10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Part 16
4. RIP, The Tulpa Of Diane Evans
So much of The Return's dramatic weight centred on the character of Diane Evans. In Part 7, the series' most harrowing human scene centred on the grisly subtextual implication that Mr. C raped an unwitting Diane during their last encounter. Subsequent Parts played with a potential mendacity to it, as Diane was revealed to be colluding with Mr. C as a sort of double agent.
If this was an act, it bore the manipulative hallmarks of a hack show, in which information is withheld from the viewer purely to propel the narrative forward. That dramatic weight would have snapped back, painfully, like barbells on a pulley. It wasn't. The Return's most perplexing immediate mystery was resolved with a sensational twist that both made sense in the context of the morally complex mythos and enriched it, creating scope for another quarter century of conversation. It was foreshadowed brilliantly, too - "let's rock" - elevating the fanciful into the tragically believable. Diane Evans - played here, again, with a gripping inner conflict by the master Laura Dern - was revealed as a tulpa created and conditioned by Mr. C to infiltrate the FBI. The memories of her former life bubbled under the surface, manifesting as torment, profound confusion and mixed motivations.
The scene in which she met her end confirmed the aforementioned implication and was filmed with a gut-punching tension, soundtracked to David Lynch's awesome reworking of American Woman. Albert and Tammy shot her before she could shoot first, sending her into the Red Room.
"F*ck you," she said to Phillip Gerard as she met her maker - or not, as the perfectly-solved case may be.