Still Compelling, Still Frustrating, Still Weird as Hell—
A Critical Overview of Twin Peaks: The Return

by Nik Dobrinsky
April 8th, 2021, 2:53 p.m.

SPOILER ALERT—DO NOT READ THIS ESSAY IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE WORKS DISCUSSED WITHIN AND DO NOT WANT TO KNOW ABOUT SOME KEY PLOT DETAILS

Twin Peaks: The Return (also known as Twin Peaks: Season 3 and Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series)
Release Date: May 21st—September 3rd, 2017
Number of Episodes: 18 (from 53-61 minutes long)
Directed by: David Lynch
Written by: Mark Frost & David Lynch
Starring: Kyle MacLachlan, Sheryl Lee, Dana Ashbrook, Mädchen Amick, Michael Horse, Sherilyn Fenn, Richard Beymer, James Marshall, Everett McGill, Peggy Lipton, Miguel Ferrer, David Lynch, Chrysta Bell, Grace Zabriskie, Robert Forster, Harry Goaz, Kimmy Robertson, Wendy Robie, Russ Tamblyn, David Patrick Kelly, Ray Wise, Laura Dern, Naomi Watts, Jake Wardle, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Roth, Jim Belushi, Robert Knepper, Don Murray, Matthew Lillard, Tom Sizemore, Eamon Farren, Amanda Seyfried, Catherine E. Coulson, Carel Struycken, Al Strobel

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION: IT HAPPENED AGAIN
2. THE WORKS OF DAVID LYNCH AND MARK FROST
3. TWIN PEAKS, THE ORIGINAL TELEVISION SHOW (1990-1991)
4. TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME, THE FILM (1992)
5. TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN (2017)
6. CONCLUSION: WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

INTRODUCTION: IT HAPPENED AGAIN

The original Twin Peaks television series first aired on the ABC network from April 1990 to June 1991. I was an adolescent at the time, at an age when my interest in storytelling—literature, comic books, movies, TV shows—had begun to develop in a serious way, and Twin Peaks ignited my imagination in ways that few other works had. I'd never seen anything like it. I was not alone in being captivated with the show, as its popularity instantly reached cultlike proportions—only to have an equally rapid downfall as the second season saw the disengagement of cocreators Mark Frost and David Lynch, and a story that devolved into a mishmash of B-movie tropes and increasingly over-the-top plot threads. So the briefly hugely popular series—which many say redefined television—was cancelled, ending with an unsatisfying conclusion.

Then David Lynch released the feature film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), a prequel counterpart to the TV show. While the series focused on the aftermath of Laura Palmer's murder, the movie detailed the last week of her troubled life. More disturbing and less humourous than the series, Fire Walk with Me received largely negative reviews. Even many hardcore Twin Peaks fans lamented how far and fast Lynch had fallen. And so the franchise was thought to be over forever; a glimmering light in the dark landscape of television narratives of its time, burning incredibly bright for a fleeting moment only to be extinguished by the weight of its own ambition and unexpected success. It maintained a dedicated group of fans and was rediscovered a generation later by millennial audiences, but for many who were once enthralled with the series, Twin Peaks occupied a space somewhere in the back of the mind as a distant memory of a bad dream that had moments of genuine inspiration.

But 25 years later, Showtime reported its forthcoming release of eighteen new hour-long Twin Peaks episodes. I don't believe what Frost and Lynch have done—revisit a TV show decades after it aired—has been attempted before. And all the more potent since Laura Palmer, in the original series' finale, tells Agent Cooper, "I'll see you again in twenty-five years". Production delays resulted in the new season being released in 2017 rather than 2016 as was originally planned—technically 26 years since Laura spoke that line in 1991—but it was indeed 25 years after the 1992 film. The original story was set in 1989, and this new one in 2014. Alternately known as Twin Peaks: The Return, Twin Peaks: Season 3, and Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series, the announcement of a revival was thrilling news for the passionate fanbase. While it was critically celebrated and caused a minor stir in the contemporary television/web series environment, The Return failed at penetrating the consciousness of TV audiences to the level that the original series once had, and it remained a cultish event.

This article will focus on The Return in context of the entire Twin Peaks franchise.

THE WORKS OF DAVID LYNCH AND MARK FROST

As much as I'm a David Lynch fan in some respects, he's also annoyed me. He's a master at creating spellbindingly disturbing, dreamy, surreal images and concepts. But he makes little effort to connect the haunting narrative segments into a cohesive whole. As a result, many Lynch films feel inconclusive and leave me with a sense of having been toyed with, drawn in by intriguing stories and unusual characters only for heavy-handed stylization and pretentiousness to suffocate higher meaning. Nonetheless, I've found myself drawn back to his films, hoping for some epiphany to surface from their enigmatic makeup, for the psychedelic bits to coalesce into something more substantial than a collection of bizarro dreamworld stunts that fall short of amounting to much in the end. Just because a creative work is dark, weird, and ambiguous, doesn't mean it's deep.

One redeeming thematic quality pervasive throughout Lynch's filmography is a focus on the bizarre and macabre as exposé on the ugly side of white-picket-fence Middle America. At his best, Lynch merges the beautiful and the horrific in ways few artists do, making poetry from the grotesque. By spotlighting misfit characters within the greater universe of comfortable middle-class White America, Lynch films might be interpreted as satire of what's considered normal or moral, revealing more abnormality and immorality than ever. This is a worthy reason to tell a story. The problem is that Lynch too often indulges in the hideous underside, with hallucinatory, nightmarish imagery involving rape, murder, torture. And with unconventional story structures in which plot threads don't tie together, or are deliberately inverted, Lynch films often equal little more than excursions through his unsettling—albeit imaginative—fits of fancy.

There's value in art that challenges the norm, bucks trends, and exposes the dark side. But it's not all hip and edgy to wallow in fear without striving for some kind of redemption. It's as if Lynch's ego gets in the way of his creative talent, using abstraction to disguise an inability to attain true artistic transcendence. Compelling yet frustrating journeys through madness, Lynch films gush with self-indulgent stylistic flourishes, seldomly achieving more than weirdness for weirdness' sake.

But Lynch hasn't done this exclusively, by any means. He successfully examined the outsider theme with The Elephant Man (1980), taking a compassionate view of the severely deformed man without resorting to over-the-top storytelling techniques. And this was a good choice, as was filming it in black and white, since it's based on the poignant, true, and already strange story that need not be embellished with Lynchian antics. And The Straight Story (1999) is another example of Lynch playing it, ironically, straight. The double-meaning title applies to Alvin Straight, a septuagenarian man who rode across two states in a lawn mower tractor to see his ailing elder brother. Based on another real-life story, it's indeed a simple, straightforward tale with warmly sentimental impact. These movies in particular stand out amongst Lynch's repertoire, displaying his capability at crafting accessible, meaningful, emotionally resonant stories.

