Based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers is a television series that ran on HBO from 2014 to 2017 for three seasons. Even though critically acclaimed with a devoted fanbase, The Leftovers often took a backseat to HBO's other prestige dramas. Today, we're taking a closer look at this remarkable show almost two years after its stunning series finale. Sprawling, often baffling, and supremely confident, The Leftovers is one of the weirdest shows you'll ever see - and also one of the best. Major spoilers for The Leftovers below...

In the era of peak television, no narrative concept has been more misused and abused than J.J. Abrams' "Mystery Box" idea. The term originates from a 2008 TED Talk given by Abrams, where he relays the story of how his grandfather gifted him a box of magic tricks when he was a child - a box that he never opened because of his belief that whatever his imagination could conjure up would always trump the actual contents of that box. 2008 was also peak Lost, a show created by Abrams and run by Damon Lindelof (co-creator of The Leftovers) and Carlton Cuse. And for five magnificent seasons, Lost was the paragon of "Mystery Box" storytelling not because of the strength of the mythology or enigmas, but because of its incredible cast and writing: the mysteries were what got people through the door; the complicated, real, and utterly captivating characters were what got people to stay. With the success of Lost also came a deluge of lookalike shows that completely misunderstood the "Mystery Box" formula. Pale imitators such as The Event, Flashforward, and Touch rushed onto airwaves only to be canceled a season later. Why? Because showrunners prioritized the narrative hook over the development of characters, resulting in shows that felt both anemic and constipated, and with audiences clamoring for answers rather than a good story. Unfortunately, in the same vein as many of its failed doppelgängers, Lost's own "Mystery Box" collapsed in upon itself with a widely derided sixth and final season. Even the characters that the audience had grown to deeply love and loathe for six years couldn't save the show when it became a mad rush to answer a critical mass of unanswered, and ultimately unanswerable, questions. Accusations were slung that Lindelof and Cuse were flying by the seat of their pants and making things up as they went, and that they never had any intention of wrapping up the countless loose ends the show had generated over the course of six seasons. The truth of these accusations is subject to debate, but what happened to the quality of Lost in its final season is not (I will, however, be a Lost apologist until my dying day).

Damon Lindelof is one of the most self-aware and self-effacing guys in show business. Up until the day he quit Twitter in 2013, his Twitter bio read: "I'm one of the idiots behind Lost." After a brief stint writing big budget movies (Prometheus, Star Trek, World War Z), Lindelof courageously returned to the medium that haunted him years prior in the Lost writers' room in the form of The Leftovers for HBO. Based on the novel of the same name by Tom Perrotta (who himself would be integral as a part of the show's production and creative team), The Leftovers primarily deals with the aftermath of a mysterious Rapture-like event known as The Sudden Departure, wherein 2% of the entire world's population vanishes without a trace. The veneer of the series is a "Mystery Box" show to a T, with all the tropes of the genre on full display: a world shattering and inexplicable event, an ensemble cast, conspiratorial undertones, and extended flashbacks. In 2014, one could easily be baffled by Lindelof's decision to helm a show so thematically similar to Lost, in what must have seemed like the television world's most public self-flagellation. Today, however, almost two years after the series finale, that decision is now crystal clear in that for Lindelof, The Leftovers was not an exercise in masochism, but redemption.