The Leftovers ended its three-season run June 4, with co-creator Damon Lindelof admitting that he would have expanded the series to four seasons had HBO given him an ultimatum.
Speaking on Vox’s podcast I Think You’re Interesting, Lindelof further revealed that he originally intended the series to run four seasons before settling on three:
“I think that The Leftovers, its ideal length is 40 episodes.’ Forty is a nice biblical number.”
Lindelof admits that while The Leftovers got to end on its ‘own terms’, HBO would have been more aggressive towards a fourth season had the show been more successful:
“Had the show been more successful, I’m not entirely sure HBO would have let us end it,” he says. “There’s not really any precedent for a show that’s super successful ending after three seasons.”
As for what happened in the episodes we never got to see, Lindelof says one episode would’ve centered more on the Murphy family:
There were scheduling issues with Regina [King], who played Murphy matriarch Erika], because she was doing American Crime and also directing a number of episodes, but I think that had we asked her … we would have figured out a way to do an episode in Texas that was very Murphy-centric one more time. In a 10-episode final season of The Leftovers, that probably would have been episode four.”
Lindelof adds that another episode would’ve focused Pillar Man’s backstory:
In a 10-episode final season of The Leftovers, there would have been the X-factor episode, where we could have just gone down [some different path]. I always wanted to do that. It was like, “Let’s just do Pillar Man.” As opposed to him falling off that thing at the beginning of episode two, what if that’s the ending of episode two, and the whole episode is told from the point of view of this guy up there? Who is he? What is he doing up there? Let’s humanize this guy, who’s basically just a piece of background.”
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