Twin Peaks

First of all, let me start this review of the third season of Twin Peaks by saying that I deeply love the first and second seasons. They truly are iconic seasons of television, and having recently re- watched them, I came to the conclusion that they firmly stand the test of time.

However, one of the main problems I had with the first and second seasons of Twin Peaks (Although it was mainly in the latter, than the former) was it's deviation away from the central component which I believed made the show tick- the mystery. The mystery of Twin Peaks submerged this seemingly 'normal' town into an environment in which there were endless different otherworldly phenomenon at play. The original Twin Peaks created a feeling of uneasiness for the audience through numerous ways, such as Bob. This feeling of mystery and unease however, became somewhat tangled up in many different love stories which were all a bit too common place in the show. Nevertheless, I persisted with it and still found it to overall be an enjoyable show, despite the various James-Donna-Laura-Maddie-Bobby-Shelly-Leo stories which stretched on.

Now, when I got to this season, I was not disappointed. Season Three of Twin Peaks takes the mystical and the downright weird elements of the first and second season and places them into a show of their own. I would imagine that many of the original viewers who enjoyed the soap opera element of the first and second seasons, will be extremely disappointed. This series is unlike anything else that I have ever witness on television (yes, I did say that when I watched Twin Peaks the first time around!). The revival of Twin Peaks has come at the best possible time, for both the show and television. Modern Television now allows for less constraints on many shows, and more recently, risks have been allowed to be made. The original seasons of Twin Peaks were risks in themselves, but they still had boundaries attached to them. Lynch could not deviate as far as he can today. This combination of modern television and Lynch's vision create a spectacle for television which is unlike anything there has previously been. Some of the visual shots of different elements of the mythology in the new season of Twin Peaks, are absolutely remarkable and unique. The precedent for season three is well and truly based upon Lynch's exploration of Twin Peaks mythology.

Whilst there is a new depth to the show, as we travel further afield to New York City and South Dakota end explore the mythology, the scenes which place us back into the town of Twin Peaks contain the finite amount of nostalgia for the series. It doesn't feel as if there has been a shoehorning of nostalgia in this season, rather the scenes feel appropriate and suitable for the show. Therefore, whilst the show is extending its branches beyond the town of Twin Peaks, the return to the town does not feel as if the show is doing it for the sake of it.

Overall, the new season of Twin Peaks is truly a remarkable piece of television. I find myself wondering 'what if?', in terms of what if we never experienced this show returning? This series could be when Twin Peaks hits another level and surpasses the original run. It will take till the end of the season before we can truly determine that. However, I would urge anyone who was interested in the original run, and anyone who is interested in groundbreaking and unique television to give this show a try. You may not like it, it may deviate too far from the original seasons which you enjoyed so much, or you might find it deviates too far from what you are normally used to. Nevertheless, I believe that this is a show which should be watched to at least engage with the uniqueness of the experience that comes with watching it. So sit back, get yourself some cherry pie and a damn fine cup of coffee and enjoy what is a masterclass return to Twin Peaks.

When someone works hard at something or does something for a long time you can surmise that they well eventually get good at that thing, even masterful. Generally, this is the case for all great directors and David Lynch is no exception. With the newest Lynch-piece we are given something that is an amalgamation of all his previous work without sacrificing his style or creativity. We see the dark-industrial vibe of "Eraserhead", the American suburbia and the dark underbelly late-night bars/clubs/people from "Blue Velvet", "Wild At Heart", and "Twin Peaks", the winding roads and nightmarish features from nearly all his projects specifically "Lost Highway" and "Mulholland Drive", and then last but not least, we see the venture into the digital age with non-linear story and the craziest sound design you may possibly experience in any piece of media that we get from "Inland Empire". There are even remnants of design that hearken back to his old shorts.

This folks, is Lynch's swan song. The Return is already like nothing else ever before on TV and this includes the original two seasons of Twin Peaks.

Lynch allows the material to breathe, and gives the viewer plenty of time to absorb what's on screen. The filming is patient, and every shot is most definitely taken with care. The slow yearning shots is what Lynch uses to draw you in. The unfamiliarity of new faces leaves you with more questions than before. Also, as most already knew going in, The Return is set in many different locations--not just that charming, wholesome town of Twin Peaks. Even knowing Lynch's filmography there are moments that still have me unprepared for the amount of visuals and sounds that evoke nightmares. More terrifying than 90% of what I've seen as a film-goer.

