HBO’s ‘The Leftovers’ brought fear and wonder to a selective end-times event

This week in Autopilot, a Globe series on great first television episodes:

“The Leftovers”

Episode: “Pilot”

Pilot air date: June 29, 2014, HBO

Stream it on: HBO Max

The best stories about supernatural occurrences are less concerned with the actual event than the human response. Belmont’s Tom Perrotta understood this when he wrote “The Leftovers,” his 2011 novel that follows the lives of residents in Mapleton, a small New York town, after 2 percent of the world’s population disappears in a Rapture-like event. And Damon Lindelof understood it when he and Perrotta adapted the novel into a TV series that ran on HBO for three seasons, from 2014 to 2017.

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The pilot episode shows only a snippet of the mass vanishing, but that’s enough to provide a chill. We don’t see any bodies ascending or vaporizing, just the immediate aftermath: a mother, hysterically wondering how her infant son disappeared from her backseat; a suddenly driverless car, causing a violent traffic accident. From there we jump forward three years, as the town’s denizens, including police chief Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux), struggle with feelings of guilt, grief, trauma, rage, fear, and wonder at what their once-predictable world has become.

Why did they get taken, and not us? What does this all portend? Such questions give rise to end-times cults, chiefly the Guilty Remnant, a nihilistic bunch that wears white jump suits, smokes cigarettes as a statement (not for the smooth taste), and claim Kevin’s wife, Laurie (Amy Brenneman), as a member; and The Divine, led by the charismatic Holy Wayne (Paterson Joseph), whose followers claim he can “unburden“ anyone with a simple hug. Meanwhile, packs of wild dogs run the streets, and teens, including Kevin’s daughter, Jill (a breakout role for current star Margaret Qualley), indulge in party games that might make the “Euphoria” kids blush.

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“The Leftovers” was a slow-burning study of mass panic and hysteria, and the pilot set the table appropriately. Lindelof, coming off the cultural phenomenon of “Lost,” had no trouble telling an open-ended story that preferred raising questions to providing answers. How stacked was the cast? We’re at the end of the fourth paragraph here and just now mentioning the great Carrie Coon, who plays the grieving widow Nora Durst (admittedly a minor player in the pilot).

“The Leftovers” dared to set its eschatological problems in the realm of the everyday, where we all live. The pilot marked a gripping beginning to a series about what the end might mean.

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