The Life and End Times of the Apocalypse

With a title at once a clever nod to Left Behind’s legacy while simultaneously denoting something to be either reheated or thrown away, The Leftovers is a modern-day fantasy series aimed at audiences both secular and believing alike. In Perrotta’s book, as well as in the first season of the show, approximately two percent of the world’s population suddenly vanishes, leaving those remaining to claw desperately for answers. Did God really rapture His people? Maybe those who disappeared were ushered off to some sort of spiritually ambiguous nirvana? Or were they victims of a scientific anomaly, dissolved into thin air due to a change in barometric pressure or a rip in the fabric of spacetime?