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Read Part Two of Variety’s Interview with Damon Lindelof

By Reuben Levine

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Gear up for part two of Variety’s three-part interview with The Leftovers’ Damon Lindelof.

The Leftovers will air its season finale this Sunday, and many of the show’s principals have been promoting the show lately. Amy Brenneman was on Conan last night, and co-creator and writer Damon Lindelof has given a long, multi-part interview to Variety.

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Variety’s talk with Lindelof has the feel of a free-flowing conversation, and it’s for that reason that it’s so long. The first part was longer than most interviews tend to run and this second part was apparently “edited and condensed.” Even still, Damon Lindelof once again proves that he has a lot to say.

This part of the interview doesn’t focus on a particular episode but is more about his process and the makeup of the show. This should go without saying, but you may want to abstain from reading the entire interview if you’re not caught up with The Leftovers. Spoiler Warning, in other words. Lindelof teases the finale a couple of times, and talks about a specific callback to a scene earlier in the season:

"“The way that the season ends, the way the finale ends — the last scene of the finale very purposely and unambiguously refers back to the cavewoman. Not in a story way, but in a character, emotional, thematic way. I hope that once the audience sees the finale they’ll say, “Oh, that’s why they did that.”"

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Take that for what it’s worth. Lindelof revisits the cavewoman again to describe what he’s trying to do with the series:

"“We’re doing a show about what it is like to lose your family, to lose everything that is special to you. You know, the fact that two people survive, a woman and her baby, from a cave that has 100 people in it, on the show where two percent of the world’s population disappeared — that’s the thematic tie. It’s not rocket science.”"

Lindelof also resists his time on Lost and what went wrong there:

"“When you’re writing a mystery show, you have to know the answers to the mysteries that you are presenting to the audience. And if you don’t know the answers, they can smell it. That is the lesson that was learned. If you don’t know the answer to your mystery, the audience can smell it. They’re just way too smart.”"

There are parts of The Leftovers, especially in season one, when it feels like it could easily fall into the Lost trap of getting lost in its own labyrinth. If Lindelof really has learned that particular lesson, hopefully The Leftovers will continue to avoid that problem.

Next: The Leftovers' Amy Brenneman was on Conan last night.

You can read the entire interview over at Variety in which Lindelof also describes himself as a fan of the style of storytelling in shows like Fargo, Jessica Jones, The Knick, Game of Thrones, and The Walking Dead.

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