The Leftovers: Damon Lindelof Talks About the Episodes You Didn’t See

The Leftovers just aired its series finale on June 4th, and recently co-creator Damon Lindelof spoke with Vox about the end of the HBO TV series and what fans didn’t get to see.

Based on the Tom Perrotta novel, the drama explores what happens when 2% of the world’s population inexplicably vanishes. The cast includes Justin Theroux, Carrie Coon, Amy Brenneman, Kevin Carroll, Christopher Eccleston, Scott Glenn, and Lindsay Duncan.

On Vox’s podcast I Think You’re Interesting, Lindelof revealed he initially wanted four seasons of The Leftovers:

I was telling them, ‘I think that The Leftovers, its ideal length is 40 episodes.’ Forty is a nice biblical number.”

So what would’ve happened in those extra episodes? Lindelof says one episode would’ve focused more on the Murphy family:

There were scheduling issues with Regina [King], who played Murphy matriarch Erika], because she was doing American Crime and also directing a number of episodes, but I think that had we asked her … we would have figured out a way to do an episode in Texas that was very Murphy-centric one more time. In a 10-episode final season of The Leftovers, that probably would have been episode four.”

He later added that another episode would’ve centered on the story behind Pillar Man:

In a 10-episode final season of The Leftovers, there would have been the X-factor episode, where we could have just gone down [some different path]. I always wanted to do that. It was like, “Let’s just do Pillar Man.” As opposed to him falling off that thing at the beginning of episode two, what if that’s the ending of episode two, and the whole episode is told from the point of view of this guy up there? Who is he? What is he doing up there? Let’s humanize this guy, who’s basically just a piece of background.”

What do you think? Did you see the Leftovers series finale? Would the final season have benefited from more episodes?