It looks like a lot of people discussing the end of The Leftovers want to waste time wondering about the nuts and bolts of The Departure. As if that were the point.
Read this instead (big spoilers). Seems appropriate that after I finish a show about people finding out that they're not alone, I find some criticism that makes me feel like I'm not alone.
Because there's this:
Stories are just stories, but they're also more than that. Our religious stories don't have to be literally true to be true. There's value to them beyond even moral instruction. They're about how we interpret the world, how we force it to make sense so we can make sense in the short time we're alive.
And there's this, which hadn't occurred to me:
...season three has felt, to me, like a vital document of our current moment, just one that peeks at it from a slightly different angle, like reality is a snow globe that The Leftovers picked up and shook. So many people from all walks of life feel lost and alone right now, and The Leftovers is all about how hard we'll try to make sense of the senseless.
I came to love them all, but I love Nora most. Kevin is, like me, a hopeless dope, albeit one with better hair and ink. Nora is, in a story about people finding and loving each other through their damage, the most damaged of them all, and the most determined to face that damage honestly. She'll burn herself down, if she has to. How perfect that hers is the last story, the one without proof.
Do I believe it? Yes, but it doesn't matter. Even if she was lying, it was the truth.