Meg’s disillusioning visit to Miracle — which happens more than a year before Matt, Kevin or Nora arrive — is what ultimately sets her on a path toward violence. Meg doesn’t merely want to follow Guilty Remnant protocol by serving as a “living reminder” of what happened on October the 14th. She wants to start a revolution and, possibly, a civil war. Co-writers Damon Lindelof and Monica Beletsky, as well as director Keith Gordon — who also directed Season 1’s Matt-centric “Two Boats and a Helicopter” — subtly note that such battles have been waged in Texas before. During Meg’s chat with Evie, a monument to the Confederate Army is clearly visible in the background; on the bus ride to Miracle, Meg and Darren are surrounded by African-Americans singing “Wade in the Water,” a song associated with the Underground Railroad.

Meg’s goal, as she tells Matt, is to usher the residents of the refugee camp into Jarden. She wants to be their Moses, leading them to a promised land, but only so she can cause chaos and prove that the promise of Jarden has not been kept.

Meg has often felt like the most marginalized of “Leftovers” characters, especially this season when, until now, she only appeared long enough to cryptically torture Tommy. This episode attempts to rectify that by sharing more information about her than ever before. Season 1 explained that her mother died on Oct. 13, but in this episode, we finally see that death and the moments that transpire beforehand, which illuminate the communication gap between mother and daughter. (That gap contradicts the information on the fliers Matt once circulated and that he refers to in this episode, which called the two “very close.”) We also see Meg in Miracle, seeking answers from Isaac while bringing along the sweater that was draped over her mother’s shoulders when she died. (That’s the same sweater Meg had with her when she moved into the Guilty Remnant house in the first season’s “Penguin One, Us Zero.”) Just as we did in Season 1, we also see Meg attempting to persuade her Guilty Remnant superiors to up the brutality ante, something she’s now decided to take upon herself.

There’s something wonderfully counterintuitive about Liv Tyler playing such a dangerous woman. With her angelic, Arwen-in-“Lord of the Rings” features and her down-feathery voice, Meg is the last person you’d expect to go rogue-terrorist, which is what makes her so scary; if she can turn this unrepentant, anyone can. The question is: why?

The events depicted in this episode imply that Meg is prone to escaping reality via outside forces: cocaine use, contact with psychics, life in the Guilty Remnant. One wonders if she would have found another purpose if her meeting with Isaac had gone differently. After proving his psychic legitimacy by confirming that Meg’s mother sent back her salad on that fateful day in the restaurant, Isaac is unwilling — unlike Tommy and Laurie — to lie to provide comfort. When Meg asks to hear the story her mother had been planning to tell her, Isaac is honest. Though we never learn the details of that story, we grasp that it’s banal enough to convince Meg that life is just a big, cosmic, pencil-related joke with the punch line, “It’s pointless.”