Can you ever outrun your past? Season 2 of The Leftovers asks the big questions (poster + trailer)

(image via Hypable (c) HBO)
(image via Hypable (c) HBO)

 

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What if your life was upended in an instant? What if your spouse or your child disappeared right in front of your eyes? Was it the Rapture or something even more difficult to explain? How would you rebuild your life in the wake of such a devastating event?

These are the questions confronting the bewildered citizens of Mapleton, a formerly comfortable suburban community that lost over a hundred people in the Sudden Departure. Kevin Garvey, the new mayor, wants to move forward, to bring a sense of renewed hope and purpose to his traumatized neighbors, even as his own family disintegrates.

His wife, Laurie, has left him to enlist in the Guilty Remnant, a homegrown cult whose members take a vow of silence but haunt the town’s streets as “living reminders” of God’s judgment. His son, Tom, is gone, too, dropping out of college to follow a crooked “prophet” who calls himself Holy Wayne. Only his teenaged daughter, Jill, remains, and she’s definitely not the sweet “A” student she used to be. (official synopsis via Pog Design)

Experiencing the loss of 2% of the world’s population in an instant – that may not sound like much but given there are about 7 billion on Earth right now, that’s about 140,000,000 people – would be enough to make most people nervous about what the future might hold.

But throw in weird silent cults, self-appointed messiahs and the near destruction of the town you live in, that once felt safe and like home, and no longer does even remotely, and you have a recipe for the complete breakdown of your faith in life to offer any kind of security.

The past holds far too many ghosts and the future very little promise of anything too enticing, and you could be forgiven if you’re someone like Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux) and you simply just threw in the family.

But Kevin, and so many like him haven’t, finding their own ways of moving forward, even if the past stubbornly refuses to stay where it supposed to stay – way in the past.

For Kevin, and his lover Nora Durst (Carrie Coon), who lost more than most when everyone disappeared, a chance to put the past behind them possibly beckons in the town of Jarden, Texas which proudly proclaims to anyone who will listen, and plenty do, that they didn’t lose a single soul during a rapturous event that was anything but.

But of course like anything that looks too good to be true, it probably is, and the new trailer suggests that the picture perfect world of Jarden may not be so perfect after all.

Especially when Patti Levin (Ann Dowd) of the hauntingly freaky and decidedly unhinged cult the Guilty Remant pops up in the trailer’s closing moments.

Her appearance suggests that even when you’re rushing to embrace the future, the past is usually still nipping at your heels, like it or not.

The Leftovers season 2 premieres Sunday, 4 october on HBO.

 

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