The pickup follows a strong critical response to the drama's second season, which ended Dec. 6. HBO cast the decision to end the show after one more season as the creative choice of series creators Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta.

The Leftovers starts three years after a global event called the "Sudden Departure", the inexplicable, simultaneous disappearance of 140 million people, 2% of the world's population, on October 14, 2011.

He does indeed die, and he goes to his afterlife. Not hell, not purgatory, not heaven, just The Afterlife.