TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN (2017)

The first early-nineties run of Twin Peaks managed to feel both nostalgic – for such a haunting show, it was laced with the motifs of fifties-style innocence – and positively forward-looking, setting the stage for decades of ambitious television to come. David Lynch’s original conclusion, in which a possessed Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) creepily calls out for his love interest Annie (Heather Graham) turned out to be a quarter-century-long tease. It held countless narrative opportunities for a potential third season.

When Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost brought Twin Peaks back in 2017, they took the Lynch-iest direction possible. And it was great! MacLachlan’s Cooper suddenly became three (four?) characters as the show expanded itself beyond the docile pines of the Pacific Northwest, as a series of humans and demons traversed the U.S. in a competition to either enable or defeat a great evil that was unleashed in the world.

Episodes 17 and 18 arrived on streaming services simultaneously. The first offered the closest thing that could be construed as a satisfactory ending, with Cooper seeming to reach back into the past and, maybe, reversing the series of events that led to the series-launching death of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). Then Episode 18 completely erases that goodwill, taking Cooper on an American roadtrip that may or may not be our reality (as opposed to the show’s) and exclaiming, in one final gasp, “What year is this?!” One fan theory postulates that the final two episodes were meant to be watched simultaneously, but in the absence of multiple CraveTV logins, I’ll stay satisfied with the linear-watching approach. Twenty-five years and 18 episodes after the last cliffhanger, Lynch concluded the series with a bigger one. He decided to make art, not entertainment.