Post your fan-theories for The Leftovers here!
The series is a sequel to Lost
In the Lost finale, The End, the cork came loose on the island for a minute or two before Jack put it back in. The cork is said to hold in the source of Life and Light. What happened in that time it was loose? 2% of Earth's population vanished into thin air. People were taken based on IQ - only geniuses were taken.
To qualify for Mensa, the high IQ organization, your IQ must be in the top 2% - essentially 1 in 50. This was the same percentage that was taken on the show. While you may think that if this happened our colleges would be wiped out and it would be obvious, actually a large number of people in Academia have IQs that are high, but not necessarily the top 2% - making it far in the academic world requires intelligence, but more important are determination and focus, something some intelligent people can lack. You don't have to have a genius IQ to get a PHD, but those in the top 25% of IQ scores would certainly find it well within their grasp if sufficiently dedicated. Hence losing the geniuses would seem like a haphazard group.- Gary Busey was apparently taken. Him and a baby. Neither of whom are particularly geniuses.
- Well, I don't know as a matter of fact that Mr. Busey isn't a genius, but the number of infants taken would seem to be a blow against the OP's theory.
- IQ is independent of knowledge learned. Three year olds can be tested with genius IQs
, though you would definitely beat them on a trivia quiz because they haven't had the amount of time you have had to accumulate knowledge. Intelligence is what we use to manipulate and work with the knowledge we have accumulated, not the amount of things we have learned. That's why geniuses aren't handed college degrees for free.
- IQ is independent of knowledge learned. Three year olds can be tested with genius IQs
- Well, I don't know as a matter of fact that Mr. Busey isn't a genius, but the number of infants taken would seem to be a blow against the OP's theory.
- Given that we find out in "Penguin One, Us Zero" that a boy with Down's Syndrome is among the Departed (not to mention the entire cast of Perfect Strangers), it doesn't look as if this theory is particularly solid.
- Further, The Garvey's at Their Best shows that some departures were actually ''in utero."
- There's also Nora's husband and two kids disappearing in the same room. That doesn't exactly sound like 1 in 50 odds.
- If the departures are based on intelligence, odds have nothing to do with it. If they're random, 140 million people is far too many for there not to be statistical outliers such as this.
- The dice don't know what the dice did last time. Each individual disappearance would be a 2% shot, completely independent of any other disappearances. Unlucky, yes, but very much possible for three out of four of the Dursts to depart from the same place.
The departed were wished away.
Wait wait, hear me out, I mean that the departed were people who at the exact moment had someone who was secretly wishing that they were not there.- Point one, the baby from the pilot, his mother was clearly frustrated with his crying.
- Point two, the mentally handicapped boy, its not hard to imagine that his parents, though they certainly loved him, felt burdened by the special care he required.
- Point three, Kevin's mistress, come on, Kevin certainly felt guilty during the act, and from there its not hard to extrapolate that he might wish that woman had never showed up.
- Point four, Nora's family, as we see at the moment of departure, Nora was extremely stressed out by the actions of her whole family.
- Point five, Lori's unborn baby, her marriage was extremely strained, she didn't even want to tell Kevin about the pregnancy, again its not hard to extrapolate that she might have been wishing that she were not pregnant.
- I thought this myself. But then if that were the case why did the people (Or was it just one person?) in that holding hand circuit vanish?
- It was one kid, and we know literally nothing about him, so its impossible to speculate as to him, so while he doesn't help support this theory at all, he also doesn't in any way damage it either.
- What about the kid whose dad vanished in the grocery store parking lot right next to the mom and baby in the pilot?
- I thought this myself. But then if that were the case why did the people (Or was it just one person?) in that holding hand circuit vanish?
Whatever the Dog Killer is, he is perceivable only to the Garvey family.
While Jill spoke and interacted with him like her father, her friend didn't seem to react to his existence in any way, not even sparing him (or the beer he was holding) a glance.- Oooo- nice catch!
- Jossed. "Gladys" shows him interacting with way too many random people to be connected, though there still needs to be a Garvey around.
- Nevertheless, there is almost certainly something supernatural about him. In "Cairo", Patti mentions that she tried looking into him, pulling cult resources to do so, and couldn't find anything about him - no driver's license, no records of any kind. She figuratively calls him a "ghost", to which he replies that he prefers to think of himself as "a guardian angel."
- Jossed. Season 3 reveals that while Dean (and Patti) may've believed him to be supernatural, he's just a regular loon.
Garvey Sr. can see the people who disappeared, Kevin is starting to, and the Dog Killer is one of them.
- Jossed. The Dog Killer is a regular person, and while Kevin eventually can see the Departed, he has to go to an alternate world to see them. ''Maybe''.
2% of all bagels everywhere vanished.
- Kevin only found that one stuck in the toaster because of his special ESP powers.
The Departed weren't randomly selected.
- Whoever (or Whatever) took those people used a formula which was calculated to cause the most havoc for the remainder of humanity left behind. It may be a long-term plan to cause humanity to tear itself apart through chaos.
