A red herring is something that led you down a path that went nowhere, or that was ultimately meaningless. This path led somewhere, but it led to an emotional place versus a narrative place. Had the show decided to say Kevin Garvey is the Messiah, that would have been a quantum mistake. It was more about the failings of the characters who were designating him as a messiah type. So I do think it was really important that we did that story. Kevin believed there might be some purpose behind him dying again, and then when he went on this mission to fulfill the wishes of others, he realized he was really fulfilling something he needed to do for himself. Had he not gone on that journey, he wouldn’t be in a place, emotionally, where he can end up with Nora at the end of the finale.

Was there a particular balance you were trying to strike in the finale between providing answers and allowing the supernatural aspects to remain mysterious?

When you actually go down the roads of what would it look like if we tried to answer the more meta questions — What happens when we die? Why does Kevin have the abilities that he does? Was Holy Wayne imbued with the ability to heal people? — I get a very queasy feeling in my stomach. We’ve been transparent in saying, “If you are looking for the resolutions to these sorts of mysteries, ‘The Leftovers’ is not going to be giving them to you.” But the other questions are more important. Showing Laurie go over the side of the boat at the end of Episode 6 and saying maybe she killed herself, maybe she didn’t — to not answer that question would be a huge cop-out. People want to know what happened to Matt Jamison when he went home, and to Kevin’s kids and his dad, and how the Murphys are. Those are the relevant questions, because the characters on the show really care about them.

You’ve always said the show would never explain the Departure, and while the finale didn’t, Nora did describe the world where the departed ended up. When did you arrive at the concept of that other place being an inverted, even grimmer version of the world we saw?

First off, that’s presupposing that Nora is actually telling the truth, which I will neither confirm or deny. But let’s just take her story at face value and assume it happened exactly the way she said it did.