Twin Peaks wasn’t a series that was made to answer questions. The fever dream of a television program that lurched forth from David Lynch and Mark Frost’s minds in 1990 was a cult success, spawning the kind of enduring fandom most TV creators can only dream of. Now that the series is returning to Showtime on May 21 for a limited-run revival, fans can revisit the strange, evocative series once more. More importantly, they can finally find out if some of their decades-long questions about the idiosyncratic series will get answered.
Of course, this is the part where we warn you not to hold your breath—the series is built on the back of Lynch’s obsession with narrative mysteries. So obsessive is he that the public still doesn’t know any details about the revival, which is only days away; the only cast member who has read the entire script is lead actor Kyle MacLachlan (a.k.a. Special Agent Dale Cooper), who had to devour it all in one go while sitting in a room by himself.
Still, the rest of us are only human, up late at night wondering if Diane is real, or what the full story behind Killer Bob and Mike is. It all remains to be seen. For now, here are the most pressing questions we hope the revival addresses.
You see, the message of Twin Peaks was that “normalcy” was a construct and the world was a weird and random place where we attempt to impose our own patterns. ABC, like other networks, was pledged to elevating the normal and typical in search of the LCD ratings smash. Twin Peaks wasn't a series that was made to answer questions. The fever dream of a television program that lurched forth from David Lynch.
Will we ever see Agent Cooper’s secretary, Diane?
She’s a constant presence, yet we have no idea what she looks like. How many times have we seen Agent Cooper press a tape recorder to his face and ask Diane, his distant but loyal secretary, to do a number of tasks for him? Or just listen to him spew theories about the case he’s working on? So many times, in fact, that Simon & Schuster put together an audio file of all the times Cooper has recorded a message for her. Naturally, many fans of the series have theorized that Diane isn’t real, and is more or less a comforting figment of Cooper’s imagination. However, we know Lynch wants us to believe she’s real, because at certain points Cooper thanks her for completing said tasks, such as when she sends over a pair of earplugs at his request. She’s so vital that when he was shot at the end of Season 1 and thought he was dying, his “last” words were a message for her.
It would be nice to see the woman behind dozens of messages, an ever-present figure since the show’s inception. And while we’re on this topic—what’s her last name, anyway?
Whatever happened to Annie Blackburn?
Here’s one that may never be resolved. Annie Blackburn, played by Heather Graham, was Norma Jennings’s sister, who becomes a Double R Diner waitress and falls in love with Agent Cooper. However, like Cooper’s other love, Audrey Horne, Annie’s last appearance in the series is mystifying and open-ended. We last see her in the hospital in a trance-like state, later telling Cooper in the Red Room that she’s still alive, while the Bob-possessed Agent Cooper doppelganger mockingly snickers “How’s Annie?” in the mirror. Graham, however, hasn’t been announced as one of the cast members returning to the series, so we may never get to see Annie Blackburn again.
It’s been 25 years. What does that have to do with Laura?
One of the most enduring promises of the series came from its original finale, when Laura Palmer, sitting pretty in the Red Room, tells Cooper, “I’ll see you again in 25 years.” Lynch and Frost began kicking up ideas for the revival around 2012, according toGary Levine, Showtime’s executive vice president of original programming, so it seems like the timing might have something to do with keeping up Palmer’s end of the bargain.
Though the premise of the show revolves around Laura’s death, she’s a major presence in the series all the same. Actress Sheryl Lee, who plays Laura, also worked double time: she played Laura’s identical cousin, Maddy Ferguson—who also gets murdered by Leland Palmer—as well. Now that those 25 years have passed, how much more could Lynch escalate the mystery surrounding the then-teen’s life?
How did Audrey Horne survive?
To refresh your memory: at the end of the show, Horne is at the bank during an explosion, and it’s basically the last we see of her. The character was apparently supposed to appear in Fire Walk with Me, but due to a good bit of gossip from actress Sherilyn Fenn herself, was cut because Lynch was “mad” at her for trying to squeeze the movie into her busy schedule. Later, Mark Frost’s comprehensive book Secret History of Twin Peaks revealed that Horne somehow survived the blast and ended up in a coma. It sure seems like Lynch got over his tiff with Fenn, because she’s going to appear in the revival. But in what capacity is Horne returning? And has she been in a coma all these years?
We’re not going to talk about Judy . . . or are we?
Here’s one for the Fire Walk with Me fans: who’s Judy? All we know is that we’re not supposed to know anything about the mysterious character, who is mentioned only in the film and not the series. She’s mentioned briefly by Jeffries (played by David Bowie), who angrily tells Agent Cooper, “I’m not gonna talk about Judy. In fact, we’re not gonna talk about Judy at all; we’re gonna keep her out of it.”
The plot thickens toward the end of the prequel, when a monkey whispers the name “Judy,” once more pushing the audience to wonder about this mystery character. A couple of years ago, it seemed like we might get an answer to this, as Bowie was announced as one of the characters returning for the revival. Unfortunately, the iconic musician died last year. But perhaps Lynch will find a new way to still incorporate a revelation about Judy, a mystery that has haunted fans for years.
