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I don't know about you, but The Leftovers on HBO feels like a show from an entirely different universe now. The show, which began airing on HBO in 2014 and ran until 2017, took place in a world where 2% of the global population - around 140 million people - vanished overnight. Hence, the remaining people are "the leftovers" that the show is named for. 

While The Leftovers was a critically acclaimed series, it failed to incubate the rabid fanbase that HBO shows like Game of Thrones, True Detective, Sex and the City, The Sopranos, and later, The White Lotus, built. The TV show was co-created by Damon Lindelof, who is currently working on HBO's Lanterns series. So there was no shortage of talent both behind and in front of the camera. Series star Christopher Eccleston, also known as the Ninth Doctor on Doctor Who, shed light on the reason why he believes The Leftovers floundered at HBO during an appearance at Rose City Comic Con 2025. 

 “Probably it's up there in my top two, I think, The Leftovers. [Series creator and showrunner] Damon Lindelof, who, interestingly was castigated and was hated so much for the finale of Lost and then with the finale of Leftovers, is now regarded as the greatest. He had polar experiences with finishing off a series. It was a lot of, actually, theater actors, everybody on that. Nearly everybody on that, the Americans and a couple of Brits, had all come through theater, and of course, it was an ensemble piece. I mean, Justin [Theroux] and Carrie [Coon] led it, but the rest of the time, everybody else either was in the background or would step forward, and we all got along really, really brilliantly. That was mostly to do with Damon Lindelof's approach and the quality of his writing," Eccleston began. 

"And like with Penny Dreadful, which I thought was amazing, I was really sad that we only got the three series, because we never got the viewers. We got amazing reviews, but for some reason, the viewers never came in the numbers that we wanted. And I do think with The Leftovers that if we'd have released that post-COVID, it would have gone viral because it kind of pre-empted that whole, the oddness of what happened to the world," said Eccleston. 

An aspect about The Leftovers that feels salient to a world ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic is this haunting sense of absence that hangs over the characters in the show, stemming from the literal absence of 140 million people in the world. It's an atmosphere that would feel relatable to city dwellers who remember the shock of seeing deserted urban streets during lockdown in 2020. Who knows, maybe The Leftovers will finally cultivate the audience it never had when it was airing on HBO ten years ago? 

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