Twin Peaks: The Return episode review — 3.18 — Part 18/What Is Your Name?

Original air date: September 3, 2017
Director: David Lynch
Writers: Mark Frost & David Lynch

Rating: 9/10

When I first decided to do individual reviews for each episode of this season, I worried about Part 8. I should have been worried about this one.

There’s just so much to say, and yet it’s so difficult to talk about. It has to be the most open-ended finale in the history of television, and it is absolutely intentional.

Anyways, we start out in the Red Room, where we see Mr. C burning.

MIKE then creates a second Dougie Jones, who goes to Janey-E and Sonny-Jim in Las Vegas.

So those loose ends are tied up nicely. Now what the hell else is going on?

Well, nothing new just yet. We see Cooper and Laura walking in the woods, we see Laura get pulled away. And we see Cooper in the Red Room just as he was at the start of the season, with MIKE repeating, “Is it future or is it past?”

He then sees the Arm in the form of that weird electrified tree thing.

Laura whispers into Cooper’s ear again in the Red Room, and is once again pulled away. Cooper finds Leland Palmer, who tells him to find Laura. Everything is seeming familiar at this point.

I’m willing to bet some of it is reused footage, but I’m pretty sure a line was changed here and there, so it wouldn’t shock me if it’s all new footage. It’s definitely interesting.

Cooper exits into Glastonbury Grove, where he’s greeted by Diane.

Cooper and Diane are then seen driving around the desert by a bunch of power lines, talking about being ready to do something. Cooper pulls over at 430 miles, 430 of course being the number that the Fireman told him to remember. They “cross over,” and there’s then no indication that they understand the importance of what just happened. Of course, neither do we.

It’s now night time and they stop at a motel. In their room, they have what can only be described as an awkward sex scene, set to the same Platters song from Part 8, which is at one point overtaken by Badalamenti’s ominous score.

In the morning, Cooper wakes up and finds a note, signed by Linda. Again, the Fireman told Cooper to remember the names Richard and Linda. So, Diane/Linda is now gone. When Cooper leaves, it’s clear it’s not the same motel.

Cooper then takes off driving until he finds a diner named Judy’s.

Inside, he has some coffee and asks the waitress (Francesca Eastwood) about another waitress who works there.

This doesn’t seem like the real Cooper. He’s not all jolly and chipper. He’s mildly threatening even. When a couple of guys wearing cowboy hats harass the waitress, he pulls out his gun and shoots them, injuring them. Cooper then gets the address of the other waitress and finally says he’s from the FBI.

Cooper then goes to the address, and it’s where Laura Palmer lives, apparently.

She doesn’t respond to that name, of course, and goes by Carrie Page. When Cooper talks about her parents, she seems to respond in a strange way. Cooper explains that he intends to take her to her mother’s house in Twin Peaks.

She goes with him, but not before Cooper notices a dead body in her home. Neither people really react to this. Cooper doesn’t seem to care too much, and Laura doesn’t seem to care that he’s seen it.

They drive through the night from Odessa to Twin Peaks.

At the Palmer house, they’re greeted by someone neither of them recognize, who says she doesn’t know who Sarah Palmer is, and that she bought the house from Mrs. Chalfont. Her name is Alice Tremond. Both Tremond and Chalfont are names connected with spirits who have something to do with one of the lodges, we know, from their interactions both with Donna from the original run of the series, and with Laura in Fire Walk with Me.

When Cooper and Laura walk back to the car, Laura seems to hear her mother calling out her voice. Cooper looks defeated, confused.

When Laura hears her name being called, she lets out a blood-curdling scream, and the lights go out. The last image we see is a freeze-frame of Laura whispering into Cooper’s ear from the Red Room.

It’s certainly an intriguing ending, and it really makes me want more. I’ve read a lot of theories and seen a lot of videos on this, and the more research I do, the more this feels like it’s not quite the end. Showtime apparently hasn’t ruled out doing another season, but given how long it took to get this one, and given Lynch’s age, I doubt it’ll happen. Still, I hold out some hope.

If this is the end, I think it’s incredibly devastating. Cooper is more powerless now in this new world than he was when he was stuck in the Red Room for decades. He may have brought Laura right into a trap, given all the weird stuff going on with her mother, and her possible connections to Judy.

By itself, this ending is fairly unsatisfying, but that’s also sort of what I expected from David Lynch. We know he’s not going to spell anything out for his audience, and given that Twin Peaks originally faltered when the network demanded that he solve the murder of Laura Palmer, it’s definitely not too surprising that he and Frost kept this ending as vague and as open as possible.