On the demented side of Lynch's catalog are: Eraserhead (1977), Blue Velvet (1986), Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (2001), Inland Empire (2006), and the Twin Peaks franchise. Not to mention Lynch's adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic science fiction novel Dune (1984), which was widely considered a flop but is not without entertainment value. And Wild at Heart (1990) seems a forced attempt at parody or black humour, with intriguing elements likewise overshadowed by excessive kookiness.

Lynch's debut feature Eraserhead is a thoroughly surreal horror pic. In production for over five years, the black-and-white oddity became a cult favourite on the "midnight movie" circuit while being alternately celebrated and maligned by critics and filmgoers. Many abhorred the film as a near-unwatchable gross-out, while others regarded it as a boldly unconventional accomplishment. Legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick once proclaimed Erasherhead to be his favourite movie. In any case, it made a splash, and introduced Lynch to the world.

Blue Velvet epitomizes Lynch's exposing-the-dark-side-of-Middle-America theme—the nightmare behind the appearance of a dream. It's beautifully filmed, but an all-around disturbing experience. Is the sadistic trip through sexual degradation and violence justified by any meaningful message? We know there are sick freaks out there—what's the value in witnessing their abuse on a screen? Questions to be pondered and discussed, I suppose. In any case, Blue Velvet is now widely regarded as Lynch's masterpiece. 

Lost Highway exemplifies the best and worst of Lynch at once; the best in his technical craftmanship at creating a suspenseful atmosphere and alluring, mesmerizing imagery, and the worst in that it all amounts to very little, drawing the audience in to a story that ultimately disappoints with excessive ambiguity. And Inland Empire follows suit; Lynch began shooting it without a completed script, reportedly writing as he went along—and it shows. I'm not even sure what to think. Three hours of surreal mayhem. Like all Lynch films, I love parts of it. But I have no idea what it means. Which begs the question: if no one really knows what a movie means, even the creator, does it mean anything?

Of this twisted type of Lynch film, Mulholland Drive comes closest to finally embodying art of intellectual and emotional substance that most of his other works hint at but fall short of. Set in Los Angeles with the filmmaking industry as a narrative backdrop, Mulholland Drive is a bizarre story with a bizarre structure, with typical Lynchian slipstream fantasy qualities of inverted plot details, character personality swaps, and shifts in time. It has Lynch's trademark haunting imagery, mysterious atmosphere, and at times outright bone-chilling scenarios. But it all comes together here as a compelling commentary on Hollywood, stardom, and the filmmaking art form at large.

David Lynch went to art school, starting out as a painter before making experimental short films in the early 1970s in which he cultivated what would become signature traits. These career beginnings provide context for Lynch's overall body of work, so maybe he should be viewed foremost as an experimental filmmaker; his movies best thought of as abstract visual art exercises intended to raise questions more than convey concrete stories. His primary contribution to the cinematic arts may be his uncanny skill at projecting the dark, disjointed dreams of human subconsciousness onto the screen. The key to appreciating a Lynch film may be to not try to decipher greater meaning, to just experience his fragmented narratives as collections of intriguing tidbits that evoke a mood or feeling.

And then we have Mark Frost, who is less famous than his Twin Peaks cocreator. But that doesn't mean Frost has less of an imprint on TP, it just means it's harder to identify because his work has been more as a writer and producer of television series than as a film director. The only feature film he ever directed was 1992's Storyville. His most-celebrated work prior to TP was on the popular 1980s police procedural television show Hill Street Blues, which influenced many subsequent TV dramas from NYPD Blue to Law & Order. In addition to serving as a writer and producer on dozens of other TV shows of varying degrees of success before and after TP, Frost is also an accomplished author, having written several fiction novels in the mystery genre and a few non-fiction books about sports history.

And Frost has also written two books about TP. Published in 2016 a few months before Season 3 aired, The Secret History of Twin Peaks takes the form of a series of documents—letters, clippings, notes—which outline the history of the town of Twin Peaks in incredible detail. This was followed by Frost's Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier, released a few weeks after Season 3 finished its 2017 broadcast. Also formulated as a series of reports, The Final Dossier provides background, fills in gaps, and attempts to reconcile discrepancies in the series. For the kind of Twin Peaks fan like me who wants more answers than the series alone provides, these books are invaluable counterparts. Frost shows that he has just as big an imagination and keen an eye to detail in these books as Lynch does in film.

In a 2017 interview David Lynch was asked what he thought of Frost's book The Secret History of Twin Peaks, and he replied, "I haven't read it. It's his history." This response signals, possibly, creative conflict between Lynch and Frost, that they perhaps have somewhat divergent perspectives on TP—although they've always publicly spoken positively about their collaboration. Lynch has said the original Twin Peaks was "at least fifty percent Mark Frost". So, it's safe to assume that Frost's background in television drama serials at least somewhat tempered Lynch's tendency towards abstraction, that the more concrete narrative elements might be attributed to Frost and the more surreal elements to Lynch. But Twin Peaks: The Return is less linear, with more meandering story threads than the original series. So perhaps Frost was less influential this time around, or shunned his traditional TV background to further unleash his weird side within the less restrictive streaming format.

Whatever the case, Twin Peaks stands as Mark Frost's finest and most widely celebrated work. And probably Lynch's as well—particularly the TV show (less so the accompanying film). Although not without its flaws and still ultimately unfulfilling for many, Twin Peaks displays all of Lynch's usual qualities, but approaches emotional and philosophical resonance in ways that much of his other work never quite reached.

TWIN PEAKS, THE ORIGINAL TELEVISION SHOW (1990-1991)

Twin Peaks' initial success might be attributed to a number of factors. There's the suspense-filled, murder mystery element. The Middle America, all-is-nice-on-the-surface-but-horrifying-behind-the-scenes theme. The supernatural horror-fantasy aspects. A peculiar sense of humour and parody. Absurdist scenarios and non-sequiters. Small-town quirkiness. And soap opera-ish interpersonal relationships and human drama. The first season embodies all these qualities impeccably, and as such was a pop culture sensation upon its release.

