Our Twin Peaks: The Return rewatch begins tomorrow.
Before we do that, let us take you back.
It’s the twenty-first of May, two-thousand-seventeen. Evening has fallen, or is steadily creeping towards you, or is long past gone depending on where in the world you happened to be on that day. Maybe you’re at home, in front of your TV, with the blinds shut and the sound system and Showtime punched in on the remote control.
Perhaps you sit with your computer on your lap, ears wrapped in headphones, tapped into the streaming service that will give you access to the world you’ve been waiting for for who-knows-how-many years (no, scratch that — you know exactly how many years it’s been.) Perhaps you’re waiting patiently on Twitter or Facebook for the conversation that will inevitably erupt, the hashtags that will trend and the ideas that will flourish attached to them, once the long-anticipated hour arrives.
Maybe you’re alone; maybe you’re at a party surrounded by dozens of friends. Maybe tables of coffee and donuts and cherry pie lay assembled around you; maybe nothing more than your hunger for this show is filling your belly.
But whether you watched the first two hours or the full four on that fateful night a year ago, you remember where you were, what you were doing, and who you were with as Twin Peaks returned to our lives after a too-long absence.
A lot has changed in the last 12 months. As we rewatch the series this time around, things are going to be different. We have the knowledge of where we’re going; the mystery, in many ways, is over. But instead of struggling to keep up with the unfolding plot, following tangents that aren’t as important as we initially thought they’d be (…or are they? Looking at you, Beverly and Tom Paige!) or keeping track of the dozens of plots and the hundreds of characters weaving their way through them, we can luxuriate in the details we missed the first time around. The insufferable silence of long midnight drives, or the endless cycle of Roadhouse sweeping, the pregnant pauses lasting long past their due date held between characters we want (not need!) to hear speak — it will all be a chance to look at things from a different angle, ruminate more deeply, and come to our own enhanced understandings.
Every Sunday night, we’ll revisit these Parts with fresh eyes during our Twitter livetweet party. We’ll be trying to recapture our initial feelings and considering how time has changed our outlook, if it has at all. Every Monday morning, new Peaks article reviews will await you, with new insights and recalibration of the old ones, fine-tuned to bring you up to speed whether you missed the rewatch or are still trying to understand it all. Finally, we’re excited to announce that on the Tuesdays after Parts 4, 8, 12, 16, and 18, we’ll be bringing you very special interviews and insights from community luminaries — podcasters, bloggers, vloggers, and deep thinkers all — in which we pick their brains a bit and put the preceding Parts in context. We can’t wait to share these with you.
Plus, throughout the week, our social media team will be busy bringing back memories with throwbacks to the original content we published last summer. Journey back in time with John Bernardy’s original podcast roundups; settle in with your favourite Season 3 weekly columns from Laura Stewart, Brien Allen, Eileen G. Mykkels, and Andrew Grevas; check out the old Black Lodge/White Lodge debates; or sidle up for essays about the big dramatic twists with theories and social commentary from our staff writers, editors, and special guests from within the Twin Peaks community at large. We’ll be serving up a broad sample of original content alongside new thinking, so no matter what your tastes or inclinations, 25YL will be a one-stop shop for Twin Peaks content.
Whether you loved the series or struggled with it, we hope that our Twin Peaks The Return Rewatch livetweets and the articles in the days after will be fun and helpful. Revel in the sense of community again as we gather once a week and share ideas, remembrances, and retell the collective story of the Summer of Peaks. And don’t forget to join in the conversation on Twitter with @25YLSite/#ReturnRewatch and on both our Facebook page and in our sister group, Twin Peaks: Between Two Worlds.
See you in the trees,
– 25 Years Later