The Leftovers Season 2 Starts With A Ratings Whimper

Not sure if you want to stick around to see what happens with a new locale and slightly more optimistic overall tone in Season 2 of The Leftovers? Looks like you’re not alone.

Deadline reports that less than half of the audience who watched the series premiere of The Leftovers last summer decided to turn out on Sunday for the beginning of its second go-round. Only 713,000 total viewers watched this episode live or same day, compared to 1.8 million when the show kicked off last summer.

The culprits could be the momentum the series lost during its hiatus in 2014, as well as the second part of that first season not airing after Game of Thrones. It’s definitely true that in TV, sometimes you’re only as good as your lead-in.

Still, with creator Damon Lindelof putting on a full court press of publicity as of late to assure people that things would be different on The Leftovers, it doesn’t appear many people are putting it on their must-see list for Sunday nights. It’s certainly not helping matters that the show is starting up now in the fall, when Sunday Night Football is king (as well as a certain zombie show on AMC, though that airs an hour earlier than The Leftovers).

The obvious question now is how long HBO is willing to stick with it. Lindelof might be able to stick the landing on this series with some supernatural overtones better than he did on Lost, but there’s now a real doubt whether anyone will still be around to see him even attempt it.