Summary

• The Guilty Remnant's master plan was to make the people of Mapleton remember the Departure by placing lize-size dummies of Departured victims where they disappeared. It's their final statement against those who try to move on.
• Despite their contrasting values, Holy Wayne and The Guilty Remant both represent types of religious extremism in The Leftovers Season 1.
• It took Kevin losing his family to realize that all he really wanted was his family together. Before Laurie abandoned him, he was the one who planned to turn his back on her.

The Leftovers doesn't rely on easy answers, and its first season is particularly difficult to follow, but the Season Finale manages to tie all loose ends. In the show, 2% of the global population disappears without a trace in an event that came to be known as the "Departure." Three years later, inhabitants of the small town of Mapleton discover that coming to terms with those who stayed might be more difficult than letting go of those who vanished.

Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof proves once again he's a genius of contemporary TV at the end of The Leftovers Season 1. After a series of mind-bending episodes and seemingly unrelated storylines, the show reaches its climax when the Guilty Remnants place life-like replicas of the departed townspeople where they disappeared. The protest, carried out to make people "remember', causes the inhabitants of Mapleton to violently revolt against them.

The Guilty Remnant Finally Execute Their Master Plan in The Leftovers Season 1 Finale

Of all the mysteries introduced in The Leftovers Season 1, the Guilty Remnant's true intentions stand out as the biggest one. Despite their stern rules, they initially look like a conventional protest group rather than a dangerous cult: they dress in white, follow a strict vow of silence, and smoke incessantly. They represent the collective trauma caused by the Departure, and they take over the streets to remind people of a tragedy that can't be forgotten.

Spreading phrases such as "Nothing Matters" or "Stop Wasting Your Breath," it's clear that the Guilty Remnant believes the Departure was the end of life as it was, and no one should be allowed to move on. With the inexplicable Departure destroying "normalcy" forever, the Guilty Remnant rejects a steady pattern and lives on as "constant reminders." Three years after the Departure, the Guilty Remnant starts getting more extreme, with Gladys' stoning and Patti's suicide hinting at a scheme that will shake the lives of everyone in Mapleton. Their purpose is to make people remember. That's what they do when they scatter life-size dummies of the departed in the places where they were last seen, causing chaos to ensue in the streets.

The Guilty Remnant work as one of the most realistic aspects of The Leftovers' dystopian tone. To understand them, it's important to always keep Nora Durst in mind. The Guilty Remnant and Nora are the polar opposites of each other, while Laurie Garvey stands in the middle. The Guilty Remnant lives in favor of the discontinuity of normal, the disruption of life in its natural course. Nora, who happens to have lost every single member of her family in the Departure, a one-in-a-million occurrence, spends the entire first season of The Leftovers trying to find a way to let go. One part of her vanished with the others on Departure day, and her arc is all about finding a purpose again.

In The Leftovers, the least religious show about faith, an exception to the rule is made through the character of Laurie, the closest thing to a contemporary version of Judas ever put onscreen. Gladys, Patti, and Meg are all examples of Guilty Remnant members who committed to the extremes their roles required, two of them willingly dying for their cause.

While Nora desperately clings to life and the Guilty Remnant desperately clings to the not-living, Laurie wishes to die. Torn apart by loss, she can't let it go, but propelled by love for those who stayed, she can't give up. Laurie is the most unpredictable character in The Leftovers, but the fact that she chooses to break the vow of silence to save Jill and turn away from the welcoming river of death to embrace Tom comes as no surprise.

What Did Holy Wayne Symbolizes in The Leftovers

• The first season of The Leftovers covers Tom Perrotta's novel of the same name. The plot of the other two seasons was developed by showrunner Damon Lindelof.

While the Guilty Remnant wants to prevent people from moving on from the Departure, the mysterious Holy Wayne, leader of the Divine, comes in to do the opposite: his prophetic visions from past and future attracted the people that make up his "family," and anyone can pay Holy Wayne to have their pain "removed" with a simple embrace. The Guilty Remnant and Holy Wayne are also separated by contrasting natures but act as antagonists in the end because both cults represent two different kinds of religious extremism.

Holy Wayne stands for alienation, but he can also represent a release from grief and trauma through faith. There's a strong psychological chain tying Holy Wayne to his followers: he genuinely believes he's holy and capable of spiritual healing. On the other hand, the people who seek his healing embrace truly believe they are going to be healed. The Leftovers offers plenty of room for interpretation, but regardless of whether Holy Wayne's divine powers are real or not, what matters is that he and his followers believe it.

Holy Wayne is the embodiment of everything The Leftovers Season 1 represents. All of these troubled characters desperately want to be healed. The Departurre left them with a hole in the chest: any possibility of closure can't be attained until the people who vanished return, but no one can know when this will happen or whether it will happen. The placebo effect drives Season 1 toward its conclusion. Holy Wayne might as well be a saint; after all, he did conceive Kevin a divine wish before dying. However, there are also plenty of indications that he's nothing but a creep who used his influence to prey on innocent women. In The Leftovers, a modern TV show that immediately earned classic status, the truth is unclear, but the meaning is evident.

Did Kevin's Wish Come True in The Leftovers Season 1 Ending?

Damon Lindelof's Most Recent Projects:

• 2023: Mrs. Davis (TV Series)
• 2020: The Hunt (Movie)
• 2019: Watchmen (TV Series)

It's from the perspective of Kevin that viewers get to see most of the events of The Leftovers Season 1, which makes it easy to like him and relate to him. He starts off the show as the seemingly single person in Mapleton who hasn't lost his mind, but it doesn't take long before he falls victim to hallucinations and blackouts. He also befriends people who may or may not be real -- Dean, the dog killer, is a major wild card.

By the time viewers reach The Leftovers Season 1 tragic finale, it's clear that Kevin has been repressing his true feelings all along. Kevin never really got over the fact that Laurie abandoned her family, even though he was the one who thought about abandoning his family prior to the Departure. It took Kevin losing his family to realize that all he really wanted was his family together. Thankfully, fate leads him straight to Holy Wayne's dying breath, where he grants Kevin a divine wish.

Now, no one gets to hear what Kevin's wish is, but everything points to him asking for his family back. He effectively retrieves Jill from the Guilty Remnant's burning headquarters and returns home only to find Nora, who came to his house to deliver a letter about her decision to leave Mapleton and Kevin behind, holding Christine and Holy Wayne's baby in her arms. The scene heavily implies that his wish has miraculously come true. In addition, Laurie has finally broken free from the Guilty Remnant, choosing her family instead, and Tom has returned to where he belonged. All of a sudden, the normality that the Guilty Remnant worked so hard to destroy took shape in the form of a fresh start for the characters.