“Hello, Agent Cooper”, Laura Palmer says to the idiosyncratic protagonist of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s surreal murder mystery drama Twin Peaks. “I’ll see you again in twenty-five years”, her voice distorted to match the accents of her fellow residents in the otherworldly Black Lodge. Excluding the 1992 prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, this is the last time audiences encounter the two beloved characters and, as they were led to believe, the conclusion of their stories. Fast forward the aforementioned time gap and Lynch and Frost open their 2017 limited series continuation with a snippet from this scene, followed by a gleaming translucent photo of Laura Palmer that fades out to reveal the douglas firs synonymous to the titular town, and Angelo Badalamenti’s reposeful theme begins to play over the bucolic and hypnotic visuals of the updated opening credits: replacing the tranquil and still shots of the original with more active sequences, from aerial shots craning over the town waterfall to spiral camera movements capturing the red curtains and the tessellated black and white floor of the Black Lodge.
If this alone is enough to evoke nostalgia for the original series, then Lynch and Frost are quick to strip viewers of these warm emotions. Opting for a more languid pace in the opening episodes, they are in no rush to flood scenes with trivial reunions, or to offer the supposedly mandatory fan service that so many similar continuation projects feel the need to adhere to. A number of scenes in these episodes are sparse with dialogue and have a more observational approach to the bizarre sequences that unfold. One of the first characters we are reintroduced to is the town therapist Dr. Jacoby (a major player in the mystery of Laura’s death in the show’s first season who eventually gets sidelined in the middle of season two), shown at first in a vague, yet voyeuristic, long shot with the camera placed in the bushes outside of his new trailer residence. Instead of continuing on immediately with some closer shots and following Jacoby’s actions attentively as he goes about his ‘off-grid’ activities, the first few episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return devote the bulk of their focus to the horrific murder of school teacher Ruth Davenport, the doomed couple Sam and Tracey who make the classic horror film mistake of having intercourse while in a room with a giant glass box recording extraterrestrial activity, and the sinister schemes of the demonic parasite Bob, currently possessing an evil variant of Agent Cooper (one of the many roles that Kyle MacLachlan plays throughout the eighteen episodes). These narratives aren’t exactly out of place for Twin Peaks arcs–let alone one of David Lynch’s dreamlike pieces, even if it is made with another person–but as the title sequence quite clearly indicates, this continuation is diverging from the path that the show was on before. There may be recurring characters, settings, themes, and symbolisms, but this is an advancement from the darkly quirky melodrama that ABC aired from 1990 to 1991, as both Lynch and Frost have metamorphosed as artists since they created the pilot.
In keeping with the slower pace, the show’s writing is quite restrained. It isn’t until a couple of episodes later, after some more dialogue-free scenes, that Jacoby’s intentions of spray-painting shovels golden are finally revealed as we are eventually reacquainted with Nadine Hurley, as she watches one of Jacoby’s conspiracy theory web videos, which he intercuts with an advert for them to help “[d]ig yourself out of the shit” inflicted by large government oppression. There is no long-awaited reunion between Sheriff Harry Truman and Special Agent Dale Cooper: Harry isn’t even in this season and is instead replaced by his brother Frank, a calm and somewhat sage-like head of the Twin Peaks’ Police Department who is quietly coming to terms with the town’s relationship with the occult (played fantastically by acting veteran Robert Forster). As for Agent Cooper, the enchantingly peculiar black coffee and cherry pie obsessed detective that has captivated fans from the moment he drives into Twin Peaks, spends the vast majority of The Return in a childlike state, as he escapes the Black Lodge plain and is rebirthed into the real world through an electrical wall socket, subsequently replacing the body of a man named Douglas Jones and navigating this man’s life with the mental state and wonder of an infant during their formative years, but still retaining certain elements of Cooper’s astute intuition. Even Badalamenti’s leitmotifs are withheld in the beginning, and it isn’t until a heartbreaking moment in the fourth episode when Bobby Briggs sees a photo of his late girlfriend Laura Palmer and bursts into tears that we hear Laura’s designated theme again, elevating the devastation.