I have to admit that it is taking me some time to adjust to the new vibe of the series knowing well in advance that Lynch and Frost have stated that The Return will be more like the prequel movie FWWM. I am someone who prefers the film to the series because Lynch had more room to work toward his vision. The result is a surrealist nightmare that The Return will have beat by a landslide. With that said, there will be many of you who will not like this at all (even folks who enjoyed the original series because The Return is THAT different). Lynch is certainly an acquired taste and everything isn't for everybody, but for those of you who are willing to give it a shot and appreciate an artist in his top form then maybe there is still some redeeming qualities in this for you. The Return is no run-of-the-mill action series or soap opera so be ready for one of the craziest rides you may ever be on.

I can't quite gather all my feelings and emotions and put them into words, but simply put: I have an emotional connection to Twin Peaks.

First things first - if you asked me, "What is art to you?" my answer would be Wajdi Mouawad or Peter Brook's plays, cinematic visions like Mulholland drive or 2001 : a space odyssey , Dostoevsky's novels, or Mozart's music. I would never mention a TV show.

Then came Twin Peaks: The Return - and now, I consider a series to be one of the finest pieces of art I've ever experienced, perhaps even surpassing many cinematic works. David Lynch reached the peak of creativity with this.

I started watching it nearly a year ago, and for me, Twin Peaks became a companion through my lonely days and nights. Every character felt like a family member over these months, and I'll never forget any of them.

Maybe it's the finale that shook me the most - it disturbed me in a way I wasn't prepared for. I felt confused, even a little lost. But that confusion is exactly what makes it so unforgettable. It's haunting because it refuses to give you closure. It forces you to sit with questions that don't have easy answers - questions about identity, time, reality, and whether we can ever truly go back to anything. The whole season slowly unravels into something deeply existential, and by the end, I realized Lynch never intended to comfort us. He never offers answers - he just holds up a mirror and dares us to look. That, to me, is what makes The Return so profound.

When I watched Twin Peaks: The Return, I felt like I was witnessing a director working at the absolute height of his creative freedom. David Lynch didn't just make a sequel - he made a statement. This wasn't about fan service or wrapping things up neatly. It was about transforming the medium itself, about what television could be if it weren't bound by convention. I genuinely believe there's no other show like it. The Return is something closer to a moving painting, or maybe a dream you keep having but can never fully understand.

What makes Lynch's directing style so brilliant - and so frustrating to some - is that he embraces ambiguity. He isn't concerned with clarity. He chooses to focus on mood, texture, and raw emotion. There's a confidence in the way he holds on a shot just long enough to make you uncomfortable, or lets silence fill a room until it becomes its own character. He doesn't spoon-feed you anything. And somehow, it works.

Visually, The Return is stunning. He uses darkness like no one else. Shadows dominate scenes - both literally and metaphorically. And when there is light, it's often cold and surreal, or violently artificial, like the flickering neon in the Bang Bang Bar. His framing is deliberate, almost painterly, with so much attention given to the awkwardness of space and distance between people. It all adds to the unease. Even the digital cinematography, which some might find jarring at first, feels like a deliberate choice - a way to show the world through a warped lens, to blur reality with fiction.

Narratively, The Return is a maze. Lynch completely subverts the idea of nostalgia or resolution. Instead of giving us Dale Cooper as we remember him, we get Dougie Jones - a hollow version of him for most of the season. And somehow, that absurd, frustrating choice becomes brilliant. It forces us to feel the weight of lost time, identity, and purpose. When Cooper finally returns, it's euphoric - but even that moment doesn't last. Lynch is constantly reminding us: "You will never go back to how things were."

The themes of Twin Peaks as a whole are so profound that I still don't think I've fully unpacked them. Identity, trauma, duality, the nature of evil, the illusion of time - it's all there. Laura Palmer isn't just a girl who was murdered. She becomes this symbol of suffering, of purity corrupted, and also of resistance. Lynch doesn't treat evil as something that can be easily explained or defeated. It's everywhere - in the woods, in our homes, in ourselves. And then there's Judy, or Jowday, this metaphysical force of pure malevolence that's never truly seen but always felt. You can't fight it head-on. You can't even fully understand it.

And then there are the absurd fan theories - which I love. Some people think Cooper is trapped in a time loop. Others say Laura is actually the dreamer, or that the whole thing is playing out in some alternate dimension within her mind. There's the idea that The Return is a meditation on art itself - Lynch literally creating a world and then trying to save his own creation. And of course, Monica Bellucci's dream - "We are like the dreamer who dreams, and then lives inside the dream" - is maybe the most cryptic, and most revealing, line in the entire show. That moment hit me hard. It felt like Lynch wasn't just telling a story - he was questioning the very act of storytelling.

