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The Leftovers (2014) second season finale nicely bookended its thematic opener. Ten episodes prior, the season opened with a 10-minute sequence in which a native woman survives an earthquake to find an avalanche has crushed her entire village. Everyone she knew perished in the devastation, and her circle is lost. She soon suffers her own peril and perishes on some rocks after being bitten by a rattlesnake, but not before giving birth to a baby. The place of her death is the same stone face surrounding a body of water outside Jarden, Texas, where the season takes place.

After the final earthquake Kevin (Justin Theroux) feels in “I Live Here Now,” he walks into his Jarden home to find his familiar circle more in tact than ever. Waiting in his living room are his daughter Jill (Margaret Qualley), ex-wife Lori (Amy Brenneman), girlfriend Nora (Carrie Coon), adopted baby daughter, son Tom (Chris Zylka), Nora’s brother Matt (Christopher Eccleston), and Matt’s wife Mary (Janel Moloney, who had just awoken from a two-season long vegetative state, seemingly for good.) Unlike the native woman, Kevin’s earthquake symbolizes that life can go on, for him and his family, more complete than ever.

Meanwhile, surrounding this beacon of positivity, the Jarden of Eden has transformed into its own form of Sodom and Gomorrah. The peaceful town was spared on October 14th, the day of the Sudden Departure, but that protection proved impermanent as Meg (Liv Tyler) and the Guilty Remnant invaded with an intensely orchestrated demonstration that went beyond anyone’s expectations. Before the invasion, Meg had told Tom “family is everything.” The series seems to want us to hang on that message as we’re left with the reunited and sloppy Garvey/Durst/Jamison family bundled under one messy roof, and the Guilty Remnant family just outside the door, relishing the spoils of their anarchy.

Kevin found himself in purgatory for a second time in the finale through an ultra-adventurous move on the showrunners’ part. Killing and un-killing a primary character twice in three episodes is as unorthodox as storytelling gets, but it wasn’t just for thrills. Following up on his visit to the other side from the “International Assassin” episode, Kevin this time selects his Mapleton police uniform from the closet of would-be personas, identifying with the life he led before October 14th and not one of vigilantism and freedom. He then heads to a bar where he’s asked to sing a song in exchange for his life—a plea he deems to be phony, but with little other options, does anyway. The woman on stage before him sings “Angel of the Morning.” For Kevin, it’s Simon and Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound.” Just a few weeks ago, The Leftovers graced us with S&G’s “I am a Rock” in the episode where Nora deserted Kevin for his crazed visions of Patty (Ann Dowd). This season has heavily employed music to amplify its thematic currents, and the orbit of Simon and Garfunkel moving Kevin from a rock to homeward bound is telling. Much of the season’s exploration of Kevin’s psyche dealt with his priorities; whether or not he truly loves his family and life. The season ends on a positive note—he does, and he’s rewarded with returning to them.

The ending of the episode, with Jarden in flames, is broadly reflective of the way season one ended with much of Mapleton undergoing the same cleansing. In that moment, the illusion of Miracle was broken. Seeing Miracle in devastation seemed fully appropriate—the town was too passionate about its own salvation to remain in tact in The Leftovers universe, but the manner of its downfall was unexpected. Meg drove a Trojan horse of sorts onto its bridge, but the GR members that popped out from within weren’t the ones laying siege. Miracle was flanked by the rabble waiting outside its walls all season long, and the bridge inside the sanctity of the park suddenly looked the way Kevin saw it in “International Assassin” two episodes ago: littered with barrel fires, ransacked buildings, and mayhem.

The Leftovers’ second season material proved a playground for talented actors and directors to showcase their skills. The direction of “I Live Here Now,” from the silent screams of Regina King on the bridge with Evie (Jasmin Savoy Brown) to a baby almost getting trampled by a mob, to the soft piano rendition of the Pixies song “Where Is My Mind?” which has worked its way into a number of the season’s episodes, everything came together harmoniously. The season finale contains more big moments than some shows’ full season arcs, and despite the devastation and carnage surrounding the events, it ends on a positive note without answering every lingering question.

Should The Leftovers get a third season, the material lends itself to much deeper exploration. If HBO decides to go October 14th on the series and make it the victim of its own Sudden Departure, at least it can feel confident that it went out strong.