It also has a 1950s/'60s vibe, with a milkshake diner, a motorcycle-riding teen, and other troubled youths à la Rebel With a Cause (1955). So, fittingly, the cast includes numerous actors from classic 1950s and '60s film and television; Richard Beymer (West Side Story), Russ Tamblyn (also West Side Story), Piper Laurie (The Hustler), Peggy Lipton (The Mod Squad), and Michael Parks (Then Came Bronson); cult movie and character actors like Lynch regular Jack Nance (Eraserhead, Dune, Barfly), Everett McGill (Quest for Fire), Ray Wise (Swamp Thing, The Journey of Natty Gann), David Patrick Kelly (The Warriors), Grace Zabriskie (The Big Easy, Drugstore Cowboy), and Miguel Ferrer (RoboCop); and also a bunch of promising up-and-coming young actors like Sheryl Lee, Mädchen Amick, Lara Flynn Boyle, Sherilyn Fenn, Heather Graham, and David Duchovny.

As scary as Twin Peaks is, there's also sappy romance, heightened by Angelo Badalamenti's alternately haunting and sugary soundtrack. A regular Lynch collaborator, Badalamenti composed the scores for almost all Lynch films since Blue Velvet. The music of TP is essential, as each of the show's tones and characters have distinct theme songs. And a touch of satire is exemplified by a continuing detail; throughout the series a fictitious low-budget soap opera entitled "Invitation to Love" plays on TV sets in the background, where we're shown excessively cheesy and melodramatic scenes. This detail stings of lampoon considering Twin Peaks' hour-long, prime-time TV format, and reiterates the Lynch theme of exposing America's dark side. It's surreal, campy, humourous, suspenseful, and weird. A unique combination of murder mystery, horror, and screwball comedy equaling something greater than the sum of its parts.

But by midway through the second season ratings had plummeted and the show's cancellation was announced. Frost and Lynch had left to pursue other projects and only returned for the last few episodes in an attempt to wrap up the story. But alas it amounted to a typical Lynch ending after all, leaving many interesting plot threads unresolved. Twin Peaks was ahead of its time, pushing the boundaries of what a serial television program could be. It didn't really fit the mainstream TV medium of its day. I always thought that a miniseries structure of twelve or so episodes would've been more suitable, with the time to articulate a still deep but conclusive story. But because it was an ongoing series with no set number of episodes, more storylines were created that diverged from the main narrative and audiences got fed up with increasingly convoluted and far-reaching subplots. The TV format of the time affected and muddled the show's message.

But the message was an immense, courageous one. Twin Peaks was ultimately an earnest attempt at explaining evil in the world. Not to revel in the worst, scariest scenarios imaginable, not to simply get off on depictions of violence and terror as many horror works (and many other Lynch works) do, but rather to genuinely ponder the unsettling question of why and how a person could do such unspeakable acts as rape and murder to another, let alone to a teenaged girl, let alone to their own daughter. When it worked, it was less exploitative than it was an authentically compassionate attempt to make sense of the world's inexplicable horrors, to find meaning where there appears to be none by imagining we're part of a bigger universe that we only glimpse a tiny part of.

When watching the show as a kid, I noticed there was no mention of the two mountains that appear in the title sequence, giving the town its name. As the story unfolded I realized the title may actually refer to twin peaks of human experience: fear and love. Fear opens the door to a dark spirit world called the Black Lodge, and love opens the door to the parallel White Lodge, a realm of goodness and light. Spirit entities who originate there enter our world and possess people. Angels. Demons. While obviously invoking biblical themes, it's not a religious story so much as another entry into the age-old exploration of human duality. It's Lynch's version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, William Blake's theory of contraries, George Lucas's Jedi-Sith paradigm in Star Wars; the light and dark sides of the Force. A spiritual, supernatural tale that creatively examines causes of extremely violent human behaviour, Twin Peaks at times manifests brilliance.

The story approaches something transformative with the White Lodge-Black Lodge spirit world dichotomy. The White Lodge, Indigenous policeman Hawk (Michael Horse) says, is a place in another dimension that overlaps ours, where spirits who rule over man and nature reside. And the Black Lodge is the shadow of the White Lodge, the place through which every spirit must pass on their way to perfection. There, Hawk says, "You will meet your own shadow self. My people call it 'The Dweller on the Threshold'. It is said if you confront the Black Lodge with imperfect courage, it will utterly annihilate your soul." The killer Bob (Frank Silva) is from the Black Lodge, whereas The Giant (Carel Struycken) who guides Cooper in visions is from the White Lodge. It's a compelling concept suggesting that positive and negative are inextricably linked; the opposite ends of a magnet, yin and yang, day and night, light and dark. A universal idea that's been explored through art, religion, and mythology since antiquity; Heaven and Hell, Olympus and Hades, Elysium and Delirium, Valhalla and Hel, nirvana and duhkha, love and hate, good and evil.

There were undoubtedly flaws with the original Twin Peaks series, at times degenerating from parody of soap opera into actual cheesy soap opera. And the sexism became tricky. What was initially a sensitive blend of shockingness and humaneness declined into a precarious assortment of unsavory notes. The show started out being about the rape and murder of a teenaged girl whose life was full of sexual violence, and so it was more so a story about misogyny than a misogynistic story. Laura Palmer was severely troubled as a result of lifelong rape and molestation by her father, an already heartbreaking revelation. But it shifted from a sympathetic to sensationalist tone as the list of men she had affairs with grew to a disgusting extent. I get that TP was going for a scandalous, dangerous vibe, but at some point it stopped carefully skirting the exploitation line.

As the series progresses, an increasing number of much older men flirt with, fawn over, and sexually coerce extremely young women. And it's usually not treated as an issue to condemn or debate, but rather normalized, or even glamorized. 18-year-old Shelly (played by then-21-one-year-old Mädchen Amick) is married to abusive psychopath Leo (Eric Da Re), and is romanced by Gordon Cole (played by then-45-year-old David Lynch himself). 18-year-old Audrey (played by then-26-year-old Sherilyn Fenn) hooks up with her father's substantially older business partner, but only after Cooper turns down her advances—which Kyle MacLachlan kiboshed in real life, to his credit, due to discomfort over his character being romantically involved with a teenager. 29-year-old Josie (Joan Chen) is involved with 45-year-old Sheriff Harry Truman (Michael Ontkean) before it's revealed she was formerly the wife of 70-year-old Andrew Packard and concubine of 50-year-old Thomas Eckhardt. 19-year-old Lana (Robyn Lively) marries the elderly Dougie Milford, and after his death becomes romantically involved with his octogenarian brother Dwayne. And on and on with old men and very young women.

Misogyny as a subject is put in the foreground in some respects, as with Laura and other teenaged girls seduced into prostitution at the local brothel "One-Eyed Jack's". And Josie's arranged marriage and status as a mistress are illustrated as oppressive relationships. But much of the time it's portrayed as a non-issue that the women are 18 and the men 40, 50, 60, or older. This is Hollywood's aging male fantasy cliché. It's depicted as normal, or even sexy, and in some cases—like that of Shelly and Gordon, and Lana and the Milfords—it's intended to be humourous. There are of course other relationships between men and women of comparable age or equal status (Ed and Norma, Andy and Lucy), but the frequency of teenaged woman/older man pairings is problematic in context of the main storyline—the rape and murder of teenaged women—undermining any indictment of violence perpetrated by men against women by normalizing imbalanced gender power dynamics in so many instances. 