What makes Twin Peaks: The Return a masterpiece in my eyes isn't just the complexity or the visuals or even the sound design (which is incredible). It's the feeling that David Lynch is operating on a frequency most people can't hear. He's not trying to impress anyone. He's just being, expressing something deeply personal, something raw and often uncomfortable. It's not always fun. It's not always entertaining. But it's honest. And in a world full of media that's trying so hard to be palatable, Lynch's work feels like a scream in the void - haunting, beautiful, and impossible to forget.

What a fascinating case of mass self-delusion this has been. It's truly amazing and disgusting how heavily people are stroking themselves over their ability to force themselves to choke down something that is so very poorly executed just so they can reach that oh so "clever" hidden story within.

Look, I know that it must be very comforting to keep talking down to people about how they just don't get the weirdness and complexity of it all (because WOW, use of metaphor and non-linear storytelling in the video medium? UNHEARD OF!), but that's really not the problem here. It's the absolutely abysmal pacing and structure. Yes people, we get it. Lynch likes to pull the same old thing out of his bag of tricks that he always has, where he tries to artificially induce unease by drawing scenes out well past their welcome, except instead of the handful of times spread out across a 2-3 hour movie we are now treated to 45/60 minutes of this filler in each episode of an 18 hour saga, leaving very little room for any actual worthwhile content. You don't need to be a mathematician to see that the ratio between the two is incredibly uneven.

But OK, yippee hooray for ARTISTIC INTEGRITY! He has such complete free rein to spew out completely unfettered streams of consciousness that no one at all will dare to tell him that maybe things like having a confused old woman talking to the police about who has the keys to a door for 10 straight minutes is an absolute waste of film, and none of you will dare admit that this pile of slop is in dire need of editing because you're too busy preening about what an artistic genius Lynch is, and how open-minded and avant-garde you are by extension for being able to wrap your heads around a plot that's literally been done a hundred times before in superhero comic books.

A big slow clap for you all.

It's finally here! And the first 2 hour episode of season 3 is an absolute joy to watch. When the original series aired, i was in my early teens, but i could still enjoy the show. I might not have understood all that was going on, but as it turned out, neither did anyone else.

This was the magic behind Twin Peaks, it had no conclusion, like ever. It's the everlasting chase or hunt for something, that is never found. And once the murderer was revealed in the original series, the viewers left the show quickly, it wasn't suppose to be revealing. People watched it for the mystery, and apparently this mystery could have been stretched for 10 seasons, and people would still have been glued to their seats every time a new episode aired. The show was that captivating, more so than almost anything ever aired before.

This was so different from anything else back then, no one had ever dared to make something like this, almost not even with movies. Actually the show was intended to be just a TV movie, but the people that saw it went ballistic, so they decided to make 7 episodes to air. But then the show exploded in popularity and got 10+ emmy award nominations and suddenly the show became insanely popular.

It's kind of a mystery how, it was definitely not a show made for everyone, but still, it ranks as one of the best shows of all time. Why? What was so special about this show? Well you could probably line up 10 professors and movie experts to try and explain it, you would probably get 10 different answers.

So here we are 25+ years later. The first episode of the new season has just aired, and i am thrilled. This was an absolute joy to watch, and it captures the essence of the original series really well. You can tell that Lynch is all over it, he has total control. And just as you would expect, it is bizarre, weird, mystical, scary and incredibly entertaining. And i have no idea what so ever what is happening.

When i saw this first episode i thought of Quentin Tarantino a lot and how great he is at setting up conversation scenes with lots of tension, like the pipe scene at the beginning of Inglorious Basterds. Which is one of the best scenes in all of movie history.

Here in this first episode you have this kind of tension in almost every scene, and the people could be doing anything. Eating donuts, checking voicemails, deliver packages, watch TV, have sex. Whatever, the suspense is with it all the way, and i have no idea why, because i have no clue what I'm watching. It's just there.

This is one of the things that makes Twin Peaks so special, you are just along for the ride, no matter where it takes you, just enjoy the moment. Let it embrace you, it is what you want it to be. And this show does this better than any other TV show in history. The new season is apparently no exception. After the first episode I'm sold, when the song was performed at the end of it, while we see many of the original cast come together, that just sealed it for me, what a way to continue the saga. Absolutely brilliant film making.

I can't wait to see the rest of it, this is quality.

10/10 first episode - Masterful