Van Redin

The Leftovers fans are a hearty lot.

The spooky HBO drama’s first season — based on Tom Perrotta’s 2011, rapture-esque bestseller — drew mixed critical response, middling ratings and a whole lot of “What on (or off) Earth was that?” But the network — and viewers who obsessed over the Justin Theroux starrer’s thought-provoking supernatural bent — hung on, resulting in a second season that defied description, but made for one of 2015’s most satisfying television experiences.

Then the wait began anew. Though the Season 2 finale suggested a (mostly) satisfying series finale, too, fans hoped that there might be a bit more to the complex tale of life in a tiny town after 2 percent of the world’s population disappears. Again, HBO delivered. Creators Perrotta and Damon Lindelof (Lost) set to work on a final season that would tie up the tale they sought to tell and give the show’s devoted fan base genuine closure. “The real blessing was knowing that the show was going to end, and having an entire year to process that emotionally — and also to execute it so that it felt more like it was a celebration of the show, as opposed to watching something wither away and die,” says Lindelof. “As opposed to bittersweet, it’s sweet-bitter.”

Like Season 2, Season 3 begins with a wordless but emotionally rending genesis story — this time centered on a real-life religious group called the Millerites that portends the start of the Guilty Remnant. Then comes a substantial time jump that keeps us in Miracle, Texas, but offers new realities for many characters, setting up what promises to be an engrossing eight-episode final run. Lindelof says that jump allowed the writers room to honor the Sudden Departure’s rapture-like nature.

“The idea that the final season was going to take place in the days leading up to the seven-year anniversary of the departure — perhaps in anticipation of the final reckoning — it just felt like how do we not do that? Especially if the audience knows that the series is coming to a close,” he explains. “Then all bets are off and the audience begins to experience the same anxiety that the characters are experiencing in terms of ‘Wow! Maybe they are gonna end the world!’”

By now, you’ve likely heard that some Miracle residents are Australia-bound, too — little surprise to fans who’ve paid attention. Especially after Theroux’s former lawman Kevin Garvey’s wayward dad (played by Scott Glenn) proclaimed that he could “sit around and cry about how the world @#$%ing ended — or I could start it up again,” then headed Down Under. Lindelof relishes the chance to use Glenn — whose craggy face is a story in itself — to full effect.

“Until Season 3, Kevin Garvey Sr. has almost been exclusively linked to Kevin Jr.,” Lindelof says. “The idea of letting Scott play with more of the show’s ensemble — what does it look like for him to be in scenes with Amy [Brenneman, who plays Laurie Garvey]? With Kevin Carroll [troubled dad John Murphy]? — became really exciting to us. Senior’s actions in Australia are really that he’s been basically laying the pipe for what’s going to happen now.”

Meaning what for the suggested Garvey-family bliss in the closing moments of Season 2 — coupled with Kevin Jr.’s apparent inability to expire with any finality?

“Here’s what I’ll say,” Lindelof hedges. “There’s a metaphysical level of the show, which is ‘Can I die? Can I not die? The experience that I had when I was in the hotel, what did all that mean?’ That stuff is important — but I think that what’s more important is the emotional idea of the show, which has always been quite simple. In Season 1, we demonstrated that even before the departure happened, Kevin was one foot out the door. He was already struggling with the idea of being in a family unit. So this idea that the departure destabilized everyone is bull@#$%. For this character, there is this fundamental idea of escape — and he keeps finding himself in those situations. In the second season, Patti represented this idea: ‘There is no family, and you’re just gonna lose Nora [Carrie Coon], so why make yourself emotionally vulnerable to her?’

“All of these ideas are still in play for him, but we did want to reconnect back to the initial premise of the show, which is, ‘What now? What are we supposed to make of this?’” Lindelof continues. “Even though it’s almost seven years after the initial Sudden Departure, it felt like there was a new way of re-examining it that was directly personal to Kevin, and we’ll be exploring that idea all season long. Whether the show is actually going to definitively answer whether he is some kind of messianic character is less interesting to us than how Kevin and Nora are going to handle it.”

The Leftovers Season 3 airs Sundays at 9/8c beginning April 16 on HBO