Every part as much as and together with Nora’s response to Kevin’s feigned ignorance and her dealings with the nun reveal a through-line of not simply honesty, however righteous anger within the face of untruth and false consolation. From a purely psychological perspective it is smart to take Nora at face worth.
It’s not inconceivable to think about, in fact, that Nora entered the machine, drowned because the water enveloped her, and earlier than she was rescued by both the scientists or Matt, went to an identical place to that which Kevin visited throughout his personal wanderings in demise’s hinterlands. And whether or not “actual” or imagined, Nora’s experiences would nearly definitely have appeared “true” to her.
We are able to, nevertheless, low cost any notion that the occasions of the ultimate episode occurred anyplace aside from “the actual world.” Damon Lindelof himself confirmed as a lot in an interview with Esquire. “For somebody who wrote a present the place there was a misdiagnosis of ‘they had been lifeless the entire time’ attributed to the top of it, I must be a masochist to strive to do this right here in The Leftovers,” he defined. “What I’d say that’s important to us is that everyone understands that this finale is going down in actual house… in the identical actuality that every one different episodes of The Leftovers happen, in all probability excluding the ‘Worldwide Assassins’ episodes [which chronicle Kevin’s after-death dalliances], which very clearly aren’t going down on this actuality.”
Assuming Nora’s Story Isn’t True
There’s an undeniably stronger case to be made that Nora’s story isn’t true, although how a lot you agree with that assertion in all probability will depend on the way you view the world; whether or not your lens is scientific or non secular, or some level between the 2.
Considering clinically and critically, if science had reached the stage the place individuals from our world may very well be despatched to the reverse departure world and again with relative ease then certainly there would have been a thriving inter-world journey trade in full swing by the point Kevin tracked Nora down, and he or she would have been its poster woman. Although that Nora was a statistical aberration – the one departure-naut to have survived the method – and that she stored her survival and subsequent return a secret from everybody, together with the scientists – or charlatans – behind the machine, her story is nonetheless full of such a glut of questionable, implausible and fantastical particulars as to make it nearly unswallowable.
Whereas the Nora we all know despises liars, cheats and seekers of straightforward solutions, the lack of her youngsters was a wound that refused to heal, and over time her hope and defences might have lowered to the purpose the place embracing a comforting untruth appeared preferable to embracing oblivion (which she’d tried to do many instances in any case). Her response to the nun, then, angrily mocking her for expressing a willingness to embrace a narrative simply because it was “nicer,” may very well be seen as a projection of Nora’s personal indignant emotions for having primarily performed the identical.
