Season 2, Episode 10: ‘I Live Here Now’

Is Kevin Garvey dead? It’s amazing that this question comes up again during the Season 2 finale of “The Leftovers,” since it seemingly gets resolved at the beginning of the episode.

Early in Sunday’s finale, “I Live Here Now,” Michael confirms that Kevin was indeed dead and buried for eight hours, at which point, as previously shown, he came back to life and crawled out of his grave. Kevin then assures Michael that Virgil helped him cross over and return to Earth. With that, all matters related to whether or not Kevin has a working pulse should have been closed. Ah, but this is “The Leftovers,” a show hell-and-purgatory-bent on reminding us that life gives, but it also haphazardly takes away. Just because a man went to the other side and came back, that doesn’t mean that, mere hours later, he might not get shot and killed by John.

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But by the end of the episode, following another trip to purgatory, it’s clear Kevin is not dead at all. The dream-like quality of the final moments in “I Live Here Now” — including the part when Kevin gets knocked down by yet another earthquake, then goes home to find everyone he loves in his living room — make the new reality in Jarden seem unreal. But when considered as a bookend to this season’s gonzo opening scene — the one in which a primitive, pregnant woman survives an earthquake and finds that every person in her small community has vanished — those closing seconds are telling us something important.

In that opener, the woman loses everyone in her circle, but ensures that life will continue by giving birth to a child. In Sunday’s final images, Kevin realizes all the people in his circle are right here in Miracle, and that life can go on for all of them. Maybe no one is “spared.” But by being lucky enough to be together, they reside in an undeniably sacred place. The message: Nobody does it alone.