A Pioneering Mystery Box Series That Influenced Modern TV

A strong contender in discussions of the greatest show of all time, The Leftovers left a mark on its genre that’s still felt today. From Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof, a show about the vanishing of 2% of the population into thin air promises to be interesting, but its engaging premise is only the beginning of all that The Leftovers has to offer.

In fact, the “Sudden Departure” is one of the least strange things to happen throughout the show’s three-season run, which also manages to feature an odd purgatory-like plane of consciousness and an impending apocalypse. Yet all the while, The Leftovers’ down-to-earth characters remain rooted in emotional resonance. If anything, the weirder the showt gets, the bigger its emotional impact.

The Leftovers Is Perfect From Start To Finish

The Leftovers makes the interesting — and ultimately strong — choice to begin its story three years after the Sudden Departure. This proves to be a gold mine of emotional weight as the characters of the small town of Mapleton, New York are nearing their breaking point as they process the event in different ways. Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux), chief of police and the most normal guy you’ll ever meet, tries to hold it all together.

The Guilty Remnant, a cult that formed in response to the Sudden Departure, and the various ways the event touched the townspeople, all make for an incredibly compelling character study on its own. But this proves to be merely a jumping-off point as The Leftovers continues and relocates to the fictional Jarden, Texas.

Despite there being strange people all around, the bizarreness of the world seems to seek out Kevin, creating an interesting commentary on choices, responsibility, and who is worthy of being deemed “special.” Kevin perseveres through the oddities life throws at him with a rational yet open mind, encouraging audiences to do the same.

As he veers deeper into the truly bizarre — alternate planes where he can’t drink the water but must sing karaoke — Kevin, in fact, gains clarity on who he is, how he feels about the world, and what he is willing to do. The Leftovers isn’t afraid to expand its world and leave some questions unanswered, but it doesn’t lose sight of the mystery that started it all.

When streaming the series finale, the episode description reads, “Nothing is answered. Everything is answered. And then it ends.” That is indeed exactly what happens in a way that’s both emotionally and logistically satisfying.

The Leftovers Is A Cornerstone Of The Mystery Box Genre

Mystery box shows are high-concept, often sci-fi series with a big overarching question mark or mystery that unspools slowly throughout the course of the story. Lost brought the genre into the mainstream, but its controversial finale left some fans uncertain that a show with such dense lore could sufficiently stick the landing. The Leftovers came along and proved that it could be done.

Where the Lost finale commits to emotional satisfaction at the cost of answers to its countless unsolved mysteries, the ending of The Leftovers ultimately will tell you where the Departed went. And that answer itself carries an emotional weight that hangs on the characters and punctuates the series.

Before it got there, The Leftovers also showed that, if done properly, a show can get well and truly bizarre without losing its audience. In “International Assassin,” one of the show’s highest-rated and most talked-about episodes, Kevin ventures into that purgatory plane where he’s tasked with increasingly nonsensical missions that nonetheless speak to the show’s emotional truth.

The Leftovers Has Clearly Influenced Current Mystery Box Shows

In the years since its finale, many more shows have felt emboldened to give the genre a shot, and The Leftovers‘ fingerprints on them are evident. Severance, arguably the biggest mystery box show on today, features a cult-like religion that operates on the periphery of the show’s main characters and focus. Lumon’s worship of Kier Egan is certainly evocative of The Leftovers‘ Guilty Remnant.

From, meanwhile, is led by Boyd, the makeshift sheriff and de facto leader of the mysterious town’s group of survivors. A flawed straight-man trying his best, there’s a lot of Kevin Garvey to be seen in Boyd Stevens. Similarly, Pluribus’ Carol is an ultra-flawed, ultra-ordinary person who has, for some unknown reason, been chosen to fight for humanity.

The beauty of mystery box shows is that, for all of these similarities, myriad other things make each series wonderfully unique. Nonetheless, their bones, and the sheer number of shows like this that have emerged in the past 10 years, cement the fact that The Leftovers is an essential mystery box installment.