The Leftovers Recap: Season 3 Premiere “The Book of Kevin”

Welcome to the beginning of the end. The Leftovers returned last night with an episode that seemed relatively straightforward until it… wasn’t.

Among its many virtues, The Leftovers is unpredictable. You never know what a given episode will look like or where it will go; watching feels like an act of constant discovery. So, despite all the promotional material released by HBO, including multiple trailers and synopses for seven episodes, I had no idea what to expect from the show’s final season.

Last night’s premiere had plenty of surprises in store. First of all, the title credits are gone. I’d been looking forward to seeing a revamped sequence, assuming season 3 was going to follow its predecessor’s lead, so this was a bit disappointing. Maybe they’ll be back next week. A person can hope…

“The Book of Kevin” does mirror the season 2 premiere in one way: it opens with an extended, wordless vignette. Again, we travel back in time, though not nearly as far. It’s the year 1844. The inhabitants of an isolated Australian village go about their daily routine: they exchange livestock, attend church, survey their surroundings from ramshackle rooftops. As staged by director Mimi Leder, these images have a serene beauty, light pouring down from the heavens in a warm, rosy glow.

However, there are hints of something sinister, or at least unusual. The villagers dress uniformly, the men in collared black suits, the women in white bonnets, their conservatism a jarring contrast from the untamed outback landscape. Jesus Freak’s “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” plays on the soundtrack, harmonious vocals clashing with bleak lyrics: “Life was filled with guns and war / And all of us got trampled on the floor / …The Son has come and you’ve been left behind.” One night, a thunderstorm engulfs the village, and it appears to be a momentous occasion. Our point-of-view character, a nameless red-haired woman, stretches out her arms, soaking up the rain. But the next morning, she wakes up to find the village still standing, unchanged.

What does it all mean? Why does the rest of the community shun the red-haired woman after the storm? Of course, as “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” underlines, the storm echoes the Sudden Departure — another apocalyptic event that failed to end the world. More striking, though, are the villagers’ actions before the storm. In their rigorous adherence to apparently arbitrary rituals (not to mention their affinity for white clothing), they evoke the Guilty Remnant.

From there, we segue into more familiar terrain. Evie wakes up in the Jarden visitor center, which is still occupied by Guilty Remnants. She exchanges a few words with Meg — hers written, the latter’s spoken. “You’re much better at this than me,” Meg says. “Maybe you should be in charge.” Are her doubts sincere? Evie doesn’t take the time to find out. Instead, she dashes out of the building and finds the town in chaos. This must be soon, if not immediately, after the events of the season 2 finale, then. A plane flies overhead and drops an object. We watch Evie’s face in close-up as the object descends toward her, exploding in the reflection of her glasses.

Cut to: three years later. Kevin is looking at a pile of rubble enclosed by a chain-link fence. The crosses adorning the fence tell us all we need to know.

During the remainder of the episode, we play catch up. Kevin is once again a police chief. He spends his days riding through town on a white horse, escorting newcomers (dubbed “pilgrims”) into Jarden and generally maintaining the peace. Tommy has also joined the police. It’s briefly shocking to see him and Kevin interact; aside from the season 1 flashback episode, we’d never seen them together before. They seem to be getting along, though, as is… everyone. Nora is still working at the Department of Sudden Departure, albeit in a different capacity, and it’s implied that she and Kevin are now married.

Also an item are Laurie and John Murphy. Which, okay… The reveal feels a tad gimmicky (it’s a very Lost move), but future episodes surely will provide more context to the relationship. They have revived and improved Isaac’s scam, with John claiming he can communicate with the dead and Laurie secretly providing the messages behind the scenes. One customer asks why his father committed suicide on his birthday. Left unsaid is the question of why it matters. After all, in the end, your birthday is just a day; it only has meaning if you assign it one.

But beliefs wield just as much influence over people as facts. Kevin continues to reject religion, but it’s clear that doubt lurks beneath his pragmatism. Memories from his journey(s) to purgatory flash across the screen, intruding on his carefully constructed new reality. Isn’t ignoring part of your experience, no matter how bizarre, just another form of self-delusion? And his leap into the potentially poisoned “holy” water is an act of faith, even if it is driven more by recklessness than any sense of divine guidance. Similarly, John, who used to burn people’s houses down for their beliefs, clings to the faint hope that Evie is still alive, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Matt Jamison continues to preach, using a loud speaker because there’s not enough room in his church. He focuses on three things: a time (October 14, the upcoming seventh anniversary of the Sudden Departure), a place (Jarden, aka Miracle), and a person (Kevin Garvey). As he notes in a sermon, the number seven is loaded with biblical significance. While in Jarden, his wife Mary not only awoke from a coma but also gave birth to a son, Noah. Lastly, Kevin cheated death two times, which might not make him Jesus, but it certainly makes him unique — at least worthy of a gospel.

Kevin treats Matt’s book with only slightly less derision than he treats Dean’s conviction that dogs are plotting to take over the world. And why not? Society might regard certain beliefs as more credible than others, but a person who believes in evil dogs has just as much confidence in the truth of his belief as a person who believes in God, and to a skeptic, they’re equally wrong. What demarcates the difference between faith and madness, ritual and compulsion?

One thing’s for sure: we’re glad to have The Leftovers back, if only for a while.

Stray observations:

The Leftovers has always had a rather dry sense of humor, but this episode is especially funny. Justin Theroux’s expression when Dean mentions that he tested the sandwich for dog DNA is priceless.
What happened to Lily? Erika is also conspicuously missing.
Officially, the Jarden visitor center was destroyed by a gas leak, which caused an explosion when a Guilty Remnant member lit a cigarette. The irony of this explanation is surely not lost on Kevin, who perhaps had a hand in concocting it.
Callbacks — Easter eggs, if you will — are strewn throughout “The Book of Kevin.” Most notably, the baptism ceremony incident parallels the clash between the police and Guilty Remnant in the pilot.
Kevin and Nora are TV’s best, sexiest couple. I will fight you on this.
Janel Moloney finally gets to talk!
Sometime in the future (post-apocalypse?), Nora will move to Australia and adopt the name Sarah. The aging makeup is, fortunately, not terrible.

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