Twin Peaks has always been about ripples. We watched as a single event – the murder of a teenage girl, a small-town homecoming queen – sent out ripples of action and reaction through time and space.
What we’re watching in The Return is a continuation of those ripples. A quarter of a century has passed and the aftershocks of Laura Palmer’s death are still tangible all over the town of Twin Peaks. Bobby Briggs, now a capable, confident officer of the law, still can’t see her photo without weeping. And Laura’s mother, Sarah Palmer has never recovered either. She is broken, frozen and haunted by the “goddamn bad story” that tore her world apart. Rather than fading out over time, the ripples have intensified into destructive waves of grief.
Perhaps this escalation occurred because, as time passed, Laura’s ripples combined with other impacts on the surface of the town, most notably the sudden disappearance of Special Agent Dale Cooper 25 years ago. The Return reminds me of those “Bizzaro: What If?” comics they used to do, like “What if everyone on Earth had Superman’s powers?” Except here the “What if?” is “What if Agent Cooper suddenly ceased to exist 25 years ago? What would the world be like?”
And the answer is: Not good. Not good at all. Twin Peaks is not the warm, welcoming town we came to love way back when. Violence and madness, once secret and suppressed in the shadows, now stand proud in the bright light of day. Back in the 1990s, Agent Cooper had become a key figure in the fight against “the evil out there”, and his disappearance left the community vulnerable to the sinister forces that besieged them. The “troubling abstractions” that once lurked and skulked in the woods are now openly running riot through the streets.
Audrey Horne was profoundly and personally affected by the sudden vanishing of Dale Cooper. Had he been there when she awoke from her coma, her situation could have been so different. Perhaps the two of them would have started a life together. At very least he would have continued to be a steadying, encouraging influence and a true friend.
In this “Sliding Doors” future without Cooper, Audrey has lost her mischief and her sparkle. Robbed of the magic of a thrilling teenage crush, she settled for a loveless and frustrating marriage to the world-weary and irritating Charlie. Charlie is an anti-Cooper – inert, cynical, uncaring and putting his work before Audrey. How they ended up together is a mystery. Perhaps he was there that fateful day in the bank. Perhaps he was there when she finally awoke. Perhaps she loved him once. I don’t know. I don’t have a crystal ball (and neither does he*).
Although the decades of disappointment have clearly worn her down, Audrey has retained a hint of her spark, a glimmer of her former rebellious and idealistic youth. But that energy is tainted by years of bitter resentment and now manifests in a foul mouth, an emotional coldness and a destructive affair with a man named Billy. And Billy, like Cooper before him, is missing. Audrey is left with only troubled, violent dreams about his fate to keep her company.
Will Cooper return, like a knight in shining armour to rescue this damsel in despair? Probably not. And even if he did, he could never undo 25 years of damage to Audrey - any more than the spirit of Laura, for all her golden, glowing goodness, could repair Sarah’s spiritual and psychological devastation. The wounds inflicted on Twin Peaks, and the people who live there, have festered, not healed. We will never know what may have been if Laura and Cooper were not cruelly snatched away, because they were. What we see is what we get - the ugly, tragic reality of life after loss.
More than 70 years after the Trinity atom bomb test, the residual radiation at the site is still highly toxic. Just like the tremendous, spreading force of the blast we witnessed in Part 8, devastating shocks from the past continue to undulate in waves through this simple logging town. And nobody is immune to the fallout from the events that shook Twin Peaks, not even the dreamiest femme fatale.
*This is a lie, he totally has a crystal ball. It’s right there on his desk.
This piece was published on the 25YearsLater blog on 2nd August 2017, as part of a Black Lodge/White Lodge debate. You can read the article in its natural habitat here.