Culture

Twin Peaks finale: baffling, discombobulating, inconclusive, brilliant

David Lynch’s return to TVs most iconic town is also a lesson in the dangers of going back

In limbo: Kyle MacLachlan and Sheryl Lee in Twin Peaks: The Return

Ian Maleney
Wed Sep 6 2017 - 21:00

Let the theorising commence. After 18 hours of knotted, unpredictable, often astonishing television, Twin Peaks: The Return has come to an end. And what a confusing, ambiguous place at which to arrive: an utterly appropriate denouement for a journey of spiralling complexity, poignant beauty and terrifying darkness.

Before the season began, I wondered, as many did, whether revisiting the world of Twin Peaks was a wise decision for its creators, David Lynch and Mark Frost. To re-engage with such a beloved set of characters, around whom a dense mesh of phrases, references, and philosophies had been constructed by fans, was a risky endeavour. After 25 years, so much had changed – on television and in the real world – that it was natural to wonder how the rich and unmistakable spirit of the original could be adequately reanimated.

The central question of the series was one of similarities and differences

In the end, it felt like a triumph. This season was a show unlike anything else on television, even its old self. Looking almost the same, but feeling completely different, it enacted on an aesthetic level what its characters were concerned with in the narrative. The central question of the series was one of similarities and differences, of replication and reproduction and, most powerfully, of recognition, of memory: is it really you? It worked because Lynch and Frost took the time to fully explore all the connotations and consequences of the show's subtitle: The Return.

First and foremost, the audience’s return to Twin Peaks is questioned. Characters in the show are constantly watching each other on screens and, though it is a simple trick, we are reminded of our own position as viewers each time. We are reminded of our distance from the action, and the interpretation and inference which such distance necessitates. In the penultimate episode, the audience is mirrored in the crowd of characters assembled to watch and puzzle through the events taking place in front of their eyes. “What the hell is going on around here?” asks Bobby Briggs. “Took the fucking words right out of my mouth,” adds Jim Belushi, along with half the audience.

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Though Lynch and Frost are not above fan service – most obviously in the reunion of Ed and Norma – those moments of simple pleasure are undercut by the many, many stories which are never concluded, such as that of Audrey Horne. When we see Audrey dancing in the Roadhouse near the end of the series, it feels strange and beautiful; something long desired is finally being realised. When the vision is interrupted and replaced by something more ambiguous and troubling, the effect is almost traumatising. The Return is constantly stating an awkward truth which television mostly avoids: sometimes there are no answers.

Unsettling vision

Of course, the most anticipated return of the series was that of Dale Cooper. The unsettling vision of Kyle MacLachlan's smiling, blood-covered face which closed season two of Twin Peaks left an impression which lasted for a quarter of a century. The idea of the previously golden-hearted Cooper roaming the world as an embodiment of BOB, a purely evil spirit, lingered noxiously in the air. Watching Mr C, the "bad Coop" doppelgänger, for such long periods in this series creates an opportunity for that evil to become humanised – not in the semi-redemptive sense of the typical anti-hero, but more subversively as a manifestation of ordinary, everyday turpitude; something which is part of everyone, something which must be struggled against.

Toxic masculinity is a frantic and disjointed but nonetheless powerful force in The Return

In Twin Peaks, this struggle has most commonly manifested in the violence perpetrated by men against women. Like a heavyweight boxer realising a fight is slipping away from him, toxic masculinity is a frantic and disjointed but nonetheless powerful force in The Return. It is everywhere apparent, many-faced and indiscriminate, with its roots in alienation, disenfranchisement, and greed. It comes out swinging, and the women of Twin Peaks are once again the primary target.

When the original Cooper does finally return (in a scene knowingly dipped in syrupy self-parody), he is only temporarily himself – “the one and only”, as his old love Diane says. The climax of the series in a literal fistfight between good and evil is a joke. Or, better yet, a dream. A dream of good triumphing over evil, where the white knights arrive just in time and a young man fulfils his destiny by power-punching a malevolent sphere into a million pieces. Just as that impossible dream appears to be coming true, it cracks. Cooper’s face freezes, the clock begins to tick backwards.

Cooper's plan hasn't worked – the story he's been telling himself was compelling, but wrong. You can never go back. You cannot change the past

What follows is another possible meaning of "return": Cooper attempts to return to the past, to the beginning of this convoluted story, hoping to save Laura Palmer from her fate. Through the use of footage from Fire Walk with Me, where the astounding emotional power of Sheryl Lee's performance is readily apparent, we follow in Cooper's footsteps. These scenes of earlier times are intoxicating. To once again see Josie Packard at her mirror, to see Pete Martell going fishing on a foggy spring morning, these moments are almost painful, such is the weight of nostalgia for a world where things turned out different. A body wrapped in plastic disappears from the riverside. This is the power of storytelling, both dangerous and hopeful: it creates an infinite alternate universe for us to live in, where everything could be otherwise.

No escape

But Lynch is ultimately, like his beloved Franz Kafka, a realist. He offers no escape. The rupture comes with Sarah Palmer violently attacking that iconic photo of her daughter, the sound and images quivering and glitching with the intensity of the despair and hatred. Time slips from whatever hook it was hung on. Three times Laura’s blood-curdling scream rents the air, and by the final time we know for sure that this is no longer the world we entered 25 years ago.

By the end, everything is otherwise, but not for the better. In a final, night-time journey on the open road of the American imaginary, Cooper and Laura drive towards Twin Peaks. Cooper is bringing Laura home, to her mother’s house, but the atmosphere is paranoid, dark – something is off. Cars are driving on the wrong side of the road, the Double R is gone. The woman who answers the door is not Sarah Palmer. Cooper is deflated, confused. He cannot get the answers he’s looking for. He can’t even ask the right questions.

The stories we tell ourselves have a terrible power, and it is so tempting to live in that other country

Cooper and Laura stand, as disoriented as the audience, on the street outside the would-be Palmer house. Here they are, our two central characters, faces we've lived with for so long, adrift in a world they don't understand. Despite all the groundwork, the clues, the sparks of intuition, Cooper's plan hasn't worked – the story he's been telling himself was compelling, but wrong. You can never go back. You cannot change the past. And perhaps this has always been the heart of Twin Peaks' intricate narrative: that the stories we tell ourselves have a terrible power, and it is so tempting to live in that other country, on the far side of the porous border between what is real and what is imagined, or dreamed. The Return suggests a less-than-happy addendum: that maybe we have lost the ability to tell the difference between these two worlds. The black and white no longer distinct, we, like Cooper and Laura, are left to wander a colourless limbo where the codes don't get cracked, the messages aren't understood, and truth . . . well, who knows?