Watching The End Times In Primetime

Matthew Paul Turner unpacks the peculiar theology informing the new HBO show The Leftovers, which is premised on the sudden disappearance of 2% of the world’s population – an event evangelical and fundamentalist Christians know as the Rapture:

Believe it or not, the Rapture, as many evangelicals understand it today, is an idea that’s less than 200 years old, one part of an eschatology invented in the 1830s by John Nelson Darby, a British Bible teacher and devout member of the Plymouth Brethren. As a theologian, Darby constructed an entire Biblical interpretation known as Dispensationalism, an evangelical futurist expounding that, among other things, suggested that God’s relationship with humanity varied according to dispensations, or periods in history.

According to Darby, God’s epic timetable—from Adam and Eve to the apocalyptic end—is split up into seven non-uniform eras. For instance, Darby’s first era—the dispensation of innocence—started with Adam and Eve and lasted only as long as the first biblical pair lived in the Garden of Eden. The second era—the dispensation of conscience—began right after God evicted Adam and Eve from the Garden and ended when Cain murdered Abel. Darby said the sixth era—the dispensation of grace—started with the crucifixion of Jesus and would not end until Jesus rescued all Christians from earth, making the way clear for the Great Tribulation—seven years of torment and pestilence—to begin.

After watching the pilot episode, however, Brandon Ambrosino picks up on the nuances of the story being told:

[A]s [series creator Tom] Perrotta has insisted, his rapture isn’t the Christian one. Yes, he said, people will use the word “rapture” because it’s the one they’re familiar with when it comes to explaining mass disappearances. But he hopes Leftovers is able to “disconnect [the rapture] from its religious context,” which he thinks is too “purposeful and clear,” and lacking in “nuance and grief.”

After watching the pilot, I can see that Perrotta was true to his word: his series is not about the rapture that Christians have been obsessing over for a century or two. For that matter, The Leftovers isn’t even a show about a rapture — it’s a show about loss. Which is to say, it’s not a show about an event, but a show about the people left in the wake of that event. As Perrotta explained to the Times, that is a universal theme that should resonate with both religious and non-religious viewers: “We’re always being left behind, we’re always living in a world where there are these spaces where people we knew and loved used to be.”

Still, the religious — and, in my opinion, deeply biblical — influence of the narrative is still lurking throughout the show. In some moments, this influence is blatant, in other moments it’s merely winked at.