The previously inexplicable link between Kevin and Patti is explored on this week’s episode of The Leftovers. Taking place in some other plane of existence entirely, Kevin’s fate is determined through a series of choices he makes along the way.
For all intents and purposes, Kevin was foaming at the mouth and irreversibly dead. Or so we thought. He woke up drowning in an overflowing hotel bathroom, and out of a strange mix of uniforms in the closet, he chose his new identity: international assassin. If you can be dead and pick your profession, might as well make it an exciting one, I guess!
There’s a handful of notable characters Kevin runs into in this hotel. First off, Virgil was the man who poisoned him in the real world. He has to pretend not to know what’s going on, but he does eventually advise Kevin on his mission. If he can get through his assassination of the presidential candidate and manage to not drink the water in the hotel along the way, he will be delivered and return home.
This is as much Kevin’s purgatory as it is Patti’s. He revives a little girl floating in the pool, only to later to discover the true identity of her and the man who scolds her for swimming. We’ve heard so much about Neil Levin, Patti’s cheating husband. Only now Kevin finally meets – and strangles – this scumbag of a man. For a symbolic meaning open to interpretation, the little girl is actually Patti.
The grown incarnation of Patti that Kevin is supposed to take out in the masterplan to escape claims at gunpoint that she’s not her. Either way, he pulls the trigger on this supposed body double. Going through with the assassination proves fruitless anyway.
The television in Kevin’s room was flickering off and on before he received a message from his father. It seemed super strange but somehow pretty legit that they were able to see and speak with each other. Kevin’s father told him he has to bring “her” to the well. None of this made sense right away. Even now, there’s so many things that make zero sense. Like the bird in the lobby that Virgil smashed and killed after he gave in and drank the water. This hotel wasn’t scary like Hotel Cortez in American Horror Story but definitely eerie enough the way Neil admitted he was dead and stuck in the hotel.
Patti, who fell down the well as a little girl, calls out to Kevin as the grown woman we’ve always known. He climbs down where she speaks about being scared. Kevin puts her out of her misery by drowning her in the water. It takes another earthquake to shake him out his nightmarish condition. He’s climbing up through the well, coughing up dirt. Michael finds him, and we know this means he’s truly back from the dead.
What a freaky episode! We literally just witnessed Kevin’s fight through his version of purgatory. Between this and the masterfully done Lost series finale, I would love to spend hours just picking Damon Lindelof’s brain. Genius.
[Photo credit: Van Redin/HBO]