Despite these major shortcomings, for a minute there Twin Peaks was on to something, and had transcendent moments even when going off on unappealing tangents. The second season turned away from the Laura Palmer murder investigation and diverged into various subplots involving not only spirit worlds, giants, and dwarves—but also cave hieroglyphics, evil owls, hooded figures in the woods, the mythology of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and yes, aliens. Much of it was fascinating, a sincere if uneven effort by Lynch, Frost, and company to reconcile many imaginative threads into a unified storyline. But the interesting aspects were repeatedly overshadowed by details that deteriorated into straight up B-movie camp and corniness, and it all ended on a massive cliffhanger and thoroughly disturbing note. The Laura Palmer mystery turned into a weirder and more complex story than audiences were ready for, and after her murder was effectively solved, people tuned out and the series was cancelled.

TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME, THE FILM (1992)

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me outlines the last few days of Laura Palmer's life, piecing together the evidence we saw Agent Cooper and company uncover in the series. The TV show began with the discovery of her body on the morning after her murder, so we'd only seen glimpses of Laura in occasional flashbacks and dream sequences. Sheryl Lee also played Laura's doppelgänger cousin Maddy Ferguson in the series, and while fine in her dual roles, we really get to see her in action in the movie as the tragic heroine. I always thought she deserved more recognition, for one of the most terrifying performances—that is, the most believably terrified performance—I can recall. In Fire Walk with Me (FWwM), Lee is astounding in her ability to embody fear in its deepest, most primal incarnation.

The movie is an early example of the prequel format that became popular in subsequent years with film series like Star Wars, X-Men, and the Hannibal Lecter movies/TV show. Mark Frost gets an "executive producer" credit but not as a writer; that honour goes to the film's director David Lynch (along with Robert Engels, who also worked on the series as a writer-director). Without Frost's input, the movie is strictly a Lynch affair, riddled with his usual hallucinatory touches and disjointed narrative segments.

FWwM abandons many qualities that contributed to the show's initial popularity; gone are the humourous moments that had been so successfully blended with spooky fantasy details. And Kyle MacLachlan's Cooper—whose extrasensory talents, boyish charm, and zany eccentricity made him such a beloved character in the series—appears only briefly. The first half hour takes place one year before Laura's death, focusing on the FBI's Theresa Banks murder investigation in a nearby town before moving ahead a year to detail the last week of Laura's life in Twin Peaks. It's terribly sad, and Lee succeeds in inducing great sympathy for poor Laura. I just feel really bad for her, and want to help her—which I guess is how many around her felt.

The rape/molestation scenes, and the murder scene, are fairly graphically depicted; skirting—or perhaps crossing—the line between art and exploitative distastefulness. FWwM features some of the most disturbing sequences put to film without, arguably, enough redemptive qualities to make it all worthwhile. And with few answers to the series' unresolved questions, the final result is sometimes compelling if also off-putting.

I knew the TV story when I first watched the film, and without that context I may think the movie just another horror/nightmare/torture-fest in gratuitous Lynch fashion. But as a series counterpart, it's not an entirely bad piece of work—and still worth seeing for fans of Lynch or TP, and because of Sheryl Lee. While her performance occasionally veers into overacting melodrama, for the most part it's an impressive, courageous turn by the then-24-year-old actress, painting an intimate, harrowing portrait of a sexually and psychologically abused teenaged girl.

TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN (2017)

Twin Peaks is considered a landmark turning point in television, laying the foundation for the likes of The X-Files, Lost, and countless other less-successful imitators. The original series (OS) totaled thirty episodes (including two double-length season openers) written and directed by others in addition to Frost and Lynch. But Season 3 (S3) was jointly written exclusively by the two creators, and directed solely by Lynch. Shot from a continuous script and edited into eighteen one-hour episodes, the limited series was produced in a new media era wherein subscription-based streaming services have supplanted cable TV programming. Internet platforms like HBO, Netflix, and Showtime provide a perfect format for Twin Peaks; with relaxed censorship restrictions, flexible episode/season lengths, and no longer beholden to outdated television ratings systems—this time Lynch and Frost have no excuse. While many series are now released by entire seasons all at once, The Return had a more traditional broadcast schedule; the first two episodes aired back-to-back, followed by one a week afterwards. Like many, I awaited the series with the hope it would fill in some holes from the original show while also stand on its own as a new complete work.

Going into S3, I imagined the mystery might be reignited by a new investigation resembling the Palmer case or White Lodge/Black Lodge lore. I only hoped it would culminate in a more satisfying way this time. In Season 2's last scene, we see Cooper (or a lookalike) possessed by the demon spirit creature Bob. How would the new series address the passage of time following this horrifying occurence? Will unresolved details be adequately illuminated? The Return starts with the OS Black Lodge scene of Laura telling Cooper, "I'll see you again in twenty-five years". At the outset, the tone is strictly weird and dark.

The OS started small, in a little town where a popular teenager was murdered. As the case unfolded the story got bigger, the universe grew wider, to supernatural, mythological proportions. But S3 starts big, launching into a trip through otherworldly dimensions, while earth-based storylines are slow to develop. By Episode 4 the story takes on a more discernible course, but it takes awhile to get grounded and might be hard to stomach for conventional TV-watchers. Imagine spending the better part of a three-hour-long film in a Black Lodge-type setting. In the OS such sequences were limited to a few minutes at a time and anchored in the "real" world of Twin Peaks; a balanced recipe of accessibility and ambiguity. But S3's first few hours are more an exercise in ambience and style rather than a construction of concrete story details. We're immediately plunged into a maelstrom of incomprehensible segments involving Cooper floating through spirit realms where he meets an eyeless woman who speaks in a birdlike language, and a shadowy entity called "The Experiment" that emerges from a glass box in a New York City warehouse to murder a young couple as they have sex. An onslaught of seemingly arbitrary sequences, it's at times compelling but infinitely weird.

However much S3 veers into excessive abstraction, Lynch and Frost still deserve credit for going all out with what they're trying to do—I'm just not sure what that is. S3 embraces the risks of narrative ambiguity, and sometimes pushes it too far. Right from the start it's certainly being what it wants to be. But what it wants to be is out of reach, if barely. Sometimes it feels like its commanded by a sure hand, but other times random fragments are strung together so haphazardly it makes me wonder how strong the creative vision really is. Continually teasing the audience with a secret they'll never be let in on is alienating. This is the Lynch rub I keep coming back to; as much as I love some aspects of his movies like the use of music, lighting, and colours to create a dreamy atmosphere, intriguing segments too often fail to amalgamate into a cohesive narrative.

