10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Part 6
1. We Know What's Missing
"Something is missing," warned the Log Lady to Hawk during the series premiere. "How you will find it has something to do with your heritage."
We now know (or can reasonably infer) what is missing; the torn out pages from Laura Palmer's diary, which have somehow wormed their way between a door in the stalls (manufactured by 'Nez Pearce') of the men's room of the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department. Hawk dropped a buffalo nickel next to a toilet, at which point he noticed a fixture was missing. It was then that he ripped it apart and recovered what appeared to be yellowed, faded diary pages.
In Fire Walk With Me, Annie Blackburn advises Laura Palmer that "the good Dale is in the Black Lodge. Write it in your diary." We can now infer that Hawk will soon learn what the FBI already half-knows: that the real agent Cooper did not disappear. What's also interesting is that Annie was retconned in Mark Frost's The Secret History Of Twin Peaks tie-in novel. Lana Milford, not Annie, was apparently crowned Miss Twin Peaks on the eve of Cooper's entrance into the Lodge. The parentage of Norma Jennings was altered to further erase her out of existence. One thing was made clear by this week's cliffhanger: if we are going to learn how Annie is, we will learn it soon.
As Hawk finally unravels his clue, so too might the viewer; the aforementioned scene with Carl Rodd alluded to there being a "Linda" - a wheelchair-bound war veteran - residing in the New Fat Trout Trailer Park.
We have a Linda. We have a Richard. How (or if) this folds into Cooper's narrative is an as-yet unanswerable mystery.