers you could call and marked the first time the show crystallized its themes of faith and suffering to tremendous effect. Focusing entirely on Matt’s perspective, “Two Boats And A Helicopter” tracks his attempts to pay the costly sum necessary to save his church being bought from him, while he distributes fliers trying to dispel the myth that those who Departed were in any way saintly or pure (an ongoing effort to determine why God would do this) and care for his paralyzed wife, Mary (Janel Moloney). Matt’s deadline to pay back his debt leads him to a casino with a $20,000 gambling stake and a blind faith in God working a roulette wheel—only for the parable’s message of agency and self-action to become abundantly, violently clear in the casino parking lot. Eccleston’s own sudden departure from Doctor Who takes up a lot of the conversation surrounding the actor, but his most beloved role should absolutely be Matt Jamison. That forceful American accent and heavy physicality expertly expresses the pain the reverend is called upon to shoulder during a time of perpetual doubt.

Season one received a fair bit of pushback on its bleak tone and lack of clear direction, but its greatest strengths lie in how we’re immersed in a world pretending it’s coping fine through the perspectives of characters more willing to admit they are not. Another standout single-perspective episode was this one on Nora, whose post-Departure job is conducting surveys for the Department of Sudden Departure to see if they’re eligible for benefits, as well as to harvest data on those who vanished. In “Guest,” named after the name badge she has to wear after hers is claimed by an imposter, she attends a conference in the city where she can get away from the stress of awkwardly flirting with Kevin, buying fresh produce in case her family return home, and paying escorts to shoot her in the chest. “Guest” isn’t just a fantastic look at the bureaucracy creeping over a global trauma, but also how capitalism tastelessly extends into all areas of grief: Nora drunkenly berates a writer who wrote a best-selling book about the need to move on and makes out with a lifelike dummy replica of a businessman (also drunkenly) he produces and sells. By the time Nora encounters Holy Wayne, she and the audience have encountered a marketplace of hucksters touting miracle cures, but despite the phony, exploitative motives behind these salesmen, Nora sees the power of the theater of unburdening yourself.

This flashback episode depicts the moments up to and including the Sudden Departure for Mapleton, presenting a surface-level rosy view of a world that the characters pine to return to despite the sheer volume of imperfections that define their lives. Kevin serves under his police-chief father Kevin Sr. (Scott Glenn), Laurie is a practicing psychiatrist for patients like the fatalistic Patti, and Tom struggles without a purpose and the police intervene when he confronts his biological father. Watching the minutes tick down before these people, in effect, stop existing feels like a view into an alternate timeline or a vision from beyond of people who don’t know they’re about to turn into ghosts. The final season of the immediate reaction to the Sudden Departure may be the finest moment in the first season, with Max Richter’s delicate, always-effective score lacing the stunned faces and gradual panic with looming portent. And that incomplete shot-reverse just before the credits roll is one for the ages.

The first three episodes of season two play around with perspectives and delayed gratification to the extent that this fourth episode, which picks up after two different cliffhangers, feels euphoric (even though it’s a very distressing episode). Kevin and Nora’s neighbors, the Murphys, try to figure out where their daughter Evie has vanished to, and Kevin deals with his psychotic condition worsening as he wakes up tied to a cinder block in the middle of the drained Jarden lake. “Orange Sticker” nails a community’s slip into panic better than any other episode, deepening the tensions between John and Erika Murphy (Kevin Carroll and Regina King) and Kevin’s family. It’s all capped off with a confrontation between Kevin and his vision of Patti that could feel too blunt and theatrical but radiates with dangerous, intimate energy—in no small part because of Dowd’s captivating, force-of-nature presence. It’s a key centering of Kevin’s suicidal ideations in a season that will continually confront him with self-destruction.

If we could include all three Matt-perspective episodes in this list, we would, but we’ll have to settle for two out of three. When Mary woke up for a single night when they first moved to Jarden, she and Matt had sex, and now Matt learns she’s pregnant. The problem is, there were no witnesses to Mary’s recovery, and other people think it’s much more likely he had sex with a catatonic person without them being able to consent. What’s more, because of Miracle’s strict border control, Matt can’t re-enter the territory and must accept increasingly debased and punishing conditions to get back home with his wheelchair-bound wife. Rarely has so much suffering been loaded onto one character in an hour-long episode, and the frequency with which Matt must dive into a moral quagmire becomes absurd as the episode goes on. But if it’s an episode about what it means to suffer, then Matt’s lifeline is found in acceptance. Eccleston’s triumphant performance sees Matt achieving a level of spiritual clarity that’s almost breathtaking in the final moments, paired with the bittersweet, knowing sound of Regina Spektor’s “Laughing With”.

