And with another week in the rear view mirror, we return to Twin Peaks: The Return. Guys, I have to admit, I’m hecked up. This episode was a lot and I am still processing this as you read this. This was the most satisfying episode of the series so far without being straight up fan service. It’s the culmination of a lot of things and it feels good. Let’s rock! But be warned, there are spoilers throughout this.
1. So Long and Farewell
Tonight’s episode starts out very fast with BOOP and Richard in their truck, making their way to an unclear destination. BOOP stops the truck and tells Richard about coordinates and that they are almost at those coordinates. He has Richard walk over to them and Richard is then seemingly destroyed by a burst of white light and lightning. As this is going on, we discover that they aren’t far from Twin Peaks because Jerry Horne has found his way back to civilization and he watches all this go down. Somewhere, there is a cut of this show that has more of Jerry Horne losing it and I need to see that cut. He watches Richard die and we go back to BOOP who says “goodbye, son” and a huge theory is now confirmed. He is the son of BOOP and Audrey (we’ll get to her at the end). BOOP clearly is all about self preservation and he isn’t above sacrificing his own child to do that.
2. “People are under a lot of stress, Bradley”
Twin Peaks is a weird show and even when an episode delivers a lot of plot progression at once, it still stays weird. This scene back at Dougie’s house with Hutch and Chantal is exactly that. They are waiting at Dougie’s house to kill him and as they sit there, they talk and eat snacks. As they do this, the F.B.I. is also waiting for Dougie to return home and when both these groups are here, s*it hits the fan. A neighbor of Dougie arrives home and tells Hutch and Chantal that they are blocking is driveway to which they say they aren’t and this is when things get violent. The neighbor gets in his car and rams it into the van to which Chantal responds to with her gun. This neighbor then unloads a machine gun on them and murders them right there in broad daylight as the F.B.I. agents just look on. I will miss Hutch and Chantal. They were violent and very midwestern but were at times funny and ridiculous. This entire thing plays out very Lynchian when the Mitchums emerge from the house and say “people are under a lot of stress, Bradley.” I basically lost it at that moment because that’s the perfect cap to this entire sequence. Hutch and Chantal’s departure isn’t a huge deal for the bigger story involving the Black Lodge but it still matters as it is a big blow to BOOP. I wonder how long it will take for this to reach him and what the reaction will be. He has lost them and he has lost Richard. With Dale Cooper back, things become very dire for him. Oh, yeah, DALE IS BACK!
3. *Yells Out Of Window* HE’S AWAKE
DALE COOPER IS AWAKE!!! I will pause for cheering…
Okay, deep breath, he’s here and the coma and the electricity are probably what brought him back. As he’s laying in the hospital, the noise that we kept hearing at the Great Northern is present. Mullins hears it and leaves the room. At that point, Cooper wakes up and we see him talk to MIKE. MIKE tells him that the doppelganger is not dead and he did not return to the Lodge. Cooper knows what he must do but he asks that MIKE manufacture another copy of him. When Mullins comes back, Dale Cooper takes his IV out, gets dressed, says “I am the F.B.I.” and the sweeping Twin Peaks theme by Angelo Badalamenti comes in. I cried, I yelled and I applauded. I watch a lot of TV and there are almost no moments that are more satisfying than this one. It plays out beautifully and feels like the moment when a superhero is getting beat up and he rises up from that and kicks ass. It gets better from a story perspective when Dale Cooper is revealed to be completely up to speed on what’s happened while he wasn’t awake. He loves Dougie’s family and he plans to use his alliance with the Mitchum brothers to get him back to Twin Peaks. As he says goodbye to Janey-E and Sonny Jim, he slips up and says Dougie instead of “me” and it becomes clear that he’s made MIKE make another doppelganger so that they have someone and that he can probably enjoy the luxuries that will be given to him by the Mitchums. Dale is taking care of the ones who took care of him and it’s very sweet.
Continued belowI was impatient for most of this season but this was honestly one of the most perfect buildups and payoffs I’ve ever watched. 25 years and Dale Cooper is free to fight the evil of the Black Lodge once and for all. It made all the waiting worth it.
4. There’s DEFINITELY Something Wrong With Diane
So, for weeks I’ve tried to figure out what happened to Diane. I was partially right but did not guess the rest of it and still have a ton of questions about that. After Richard Horne dies, BOOP sends out a text that simply says, “:-) ALL” she becomes almost robotic and remembers things. Diane very robotically walks up to the room they’re all working out of and tells them that she remembers what happened the night she last saw Dale Cooper. She tells them that he came to see her but he wasn’t really him. He proceeded to interrogate her about what the F.B.I. is up to and he then rapes her. It’s a chilling story and I suspected that’s what had happened to her. What I didn’t expect was that she was unwillingly a sleeper agent and the text forced her to pull a gun out on Gordon, Albert, and Tammy. Before she did this she yelled out “I’m not me” and as they shot her, she vanished into the Black Lodge and MIKE tells her the same thing he told Dougie way back in the first episode “someone manufactured you.” Diane was taken over by the evil of the Black Lodge after what BOOP did to her. That’s what I infer. Any good in her was buried deep away by BOOP and it’s very tragic. Diane also leaves us in this episode and it’s a sad loss because she was a victim of something she shouldn’t have been a victim of. Laura Dern’s work here was amazing and definitely made Diane an unforgettable character.
5. Audrey’s Dance
At the very end of this episode, we get a big Audrey Horne development. She finally makes it the Roadhouse and after a beautiful and haunting performance by Eddie Vedder, “Audrey’s Dance” is played by the band. Audrey begins to recreate her memorable dance and it’s as if no years have gone by. If there was anything here that could have been accused of simply being fan service, it would have been this until the literal last second twist before the credits rolled. As a fight breaks out at the end of her dance, she panics and says she wants to get out of there and we’re taken to a quick shot of her in a white room. She looks slightly haggard and unlike herself. I have been of the mindset that she is in a hospital in a deep delusional state and her “husband” is her therapist since he’s the only one we get to know and he’s a stranger to us. We know that Richard is her son so is it possible that she too was attacked by BOOP and thus traumatized by it? Is she just being held captive? Is she in some unexplored part of the Black Lodge? I don’t know but we’re going to find out. Next week is the end and we’ll hopefully get all the answers we want and need. For me, all I want now is for Audrey to be free to live the fabulous life she was always destined for.
