10 TV Finales That Messed With Your Brain
2. Twin Peaks - ‘Part 18’
It’s kind of sweet that many people assumed that the long awaited third season of David Lynch’s complex supernatural thriller/small town murder mystery/primetime soap opera would resolve the show’s dangling plot threads in a way that made sense to them. What part of Twin Peaks (or indeed, most of Lynch’s creative output) would make them think that?
True to form, season three - also known as ‘The Return’ - swam deep into the murky, batsh*t crazy end of the Lynch swimming pool, presenting us with more esoteric, arcane symbolism and events obscured by elliptical storytelling. Even the exposition and backstory revelations were heavily layered with hidden meaning.
The result was infinitely watchable for devotees of Lynch’s storytelling style/mania, but utterly incomprehensible for literally everyone else in the world.
How many Agent Cooper doppelgangers were released into the world? Why is BOB now a floating orb? Why is the Arm (formerly The Man From Another Place) now the Evolution Of The Arm? Why… you know what, there are more questions than we have space for here.
The important thing to remember about Twin Peaks is that it will always pose more questions than it answers; it will never provide closure; and it will always be brilliant, audacious, terrifying, groundbreaking television to be experienced, rather than understood.