Theories on the scientific nature of the Sudden Departure are present throughout the show, but from the second season onwards, they’re given a lot more consideration (even if none of them end up being proven). “Lens” is a perfect example of the confused blend of hope and frustration that a definite answer to the show’s unanswered mystery could bring, in a largely Nora-and-Erika-focused episode right in the heart of the unfolding tension spreading through Jarden. The title refers to a theory that those who lost a significant number of people, like Nora, could be a nexus point if there is another Departure, a fear that’s on everybody’s minds as superstitions bubble up through the usually clear-headed town. Shifting focus to the tension between Nora and Erika gives Carrie Coon and Regina King the ability to demonstrate just how capable and commanding they are as performers, gnawing down on the exhaustion of filling their lives with blame and guilt. Their scene at the tail of the episode has a peak position in The Leftovers hall of fame.

This is probably the most-used reference point used by Leftovers fans to get people to watch the show and it’s undoubtedly the most undecipherable one to watch in isolation. The context is that Kevin has drunk a poison to enter a spiritual or subconscious realm to rid himself of Patti’s demonic presence and has woken up in a stylish hotel where he inhabits the role of a hitman who has to kill Patti, who here is running for presidential election. The mechanics of the dreamworld soon overwhelm Kevin as he encounters many recognizable faces from the real world who give him instructions or don’t acknowledge his actual identity. And eventually Kevin takes “the real Patti” on a pilgrimage to her nauseating death, which submerges him in an intolerable empathy that he needs to push past to survive. Theroux’s staring, frenzied face blends with Kevin’s self-perpetuating hatred for an imaginative highlight in Leftovers history.

Season two of The Leftovers leveled up the stakes, scope, and sensitivity of the series in nearly every way, meaning that its epic finale, which stages a Guilty Remnant standoff at Miracle’s gates and a dead Kevin resurrecting himself through karaoke, had some high expectations to meet. Thankfully, Lindelof and Perrotta nailed it, with Biblical natural disasters and powerful resolutions between feuding family members. It’s as big a scale as the series gets, capitalizing on the season’s simmering tensions inside and outside Miracle, complete with a modern recreation of the Walls of Jericho. The show’s habit of ending a season with a staggeringly beautiful coda is maintained here, but Kevin’s reunion with his loved ones only hits as hard as it does because of the pure loneliness on display in his tearful rendition of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound” to return to the land of the living.

Kevin is back for another trip to the undead dreamworld, courtesy of a group of Australian doomsday sisters who fear another Sudden Departure unless Kevin saves them all. In the dreamworld, Kevin is both his assassin alter-ego and the President, his identical twin brother (also played by Theroux) meaning we’re really unpacking the depths of Kevin’s self-destructive drive just before the end—which of course wouldn’t be complete without a return appearance from Patti just before the world ends. It’s a very funny episode, with the fantasy of the dual roles Kevin must inhabit, often confusing him rather than providing clarity. But in the last moments, Kevin is given the chance to confront himself on the most visceral, invasive, and intimate level possible, and the truth they acknowledge together—that they “fucked up with Nora”—is devastating to hear, and sets us up perfectly for the finale.

The finale to The Leftovers thrives off an ambiguity that courses through the episode and threatens to linger forever after. Did Nora really cross over to the other side? Is this really our Nora living in rural Australia in her fifties? Did Kevin and Nora really not share a life together? It’s an hour of remarkable restraint and fragile intimacy as two gray-haired lovers try to reconcile the fallout, not from the Sudden Departure but from their inability to prevent each other from neglecting their relationship. The final scene, which involves a monologue delivered with expert grace by Coon and a short, sweet reply from Theroux, perfectly articulates how the series eschewed direct answers and asked its characters to put their faith in each other regardless of doubt. And still, ambiguity persists but not in a way that detracts from the episode’s final answers. Instead, “The Book Of Nora” asks us to believe beyond the rational, that the suspension of disbelief has an almost spiritual power that might be necessary to keep us whole. The Leftovers suggests that faith isn’t about the absence of doubt, but the embracing of it. And in a show full of narrative mysteries and broken people, it’s a powerful final note.