The Leftovers: parents' guide
Best for ages 17 and up. Rated TV-MA.
A haunting adult drama about grief, best for mature older teens and adults. Three years after 2 percent of the world's people vanish without explanation, a small-town police chief and his family try to cope as cults spring up around them. The pilot alone has a teen party with sexual dares and drugs, a bloody riot, dogs shot dead and about 30 f-words. Graphic sex, a rape in season 2, the deaths of children, an on-screen suicide, self-harm and repeated suicide attempts follow over three seasons. The sadness is the point and it is heavy, so 17 fits.
What's in it
Violence
StrongBloody riots, dogs shot dead, a cult member stoned to death and a woman slitting her own throat on screen. In season 2 a cult leader rapes a young man her followers have tied up in a van. Season 3 adds drownings, including the hero's.
Language
StrongConstant and harsh. Plugged In counted about 30 f-words, 15 s-words and four c-words in the pilot, and 13 f-words plus a racial slur in one season 3 episode.
Sex and nudity
StrongGraphic simulated sex and masturbation, with partial nudity such as bare buttocks. The pilot's teen party includes oral sex and a choking game during masturbation. In season 1 a cult leader has sex with teenage girls and gets one pregnant.
Drinking, drugs and smoking
StrongTeens smoke marijuana and someone snorts cocaine off a girl's stomach at a party. Cult members chain-smoke as a ritual, the hero drinks and drives, and adults drink throughout.
Scary or intense scenes
StrongBleak from the first scene, when a baby vanishes from a car seat. A mother mourns her vanished children, another learns hers died, a former cult member kills herself and her family, and the hero dies by poison and tries self-suffocation.
Sensitive topics
- Suicide
- Self-harm
- Sexual assault
- Animal death
- Death of a child
Worth talking about
Each character handles an unexplainable loss differently: joining a cult, denying it, searching for meaning. Talk about healthy and unhealthy ways people cope with grief that has no answer.
On our lists
Similar picks around 17+
Checked October 13th, 2026 against Common Sense Media, Plugged In, Wikipedia. The age is our judgment, not an official rating, and every family draws its lines differently: read the notes, not just the number. Spotted something we missed? Tell us. How we rate.