The Leftovers Recap 'Ten Thirteen': A Living Reminder

In The Leftovers recap, Meg prepares to strike at the heart of Jarden, Texas and she’s got quite the axe to grind….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

Quite a few answers were obtained in the penultimate episode of The Leftovers season two on Sunday night including the whereabouts of those missing girls, who have been gone ever since the first episode so many weeks ago.

While the entire town of Jarden, Texas has assumed that Evie and her two friends just evaporated like the other two-percent of the Earth, the reality is those girls orchestrated the entire thing — from the abandoned car, to the windows being rolled up to the music still playing when people finally arrived to look for them.

It was all part of a grand plan to join the Guilty Remnant but why? And how? And what does it have to do with Meg?

Let’s see if we can get to some of the answers as we recap the latest episode of The Leftovers titled ‘Ten Thirteen’….

The Day Before

Our story begins this week with Meg snorting coke in a bathroom while trying to make it through a lunch with her mother. Whatever it takes, right?

It seems Meg’s mother is concerned about her daughter setting a wedding date and more importantly allowing her to pay for the wedding. It’s all the typical things an overbearing mother might say and a resentful daughter can barely stomach it. Her mother even brings up an expensive pair of shoes she bought for Meg as a loan, yet she’s never received the money for it. It’s a not so subtle jab at Meg’s responsibility, for which she immediately responds by writing out a check for the full amount. As she’s dating the check, her mother tells her to push it one day forward because today is bad luck.

The date is October 13 — one day before the Sudden Departure.

Her mother has something important to tell her, but Meg needs a fix before she can put up with anymore of the nagging so she goes to the bathroom for a second powder up the nose. When Meg returns, her mother is on the floor in full cardiac arrest and her daughter is standing there in shock. Meg is grief stricken but then 24-hours later no one is willing to give her a shoulder to cry on because over 100-milllion people disappear and her mother’s natural death seems so trivial.

Fast forward two years and Meg is taking a trip to Miracle, Texas with her fiancé to go on a site-seeing journey complete with an audio tour and stops by town monuments like the girl who is still wearing the wedding dress she tried on the day of the Sudden Departure.

Meg’s real purpose in town is to visit Isaac — the hand print reading fortune teller we first met back in episode one — and she wants to know what her mother was planning to tell her before she died. Isaac passes her bullshit test when Meg doesn’t believe that he’s the real deal, but he still warns her that no matter what he says it won’t fill the void in her heart that’s been overflowing with hurt since losing her mother. Meg doesn’t care, she has to know what her mother was going to say.

We never hear what that is exactly, but Meg exits and pretends like nothing is wrong as she gets ready to leave town with her fiancé on the last bus to exit Jarden. While waiting for the bus to start loading, Meg runs into a familiar face — it’s Evie and she’s offering up some baby carrots to help the crying woman feel better while she’s sitting on the bench all alone. While they are there Meg shares a joke with Evie — the same joke Evie then tells her father while they are practicing softball pitches in the yard on the day of his birthday.

Meg departs but not before taking one more venomous look at the town of Jarden and spitting on the ground as if defiantly rebuking whatever notion that this place was spared from the Sudden Departure.

Violence Gets Results

Back in present day, Meg is now the leader of her particular sect of the Guilty Remnant but she’s not into subtlety when looking for results. She’s not interesting in staring at people from just outside their property until someone assaults them. Meg prefers direct confrontation — like stopping a school bus full of children and tossing a grenade inside. The grenade wasn’t live, but the screaming children all panicking in fear got whatever desired effect she wanted across.

Meg isn’t exactly beloved by the Guilty Remnant hierarchy either because on this particular day they meet with her to ensure that the plans they have set for the October 14 anniversary are going to happen on schedule. There are rumors that Meg has been attempting to purchase plastic explosive amongst other items and her view that violence is the best way to remind people about the Sudden Departure doesn’t sit well with the rest of the Guilty Remnant.

The only problem is Meg has more than a few loyal followers who do believe in her particular kind of message and they will enact that plan on October 14.