While the Twin Peaks saga is shrouded in subjective, vague, and at times even duplicitous or deceptive allegories, one of its more immediate core themes is “the evil that men do”, as Agent Cooper’s colleague Albert puts it when trying to come to terms with the idea of Bob, and The Return doesn’t stray from this. Bob is still running rampant in a longhaired Agent Cooper disguise. “You’re still here”, this malicious Cooper variant says to himself at one stage while looking in a mirror, with a stark flashback to the night of his possession. “Good”. Unfortunately, Bob’s actor Frank Silva passed away a few years after the original series was made and only makes a few brief appearances through edited footage, but this does little to hamper the chilling effectiveness of his limited presence. The first two seasons focus on this theme largely through Laura Palmer’s sexual abuse and mistreatment at the hands of a multitude of men, and her subsequent rape and murder by her father, Leland, whose body was being utilised as a vessel for Bob at the time. This season continues to explore these ideas through Bob as he goes on his path of mischief and chaos as the beloved FBI agent, leaving behind a bloody trail of corpses, destruction and trauma. His manipulation entraps the vast majority of people that he encounters. Laura Dern’s Diane,the mysterious woman who Cooper leaves a series of tape recordings for throughout his stay in Twin Peaks, is revealed to be another one of Bob’s rape victims and spends her time on the hunt for him with her ex-colleagues at the FBI in perpetual fear, inevitably contacting Agent Cooper/Bob and offering him information. The women in all three seasons and the prequel film suffer greatly from misogynistic violence and the controlling natures of some of the male residents of the town. A clever addition to this season however is the effect that Bob’s rampage has on some of his male counterparts. Richard Horne, Audrey’s son, is introduced to the show as an antagonist who eventually crosses paths with Bob. In a moment where it seems as if the two may form a depraved alliance, Richard is instead used by Bob to uncover an electrical mine trap and disposed of quickly. These events do not just occur in a vacuum, as the lingering aftermath of Bob’s actions are also shown. Scenes with Sarah Palmer, who lost both her daughter and husband to the events of the original series, focus on her alcoholism as she sits alone in her house drinking bottles of vodka. Her situation may be adorned with the guise of the supernatural, but that in no way alters her losses and devastation. Bob may primarily exist on an allegorical level, but the evil that he has these men do certainly has consequences for the characters and the diegesis. As Agent Cooper says to Harry in their moment of reconciliation with Laura’s horrendous ordeal, “is it easier to believe a man would rape and murder his own daughter? Any more comforting?”.
A project like this is obviously rather difficult to pull off, from practical restrictions like cast members refusing to come back or no longer being able to return, to the significant gap between the show’s original finale and the continuation’s first episode. Season two ends on an abrupt cliffhanger after getting canceled because of the show’s dwindling viewership, thanks mostly to Lynch and Frost being forced to reveal Laura’s killer earlier on in the season. Their original intentions were for a much longer run, and it certainly seemed like the two had washed their hands of the world of Twin Peaks for a time. It’s almost miraculous that the duo even managed to get this series created, especially with the help of a cable TV network like Showtime, which is mostly known for shows like Weeds, Billions, Californication, and Dexter, which have all received similar criticisms during their time on air: they all eventually outstay their welcome in some capacity (with the latter receiving an upcoming revival season, after already receiving another revival season back in 2021). An eighteen episode once-off series from the network in all its strange and dreamlike glory is most definitely a blessing. As we rapidly approach an era where nothing can end, it is quite refreshing to see a continuation of this sort done well. Audiences aren’t necessarily deprived of nostalgia laden franchise reworkings, and one without any of the superfluous character reintroductions, which the likes of Marvel movies or the Star Wars spin-offs so frequently indulge in, really feels like an enigma. Of course, those continuations don’t tend to have anything remotely comparable to the creative force of Lynch and Frost behind them. On top of the returning cast members, the stellar talent that they managed to bring on board is almost astounding (Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michael Cera, and Amanda Seyfried, along with some other recurring Lynch regulars, all make appearances, and they even manage to bring in musical acts like Nine Inch Nails and Eddie Vedder to perform live at Twin Peaks’ Roadhouse bar). Perhaps this is just a testament to David Lynch’s power and influence as an artist, as there aren’t many auteurs that could gather such a cast for a continuation of their delve into television over twenty years after the fact. While it is extremely devastating that this is the last long form directorial work that we got from him, and the thought of never being able to anticipate puzzling over a new David Lynch film is absolutely soul destroying, The Return does seem like a rather fitting end to an outlandishly, yet undeniably beautiful career.
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