Lynch pics evoke the saying, "It's better to be good at being different than to be great at being the same". His works are definitely different. But does that mean they're better than films that follow more linear narrative arcs? If the most Lynch offers is a challenging of the medium itself, is that enough to justify the often hard-to-watch scenarios he puts to screen? S3 has its own distinct style, and doesn't try to precisely replicate the feel of the OS nor cater to audience expectations—as it should be. Is it interesting? At times, very. But the sequences of Cooper traveling through alternate dimensions are too much too soon, going on and on with enigmatic details. Generally slow-moving, it plods along at its own desired pace with frequent minutes-long segments devoid of dialogue. It's sometimes riveting, sometimes head-scratching, and sometimes eye-rolling. Eventually several disparate storylines are established, in different locations across America; New York, Las Vegas, South Dakota. And of course, Twin Peaks. The trick at first seems to decipher how it's all interrelated; we're shown the puzzle pieces, but not how they connect. It's a massive mosaic that, one hopes, will reveal itself in full by the end.

The story gets going in a more accessible way, if also still weird as hell, when Cooper leaves the spirit realm and arrives back on earth. Materializing in Las Vegas, he emerges as black smoke through an electrical outlet before coming to resemble the Cooper we knew—albeit, of course, older. He replaces a doppelgänger "Dougie Jones" who is sucked into the spirit dimension. In a near-catatonic state, Cooper is mistaken as Dougie by his wife and insurance company coworkers, who regard his behaviour as odd but still quite readily accept it. Shuffling around in an emotionless trance, he is unable to feed himself nor communicate coherently—repeating only two- or three-word excerpts of what others have said to him. Even though Dougie appears to have suffered a brain injury, several days pass before anyone thinks of getting him medical attention. This is hard to fathom, even for the TP universe. Cooper also has visions of the One-Armed Man (Al Strobel) talking to him in Lodge-speak—the reverse-speech dialogue technique Lynch invented by recording actors speaking (and moving) backwards and then playing the footage forwards—to notoriously peculiar effect.

Meanwhile FBI agents Gordon Cole (Lynch), Albert Rosenfield (Miguel Ferrer), and Tammy Preston (Chrysta Bell) investigate a lead: Cooper has been found, arrested in South Dakota. But this is actually Cooper's evil doppelgänger—another copy of him in addition to Dougie Jones. Dozens of other characters are introduced in various storylines involving criminal exploits, gruesome killings, and a headless corpse that turns out to be the body of Major Briggs, who was thought to have died years earlier. And we get bits and pieces in Twin Peaks, as the police reopen the investigation into events surrounding Laura Palmer and Cooper upon discovering new evidence. But Twin Peaks takes a backseat to the other settings, at least for the first half of the series.

S3 is slow to get going, and requires a commitment from the audience; it's not likely to make any new fans out of viewers who aren't familiar with the OS, and is likely to even lose a few. But for diehard TP loyalists who stick with it, S3 gets increasingly compelling as the series progresses—although not without intermittent pitfalls. By Episode 7 we really start getting into past Cooper/Palmer mystery details, including a brief description by Deputy Hawk of what happened to Cooper following the OS finale where we saw him possessed by Bob. Hawk simply says that Cooper left town soon after, but now speculates this was not the "good Cooper". The elaboration of such details is welcome, but if it will all pay off by the end still remains a question mark midway through, given Lynch's tendency towards open-endedness.

Episode 8 is the weirdest one. A black-and-white sequence begins with the onscreen title "1945 New Mexico", featuring an atomic bomb testing site. Sporadically alternating to colour, a mushroom cloud disintegrates into a thousand stars, then a series of blurry images—complete with a discordant, ear-splitting soundtrack. We're suddenly in an outerspace-like setting, floating through stars, asteroids, rolling waves, energy beams; a fever dream of kaleidoscopic, hallucinatory snapshots. Next we see smoke billowing around a gas station in a choppy time-lapse, strobelight-like series of movements, as the cacophonous noise-score rages on. The footage goes in and out of focus, speeds up, slows down, and skips like a broken record. Then we're back in space where a stream of ooze expands into a cloud, then fiery bursts, bubbles, explosions. It's like Lynch attempting his version of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey wormhole sequence, taking us through dimensions beyond space, time, and rational thought. But where Kubrick's vision was awe-inspiring, Lynch's is grating.

An assault of sights and sounds, this is Lynch at his most self-indulgent. S3 had finally gotten rolling a few episodes ago, only to be interrupted by this sensory overload. The hectic pace and strident score finally wind down and the episode becomes more palatable, settling on a black-and-white scene where music plays on a gramophone in an old-fashioned theater occupied by an unidentified woman and The Giant (referred to in S3 as "The Fireman"). With effective use of shadows and light, the artfully crafted set design includes Tesla-like 19th-century technology and Seussian machinery with tubes, coils, gears—stylized to resemble a 1920s silent film the likes of Metropolis. After more weird stuff happens in this strange chamber, we return to New Mexico, now in 1956, where a reptilian buglike creature hatches out of an egg in the desert, makes its way into a teen girl's open bedroom window, and crawls down her throat as she sleeps. Who knows what it all means, but being set in the past this episode evokes the idea that it's perhaps some kind of origin story.

It's clear from Episode 8—which numerous critics hailed as a masterpiece of modern television—that Lynch and Frost don't care about conforming to any traditional storytelling standards. This warrants some praise, or at least acknowledgement. It's certainly one of the most memorable hours of any TV show, ever. It's definitely unique, different. But again, just because it's different doesn’t mean it's good, and there's such a thing as overdoing it. The whole sequence is notable for its visual variety; it's not often TV/film audiences witness this kind of thing. But for good reason—because it's hard to stomach. At this point in S3 it's the earth-based story that's most compelling, and while I like that it's framed within this larger bizarre universe—that's what makes it compelling—these flights into total eccentricity resonate as erratic, off-the-wall, masturbatory decadence on the part of Lynch and Frost.

After recovering from the jarring Episode 8, the latter half of S3 finally gets comfortable in its own skin, successfully orchestrating a careful balance between the bizarre and the comedic. Some scenes are straight gold, particularly surrounding Dougie and the Mitchum brothers—casino-owning gangsters played by Jim Belushi and Robert Knepper in outstanding comic turns. Several scenes with Gordon Cole and Albert Rosenfield are also skillfully executed comedic brilliance. Miguel Ferrer was superb in the OS as the eternally sarcastic Rosenfield, and he effortlessly reprises the character here in the accomplished actor's last live action role before his death by cancer, just a few months before S3 aired.

