10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Part 12

4. A Lesson Of Pacing

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Part 12 moves at a glacial pace, even by the standards of The Return. The pace is so unnatural that the capper to Lynch's love letter to the female form - he tells Albert that he worries about him, apropos of not much - can be read either as punchline or portent. His knack for the uncanny remains as intact as his sex drive.

By far the quickest scene is also the most gruesome; we cut suddenly to Tim Roth's Hutch, applying a silencer to his gun in an act of near-masturbation. In the front of their van, Chantal elects not to torture their imminent victim. There's a Wendy's down the road. She's hungry. Human life is nothing to her. The act of ending it is a mere inconvenience. Hutch shoots Warden Murphy first in the back, and then in the back of the head. In a brutal sequence, his young son opens the door of his house to find his daddy's brain pooling out of him. Lynch's camera doesn't linger on the image, like it does with French Woman's legs. He cuts immediately to Hutch, who says "Next stop: Wendy's" dispassionately. What is Lynch trying to tell us?

In the original series, in the unrecoverable Twin Peaks, every life had meaning. Now that the evil is seeping from earth, that is no longer the case.

Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!