Sims: Spoken like a true TV showrunner.

Lindelof: Yeah, of course! So when we got to the third season, it was, “What’s the final scene of the third season going to be?” And it was Nora telling this story [of her journey to the world of the Departure]. I think that from when we first pitched it, to how it evolved over time, we were unsure of who she was telling the story to. But it became very clear that it had to be Kevin. I wanted to take away some of the anxiety from the audience of where the show was going to end, and when it was going to end. So let’s just tell them that at the end of the first episode, as opposed to just keeping doing flash-forwards. We’re telling the audience that these characters are going to break up, that she’s conflicted about that, and then, hopefully they know that’s the beginning of the end. We kept using the words “bookends,” that we would bookend Season 3 with the Book of Kevin and the Book of Nora.

Sims: Watching the finale, I briefly wondered if we were in another “place,” because of course you’ve introduced that element into the show. When I saw Laurie (Amy Brenneman) on the phone with Nora, who I had already said my goodbyes to—I had closed the book, and figured she had died when she went deep-sea diving [in the episode “Certified”]—I wondered if this was a new reality we had entered into. Part of the fun was knitting together those missing years.

Lindelof: Right, that there’s just one reality. You have an intention when you write a script, and then you watch the episodes and it’s interpreted by the actors and directors and becomes this other thing. We were kind of divided as writers as to what Laurie’s fate ultimately was, and then we watched the episode in the editing room for the first time before we actually wrote the finale—the scenes Laurie had with people, where she was letting Nora go, letting Kevin go, and then her kids call her. That scene on the cliffs, when she says “same time, next week” to Nora, that felt like a promise of something to come and I loved the idea that these two women of Kevin’s life came together in this very significant way. We started talking about the final episode following a romantic comedy structure, and one of the things in a rom-com is a person pretending to be something they’re not [as Kevin is], there’s people who’ve broken up that are coming back together, there’s a wedding, there’s a goat! And another element of a rom-com is the best friend, and who’s Nora’s best friend if she’s in isolation? There were two options, Erica (Regina King) or Laurie, and after seeing that episode, with [Laurie’s] line “You are now my patient,” we were like, that just feels right to us.

Sims: I was very happy about it, especially after the phone call Laurie had with her kids, where you feel like there’s a lot more to her than what we’ve seen this season.