In The Leftovers recap, Nora makes a shocking decision and Kevin tries to find a way to finally get rid of Patti….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Well, Kevin is dead.
At least that’s the way it looks after the latest episode of The Leftovers following Kevin’s most drastic attempt to rid himself of ghost Patti. Nora left him, Laurie returned and Jill has now counted two times he’s fucked up his family and there won’t be a third chance so he’s willing to do whatever it takes to rid himself of this burden.
But rather than deal with it on a psychological level as his ex-wife/therapist suggests, he goes to a snake charmer who wants to send him to the afterworld for some kind of post-life throw down to give up the ghost.
Does it work? Is Kevin free of Patti?
Let’s recap the latest episode of The Leftovers titled ‘A Most Powerful Adversary’ and find out…
Gone Girl
Kevin wakes up still handcuffed to the bed but Nora is gone. Following his confession that he sees dead people or more specifically one dead person — Patti Levin, the leader of the Guilty Remnant who killed herself in front of him — and Nora is checking out of the crazy house. It might not be as much about Kevin’s visions but more the fact that he lied to her for months after they promised a clean slate with nothing but the truth from here on out.
And Patti is no help as she just taunts him from a chair in the bedroom.
Kevin cuts himself loose from the handcuffs with a pair of bolt cutters, but he still needs to actual bracelet removed so he heads out into Jarden to find someone to help him out. Patti warns him that this is going to be a bad day and boy was she right on the money.
First Kevin visits a locksmith but in his frustration and anger with Patti ragging on his every move, he lashes and drops and ‘F’ bomb, which gets him tossed from the building. His second attempt is to go see John at the fire station, but when he arrives it seems his next door neighbor is taking palm prints to try and narrow down the search for whoever left that muddy print on the car the night his daughter disappeared.
Well, Kevin knows it’s his but he’s trapped and forced to give his palm print anyways. To make matters worse, John doesn’t have the tool to cut Kevin free and his only suggestion is to go see the locksmith down the street.
Meanwhile, Jill is trying to connect with her boyfriend Michael while expressing her frustration over Kevin’s latest break from reality. Michael doesn’t have the answers for her other than saying that he won’t have sex with Jill because he’s not sure he really loves her. That wasn’t the confidence boost she was looking for.
Michael does have answers for Kevin, however, after spotting him in his truck talking to Patti but rather than laugh or judge, he just puts his bike in the back of the bed and tells him to drive. Kevin is utterly confused, but Michael says he wants to take him to see his grandfather Virgil — the same guy he went to see when he was sleepwalking all those weeks ago.
Give Up the Ghost
Kevin makes it out to Virgil’s trailer out in the middle of nowhere — remember Virgil, he’s Erica’s father, Michael’s grandfather, who apparently got into some kind of conflict with John that ended with him being shot. Apparently, the night that Kevin sleepwalked back in episode 2, he actually visited with Virgil first and that’s where he got the answer on how to deal with his Patti problem.
Virgil said he needs to die — temporarily — to deal with a most powerful adversary that’s clinging onto him after death. In that state, Kevin can fight her and hopefully win to free himself of her. Virgil knows this works because it happened to him. He did something awful (it’s later mentioned that he’s a pedophile) and when John found out he shot him three times — in the chest, in the stomach and in the man parts. Virgil died, battled his ghost and came back a changed man.
Upon hearing this advice back then, Kevin grabbed some rope and a cinderblock and proceeded to toss himself into the river. If not for the earthquake that occurred that drained all the water out that night, Kevin would be dead.
The second time he hears this story, Kevin is convinced that Virgil is just a crazy old witch doctor and he quickly jumps back in his truck and runs away before this situation gets any weirder.
Laurie Returns
Kevin remembers what his father said when he came out of the crazy house — instead of denying the voices in his head he finally started to listen to them and what they said. So Kevin asks Patti what he’s supposed to do. She begins mumbling about going to Cairo, Egypt to steal a precious artifact called the Wishing Cup, fill it with his semen, drink it and then something magical will happen. Patti then laughs her ass off but it’s interesting she chose Cairo as the location. Don’t forget, Cairo has become a central point of conflict on this show over the last two seasons.
Following his visit with Virgil, Kevin seeks out Patti again for answers and that’s when she mocks him for even suggesting this as an answer to all his problems. She goes as far as challenging him to battle — “Let’s go fucking die!”. Kevin isn’t quite there yet but he will be.
