To clarify: Nora tells Kevin that is what happened, but there is plenty of unreliable narration in the series.
What I stated is something that actually took place on screen, not some reddit fan speculation.
The person who asked the question never even completed watching the show. You can speculate all you want about your beliefs that everything’s unreal and everyone’s lying. The producers laid it out in the show. Their choice. That is the most reasonable explanation. Clarification rejected.
To be fair, the only thing that took place on the screen was a conversation. This is one of the reasons opinions are so divided about what actually happened. Personally, I think it is more believable that she invented the story to try to find peace. Brilliant storytelling, in my opinion.
I’ll be a bit more nuanced here, sorry for the earlier response.
It’s true that we aren’t actually shown anything, just told. Nora’s explanation is long and detailed, and it would be questionable (to me) that she’d have it at the ready on the spot after all of that time had passed. On the other hand, Nora herself doubts that her story will be believed.
If Nora backed out at the last minute, it leaves the question of her mental state at the time, and that she’d have to fake her own death/disappearance, which Mark-Linn Baker was unable to do. The people running the “going through” machine would be witness to her backing out, but they’re running an illegal operation, so likely can’t be gotten hold of easily. The other witness is dead. Laurie has talked to Nora, likely wouldn’t believe the story Nora told, but isn’t going to tell Nora her delusions are wrong either. So that doesn’t solve anything.
Likewise, we don’t know how “real” Kevin’s trips to the “underworld” are. Other people can’t see them. He can “report back the results”, but it could all be in his head anyway. The flood that was predicted never happened, but that only took place after Kevin came back from the dead.
We just don’t know.
John’s shooting of Kevin not killing him was a real life event, but I suppose things like that happen sometimes.
On top of it, the show’s basis is a supernatural event, so given that, sure it’s possible that someone could build a machine to “go through.” We’re never shown.
Kevin believes Nora’s story, or says he does. Given that her birds return and the goat seems content, that seems to signal that some sort of peace has been obtained. Why, we don’t know.
Anyway, the explanation proffered is that there’s a parallel world for the 2%. Perhaps Nora’s story about it (Book Of Nora) would prove popular with others.
My reasoning:
For some reason these spoiler tags aren’t working so read at your own risk.
I like Nora’s story, and I like your explanation of it here, and the first time I heard Nora tell it I believed it too. I could picture it. But my wife and two daughters all assumed she made the story up, and the more I thought about it, the more I agreed with them.
The 2% explanation fits well narratively. It offers a clean explanation as to what happened to the departed and is a nicer explanation than the “they just disappeared“ version. There’s comfort in it. Like the concept of heaven, it’s nicer to think our loved ones live on somewhere after death, even though there’s no actual evidence of it. Just wishful thinking.
Why would Nora lie? She never lies? I’ve heard that many times. Nora, or Sara as she identifies herself to the nun. The nun who talks of the better story. There is so much symbolism in this series that it’s so hard to miss. Matt confronting God on the ferry. Mary rising from the “dead” more than once. Laurie going scuba diving after Nora says it would be great way to die. Kevin’s several trips to the “afterlife.” It’s all quite fascinating.
Back to Nora. I wanted to believe her story, but there’s just no way it’s plausible. What makes more sense? That she found a means to get to America with only 2% of the population left, found her family, did not make contact with them, somehow located the guy that built the machine, persuaded him to build another which they were able to procure the parts for, teleport back to this world, go all the way back to Australia to live as a hermit under a false name, and never contact anyone to let them know the truth? Or that she never actually left Australia, which Laurie knew but was sworn to secrecy, and was flummoxed when Kevin found her and presented her with some total bullshit story until she has to confront the cognitive dissonance in her brain?
Kevin comes clean and tells her he’s been searching for her for years. Now that he’s found her, he doesn’t want to lose her again and he’ll tell her anything she wants to hear. And her story provides closure for her which she’s been desperately needing since losing her family. Theoretically both versions work, but the “she was hiding out in Australia” version seems more plausible to me.
I only kind of watched the beginning, end, and parts of the middle of the series (probably not the best way to watch something like that), but I don’t believe they ever definitively explain HOW the 2% disappeared. Nora’s story, although plausible, is meant to be unreliable and ambiguous. So we really don’t know if the missing 2% were raptured while the remaining 98% were left behind, the 2% were “Thanos snapped” away (Carrie Coon is in both series after all), or scientists (or whoever or whatever) accidently (or purposely) created a parallel universe that pulled 2% of people into one and 98% into the other.