Numerous episodes have closing credit dedications to TP actors that passed away. Catherine E. Coulson shot her Log Lady scenes in her last days, dying from cancer in 2015. Warren Frost, Mark Frost's father, reprised his role as Dr. Will Hayward for one scene, before dying in 2017. Harry Dean Stanton returns as Carl Rodd from Fire Walk With Me, in his second-to-last performance before dying in 2017. Jack Nance (Pete Martell) and Don S. Davis (Major Garland Briggs) appear in archival footage, having both passed on years earlier. And David Bowie, who died in 2016, appears in a flashback scene via reused footage from FWwM. His character Phillip Jeffries returns, absurdly, as a talking giant steam kettle. But Chris Isaak and Kiefer Sutherland, who also starred in FWwM—and are still alive—are inexplicably absent.

With a cast of over one hundred actors, returning characters aren't given grand re-entries but rather casually inserted, often in minor roles that serve primarily as nostalgic nods to the old series. Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) has cleaned up his delinquent ways and is now a Twin Peaks deputy. His now-ex-wife Shelly still works at the Double R diner. Ben Horne (Richard Beymer) still owns the Great Northern Hotel. He has continued his moral tendencies after reforming from his previous villainy, and is divorced from Sylvia (Jan D'Arcy) who cares for their mentally disabled son Johnny (Erik Rondell). And Audrey Horne shows up in a senseless side story as a hysterical middle-aged woman in a loveless marriage with an emotionless dwarf (Clark Middleton). Audrey was one of the most dynamic TP characters, but her new storyline proves to be a waste of time, concluding with an inexplicable "WTF" moment left completely open to interpretation.

S3 continues the TP element of beautiful women in relationships with abusive and otherwise undesirable men, as if a perverse obsession on the part of Lynch and Frost. Apparently Shelly is still attracted to creeps, as she was previously married to the violent Leo and is now romantically involved with Red, a criminal who does magic tricks (Balthazar Getty, disturbingly unrecognizable from face-altering cosmetic surgery). Absent is Lara Flynn Boyle as Donna Hayward, but her little sister Gersten (Alicia Witt) shows up needlessly, in an adulterous relationship with the deadbeat husband of Rebecca (Amanda Seyfried), Bobby and Shelly's daughter. And several standalone scenes feature young women at the Roadhouse in conversation about their romantic entanglements.

But the Ed (Everett McGill) and Norma relationship is reminiscent of the OS's best moments of romance. Ed still runs his gas station and Norma still runs the Double R diner, and they've been unable to fulfill their decades-long love due to Nadine's (Wendy Robie) refusal to divorce Ed. But Nadine finally lets Ed go, and he and Norma get together in a sweet diner scene—with a perfectly selected song, Otis Redding's "I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)", playing throughout. Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn) is a kooky webcaster, and Nadine his most fervent—perhaps only—follower. James Hurley (James Marshall) is a security guard at the Great Northern, and good ol' Hawk is much the same; still a policeman, as is Andy (Harry Goaz), who is still with Lucy (Kimmy Robertson) who is still the Sheriff Station receptionist. David Duchovny—who had a memorable pre-X-Files turn as transvestite FBI Agent Deniece Bryson—returns for one scene. And Grace Zabriskie reprises her role as Sarah Palmer; an alcoholic chain-smoker who lives alone, she displays monstrous supernatural behaviour.

How does it feel to see the old characters again after all this time? There's a sense of nostalgia like seeing an old friend, and sadness too, over the not-so-great ways their lives turned out. But just seeing the same characters without sufficient new context isn't satisfying. Most are underdeveloped and turn up in only one or two episodes, or only one or two scenes. More time is spent on newcomers, and in locations other than Twin Peaks. The effect of this is a feeling of saying goodbye and letting go, telling the audience that times have changed and this is a different show.

Notably absent is Michael Ontkean as Sheriff Harry Truman, replaced by Robert Forster as his brother Frank—the new Sheriff Truman. Harry was a key player in the OS, the down-to-earth Watson to Cooper's eccentric Sherlock Holmes. He's repeatedly referred to as being ill here, in a detail that feels rewritten to justify his absence. They should've just said Harry died of cancer or something. There's no mention of Cooper's former partner-turned-villain Windom Earle, or Norma's sister/Cooper's love interest Annie Blackburn. And another glaring absence is Michael J. Anderson as "The Man from Another Place", whose backwards Lodge-speak and jazzy dancing are iconic for TP fans. Also known as "The Arm", he's replaced in S3 by the computer-generated image of a skeletal treelike structure with a pulsing brain on top—his higher state of evolution in the spirit world. Why Lynch/Frost went with this is beyond me, but it's ridiculous. In fact, most of the Red Room CGI looks cheap and poorly-executed, as if Lynch is inexperienced with this kind of special effect.

One interesting new player is Freddie (Jake Wardle), a young Brit whose right hand is covered by an unremovable green rubber glove that grants him superhuman punching powers. Naomi Watts is outstanding as Dougie's wife, the unflappable Janey-E. And it's a delight to see Kyle MacLachlan back, and in multiple roles. In an acting tour de force, he plays the distinct characters of Dougie Jones, FBI Agent Dale Cooper, the slightly edgier alternate Cooper "Richard", and Cooper's evil doppelgänger "Mr. C". Big-name actors appear in new roles large or small: Laura Dern, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Roth, Tom Sizemore, and Ashley Judd, among others. S3 dials down Angelo Badalamenti's music, with many long segments featuring little background audio. But in exchange for a less-pronounced score, S3 features live performances by real-life musicians at Twin Peaks' Roadhouse bar, to end nearly every episode; mostly alternative rock and dream-pop artists the likes of Nine Inch Nails, Chromatics, Au Revoir Simone, Eddie Vedder, Moby, and Lissie. Introduced by their real names, each act performs through the closing credits—blurring the line between the fictional universe (diegetic) and reality (non-diegetic), to odd effect.

Many scenes play as vignettes or sketches, isolated segments that contribute in whatever small ways to fleshing out TP's world. With an offbeat pace and uneven sense of suspense and tension-building, there's a lot no one would've missed if omitted. It could've been a leaner, more refined ten or twelve episodes if focused on fewer subplots. Numerous segments feel like incomplete ideas, dialogue snippets Lynch and Frost might've had in their back pages for years that didn't belong in other projects so they just dropped them in here. It all amounts to some kind of iconoclastic, long-form hybrid of episodic television and arthouse cinema. It doesn't always work, but credit still to Lynch/Frost for trying something different. The OS tried something different for its time too, but S3 is even weirder and darker, with more graphic language, sex, and violence.

