In The Leftovers recap, Kevin takes a journey to finally put an end to Patti but is this going to free him of her forever or is he even still alive?
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
It’s nearly impossible to truly decipher dream episodes of series like The Leftovers where metaphors are wrapped inside riddles hidden within a single frame that maybe we’ll catch, maybe we won’t. Someone will pore over every minute of this episode and break down the meaning behind every object and person interacted with and chances are it will still be wrong.
The only person who likely knows all the answers is Damon Lindelof and let’s be honest Lost didn’t exactly make things much clearer when it was over either.
All we know for sure is Kevin wakes up in a dream state and eventually pops up alive and well back in Jarden, Texas after climbing out from being buried alive. Is he fixed? Is Patti gone? Only time will tell.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of The Leftovers titled ‘International Assassin’….
Know Your Role
Kevin wakes up in a bathtub filled with water over his head and as he flops to the ground like a fish splashing around on the shore, he looks around and has no clue where he’s at right now. A moment later he realizes it’s a hotel room, but who’s room? Why is he here?
Eventually, Kevin looks at a closet and sees a sign that tells him to choose his wardrobe appropriate for the life he wants to lead — among the choices are a priest, his old Mapleton police officer’s uniform, a Guilty Remnant outfit and a black and white suit.
Kevin chooses the suit but a moment later a bellboy shows up at his door with some flowers and then attacks him. Kevin fights him off and ends up killing the man, but now he’s even more confused. Where is he and why is someone trying to kill him?
When he heads downstairs, Kevin spots Virgil working in the same hotel as a concierge. He’s a little distracted by all the fire alarms and birds flying around the hotel (Erika’s dead birds perhaps?). It takes Kevin a few moments to realizes that everyone in his vision is dead including Virgil, who says he’s ‘atoning’ by being there. Virgil eventually tells him to meet in the parking garage where he lays out the plan. Kevin is dressed as an international assassin and his job is to kill Patti Levin — who in this world just happens to be a senator running for president.
Kevin has been granted an audience with her due to a large donation made to her campaign, but once he arrives in the room, he goes to the bathroom and grabs a gun in the toilet Godfather style and shoots her dead. Virgil warns him time and again that no matter what Patti says to him, don’t believe it and to shoot her dead.
One more key thing about this world — whatever you do don’t drink the water. Kevin is warned after he jumped in a pool to save a girl who was drowning but Virgil’s concern isn’t about the victim but rather making sure that Kevin didn’t swallow a single ounce of the wet stuff.
All The President’s Men
Before Kevin can meet Senator Levin, he has to be vetted by her staff, which includes Gladys who was killed during season one by the mob going after the Guilty Remnant. Kevin is hooked up to a lie detector and asked several questions and when he lies, the bodyguard sprays Windex into his eyes.
Kevin fails a couple of times but eventually makes it through the questions. The interesting part was when he answered about why he smoked and he said to remind him that the world ended, the light didn’t go off. Remember, that’s a major point of the Guilty Remnant’s entire thesis for existence these days.
Kevin heads back to his room after the meeting and his TV that has been flickering on and off finally breaks through with a static filled image of his father. Kevin Sr. explains that he’s in Perth, Australia on some kind of psychedelic drug called God’s Tongue and he’s reaching out to his son to warn him to take Patti to the well. Don’t kill her in hotel. The signal fades before he can say much more and a moment later, Kevin gets summoned to meet with Patti.
One more side note during a fire alarm, Kevin spots another courier with some balloons marked with ‘it’s a boy’ and congrats written on them and they are going to Mary Jamison. So despite Matt’s desire that his wife is coming back, it appears she’s already gone but she’s going to give birth to a baby boy.
When Kevin finally gets an audience at Patti’s room, he’s greeted by Gladys again and then runs into her bodyguard — it’s Holy Wayne!. Unfortunately amidst all the chatter, Kevin doesn’t have time to get to the gun and Patti arrives in the suite for her meeting.
She discusses a few issues with Kevin and also explains how she never touches the water here (take note of that) but he’s more concerned with the real theme of her party — she destroys families. Well, candidate Patti is thrilled with that concise explanation of her platform and she wants it to be her new slogan. She also talks about assassins and their would-be targets and how it’s never motivated by money but instead belief. They are diametrically opposed to a belief in their victim, but Patti says deep down they actually believe the same thing and that’s what they truly fear.
