"The Leftovers" showrunner Damon Lindelof said there are only a couple of questions he will not answer after the series finale of his HBO drama, and one is how literally we should take Nora Durst's story.

Season 3 was all about belief, and it ended on a high note for Nora (Carrie Coon) and Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux), who reconnected decades later when Kevin tracked Nora down "on vacation in Australia," a vacay he had taken every year in an effort to find her.

The time jump confused the hell out of fans for much of the finale, and when Kevin showed up and pretended to barely know Nora, it looked like a "Back to the Future II" alternate timeline. But no. Kevin was pretending, to ease his way back into Nora's life.

But was Nora pretending, too, when she told him the story of what happened to her, after she went into the machine? We saw her do her Mad Libs obituary with brother Matt, then entered the machine that was meant to take her to the place where her family Departed. We stopped watching her as the liquid started to cover her mouth.

What happened after that is the mystery we will have to let be.

Did she back out and decide not to go through with it, hiding the rest of her days in Australia, even away from her brother Matt? Or did she succeed in finding her children, as she told Kevin, seeing an alternate world where the 98 percent of the Departed were living? She said she saw that her children were happy, and she herself didn't belong in that world, so she tracked down the inventor of the machine to send her back. But we as viewers never followed her, as we followed Kevin when he went into international assassin mode. So ... what to believe?

There are major questions on either side of the story, whether she's lying or telling the truth. Damon Lindelof refuses to say, other than to tell The Hollywood Reporter, "Well, I want to believe her. Let me just put it to you that way. I want to believe her. That's the most honest answer I can give you."

He added, "I definitely feel like there are going to be people out there who watch the show who don't believe her story, and then for a lot of people, it won't even occur to them to disbelieve it."

Kevin Garvey believed it, to Nora's surprise, saying, "Why wouldn't I believe you? You're here." Nora ends the series by saying "I'm here." Read more from Lindelof on that line and more, but here are some takeaways from fans, on the big Nora question:

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