The Leftovers 1.10 “The Prodigal Son Returns”

Is it a season finale because it ties up all loose ends? Is it a season finale because all the main characters get some kind of closure, or at least an epiphany? Is it a season finale because they’ve reached the end of the novel they adapted it from? Or is it a season finale because HBO only ordered ten, and this is all we get?

The Guilty Remnant have been building up to their biggest statement yet, which unleashes hell in Mapleton. And you can’t feel they don’t deserve the retribution, until you realize Jill is trapped in one of their burning houses. They didn’t want Father Matt’s church for some kind of grand statement. It was just a big enough staging area. How they infiltrated everyone’s homes again who knows, but they did it to install mannequins of all the departed, attired and positioned in the last way they would have been seen by their leftovers. How did they know how to be so precise? The stolen photos couldn’t have told so much, but that doesn’t matter as much as how devastating the gestures become.

Creeps. Much better to see Matt rush to Kevin’s aid at the torture cabin, and help him bury Patti’s body in the Cairo woods. Some deep history between the Garveys and the Jamisons, we still don’t know all of it. Somehow that loyal gesture leads to Kevin discovering Wayne, mortally wounded, in a diner bathroom. Before he’s claimed by the ruthless anti-terrorist federal agents we’ve seen before, he imparts Kevin his fondest wish, like a jinni from a bottle. Paterson Joseph’s performance does more to sell Wayne’s other-worldliness than the script ever could.

Now we at least know what everyone lost on October 14. None as devastating as Laurie’s baby from her womb, but none that didn’t count, either. And so it’s fitting that this ending brings Tommy back to her, though neither are keen on heading home with Kevin and Jill. Someone else is waiting for them there, three someones actually. Nora, of course, talking herself out of leaving town by the sight of Christine’s baby left on Kevin’s porch. And as the survivors trudge back, the poor dog that Jill freed, rope still around his neck, comes back, looking for friends this time. Does it answer any question, or make sense at all? Not really, but it still feels right. Even Mayor Warburton finally admits that Kevin saw things more clearly than she.