Between this and the smoking it makes me wonder if Kevin doesn’t truly hold ideals similar to the Guilty Remnant — and he believes that the world ended when the Sudden Departure took place three years ago and he’s just going through the motions pretending to be alive.
Kevin then makes the cardinal mistake of bringing up Neil — you know her shit fetishist husband who abused her and then left her — and she immediately orders Wayne to shoot him.
Just kidding!
Patti doesn’t mind speaking about Neil, which was the first clue that this wasn’t the same Patti we were dealing with before. Kevin finally excuses himself to go to the bathroom (we assume to wipe down after shitting his pants when Wayne nearly killed him) and he finds the gun and the silencer left behind for him.
Kevin comes out of the bathroom, guns blazing, taking out Wayne and Gladys and then turning the weapon on Patti. She pleads with him that she’s not the real Patti, but actually a body double. Kevin doesn’t buy her lie and he buries a bullet in her forehead. But in that moment, Kevin doesn’t suddenly disappear from the room and he isn’t back in his old life in Texas with a Patti-free existence.
He goes back downstairs to ask Virgil what the hell just happened, but there’s one problem — Virgil got thirsty and he drank the water. The water it seems is some sort of trap for the dead and those who drink are forced to stay there forever perhaps?
Going to the Well
Kevin has no answers and no clue where to go next, but when he gets up to his room in runs into the same belligerent asshole who yelled at him for saving the little girl drowning in the pool earlier. The guy is locked out of his room and currently guzzling down a bottle of Jack Daniels. Kevin decides to share a drink — not water mind you — and eventually finds out that this angry, self-loathing shithead is actually Neil. Patti’s Neil!
He’s lamenting about how he can’t find anyone to take a dump on him and Kevin realizes that this is Neil and the girl he saved wasn’t his daughter but was in fact Patti.
Kevin knocks on the locked door and the little girl answers and he takes her by the hand where he will return to Jarden, Texas to the well and that’s where he will kill Patti.
On the way back to town, Patti just chats up a storm and it’s hard to believe this cute little girl grows up to be his biggest rival. When Kevin drives up to the bridge to get into town, he’s stopped by some kind of Australian guard who puts a noose around his neck and says it’s time to decide. He can either kill himself right here or if he kills that little girl, Kevin has to realize nothing will ever be the same again.
Kevin chooses the ladder and eventually makes it to the well just as the first rays of daylight creep through the night. Ever enthusiastic, Patti jumps up on the edge of the well and asks if Kevin wants her to jump or if he wants to push her? Just like Patti in life, this Patti in death is challenging him even if it’s with a cute Minnie Mouse sounding voice.
Finally without hesitation, Kevin shoves the little girl into the well.
A few moments later as he’s trying to reconcile what he just did and realizes that he didn’t get zapped back into his own life, he hears for pleas of help from down in the well. Patti is still alive and she’s no longer the Senator and she’s no longer the little girl. She’s an amalgam of all three and piece by piece Kevin has been dismantling her like he’s destroying horcruxes all over town.
Kevin jumps down into the well with her and that’s where she tells him about the time she went on Jeopardy and won over $60,000 with the intention of using the money to leave Neil but she never did. She won the money in spite being intimidated by her silent opponent in Final Jeopardy, but when the time came to finally leave her husband, Patti showed fear and couldn’t walk away.
This is by far the most vulnerable Patti has ever been, but Kevin isn’t interested in her sob stories so instead he hugs her and then shoves her head under the water until she finally expires. A moment later, the Earth begins to rumble and the well caves in on both of them. Kevin reaches through some rock and dirt as his hand finally pops out and soon his head follows. Kevin breathes a sigh of relief when he realizes that he’s alive again and then he spots Michael standing nearby. It seems Michael has been camped out at this spot ever since he buried Kevin there after his death.
Remember, Michael dragged Kevin out of his grandfather’s trailer after he told him to drink the poison and then Virgil took his own life as well. Michael spots Kevin laying on the ground and he immediately drops a ‘holy shit’ because he probably never believed he’d see him again. But what kind of a world did Kevin return to? Patti’s message seemed to strike close to home with him in that dream state — after October 14, attachment and love became extinct. Is Kevin now just a living reminder like all the other members of the Guilty Remnant?
Only time will tell.
