The latest episode of The Leftovers, "Crazy Whitefella Thinking," is all about Kevin Garvey, Sr.—his Job-like journey through the Australian outback as he seeks to prevent the Apocalypse by co-optioning Aboriginal song and dance—but it links directly back to the most profound episode of the entire series, "International Assassin," from Season Two.

In that episode, Kevin Jr., who's killed himself by drinking poison, turns up in a hotel room meant to signify a kind of purgatory and his mission, he believes, is to assassinate Patti Levin, who killed herself in Season One. About halfway through the episode, Kevin Sr. appears on the TV in Kevin Jr.'s room. Kevin's dad is dressed as an Aboriginal with two similar looking men behind him. A fire is burning in the middle of the room. This is the conversation they have:

Kevin Sr.: It worked.

Kevin Jr: Where are you?

Kevin Sr: I'm in Perth. Jesus, we're staying in the same room.

Kevin Jr.: What?

Kevin Sr.: Son, I am fucked up on this shit they call God's tongue so I really hope this is real. You get the flowers I sent?

Kevin Jr: Yeah, the card was blank.

Kevin Sr.: It didn't say, "Get to the well"?

Kevin Jr.: What well?

Kevin Sr.: TAKE HER TO THE WELL!

Kevin Jr.: Who? Patti?

Kevin Sr. (to someone in his hotel room): Wake the fuck up asshole … the fire.

Kevin Jr.: What well? I'm supposed to assassinate her.

Kevin Sr.: No, you're not a fucking assassin. Whoa, don't fucking put it out; I'm still talking to him. You've got to take her to the well.

Kevin Jr.: What well?

Kevin Sr.: Son, you have to be strong. I love you.

Kevin Jr.: I love you, too.

Then the screen goes blank.

In "Crazy Whitefella Thinking," Kevin Sr. explains to an Aboriginal holy man, Christopher Sunday, whom he later accidentally kills, that after listening to the voices in his head, which told him to go to Australia, he met a "hippie" on the streets of Sydney who asked if he'd like to talk to God. Kevin Sr. said yes, and the hippie sold him a hallucinogen called "God's tongue." He woke up two weeks later in Perth, on the other side of Australia, in a hotel room alongside a scorched bed and several other white guys dressed up as Aboriginals.

Kevin Sr. has no recollection of what happened during those two weeks, he tells Christopher Sunday, but now we know at least one thing that happened: He talked to his son, who was dead.

Was this what the hippie meant when he asked Kevin Sr. if he wanted to talk to God? After all, there's a strong theme running through season three that perhaps Kevin Jr. is the Messiah.

In "International Assassin," Kevin follows his dad's advice. He meets a young girl named Patti in the hotel. He presumes this is Patti Levin as a child. Kevin Jr. takes the girl to a well—and pushes her in. Overcome with guilt, Kevin Jr. goes in the well after her and discovers an injured adult Patti talking about how she used her winnings from Jeopardy! to leave her abusive husband. Then Kevin Jr. drowns her and is brought back to life—the second of three times he'll rise from the dead in the second season.

But Kevin Sr. explicitly says his son is not an assassin. Did Kevin Jr. mistakenly kill the young girl when he took her to the well? Was he supposed to do something else? Are these the actions of a Messiah?

It calls to mind the most random moment in "Crazy Whitefella Thinking." As Kevin Sr. wanders through the outback on crutches, a Volkswagen Beetle veers out of nowhere and comes to rest a couple hundred feet in front of him. A man in a suit emerges and pours gasoline all over himself. Just as he's about to self-immolate, Kevin Sr. tries to talk to him. The man says, "They didn't take me," which Kevin Sr. presumes refers to the Sudden Departure.

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The man then asks, "Would you kill a baby if it would cure cancer?"

Kevin Sr. says no, he wouldn't, and the man replies, "That is exactly what I said." And then he starts himself on fire.

So maybe this guy—who doesn't appear to have an Australian accent—wasn't chosen to be blasted with radiation in the machine that Mark Linn-Baker says will take people to see their departed loved ones. That's the same machine that Nora is going to Australia, with Kevin Jr. in tow, to check out. Maybe she'll be confronted with a similar moral quandary.

But it's also reminiscent of the penultimate scene in "International Assassin." The young girl in the hotel room isn't a baby—she's probably about seven years old, give or take—but Kevin Jr. does what his dad claims he couldn't: kill a child to serve a bigger purpose. In this case, by killing the child, and then Patti, Kevin Jr. is able to return from death and thwart the Guilty Remnant's takeover of Jarden, Texas.

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But did Kevin err? Was that not at all was his dad was telling him to do?

"Crazy Whitefella Thinking" ends with one of the most heartbreaking scenes of the series: a woman named Grace, who explains that her children died after the Sudden Departure because they set out into the Outback in search of help and succumbed to the elements.

Seven years later, Grace finds Kevin Sr. nearly unconscious from a snake bite beneath a cross—the site where her children died. In his hand is a page from the Book of Kevin, the gospel Matt has written about Kevin Jr., which Kevin Sr. had tucked inside the infamous copy of National Geographic from May 1972, which he claimed in Season One holds all the answers. But Kevin Jr. is angry about this gospel because it's not about him. It's about his son.

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Grace believes the page from the Book of Kevin is indeed scripture. In Episode Two of Season Three, she drowns a local police chief named Kevin believing him to be the one from the page she's found.

"You just got the wrong Kevin," Kevin Sr. tells her in the final chilling moments of the episode.

The episode started with a jazzy version of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus." The lyrics go:

"Your own personal Jesus, someone to hear your prayers, someone who cares."

For Grace, who's spent the last seven years heartbroken, the song might as well say Your Own Personal Kevin. And to the rest of the world, which has spent the last seven years heartbroken, they're all looking for their own personal Kevin. The question as it stands now is: Which Kevin?

Michael Sebastian Michael Sebastian was named editor-in-chief of Esquire in June 2019 where he oversees print and digital content, strategy and operations.

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