The last three episodes are the best consecutive run of the entire eighteen. Halfway through Episode 16, Cooper—who has been in a trance and mistaken for Dougie Jones—finally "awakens". Fit-as-a-fiddle from the moment he wakes up, Cooper is unphased by his quarter-century of otherworldly adventures. He apparently retains all memory of his years stuck in the spirit world, of all the happenings surrounding the Laura Palmer case prior to that, and of his last couple weeks as Dougie—and has gained even more insight into recent events concerning Mr. C, Major Briggs, and so on. And, boy, is it refreshing to finally have him back in action, because he always was the backbone of the series and it's been a tease waiting for him. Special Agent Dale Cooper is an iconic character, but reviving him so late means we don't see much of his interpersonal behaviour. This is a shame because following his re-emergence, his scenes with Janey-E, Sonny Jim, the Mitchum brothers, and Dougie's boss Bushnell Mullins (Don Murray) are some of the season's best moments.

And so the title The Return also refers to Cooper's return to reality—a cool double entendre, if also a painfully long wait for it to be fulfilled. It's a bit of a sick joke to parade Cooper around for fifteen-plus hours of screentime as a barely functioning near-mute, only to suddenly restore him to top form as the Coop we know and love. Still, it makes his return all the more celebratory, and it's a pleasure to see him finally take care of business. The Dougie thing gives MacLachlan an opportunity to showcase his acting range—which is one of S3's best qualities—but it makes Cooper shuffle around as a hapless schmuck for most of the series—which is one of its more confusing qualities. Some great comedic and absurdist situations arise with the dazed Dougie, but the comic farce goes on too long. Cooper is a legendary protagonist with a pure sense of morality and childlike optimism, and reviving him so late deprives the audience of his quirky genius. With no equivalent character, Cooper's arc registers as a goofy drunken party, a sickening hangover, and a sobering epilogue that mocks audience desires and expectations.

The Cooper doppelgänger story has some fascinating aspects, but doesn't easily gel with what we previously knew of TP's spirit world mythos. Although Black/White Lodge details were relatively sparse in the OS, we were shown that demon entities hailing from the Black Lodge possess humans, like Leland Palmer (Ray Wise). But now we're told the Black Lodge copies a person, trapping their real selves in the spirit realm and replacing them with an evil version in the material realm. And multiple copies of a person can be manufactured, from a "seed" (made from a piece of the person like a strand of hair, as in voodoo dolls), and sent to earth as something called a tulpa—a term originating from ancient Tibetan mysticism. But Evil Cooper is shown to have the demon Bob inside of him. And it's all convoluted further by the third copy Dougie Jones, and a possible fourth Cooper, Richard. Are evil people in this universe possessed by demons, or are they evil recreations of people? The tulpa concept is intriguing, and expands TP mythology, but it's difficult to reconcile all that's been revealed throughout Seasons 1-3 and FWwM.

Duplicate or transposed character traits are a common feature of slipstream fantasy, the speculative fiction subgenre that also involves loops in time and alternate dimensions. But S3's doppelgänger angle complicates, confuses, contradicts, and conflicts with what we knew from the OS: that Leland was unconscious of his evil acts, which were caused by the demon Bob who occupied Leland's body as a vehicle. But S3 shows it's not an otherwise good person possessed by an evil spirit but rather an evil copy possessed by an evil spirit. In S3's last episode, an aged Leland in the Red Room tells Cooper to "find Laura", implying that the good or authentic Leland was trapped in the Black Lodge the whole time and it was his evil double who killed Laura. Apparently people who died in the material realm—Laura and Leland— still live and physically age in the spirit realm. Then why in the OS did the good Leland briefly return before dying, when Bob was expelled from his body? Why does his Lodge-self remain in the Black Lodge? And is the black-and-white room the White Lodge equivalent to the Black Lodge's Red Room? Repeat viewings might reveal some cohesive logic to it all, but on the surface it lacks consistency in design. 

Cryptic clues that made the OS so good—symbols, maps, visions—come into play midway through S3, including number sets that prove to be coordinates to, of course, the town of Twin Peaks. This led me to imagine a climax in which Cooper and Mr. C face off there in some kind of good versus evil, spirit world versus physical world battle of the souls. But that doesn't happen. Not exactly. If there's one theme uniting all of Twin Peaks, it's something about facing one's demons. It might be said that the whole show is a metaphor for getting oneself out of hell. The action all ties back to Evil Cooper in some way. But he's just the shadow side of the Good Cooper, who is, after all, the protagonist—on a quest to restore himself. And Laura is the one to facilitate that, the angel who sacrifices herself by refusing to be turned evil, and as such exposes the demon.

In Episode 17, crazy stuff happens at the Twin Peaks Sheriff Station, where some plotlines converge to, again, answer some questions but raise others. The last third of the episode shows present-day Cooper return to a black-and-white past to meet Laura on the night she dies. He guides her through the woods and away from the events that lead to her murder, and she suddenly vanishes. But there are hints it may all be a dream. At the start of Episode 18, the One-Armed Man says to Cooper, "Is it the past, or the future?" Then, apparently back in the present, Cooper and Diane (Laura Dern) drive to a desert location where he says they will now "cross" over, and when they do, it "could all be different". They go to a motel, make love, and when Cooper wakes the next morning, Diane is gone. He finds a note addressed to "Richard" and signed by "Linda". Cooper is confused by this, implying he has perhaps crossed into another dimension.

When Cooper awakens from Dougie's coma, he has a confidence about him, as if governed by secret knowledge he's acquired in the spirit world. And in the Richard incarnation he likewise—at first—seems to be guided by some hidden information or special insight, if also still unsure of what timeline or dimension he's currently in. He appears to have a singular goal in mind: to find Laura Palmer, who is alive in this realm, and bring her back to Twin Peaks. Now in Odessa, Texas, he drives to the home address of a woman who looks like Laura might look in her forties, who identifies herself as "Carrie Page". He introduces himself as Special Agent Dale Cooper, not as Richard, but he has an air of seriousness and a subtly harder aura. Carrie claims no knowledge of Laura Palmer or Leland, but reacts slightly—as if trying to tap into some distant, painful memory—when Cooper mentions her mother's name "Sarah". Is Carrie a tulpa? A copy of Laura who was living in Odessa this past 25 years, like Dougie was a copy of Cooper living in Las Vegas this whole time? Or like Diane? Cooper convinces Carrie to accompany him to Twin Peaks. She says she has to skip town anyway (the corpse of a man with a bullet wound in his head sits on her couch) and agrees to go with him.

