EDIT: This is a hot take from the night of the finale. Emotions and ideas reflect raw reaction.
They did it again. I cried from the moment he took Laura’s hand until the end of 17. And then part 18 happened. I both love and hate the ending. I loved every moment of Laura, of the magnificent Sheryl Lee. They teased Audrey, my favourite character, and I didn’t get her. I don’t trust Diane. They definitely set up for either a movie or a fourth season. I drank a whole bottle of wine. It’s my first viewing of FWWM all over again.
I took a walk after writing the above. It took me forty minutes and I now have a blister. I’m warm, and I shed all of my clothes. For the forty minutes of my walk, I was on the phone with my very good friend Joseph D. Clarke, who has helped cleared my mind a bit. I am currently listening to David Lynch’s The Air is On Fire.
All along, I believe that this was a setup for a season 4 or a final film, which may or may not ever happen. While Part 17 was everything I anticipated (and far more predictable than I had imagined), Part 18 was like nothing anyone had ever even speculated about. What really happened? None can say, other than this – I think that Australian promos had it right all along. Laura is missing. Dale Cooper removed her from the timeline a la Barry Allen’s Flashpoint and now, as Diane said, “everything might be different,” and it is.
Remember Richard and Linda. Well, apparently Diane is now Linda and Cooper is Richard, except that Cooper is Barry Allen and he is the only one who remembers history as it was. Was I the only one who didn’t trust Diane for a second? Who believed that when she said she was real, that she really wasn’t? Also, I’m gratified that I was right all along that the “Is is Future or is it Past?” Phillip Gerard line was time whacked. No one else’s storyline matters anymore because it’s all been overwritten.
These two parts didn’t feel anything like the rest of the season. They stand apart as other entirely. I felt the spectrum of human emotion from intense disgust to hatred to unyielding sorrow. I am empty, but I am also at peace. Somehow, I was always preparing for this. Always preparing for another Season 2 finale, always preparing for another unsatisfactory ending.
A season 4 or a final film is now inevitable, despite the unknowable answer of whether or not it will happen. (Side note, Slow 30’s Room has come on on the album). But what will we get? DC moved from Flashpoint right into the New 52 and for anyone familiar with New 52…it was a mess that they’re now fixing with Doctor Manhattan aka, DC’s version of The Fireman. Suddenly DC comics are seeming very Lynchian – will this be the angle taken in the next installment of Twin Peaks? Do we even really want more? Will there actually be more or unlike Barry is this Dale’s final unfixable mistake? (Or is it only a mistake from ours and Dale’s pov?) Has Dale reset the world to our world?
I recall when I liked the Inheritance trilogy (which I now recognize to be a mediocre Star War/LOTR mash up with Doctor Who references) and was upset when I discovered that it was going to be four books instead of the promised three. It’s that feeling, but less intense. I’ll take whatever comes from Lynch and Frost next.
I’m at peace because I still haven’t accepted the Return. I can still pretend that Twin Peaks ended with Season 2. Twenty-five years of non-continuation will do that to a person. Eventually, I will accept it. Gladly even. Do I want season four/another film? It’s been something on the horizon for the entire run of S3. People have been demanding it, threatening it. I’ve always said that I trusted in Lynch and Frost, and that if there was a story to tell, I’d be with them all the way. Am I still? The emptiness in me answers that yes, I guess I am, but I need time. Time to process, to accept. To get over everything that happened. Time to accept what I cannot change, or so says St. Francis. That’s some good advice, Coop.
The past dictates the future.
Dale, honey, you didn’t read enough comics as a child. Sometimes, people need to stay dead.
Edited Sept. 5th 3:58 pm