‘The Leftovers’: Translation of Season 3 Episode 5 Opening

(HBO)

This season, The Leftovers has been pretty creative with its opening title sequences. It shows the same sequence, but with different music every episode. Today, however, was different. Instead of music, we heard someone speaking in French.

A Redditor, ImpMercy, provided the following translation, which was also confirmed by Entertainment Weekly’s recap. (Entertainment Weekly’s translation is slightly different, but the meaning is overall the same.)

Here’s the translation of what you heard at the beginning:


I’m the only hope

The last defense of a species about to go extinct

The “warlocks” warned us

These clairvoyant sages saw the truth

They said the creatures would come 7 years after the first ones were taken

7 years after the departure

We were blind of the gods

We are now on the edge of the ravine

On the edge of destruction

When this monster is born we are done for

Because this monster will be born to end us

7 heads and 7 flaming mouths

We have one last hope, the egg

From the warlock maps I found it

Hidden in a nest, in a volcano in the sea

Thank god for the technology

The nuclear weapon

To break the fragile shell and melt the demons inside

God, may this missile fly straight and find the nest in the volcano

And hopefully this egg wouldn’t have hatched yet, and let it destroy it before it destroys the world.


This means that the voiceover you heard at the beginning was likely a prayer by the French man who later set off the nuke. (You could also hear the submarine in the background during the prayer.) The nuclear missile hit an unpopulated island in the South Pacific. He apparently believed mankind was going extinct and creatures were coming on the seven-year anniversary of the departure. Later it sounds more like it’s actually one monster with seven heads who is going to be born from an egg on an island. He set off the nuke in hopes that it would hit the egg and destroy it before the monster could be born.

Is there any “truth” in the show’s universe to this man’s belief? We really have no way of knowing, unless more comes out about him. (But he believed he was the only hope and the last defense.) We may never know if he saved mankind or not.

Interestingly, Revelation in the Bible also speaks of a seven-headed beast born from the sea. It’s in Revelation 13:1. “The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.”

Do you think the man saved mankind on the show or was he just crazy? Let us know in the comments below.