Twin Peaks, Episode 3.18: The Return, Part 18

Twin Peaks: The Return, Part 18
What is Your Name?

After twenty-five years, here we are again: At the end of “Twin Peaks.” After Laura's disappearance in 1990, Dale Cooper sits once again in the red room. He steps out and is greeted by Diane. The two drive to the coordinates given to Cooper by the Fireman, entering a portal together. The next morning, Dale awakens alone. He discovers a woman in Odessa, Texas who looks a lot like Laura Palmer but claims complete ignorance of the name. Carrie Paige, as she calls herself, only goes with him to escape troubles of her own. He drives her to Twin Peaks, takes her to the former Palmer home, but encounters only more strangers. Amidst screams and fading lights, we go into the night once more.

As the show frequently did, “Twin Peaks” left us asking the question: What the hell do we make of all this? From a narrative perspective, this is not a mystery that takes too much unraveling. As in many time travel stories before, the hero's attempt to go backwards and prevent a tragedy results in a tangent timeline in the present. Fuck with the space/time continuum, weird shit happens. Further more, this last hour is packed with secret signs and cryptic clues. The mysterious words the Fireman said to Cooper in “Part 1” of “The Return” crop up again here. As do discreet appearances from the White Horse of Death, the name Judy, apparent relations to the Chalfont/Tremond family, the number six, and probably a couple others I missed.

More than anything else, “Part 18” allows at least one piece of the “Twin Peaks” phenomenon to come full circle. It visits the show's long-lasting fascination with doubles on Laura Palmer herself and the town of Twin Peaks. Whether through timeline fuckery or alternate dimensions, “Carrie Page” is a mirror image of Laura: From the south and (apparently) a murderer, instead of a murder victim. Yet, even in the mirror, some things remain the same. She is still a woman in trouble, someone trying to outrun something. The final scene takes us to a place called Twin Peaks, that looks like Twin Peaks, but it is not the Twin Peaks we know. Doubles within doubles.

Before we go any further, let's stop to pause on something this show has always been great at: Engineering unforgettable sequences. Once they cross through the portal and settle into a hotel, Dale Cooper and Diane finally consummate their relationship. The love scene that follows is anything but erotic or sensual. It is, instead, overflowing with unsettling power. It seems, in this one moment, Lynch has recast his hero and heroines as protagonists in their own noir. Not all is as it seems, which might as well be the mantra of this whole show. And before it's all over, at least we get one more scene of Coop kicking some ass. Thanks to some cowboy hooligans in the Odessa dinner, he gets to put that FBI special training to good use one more time.

Ultimately, “Part 18” can't help but feel a little bit like another finale designed to frustrate fans. After coming all this time and distance, Dale Cooper still ends up failing. Laura Palmer isn't saved, so much as transported, and her fate still feels very ominous indeed. We end in the town of Twin Peaks but not, seemingly, one occupied by any of the beloved figures we know. In fact, none of the regular inhabitants of the town appear in this episode at all. There are certainly more than a few plot points left unresolved by these final minutes. It's nearly as egregious a cliffhanger as the season two finale.

Did David Lynch and Mark Frost screw all the loyal “Peaks” freaks over again, turning “The Return” into an elaborate eighteen hour prank that we waited two decades for? Only if you were ever looking at this like a regular piece of television. “Twin Peaks: The Return” never had a comfortable relationship with nostalgia. Any time it gave us moments of crowd-pleasing fan service, it made us wait for them. Only Lynch and Frost would have the audacity to leave the show's darling hero a drooling fool for most of its third season. Instead, by returning to the town of Twin Peaks and the image of Laura Palmer, but in a twisted form, “The Return” seems to be commenting on its own existence. Those who are expecting a happy return to a familiar place are doomed to scream in darkness. This place that looks comfortable and quint was always hiding horrible secrets inside of it all along.

It is, if nothing else, an ambitious and beguiling end to “Twin Peaks.” Assuming, of course, this is the end. There are plenty of questions left unanswered, even beyond what predicament Cooper, Diane, and “Carrie Page” found themselves in now. What is Judy's exact nature? Where does Laura Palmer fit into the White Lodge's plan? Why did Sarah Palmer have a shadowy horror show under her face? What the hell was going on with Audrey? And Jerry Horne's foot? All in all, David Lynch and Mark Frost created another mystifying piece of television-as-film, film-as-music, and music-as-art that is simply unlike anything else to exist on TV. Its last episode is as bold a statement as anything broadcast from a television box. [9/10]

David Lynch, one must remember, is always unpredictable. In the lead-up to “Twin Peaks: The Return,” the director said that he never intends to make another feature film. Yet, as definitive a statement as this is, it's not like any of us ever expected “Twin Peaks” to come back from the grave twenty-five years later. Lynch, ever the eccentric artist, is far from done. In fact, he's recently been creating a lot of weird stuff, posting new and old shorts to his Youtube channel, along with his daily weather reports. It remains to be seen what form Lynch's next project will take, whether it'll be a movie or some other unexpected thing. (Assuming you can even agree on what a movie is these days.) It might even be more “Twin Peaks,” as there's been the occasional rumble of a fourth season. If this is to happen, it hopefully won't take another two decades to arrive... America's most reliably eccentric cinematic artist will, clearly, continue to baffle and beguile with new artwork of some sort or another for at least a little while longer.

Thank you for reading. I'm sorry this took three months.