Lost influenced The Leftovers

Damon Lindelof made both and has talked at length about the second as his answer to the criticism of the first. Lost trained an audience to expect that a mystery would be explained and then could not deliver; The Leftovers opens by telling you the central event will never be explained, and makes that refusal the subject. The machinery carries over intact, an ensemble revealed through single-character episodes and a community organised around an inexplicable event, with the promise removed on purpose.