The obligatory "Matt Jameson is a Time Lord"
- He needs to keep his church because it's his Tardis! Mom and Dad left him that Tardis!
Nora's impostor at the conference had some insiders to get her in.
- Too many things worked out for the impostor. They must have had inside people helping her get in, and people not looking for Nora's badge.
Aliens or the Powers That Be took the departed because they were the only sane people
- Everyone left behind on earth is a little kooky. The small number of the only sane people keeping things in check, the looniness is taking the forefront. That's why cults are taking over and the government seems to be losing it, too.
It really was the Rapture
- God's ways are unknowable. His criteria for picking people therefore may have no discernable pattern to humans, and have nothing to do with being Christian or a "good person". As for the whole "hell on Earth" part? Well, they do say it's other people...
- I don't particularly buy this, but the kick would be that this made Jardin TX the least righteous place on earth.
Wayne and Christine's child is the Antichrist
- Wayne shows all the signs of a false savior, and he seems pretty set on at least one of his cult children being born. Would make sense for it to be the one we're following.
- Jossed. After Christine takes Lilly back, she is never mentioned again and the world doesn't end.
The Government is actually the good guys.
In the wake of the departure, there is a real bug/nanotech/Imported Alien Phlebotinum going around making people form weird cults - that's just the early symptoms of something worse. If they weren't beating these cults down the crap would REALLY hit the fan. The "It's a girl!" balloon was refering to Kevin's unborn child. Which may lead into...
- "Its a girl!" may also apply to the girl baby that is the daughter of Holy Wayne. The child may be some sort of messiah or antichrist.
- While "it's a girl!" may have referred to or refer to Wayne's daughter or Kevin and Laurie's unborn/never-born child, the rest of the theory is jossed. Lily is never suggested to be either the messiah or the antichrist.
Carl Jung's theory of Synchronicity will be mentioned.
- Probably more espescially in Kevin's case.
The Guilty Remnant commits identity fraud on the departed to empty their bank accounts and steal their property.
- Their leader Patti even brags about her investigative abilities at one point.
- That would explain their ability to buy the church and the departed replicas.
- Jossed. It's mentioned in Season 2 that the members of the Guilty Remnant are required to give over their possessions, including houses, and they have some wealthy members.
Dean (the dog shooter) is a member or agent or the Guilty Remnant.
- He just chews rather than smokes tobacco.
- Jossed. Dean has no problem with helping Kevin to cover up Patti's death, and even encourages him to do it, and just appears to be a regular loony.
Tommy will be pregnant at the beginning of the third season.
- Meg said that she had sex with him to "get him pregnant." Meg doesn't make idle threats.
- Jossed. Either she was slipping or he miscarried, because no baby happened.
Tom Garvey is an ancestor of Preston Garvey.
- Because why not?
The scene of Evie and the other girls running naked through the woods has a very simple explanation.
- They were leaving scent trails all over the forest so bloodhounds could never trail them.
- While not explicitly confirmed, likely confirmed by The Reveal at the end of Season 2 that Evie and the other girls faked their disappearance and were working with the Guilty Remnant.
Wayne's miracle happened.
- At the end of Season 1, a dying Holy Wayne tells Kevin to make a wish that Wayne can grant so that he knows he really was divine. Kevin does, but we never find out what it is. This theory is that Kevin wished to see his whole family together again, and Wayne did grant his wish — it just took a while. That's how Kevin was able to be reunited with Tom, Jill, Nora, Matt, Mary, and Laurie in the church in Miracle: he wished for it to happen. Also, that closes up the Arc Words of "there are no miracles in Miracle" - there was at least that one. Maybe.
Nora lied in the finale about where she had been for twenty years. She never left for a parallel Earth where 98% of the population was raptured away, found her family had moved on with her counterpart being vanished, or got the machine to take her back home.
- Nora either chickened out or the machine malfunctioned or just did not work. It basically was the breaking point for her and she decided to just stay in Australia and live out a quiet life alone, raising messenger pigeons in a rural town. Matt took her secret to the grave while Laurie kept her location a secret due to patient/doctor privilege. When Kevin finally located her twenty years later and tried to sell the lie that they never had been lovers/only knew each other in passing, then admitted he lied for the sake of a clean start between the two, then came back to her after the wedding and admitted the lying? Nora decided give Kevin a taste of his own medicine, along with rationalizing some sense of closure for her own Rapture related trauma to give herself and Kevin, closure. So she made up the lie, which Kevin believed because he wanted to be with her and would go along with it, if it allowed the two to start all over again their relationship.
The world really was about to end in the lead up to the anniversary of the departure, but someone stopped it.
- Maybe it was the guy on the sub and he actually did nuke the Beast from Revelation. Maybe it was the guy who needed to get to Antarctica. Maybe it was the Garveys, and they just did it in a way other than how Keven Sr. imagined it would happen. It would tie into the psychic that told Meg what her mom was going to say before she died was likely to be disappointing because it wouldn't be profound enough for her expectations.
