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Twin Peaks Recap “The Return Part 8”

By Kelly Shanaphy

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If last week’s elongated sweeping scene confused a lot of viewers, then Twin Peaks: The Return Part 8 was bound to be even weirder.

Bear with me in this recap, because this episode was genuinely one of the strangest of Twin Peak’s run as well as television ever.  What starts off in its typical surreal style quickly transforms into a supernatural story of existence itself.

Picking up with Evil Cooper’s escape from the prison, he and Ray are still on the road heading to some place called “the farm”. Their runaway plan hits a small obstacle when Ray double crosses his former partner and chooses to shoot him dead before the latter can do the same to him.

Upon his death, a group of soot-covered vagabonds come sprinting out of the woods and begin dancing around the bloodied Evil Cooper. It’s an incredibly bizarre scene which ends once Ray gets in the car to escape and Evil Coop wakes up seemingly fine.

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This is where “The Return Part 8” takes a turn for the unusual when Lynch chooses to focus the rest of the episode in the past. To start, he shows us an atomic bomb explosion in the desert where the camera slowly brings the audience closer to the center of the mushroom cloud.

Considering BOB’s face is seen here, it seems like Twin Peaks is hinting that this was the start of his creation, and maybe even the beginning of the Black Lodge itself. Once inside the explosion, the next series of shots are those of gorgeous explosions of different colors before settling on the purple ocean seen in “The Return Part 3“.

The ocean and the building on the island offer a bit more insight than the scenes with Coop in the previous episodes. Inside, there’s a woman and a man that’s played by the same actor as “The Giant” but is billed as “????” so it’s unclear who he’s playing. Nevertheless, the man watches the explosion on a theater before he sees BOB’s sphere which is where he pauses the viewing. He then vomits up an array of lights before a sphere of gold comes out to which the woman pulls down to kiss.

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However, this is no ordinary orb, this one has Laura Palmer’s face floating on it before it gets sucked down to Earth. Was Laura created by a supernatural force and sent to Twin Peaks for a reason? If so, was her purpose to be murdered by BOB or was something greater meant for her? While “The Return Part 8” offers a new back story for Laura Palmer, it also opens a whole new can of questions over what her existence now means for the scope of the series.

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Twin Peaks doesn’t offer up much time of reflection on Laura’s life/death before jumping eleven years into the future in 1946. The vagabonds from the beginning of the episode are reintroduced as they enter a small town in New Mexico trying to get a light for their cigarette. A couple drives away, being frightened by the men before offering them a simple light while a young girl returns home after a fun date.

This slight seems to send the men overboard, who take over a radio station and murder the two employees by crushing their skulls with only their hands. He starts repeating into the microphone “This is the water, and this the well. Drink full, and descend.

The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within,” which causes all of the listeners to pass out in a deep sleep. Considering Lynch adds in a “Pop’s Diner” similar to the original Archie Comics from the 50’s it seems like he’s commenting on idealistic suburban towns choose to overlook the darkness or the undesirable parts of their community.

Nevertheless, “The Return Part 8” finishes with a disturbing scene of a mutant bug-frog climbing through a sleeping young girl’s window and into her mouth. Is this a symbol of the loss of innocence or perhaps that a tiny bit of evil will always lurk inside of her despite her naive outer shell? It’s definitely not an answer we’ll get anytime soon but she will probably play a larger part of the Twin Peaks story.

Twin Peaks is on a hiatus for two weeks before returning which seems like a good amount of time for people to reflect on these past eight episodes.

Next: Twin Peaks Recap: “The Return Part 7”

While “The Return Part 8” will prove to be divisive between fans who found it mind-boggling in a genius way and others who thought it was too bizarre for television. Despite all of its quirkiness, no one can accuse Twin Peaks of not being the most ambitious television series in a long time.

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