Twin Peaks – The Return: Complete Hour by Hour Guide

NOTE TO READERS – These weekly posts are meant to recap what happened (SPOILERS AHEAD) and provide conversation starters for fans to comment and share theories. Do not read if you have not watched this week’s hour(s) yet.

TWO HOUR FINALE (HOURS SEVENTEEN & EIGHTEEN)

“Is it the story of the little girl who lived down the lane?”

Like the entire Return in a microcosm (or condensed into a little golden orb, if you will), the final two hours of Lynch’s maddening opus contained a few moments of satisfying fanatic brilliance buried in deliberately obtuse dream logic.

The fun stuff…

Judy (or Joi-Day / Chao-Dae???) is a long sought after negative entity (perhaps Mother?) that Jeffries, Cole and Coop have been hunting for (well…maybe, as we come to depressingly find out…forever). Our little Lucy heroically shoots Bad Coop at the Sheriff’s Station (Hurray Punkie!).  Freddie Sykes uses his magic green hand to punch the bejesus (or bedevil?) out of that wacky Bob orb that comes out of Bad Coop (oh yeah, and he also knocks out Chad!). And Naido was in actuality…you guessed it…the real (or at least the red-headed) Diane!

The sad stuff…

But then we get more of Dale Cooper (am I still in dream, or the lodge, or traveling along some powerline?) mumbu-jumbo as he attempts to save Laura and in doing so, locate Judy. Lynch channels Lost Highway both in tone and imagery (seriously, I’ve had enough of yellow lines down an endless highway), as even in his dream world Coop can’t seem to make things right and is lost in some endless loop.

When he encounters the “coffee kettle” version of Jeffries, he’s shown the owl symbol that turns into a figure 8…perhaps the sign for infinity…for the infinite loop he is trapped in…where Diane is sometimes Laura Dern…sometimes Naido…sometimes a tape recorder…and where the spirits of little dead girls eternally whisper secrets into his ear. He so desperately wants to help them…solve their murders…rescue their souls…and reunite with all his friends and loved ones at “the final curtain call.”

But will there ever be a final curtain call? In this world of truckers…and Judy?

We may never know (though there is…ugh…that Frost penned Final Dossier coming out in October).

Commentary by David H. Schleicher

What say you, fellow Peakers? Share your thoughts on the Two Hour Finale.