What’s Bob and Mike’s deal?
They were central to the series, but there’s still so much we don’t know about their backstories. Bob, or “Killer Bob,” was the show’s main creepy villain, a rapist and murderer who traps Cooper in the Black Lodge by the end of the series. Mike was his serial partner, who later turns on him after seeing the “face of God”—which, hey, while we’re at it, we’d love to know more about too. Biographical details about the two are slim—we learn minor bits and pieces from their own revelations and from the revelations of other characters, like when Leland Palmer says he recognizes Mike from his childhood. But will the revival tell us more? That’s tough to guess, namely because the actor who played Bob, Frank Silva, died in 1995. Lynch will have to find a new way to give viewers an update on the character all these years later. As you’ll recall, the last we saw of Bob in the show was him inhabiting a Cooper doppelganger and smashing his face in a mirror, laughing maniacally at his success.
How does Agent Cooper get out of the Black Lodge?
The series finale ended on a mammoth cliffhanger, with Agent Cooper trapped in the hellish Black Lodge. The plot point was supposed to be a setup for a third season, but the show was ultimately canceled.
Considering Cooper’s centrality to the series, it stands to reason that he’ll eventually make it out (can you even imagine if the entirety of the revival is just Cooper dealing with a revolving door of nightmare people in the Lodge?). As the revival kicks off, ideally we’ll get an immediate answer on how Cooper gets out of there.
Where (and why) does creamed corn figure into the workings of the universe?
In the world of Twin Peaks, a number of things can be construed as red herrings. In Season 2, the random appearance of creamed corn and purported mysterious properties of the goopy substance seemed like one of those things. But then it wasn’t! Or . . . was it?
Creamed corn, it turns out, is the physical form of “garmonbozia” in the series, which means “pain and suffering.” We see it again and again in the show, but never learn the origin of the term, or why creamed corn, of all things, is the real world manifestation of it. What gives, David Lynch? As usual—we may never know.
15 On-Set Beefs That Will Go Down in Hollywood History
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Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones
Jim Carrey is an acquired taste—one that Tommy Lee Jones never acquired. Carrey learned that the hard way when the pair got together to shoot the 1995 film Batman Forever. The night before a big scene, both actors happened to be at the same restaurant, so the comedian went over to say hello. Here’s what happened next, according to his 2014 interview with Howard Stern:“The blood drained from his face in such a way that I realized that I had become the face of his pain or something. And he got up, kind of shaking, and hugged me and said, ‘I hate you. I really don’t like you.’ And I was like, ‘Wow, okay, what’s going on, man?’ And he said, ‘I cannot sanction your buffoonery.’”
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There’s a moment in the new season of “Twin Peaks” where it becomes clear that after more than three decades making movies and TV, David Lynch still has a prominent male gaze.
The iconic director and writer — known for surreal, small town soap opera “Twin Peaks” as well as films like “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Drive” — has been the subject of criticism for years about his treatment of women onscreen. While he has created some of the most memorable female characters, they often become the subjects of voyeurism and also assault.
It happens early in the new Showtime series, in Part One, where we see young lovers Tracy (Madeline Zima) and Sam (Benjamin Rosenfield) begin a sexual encounter. The two sit awkwardly on a couch in between two dim lamps before the tension becomes too much. They start making out before Tracy stands up and starts removing her clothes.
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Lynch chooses to frame this from Sam’s point of view, keeping the camera steady on his body and face as he watches his partner. Tracy, on the other hand, is placed with her back towards the camera, her face completely out of view. She’s positioned on the right side of the screen with only her lower back, buttocks and upper legs showing. As she slowly undresses, we see Sam’s eyes widen as Lynch offers a direct view of Tracy’s bare behind. This is the last we see of her before she is — spoiler — torn to pieces by what appears to be an extra-dimensional monster. Incidentally, Sam gets gruesomely bit up, too.
As “Twin Peaks: The Return” ramps up, we see that Lynch’s habit of killing women in horrific ways hasn’t gone away: Ruth Davenport, a woman from a small South Dakota town, is discovered to have been brutally murdered in her home, the killer having done away with her body but leaving her head.
Lynch isn’t horrible to women, exactly. While he revels in the physical torture of them, his female characters are some of his most complex. Take “Fire Walk With Me,” which puts Laura Palmer in control of her own story. In the original “Twin Peaks” series, Laura is no more than a body. Sheryl Lee — a woman who had never acted before being cast as the murdered teen — was only supposed to be an image wrapped in plastic. However, with “Fire Walk With Me,” she becomes the focus and we as the audience are finally able to bear witness to her trauma at the hands of Bob as well as her tragic death. You get to know her outside of how other people define her and that’s more than anything the original series presented.
