‘The Leftovers’ season 3: Damon Lindelof gives us hope for renewal
For those of you who were wondering, there is no firm decision just yet on a third season of “The Leftovers.” However, we come at least bearing this nugget of wonderful news: Damon Lindelof wants to do a third season of “The Leftovers.” Given that this show has existed through two seasons on an almost year-to-year model, that is the first positive sign that we have of it coming back.
Of course, there are still more variables. HBO has to figure out whether or not financially it can justify bringing back a low-rated show, especially if the numbers do not improve or they have so many other properties that they can rely on (which they can). We can say without question that this is our favorite TV series of 2015, but the opinions of individual critics only mean so much.
Lindelof has not been one to do a deluge of press, allowing much of his work to rest on its own merit. However, he seems to be changing his philosophy somewhat, if only for the purpose of trying to bring more attention to the show in hopes that he can continue to work on it.
Following the finale the great Alan Sepinwall (of HitFix) sat down with the showrunner, who mapped out the show’s current ratings trajectory in as frank terms as possible:
“I know that HBO is really happy with the creative of the show; they’ve been immensely supportive of what we wanted to do, and they’ve been highly collaborative and pleased with the results. That said, all of us have to take a pragmatic look at the numbers. HBO is not Netflix or Amazon. The numbers of the show are known, and the truth of the matter is that the ratings are down from season 1. If the show was always an underperformer, the little engine that could, and the trajectory was flat, or up or down a little bit, we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in now. The reality is, everybody felt that the show was ascending a bit, creatively and ratings-wise, towards the end of the season, and in the interim between the two seasons, we lost a lot of the audience coming into this year. That’s the situation that we’re in. The critical buzz, the critical response, and the fan response, has been much more positive this year than it was last year. And that matters; that’s important. But I think what would be great is if there were some kind of bump in the finale ratings. We actually saw an uptick in the ratings for episode 9, which I was surprised by, considering we were up against “The Walking Dead” mid-season finale and an incredible football game … It would be great if that trajectory continued. It would probably be bad if we lost viewership from episode 9 to the finale. Any case that can be made for a show that is picking up momentum would be huge … I’m talking to HBO. We’re going to sit down before the holidays and get a sense of where everybody’s head is at. I certainly want to make more episodes of “The Leftovers.” That’s kind of how things sit.”
At the moment, we would lean more towards a third-season renewal on the simple basis of quality: In this modern age of hyper-competition, you need something that will stand out, and something that will have people discussing you over hundreds of other properties. That may mean more of a slow build, or even numbers that are more difficult to measure since people are going back and watching the show more than a month after it ended. It just feels like if there was a time to end “The Leftovers,” it would have been after a polarizing first season, not a second that actually caused some to think that this was the masterpiece many were looking for from Lindelof following six seasons of “Lost.”