Here's the Perfectly Rational Explanation for What Happened This Week on 'The Leftovers'

By Dustin Rowles | The Leftovers | October 12, 2015 |

By Dustin Rowles | The Leftovers | October 12, 2015 |

(Spoilers for this season’s The Leftover and for the first season of Mr. Robot.)

On this week’s The Leftovers, we saw the return of Ann Dowd’s Patti Levin, who killed herself last season (basically in an effort to screw over Kevin Garvey). Levin returned as a ghost, presumably, in order to haunt Kevin.

But what if that’s not the ghost of Patti Levin? What if Damon Lindelof is Fight Clubbing us, just as Mr. Robot did earlier this summer? What if Patti is not a ghost, but actually Kevin Garvey’s split-personality?

Here’s why that makes sense: Ghosts can’t manipulate the physical world, right? (Granted, this is a fictional show, and anything can happen). Yet Kevin had his head slammed against a stove by Patti. Given Kevin’s state, especially now that he’s off his meds, is it possible that Kevin slammed his own head against the stove?

Here’s why I think that Lindelof might be Fight Clubbing us. Remember how showrunner Sam Esmail tipped us off to what was going on in Mr. Robot with that instrumental version of The Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?”, a song made famous by Fight Club.

The same thing happened on The Leftovers: One of the songs that Kevin was listening to in order to shut out Patti was The Pixies’ “Where is My Mind?” Recall, also, that last season, Kevin blacked out and woke up in the cabin in Cairo, NY with no knowledge of how he got there. Wouldn’t it make sense if he’s self-destructive other personality abducted Patti and took him there?

Kevin has multiple personality disorder. Lindelof was a huge fan of Mr. Robot, after all.

How does that play into the “Departure” at the end of this episode (and at the end of the first episode)?

Well, if Kevin’s alter is feeling enough self-hatred to slam his head into a stove, maybe Kevin’s alter also decided to kill himself. Maybe Kevin’s alter drove him out to the lake, tied a brick around his foot, and jumped in the lake.

It wasn’t a departure, however, that caused the lake water to disappear. It was the earthquake. Evie and her friends may have seen Kevin jump into the lake. In order to save him, they also jumped into the lake. That’s when the Earthquake arrived, sucked all the water into the fault line, along with Evie and her friends, but it left Kevin behind.

Is it possible for the water level to drop precipitously after an Earthquake? Yes, yes it is: The water levels in Lake Mead in Nevada dropped eight feet after a relatively minor earthquake earlier this year.

That wasn’t a departure. It was an earthquake. This fault line, after all, has been rumbling since prehistoric times.

Miracle, Texas remains a Miracle.