10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Part 7
6. The Passage Of Time Has Been Explored To Devastating Effect
We were reintroduced to beloved town doctor Will Hayward in Part 7 in a sad scene loaded with meta-textual intrigue.
Sheriff Frank Truman initiated a Skype call with Doc - just as his son and co-creator Mark Frost did with David Lynch when writing the bulk of The Return - in order to shed insight on Dale Cooper's last few hours in the town. Hayward believed - and this could be crucial, or it could be red herring inference based on their closeness - that Cooper paid a visit to a comatose Audrey before disappearing. The unbearable Diane scenes heavily implied that this inverse doppelgänger is a rapist - antithetical to the celibacy Cooper enforced upon himself to protect those around him. The theory that Richard Horne is the product of intra-species rape is gathering at a sickening pace.
One of Hayward's few lines was tragicomic. "I don't remember what I had for breakfast this morning," he told Truman, when pressed for his fading memories of assessing Cooper a quarter of a century ago. "But I remember that."
Warren Frost suffered from Alzheimers in his twilight years. His son Mark warned that The Return's exploration of time would be "ruthless". He was not wrong; this, coupled in particular with the scenes of a cancer-ravaged Log Lady, have lent this supernatural tour de force a near-unprecedented humanity.