Sheryl Lee appears earlier in S3 only marginally, either as older Laura in Red Room scenes or as young Laura in reused footage, so the last-act introduction of Lee as Carrie Page is an incredible narrative component. The fifteen or so minutes of screentime when she and Cooper drive to Twin Peaks is one of the most suspenseful sequences I've ever seen in TV or cinema. Following Episode 17's raucous party, this last chapter is like the quiet morning aftermath. It's an outstanding creative decision—amongst other highly questionable decisions by Frost and Lynch—to suddenly feature Sheryl Lee more extensively in the season's last half-hour. It has the feel of the whole story coming full circle.

Cooper and Carrie arrive in Twin Peaks late at night. She doesn't recognize anything. They park in front of the Palmer house, knock on the door, and a woman we don't know opens it. Cooper proceeds to ask her a few questions, as Carrie stands silent beside him looking slightly forlorn. The woman doesn't know of the Palmers, and bought the house from a Mrs. Chalfont. Cooper asks the woman her name. "Alice Tremond". Mrs. Chalfont and Mrs. Tremond are minor characters in the OS and FWwM, involved in strange occurrences and swapped identities. Cooper thanks the woman, then walks slowly back to the car. He seems to not know what to do next. Lost in thought, he utters, "What year is this?" Carrie doesn't answer, looks up at the Palmer house, and we hear Sarah Palmer's voice call out "Laura". Carrie lets out a chilling "scream queen" horror-movie shriek and Cooper looks at her, shocked. The house flashes in light, then goes dark. Closing credits roll.

This final scene gave me actual chills through my body, as Cooper stands on a quiet night street with Laura's doppelgänger. Cooper seemed intent on bringing Carrie back to the Palmer house, so why is he mistaken? It's an alternate dreamtime reality, both past and future at once. The line "What year is this?" resonates as a metacinematic reference to the passage of time between the original series and the new one. It's the single most thought-provoking episode of the whole season, a compelling finale that sat with me for days—closing on a spine-tingling note and a total cliffhanger, once again. This story is not over. The mystery continues. But it is over, unfortunately. The utterly fascinating yet unresolved elements left me wanting more. But there isn't more.

Unnerving. Unpredictable. Mystifying. Confounding. The Return is sadder, darker, weirder, scarier, and even less conclusive then the OS. But perhaps fittingly, considering it was produced in Trump-era America where racism, sexism, hatred, and violence have been devastatingly mainstreamed by the office of the president. Like Cooper and Carrie, America's identity is lost and confused. The Return is perplexing, most peculiar, and resists grounding itself in a cogent narrative—which, again, is admirable for trying something different, but exasperating because it tries a little too hard, a little too often, to be different, at the expense of sound continuity, cohesive story, and accessible meaning. At some point, too much ambiguity feels like uncertainty.

At times imponderable in its abstraction, The Return still scores points for originality. Much of the imagery is unlike any ever put onscreen. It's problematic to even ask which parts are metaphorical, because the story itself involves alternate realities, parallel dimensions, dreams, visions. I suspect that clues to unlocking the last three episodes might be revealed upon revisiting the first three, if one has the patience. There's a lot to unpack. Lynch has been a practitioner of Transcendental Meditation for most of his adult life, but I don't want to have to meditate daily for forty years to understand what this all means. Twin Peaks: The Return is downright elusive, magnificent nonsense, but nonetheless captivating to watch and contemplate—even, or perhaps especially, in its most challenging moments.

CONCLUSION: WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

David Lynch has said "Twin Peaks is a continuing story". But it's unclear if he means that he's working on another season, or that Twin Peaks will always be a continuing story, that he'll never fully resolve it because he doesn't want to. I think he means the latter, because if he wanted to resolve the story then he could have with The Return. It all comes back to how I described Lynch at the start of this article; his movies are compelling, but ultimately frustrating, partially-realized figments. The Return is as much innuendo as it is a full story, a collage of dream shards born from the dark subconsciousness. Since the ending doesn't provide closure to the mysteries the series so hauntingly presents—and in fact establishes even deeper mysteries—then it raises the question of what a mystery is if it remains unsolved? Maybe Twin Peaks isn't so much a mystery then, but rather some cross-genre redesignation of storytelling parameters.

Perhaps more capably than any other filmmaker in history, David Lynch translates the complexions of dreams into movies. That's worth something. But dreams—actual dreams that human beings experience while sleeping—aren't stories, are they? They can certainly inspire stories, but a dream doesn't have a concrete beginning, middle, and end. Is a whirpool of semi-linked images a story? It may still be art, even powerful art. But not really a story, at least not a complete one. I've thought a lot about this in relation to TP, and Lynch in general, and I've decided that if I want a conclusive story I won't watch a Lynch work. And if I want to experience a dream, I'll go to sleep. But if I want something in between a story and the fragmented, illusory quality of a dream, then I might watch a Lynch pic.

David Lynch claims he's not trying to say anything with his art, that he doesn't want to communicate any particular message but rather explore an idea, create a mood, evoke a feeling. His creative process is intuitive, subliminal, experimental. But to create art without attempting to say something conveys a message in and of itself; maybe it's a question, asking "What is art?" Perhaps art made without any intended message is not art, but rather entertainment. Not that entertainment is less valuable than art, but I think the two are often confused. Art can be entertaining, and entertainment can be artful, and there are often elements of both in any given work. Both require technical craftsmanship, practice, and imagination. But art can be uncomfortable, can anger or offend. And entertainment can be light, funny, and can look nice. But if it's not saying anything, is it art? It's ornament. Adornment. Decoration. This conversation is Lynch's main contribution to cinema, whether he intends it or not; a metacinematic examination of what art is, or should be. That's what his movies, at their best, do. And that's what Twin Peaks: The Return does; provoke questions about what stories, movies, television shows, art, and entertainment are. And that has value.

Ambiguity and unpredictability are precious elements in stories of any medium. It's what prompts thought and discussion. But excessive ambiguity can feel like excessive ambivalence, and if an artist can't make up their mind about what they're trying to say, or doesn't care, then why should I? I don't want spoonfed, crystal clear meaning in art, because that leaves me with little to contemplate. But I don't want something too overtly, deliberately elusive either, because that can be as hollow as a work that overemphasizes one central theme or meaning. And then what's left is style, aesthetics, superficiality, and pretentiousness. Lynch falls in between, but dances dangerously close to excessive abstraction, or even dives straight off the edge. But I'd still rather go off the edge than stay within safe, comfortable boundaries.

If Frost and Lynch ever make more Twin Peaks, I'll watch it. But next time I'd be foolish to expect a solid conclusion. I'll just sit back and experience the weird journey.
• Nik Dobrinsky / Boy Drinks Ink
April 8th, 2021, 2:53 p.m.