“Doubt is fire, and fire is going to burn you up until you are but ash.”
Fire burns Gladys up until she is but ash. We see that at the very end of the episode, in which her body is slowly consumed by flames in an ATFEC compound, left to be forgotten alongside so many other people. It doesn’t matter what group she was a part of, what beliefs she held, or what disgust or anger she inspired. It doesn’t matter who they were, the bodies organized all around her. Now, the flames devour them whole.
“My congregation: this morning, we prayed for her.”
“Well, she woke up last night.”
Perhaps no other scene better encapsulates Reverend Matt Jamison’s life right now. He’s a man trying to make sense of a seemingly meaningless life–as the rest of the world is doing–and he’s someone doing so by placing everything in a religious context. Yet, with every twist of fate that befalls him, it seems as if the God he looks up to is leaving him behind in the dust.
“Hey. We’re still here.”
When 2% of the population mysteriously vanishes in what’s known as the Sudden Departure, we’re left with a bleak, unforgiving world, one permeated by crushing despair as people attempt to come to terms with what’s happened. Yet, this is a series that deals with the cold, hard truth: we’ll all disappear one day; we’ll all die, and we simply can’t ignore this fact. The Leftovers brings its characters face to face with the grim reality of existence, and in doing so, it crafts an intriguing look at the way society functions when its people experience loss on such a magnitude.
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