10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Finale
2. The End Is Bleak...
David Lynch, more so than any other artist, has the uncanny, magician-like ability to burrow into the subconscious. The Return's finale was somehow more powerful than that; in disassociating the audience from everything held so dear to them, this was a molecular shattering. Lynch, in his most effective ever work, created the physical sensation of being spiritually adrift, at once connecting and removing us from Dale Cooper.
In the absence of any coherent narrative reading - or multiple incoherent narrative readings - we can only rely on mood, on feeling, to make sense of it. It was one of disorientation and alienation, evoked through desolate landscapes, bleak silence and a literal disassociation from the two characters we were the most intimately familiar with. As Richard and Carrie drove into the town of Twin Peaks, a car followed them - a portent, a signifier of Judy's ominous ever-presence. They stopped for gas, but there was no Big Ed's Gas Farm waiting for a warm welcome - only a disturbing parallel of the convenience store. They drove past the Double R, no longer 2GO. Is it future, or is it past?
Richard and Carrie emerged at the Palmer house. Richard, channelling his old self, led Carrie up the stairs. It was a self-defeating act of compassion - and really, unwitting torture. Her tragic life echoed back to her, all in the pursuit of an impossible victory. Cooper focused on the donut, not on the hole, the void that was Laura's innocence. In the end, Carrie, a host for or fragment of Laura Palmer, let out of the most blood-curdling of her tragic, piercing screams, destined to confront the tragedy of her life in an infinite loop.
It was an existential crisis manifested onscreen.