After months of restraint, The Leftovers gave us four juicy tidbits of information about its last season: a trailer, a poster, a synopsis, and a date.
We all have different ways of relieving stress. For some people, it involves a session on the yoga mat or a visit to the local bar. For others, like yours truly, it involves consuming entertainment that drowns you in primal emotion – The Leftovers, for instance.
So, amid the usual news of government tyranny and corruption, Tuesday brought us a pleasant surprise. HBO released a miniature flood of information concerning the third and final season of The Leftovers, Damon Lindelof and Tom Perotta’s series about the aftermath of an inexplicable global tragedy.
First of all, we now have an official premiere date: April 16. Hmm, 4/16? Whether deliberate or not, that date should ring a bell for devotees of a certain other show co-created by Lindelof. With the season taking place in Australia, we anticipate many more Lost-related Easter eggs to come.
A teaser trailer also appeared on The Leftovers’ official Facebook and Twitter feeds. And we really do mean “teaser”. You can check it out for yourself below:
Nothing much happens in the 38-second clip. We see several people, including a newly (and nicely) bearded Kevin Garvey, staring up at the sky while The Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby” plays cheerfully in the background. At the end, we see what everyone is looking at: a plane has written the words “the end is near” in cloudy all-caps.
Did you get chills? The Leftovers has always worn its apocalyptic spirit on its sleeve, but never before has it hit so close to home. And curiously, it isn’t the first TV show promo this year to use aircraft to ominous effect.
Thankfully, HBO doesn’t expect us to be satiated by that enigmatic warning. The network also offered a brief yet tantalizing synopsis for season 3:
"The new season of the Peabody Award-winning show finds the Garvey and Murphy families coming together as they desperately grasp for a system of belief to help better explain that which defies explanation. The world is crackling with the energy of something big about to happen, a corresponding bookend to the Sudden Departure that sent them all spinning years earlier, bringing their journey Down Under."
Okay, so that doesn’t reveal a whole lot. The Garvey and Murphy families have spent the past two seasons searching for elusive explanations, waiting for something to happen. But an absence of clues never stops us from speculating. Namely, what could this imminent event be? The hint of a “corresponding bookend” to the Sudden Departure makes us wonder whether the people that disappeared that fateful day might return. It would bring the show full circle in a way that aligns with its entwined themes of grief and reconciliation.
Lastly, actor Justin Theroux shared a video poster on his Instagram. It repeats the portentous warning from the trailer: “The end is near.” The neon seems more evocative of Texas, where season 2 took place, than Australia, but we love it anyway.
Poster for The Leftovers season 3, courtesy of HBO
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The Leftovers airs Sundays at 9 p.m. EST on HBO. Season 3 will run for eight episodes.