Hug It Away

If there’s one problem Meg still needs to deal with on her way to deliver that message it’s the guy running around the country claiming he can hug people’s pain away. Yep, it’s Tommy at the time when he started taking over the Holy Wayne business at the behest of his mother who felt this would be the best way to battle the Guilty Remnant.

Except, Tommy never really bought the plan and his view on the world is shattered even further when Meg shows up at one of his speeches and offers to show him how to take the pain away for real. Later that night, Tommy blows up at his mother for using this ‘treatment’ as a way to atone for abandoning her own family when the Sudden Departure first happened. Laurie slaps him in disgust although the truth really does exact the most obvious reaction and Tommy leaves with no plans to return. Now we know why Laurie was looking for Tommy when she got to Jarden.

Tommy ends up drinking himself into a stupor before finally arriving at the Guilty Remnant compound demanding an audience with Meg. When she shows up — after Tommy’s been beaten up for who knows how long — she asks why he came there and he wants to know how she could take his pain away. Tommy also divulges that his family — the same people Meg knew back in Mapleton — are now living in Jarden, Texas and she immediately bursts out in laughter before the two of them end up on a road trip together.

Later that night, Meg and Tommy trade shots at a dive bar while giving each other a little look into a similar past they both share. Eventually, they kiss and then end up on the dance floor before Meg gives Tommy an answer that he’s been begging to hear all day long — why did she fuck him in the back of that laundry truck after discovering that he was helping members of the Guilty Remnant escape?

Meg tells him that she wanted to get him pregnant — and of course he’s confused — but it seems like she was planting a seed with him. One that grew and sprouted in the weeks and months since they first met and now it’s come into full bloom as Tommy has abandoned his mother, abandoned her cause and now wants to join up with the very group she was trying to destroy.

The two of them drive all night until they end up at another compound where Meg is getting the final preparations together for the events that will unfold on October 14. There’s not much time to spare and Meg quickly brushes Tommy off when he asks for more answers. She leaves and Tommy is left with the rest of the members of the Guilty Remnant who say nothing but tell him that what Meg is doing ‘will change everything’.

A Living Reminder

Meg drives close to the Jarden border and begins walking amongst the tent people when she runs into Matt Jamison. Remember, Matt tried to counsel Meg while she was struggling with the Sudden Departure and then she ended up attacking him after he started handing out leaflets with her mother’s picture on them. Considering the origin of how her mother died, now we know why Meg was so angry.

When the two of them sit down to talk, Meg explains how she left the Guilty Remnant and Matt tells his story about how he ended up here with Mary as well as Kevin and Nora. But for every explanation that Meg has about her exit from the cult, Matt just isn’t buying it and he eventually calls her on the lies. Meg answers back and wonders why Matt and the rest of the tent people haven’t just stormed into Miracle, demanding to be saved the same way all of the residents were on October 14.

Meg tells Matt that the reality is everyone there has been waiting on her — to dispel all the bullshit and prove that there are no miracles in Miracle. This place isn’t untouched. It’s not special.

While Meg is gone to Jarden, Tommy starts digging around the barn where Meg has her secret weapon stored. Is she going to blow up something in Jarden? Is she going to make an example out of them that they aren’t special. Finally, Tommy looks in trailer Meg has hidden inside the barn and to his surprise he’s greeted by three stoic faces — the faces of Evie and her two friends that disappeared. When he asks who they are, Evie just writes down that it doesn’t matter.

These girls didn’t vanish as some kind of new departure and they weren’t kidnapped — they orchestrated this from the second they got into the car until now. The entire plan was to return them on October 14 to show the town of Jarden that they aren’t above God and just like everyone else on Earth, they are just living reminders of his awesome power. Never forget what happened on that day and Meg wants to remind the people of Jarden in the most powerful way possible.

Think back to that debut episode when Evie and her friends are driving back from the lake where they were just swimming and giving the scientist a hard time — in the car all three of them are sitting there, stone faced, just one cigarette and white outfit away from being members of The Guilty Remnant. This is the plan Meg wants to unleash and isn’t it strange that it’s going against the very man — John Murphy — who wants nothing more than to prove there are no miracles in Miracle.

Except this one came at his family’s expense.