Kevin then gets a call from the visitor’s center saying that his wife has arrived looking for him. He shows up and realizes it’s Laurie and she’s looking for Tommy. Kevin tells her that he hasn’t seen his stepson in over a year and Nora failed to tell him about her call the night before, but for good reason because that’s when he confessed about being haunted by a dead woman.
Kevin eventually lashes out at Laurie but later that day he travels outside of Jarden to her hotel for some calm one on one time now that she’s no longer a member of a cult and can speak these days and he’s pretty much lost anything and everything that’s important to him in the last 8 hours.
Kevin confesses to Laurie that he’s been seeing Patti as well and she calmly tells her ex-husband that he’s having a psychotic break just like his father. To prove her point, Laurie challenges Patti to come out and play while she’s in the room, but the ghostly Guilty Remnant leader is nowhere to be found. It just proves Laurie’s point even further.
If Patti was real, she’d show up and answer something that only they would know.
Kevin tries to tell Laurie that Patti has already told him things that he couldn’t possibly know, but she reminds him that before the Sudden Departure, she was her therapist for three years. Laurie would routinely share in pillow talk with Kevin while they were still married and tell him stories about Patti’s broken marriage and her husband’s anal obsession. He’s simply manifesting those memories into a vision of Patti now.
Laurie tells Kevin he needs medication and probably a stint in a rehab facility to rid himself of the voices in his head. He has another idea….
Since Laurie never legally changed her last name, he’s able to procure her a bracelet to get back into Jarden where she can stay and monitor him while hopefully reconnecting with Jill. She’s not exactly thrilled with the idea, but after admitting that her con with Tommy fell apart after he just couldn’t lie to people any longer about a hug taking away all of their problems, Laurie hopes to avoid the same mistakes she’s already made with her daughter.
Where Is My Mind?
Kevin goes home with Laurie in tow and after a day spent calling Nora trying to find answers as to why she left, the phone finally rings. Kevin answers and speaks with Nora while Laurie begins looking around the house and sees the family photo with Lily and clearly she recognizes something with that baby. Or maybe she’s feeling the loss of her own child that disappeared during the Sudden Departure that Kevin never even knew about.
Kevin tries to get through to Nora while asking why she would leave him handcuffed to the bed when there was no way to escape. Nora actually did leave him the key with instructions on the chair — the same chair Patti was sitting on when he woke up in the morning.
Kevin finally asks Nora if she would be willing to come home and give him another chance if he exorcized Patti once and for all. Jill has already warned him about fucking up this family after fucking up the last one so Kevin knows he’s out of chances. Nora agrees so Kevin goes tearing out of the house and into his truck. Jill comes home to find her mother there and she’s clearly not happy. But Kevin’s gone and she’s got no answer as to why Laurie is back.
Instead of checking himself into a facility or following his plan with Laurie, Kevin goes back to see Virgil at his trailer of mysticism. When he arrives, Michael is just leaving and he’s very upset but it’s a passing moment until Kevin goes inside and asks Virgil to kill him.
The plan is to drink some poison and after he’s dead for a few minutes, Virgil will revive him with a shot of adrenaline, straight to the heart (Does it gotta be exact? I’m giving her a shot in the heart so my guess is it’s gotta be fucking exact!).
Patti shows up just before Kevin drinks the poison and she once again taunts his decision making and he says that after watching his father slip into a psychotic break and come back out again after listening to what the voices in his head were telling him to do, he’s going to do the same. He asks Patti if he should drink the poison and she says go for it.
So he finally chugs down the solution just as Patti screams for him not to do it as if she was just testing him to see if he’d really drink it. Kevin goes into a convulsion and falls dead on the ground and instead of saving his life, Virgil empties out the needle full of adrenaline and proceeds to fire a single bullet into his own brain.
Michael shows up after both men are dead and drags Kevin’s lifeless body out of the trailer.
Did Michael know this was the plan all along and that’s why he was so upset when he left the trailer in the first place? Was he sad because his grandfather was taking his own life? Or did he drag Kevin out of there to save him for Jill?
With only three episodes to go this season, we’ve got a lot of answers to get to and I wouldn’t put it past The Leftovers to kill Kevin off at this point. Remember, Patti was a key figure in season one and she died and said that was the most freeing moment of her entire life. Granted she came back as a ghost, but still it’s not out of the question that Kevin really does shuffle off this mortal coil (although I don’t expect that to be the case).
