10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Part 14

10. A New Mythological Bent

The opening scene was phenomenal fan service for both nostalgic old school and the new set apprehensive at the time taken to reconcile the disparate plot threads. Gordon Cole and Lucy Brennan shared a brilliantly, mutually baffled phone conversation, the result of which alerted the FBI to the two Coopers out there in the world.

We also learned that the FBI contingent is drawing ever closer to Las Vegas. This probably wasn't the two birds, one stone clue proffered by ??????? in the premiere - but it was a double dash forward into the final third act of The Return. Shortly after this exchange, Albert let Tammie in on the origin point of the Blue Rose task force. This was another two birds, one stone success story; the character of Tammie, written off by some as a swivel-hipped sex object, was developed as she showed a keen intuitive grasp of the supernatural - and the actress, Chrysta Bell, played it with a dead-eyed certainty, removed entirely from the vacuous eye candy even her superiors initially underestimated her as.

"A tulpa," is how Tammie described Lois Duffy's doppelgänger. A tulpa is a Tibetan concept, of a manifested object conjured through thought - which in the Twin Peaks universe is perhaps an explanation of the phenomenon at the divided heart of Special Agent Dale Cooper, situating Mr. C (or perhaps Cooper himself; we do not know who the "dreamer" is) away from the straight sci-fi trope of a distinct and separate alternate royalty.

This split feels more symbiotic, of a more distressing human nature.