I’m sure there were many times where we were angry and frustrated with one another, but it always felt like when the whistle blew, we were hugging each other and saying, “Good game.” I feel a tremendous debt to Tom and have always looked at this show as one that he allows me to be a part of, and therefore his opinion holds probably a disproportionate creative value. Lindelof: I feel like our collaboration has always been built on authentic honesty and mutual admiration, and also a sense of debt. How has your collaboration evolved through three seasons? That version of the show is what we chose to write. It always seems like it’s about to, and it never does, and then we’ve always got to figure it out. Perrotta: What we ended up telling is the story of people as survivors-what happens when the world doesn’t end. It felt so dangerous and scary and right that then, it was really like, Okay, what does that look like? How do we earn it? I think the idea that the show was going to end with an older version of Nora telling the story of what we promised from the word “Go” that we were never going to reveal, that was voltage through our bodies. We had all those things playing together: Should we end the world? What does the end of the world look like? Can we maybe openly deceive the audience? All of those conversations were simultaneous. Lindelof: The end of the world was the other part-Since the series is ending, let’s tell the audience that the world might be ending, too, because they might believe that we’d be willing to do it. Tom Perrotta: The idea of a flash-forward came early, too.

I think that when we came into the third season, the ideas on the table, which were very underdeveloped, were, Kevin is a reluctant messiah, and he’s kind of annoyed by the designation and Norah, in her job as a fraud investigator, is presented with a device, both literal and figurative, that could potentially reunite her with her children. How long have you both known the direction the series would take in its final season?ĭamon Lindelof: We never discussed what the ending of the series was going to be until we knew that we were ending the series.

'The Leftovers' Creatives On Possible Series Return & Season 3 Finale - ATX HBO

The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta