Diane, September 6, 1 pm. It’s over – for the next 25 years, anyways. The final two installments of the original Twin Peaks toss us back into a journey we left behind midway through this season. BOB is back. The tragedy of Laura, and the dual nature of innocence and corruption that her arc represents, hovers over the proceedings. She’s a ghost that metaphorically haunts the finale. At least, that is, until she returns for one final, tour-de-force visit from Hell, screeching her way through Cooper’s past sins as he struggles to save the woman he loves.
We must go back to the beginning to move forward. Where we’re going is just as uncertain as where the show leaves us; but man, what a hell of a ride.
Here’s five thoughts on the final episodes of the original run of Twin Peaks, “Miss Twin Peaks” and “Beyond Life and Death.” .woleb sreliopS
1. Fear and Love in Twin Peaks
Leo’s lone heroic act of the series opens the penultimate episode (or final episode, depending on how you see it, as these two episodes originally aired as a single 2 hour finale). He frees Major Briggs in the hope that the Major can provide enough warning to save his wife, Shelly. I’m not sure we’re meant to see this as an act of redemption – the last time Leo saw Shelly, he was literally trying to kill her. Rather, this is an inversion that sets the tone for how the next 2 hours of television are going to work. It’s the same kind of plot beat as when Ronette Pulaski returns, fully conscious and able to answer questions clearly. Old connections once left behind by the show are resurfacing, and the context for them has shifted.
Briggs makes it back to the Sheriff’s office, and in a drug-fueled haze he gives enough information to allow Agent Cooper to figure out the key to entering the Black Lodge. Entering the White Lodge requires love, while entering the Black Lodge requires fear. Unfortunately, Windom Earle’s bonsai bug caught it all. Everyone knows the destination, and how to get in, and the stage is set for a showdown at the Miss Twin Peaks pageant.
It’s a stroke of genius that Andy is the one who comes up with the final piece of the puzzle. Andy, the show’s frequent punchline and punching bag, solves the mystery all by himself, simply by staring at the symbols – a.k.a. the map. There are no hijinks, antics, or convoluted explanations for how he figured it out; he simply figures it out. It’s another character inversion, and one that warms my li’l heart.
2. A Crown Fit for a Queen
Everyone’s preparations for the pageant make for the perfect vehicle to reflect on the show’s history, and to tie together all the disparate threads of the show into one converging plot. Donna uses the pageant to confront Ben Horne about his relationship with her mother; Audrey and Ben scheme to use the pageant to raise awareness for their environmental cause; Lucy uses the occasion of the pageant to announce her selection for her baby’s father figure (#TeamAndy keeps racking up Ws); Norma, Ed, Nadine, and Mike have a pre-pageant pow-wow about the state of their relationship; and Agent Cooper and Annie, meeting under the pretense of helping Annie prepare her speech, are swept away by their attraction to each other and have sex.
The pageant itself is peak Twin Peaks, with all its strangest impulses on display. The opening dance number features costumes that seem like three different concepts thrown into a blender, with the women wearing swimsuits, raincoats, and tuxedos all at the same time while they twirl their umbrellas. Many of the characters behave in ways that seem wildly incompatible with their established personality, such as Lucy’s highly polished, sexy, and charismatic dance sequence or Annie’s poised, seemingly well-practiced speech.
It’s the final meeting between Annie and Cooper that proves to be her undoing. Cooper gives her advice on how to write her speech, and that advice wins her the crown. And then, of course, Earle strikes. Amidst bursts of smoke, and a chaotic, strobe-lit scene, Earle takes the queen, kidnapping Annie and spiriting her away to the Black Lodge. After consulting with the resident town genius (Andy), Cooper deduces the Lodge’s location and sets off the rescue his stolen love.
Continued below3. Where There’s a Key, There’s a Lock
Just like the last series of boxes in Thomas Eckhardt’s puzzle, Catherine and Andrew brute force their way into the box rather than figure out any puzzle that Eckhardt had intended them to solve. Like nearly everyone else in the series, they found a shortcut to get what they wanted. And, like everyone else, they pay the consequences for their unearned prize. Inside the box is a key to a safe deposit box, which Andrew promptly steals from his sister, travelling with his brother-in-law to the bank to receive the fruits of their labors. Their reward? Death.
This is the second biggest cliffhanger in a finale full of cliffhangers. There’s no way Andrew or poor old Pete Martell could have survived, given how close they were standing to the bomb as it exploded. Audrey Horne, however, was a little further away, chained to the bank vault as a publicity stunt to save the environment. It’s a bummer of a final beat for one of the show’s most compelling characters, even if I know she’ll be back for another go in The Return.
4. Through the Looking Glass and What Cooper Found There
Inside the Lodge reality starts to break down. The journey is less a narrative than it is a tone poem, one in which we replay a disparate selection of the show’s the greatest hits, only recontextualized and with the details mixed around. We’re treated to a version of Cooper’s dream, where he again meets Laura Palmer and the Little Man. Cooper sees his friend the Giant, and his “one and the same” human form, the old man “working” at the Great Northern. Cooper is even given a damn fine cup of coffee, which moves from a solid block to normal coffee to a tar-like sludge.
Nothing inside the Black Lodge is certain, not even the fact of whether they’re inside the Black Lodge at all. The Man from Another Place tells Cooper that they’re in the “waiting room” instead, and the inescapable room offers more mysteries than answers. No matter where Cooper goes, he seems to find himself facing versions of the same room, beset by twisted apparitions. Sometimes these take the forms of the loves of his life – we’re met by Annie, who switches places with his lost love Caroline, who switches places with a shrieking, horrific version of Laura Palmer. We see a white eyed Maddy Ferguson, who warns Cooper about her cousin. We meet a doppelganger of Leland Palmer, unrepentant and seemingly in league with the dark spirits. Though we’ve seen this strange, curtained world before, it’s never been this manic or unhinged.
After a nightmarish journey in which BOB claims Windom Earle’s soul and Cooper faces off against his own, twisted doppelganger, Cooper finally rematerializes back on Earth with a bleeding Annie in tow. Great victory, good triumphs over evil, the damsel is saved – haha jk lmao. When “Cooper” manages to get himself alone, staring at his reflection, he suddenly smashes his head into the mirror, revealing not his own reflection but BOB’s. The evil spirit has fled the Lodge in the form of (or, perhaps, the body of) Agent Cooper. With a twisted, incredible final bit of acting from Kyle MacLachlan, Cooper laughs, bleeds, and repeats “How’s Annie? How’s Annie? How’s Annie?” as we fade to black.
Rather than playing out the show over the classic closing image of Laura Palmer’s portrait, the closing credits roll over a picture of a cup of coffee. Slowly, we focus in and reveal a reflection in the cup: it’s Laura, recreating her pose in the portrait, suspended upside down in blackness, a stiff grin on her face as she blinks emptily. It’s a frightening inversion, and just as striking of a final image as the cackling BOB/Agent Cooper, victorious and let loose into the world for further mayhem.
5. And… Now What?
And where does that leave us, after this (excellent) finale? In its final act (by all accounts, one conceived with the hope that the story would continue), Twin Peaks resolved its arcs in the way only the best shows can – by leaving us suspended in a liminal space where anything and everything could happen.
Continued belowThroughout the finale we drift through town, touching base with each of the series’ major players with various degrees of unsatisfying endings. We leave Audrey suspended between life and death. The dramatic love triangle between Norma, Ed and Nadine is left unresolved when Nadine regains her memories. Donna sobs into her mother’s shoulder as her father punches her maybe-father Ben, smashing his head and leaving him unconscious on the floor. A very much in love Shelly and Bobby, dysfunction seemingly forgotten, replay their introductory scene in the pilot, this time trading lines with each other – though they seem happy now, the pair is caught in a loop, with no recognition of their past mistakes.
It’s fitting that Twin Peaks ends by returning to its obsession with Laura Palmer. It’s even more fitting that, rather than fully acting as a true sequel to the show, the follow-up film instead delves deeper into Laura’s story. The finale evokes the feeling of being caught in the unknown, surrounded with uncertainty and consumed by doubt, and no character more embodies that element of the show than Laura. She’s a mystery of a character, a void that shows everyone what they want to see ¬– or what they fear. She exposes their selfishness, encourages their wildness, and drives people to the extremes of their best and worst selves. The Laura Palmer we meet in the Black Lodge is this state at its purest. She has no personality; she’s a howling creature that charges forward, ready to consume whatever’s in its path. For a show that frequently deals with raw, impulsive emotion, Laura is the perfect muse.
Just one final week left in this Twin Peaks binge watch. Tune in next week as I go on a Fire Walk, put together some Missing Pieces, and attempt to cohere some final thoughts about this wild, uncategorizable show.
