What Does The New 'Leftovers' Trailer Even Mean?

Good news for fans of The Leftovers : the Season 2 teaser trailer for the second season (below) has been released and it raises more questions than it answers. Good, because that is just how I like my trailers. The show is a dark drama about a world much like our own, but where 2 percent of the population just up and disappeared. Think: the rapture but without religious explanation. The leftovers, therefore, are the people who have been left behind. Every town and every family on earth was effected by the event, but the trailer for Season 2 shows a new reality that the characters (and audiences!) must contend with. In the wake of HBO releasing the trailer on June 12, just a few months before the second season is set to air, people are speculating about what in the world that Leftovers trailer means.

Opening on a line of cars gridlocked on a desert highway, all kinds of characters are on their way to somewhere. Where? We don’t know. Sitting in lawn chairs and playing games on the side of the street while they wait, they seem to have been stuck there a while. And then — here’s the clincher — the camera zooms out and focuses on a road sign for Jarden, TX. “Population: 9261,” it says. “Departures: 0.”

Umm… WHAT? There is a place where there were no departures? Why weren’t there any people who were "saved"? What is different about that town? What is different about those people? Why are people flocking there? WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

I’m guessing there is something very different about Jarden that our friends are dying to figure out, and I’m hoping (fingers crossed!) that what they find there will reveal something about why the departed left and where the hell they all went. Finally? Maybe? The show, starring Justin Theroux and created by Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta, returns to HBO in the fall and OHMYGODICANNOTWAIT.

Images: Paul Schiraldi, Screengrab/HBO (2)