…it really isn’t that simple.
The director of the episode Mimi Leder said this:
https://collider.com/the-leftovers-ending-explained-mimi-leder/
And the showrunner Damon Lindoff said this:
The show is about faith and belief and the ending isn’t supposed to have a definitive, objective answer. I think she went through. But I only think that because I believe Nora. The show (both in this episode and Nora’s entire arc) gives us plenty of reason to doubt her. And if we don’t believer her (like Mimi Leder) that isn’t objectively wrong.
It’s a matter of faith. And it’s a remarkable ending because in many ways it gives redemption to Lindelof for his failings with the Lost finale, whilst being even less definitive than his former show.
I really think it’s best to think of the show as just about grief and forget the whole mystery of the missing two percent. Nora, for example, lost her husband and children in the event, but that could have occurred in a traffic accident or plane crash. Kevin’s wife lost a fetus, as I remember literally as she was in the middle of an ultrasound but she could instead have found out that it died.
Honestly, when I was watching the final ep, my thoughts for most of it was that Nora had already died and this was a different place. I still think that’s a plausible explanation.
After the scenes about going through, the only regulars we see are Nora, Kevin, and Laurie. Kevin acts for a long time with Nora that their history is different, only changing his story at the end. He gives updates on what happened to the other characters, but as with Nora, this is not something we actually see. So Kevin lies for most of the episode, how do we know that’s any more true? Also, it’s the cleanshaven Kevin here, and we saw the cleanshaven Kevin get killed by the bearded Kevin in the prior episode. And it had been strongly implied at the end of S3 E6 that Laurie had killed herself. So I think there’s plenty of room for that as a possible explanation. Nora died in the going through procedure, her closure with the 2% was part of the death experience.
I like the fact that Nora’s story, true or not, is in the series. It’s the best possible explanation for story purposes. If the 2% all simply disappeared and went nowhere or died immediately, that’s too depressing. They definitively went into heaven, raises more questions than answers. The lesson of that story is to live in the now, connect to what you have. All of these people that wanted to go through, what they went to wasn’t better and likely was worse, and I think it was great to put it in terms of what it would be like for the 2%, that in a world like that they lost everything, a world of orphans. It kind of puts it into perspective, that the 98% world was the luckier of the two. It’s why I choose to believe it. The story was intentionally told ambiguously, but if you don’t believe Nora’s story, then something still happened to the 2% anyway. Plus, I don’t know that it’s any more believable that Nora decides to fake her own death if she aborts the attempt to go through. Why not go back and be with your brother if you decide to stick around?
The point was to get to the “I’m here” line, which was a great ending for the characters. Nora needed to accept and live in the present, whatever that was.
Well, then I am glad I did not try to get past the first couple episodes, as I would have been pissed.
Actually, to me that is not redemption at all, it is more of the same “we are gonna reward fans of the show with no clear ending” bullshit we had on Lost.
Not to mention, Earth 2 would be a catastrophe with only 2%. The power grid would fail, food production pipeline fail, the 2% would be reduced to a dystopia ala Walking Dead.
The producers were pretty clear up front that this was not a show about solving a mystery.
Hell, the theme song even said “let the mystery be”.
Also, every dark street has a light at the end.
They’d have to consolidate. They can’t maintain that much infrastructure, true. But they only need to maintain a portion of it, and manufacturing can take a backseat for years due to all of the excess goods. Even with 2%, you’ll still have skilled people in every trade. But they’ll be scattered, so an effort would need to be made to gather together.
It was stated very early on by Lindelof and others that they wouldn’t solve the mystery. We all knew that from the jump.
During the actual TV show? Or only in “behind the scenes” interviews?
Damon Lindelof produced this show after having done Lost and I think he learned his lesson there, that solving the mystery will probably not satisfy everyone, so best not to even try.
In lot of the press for the show. But the show definitely doesn’t show any desire to explore the mystery of the disappearance.
Then, now, maybe, just maybe- don’t run a show with a huge fucking mystery in it?
At no point was this show about the mystery. An explanation would not have been a reward. This wasn’t Lost, nobody watching the last episode did it to find out what happened to the 2%. The very first scene of the show was all the earths greatest scientist going in front of congress and saying “we don’t know wtf happened and we never will”.
Ok… for this show… 