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However, before she got her redemption in a feature film, Laura was nothing but a symbol — the girl wrapped in plastic and covered in dirt. She was somebody that was a friend, a lover, or an ethereal icon — not a person. It was Sheryl Lee‘s performance that boosted her character, along with the natural evolution of the series.
The women in Lynch’s works are often the subject of brutal violence. In “Blue Velvet,” one of the main female characters is Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini), who, in order to save her son and husband, subjects herself to the masochistic end of a non-consensual relationship with the man who kidnapped them: Frank (Dennis Hopper). She’s a tragic figure on both ends of the story — both the victim of a sexual deviant with an oedipal complex and the aggressive perpetrator to the protagonist, Jeffrey (Kyle Maclachlan). Her entire being is comprised of her relationship with sex and how men would only want to have sex with her, even if Lynch himself sees it as how a person would go to any length to protect her family.
Like many Lynchian women — from Lula in “Wild at Heart” to the multiple women in “Mulholland Drive” — Dorothy is a puzzle. On one hand, Dorothy is a victim of desperation and an avatar for Lynch to explore those motivations. On the other, she’s still a victim and becomes an object for the director to explore his knack for showcasing disturbing but unique violence.
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Lynch guides his audience to explore their own voyeurism. He has said this over the years, admitting to some of this behavior himself, and it’s easy to see the running theme throughout his works.
“I’m convinced we all are voyeurs,” he said in a 1997 interview. “It’s part of the detective thing. We want to know secrets and we want to know what goes on behind those windows. And not in a way that we would use to hurt anyone.”
However, Lynch has also said in interviews that there’s something about the desecration of the female form and of women that intrigues him.
In response to a 1997 ClearBlue commercial that he directed (yeah that happened), he was asked his reasoning for signing on.
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According to an Entertainment Weekly article, copywriter Lisa Mayer noted, “I said to him, ‘Mr. Lynch, you were attracted to this because it involves the psychological torture of a beautiful young woman.’ And he said, ‘Yes.”‘
The issue with Lynch isn’t that he hates women. In the new series, he puts a capable Constance Talbot (Jane Adams) in charge of investigating a murder scene. He simultaneously focuses on the swaying hips of sultry FBI Agent Tamara Preston (Chrysta Bell) — and we have yet to understand if she has anything of substance to offer aside from her good looks.
(He also includes an exchange between Gordon Cole — played by Lynch himself — and his now-boss, transgender woman Denise, played by David Duchovny. The scene highlights her competency and her status as the boss of the entire FBI bureau.)
But there’s something Lynch finds so fascinating about exploring and destroying the female form that rings uncomfortable in 2017. When his work is filled with so many watchable and relatable female characters, it’s a shame that a lot of them are reduced to their most basic parts.
'Twin Peaks': All the Big Questions We Have Before the Finale (Photos)
- ShowtimeAt just under 18 hours long, the 'Twin Peaks' revival is the longest David Lynch movie ever, so it's only natural that we're gonna have a whole lot of questions nine hours in. There are, of course, lingering questions from the original series -- but for now let's focus on the many new questions we have before the finale (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD).
- ShowtimeOne of the biggest twists of the season was when it was revealed that Diane (Laura Dern) was actually a tulpa, or doppelganger. She had been working for Evil Cooper (or Mr. C as he is known) after he raped her decades ago. But what happened to the real Diane and what was the point of creating the tulpa in the first place?
- ShowtimeBad Coop has a lot of weird scenes in which he seems to be setting the stage for something. That something, though, is still totally unknown at this point. Which leads to probably the biggest question in the revival: After 25 years in the real world, what exactly he trying to accomplish?
- ShowtimeSo while everybody thinks the real Coop is somebody named Dougie Jones, the real Dougie Jones is gone now, having been turned into a ball bearing after taking the real Coop's place in the Black Lodge. MIKE says Dougie was 'manufactured' for the purpose of that swap. Even though real Coop is back, we still don't know who created Dougie and made the swap.
- ShowtimeWe're worried about Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn). For three parts, she tries to leave her home and can't, thanks in part to her husband Charlie. She's acting erratically, jumping from one personality to another. In Part 13 she even says she's a completely different person. 'I'm not sure who I am,' she says. 'But I'm not me' (which is the same thing Diane said before revealing herself as a tulpa). In Part 16, she finally gets to the Roadhouse and becomes herself again only to wake up in a white room. Is she a tulpa and is the real Audrey being held somewhere?
- ShowtimeIn Part 7, Sheriff Truman calls up Dr. Hayward to ask him about the night Evil Doppelganger Coop came out of the Lodge at the end of season 2. Dr. Hawyard says he took Coop to the hospital for a work-up, and then later found him in Intensive Care with that 'strange face' (presumably when BOB shows through). He speculates that Coop was checking on Audrey, who was in a coma after the explosion at the bank. Might that imply that Bad Coop sexually assaulted Audrey? Is she still in the coma?
- ShowtimeWe're not surprised that Laura Palmer's mother Sarah hasn't had a good time since the death of both her daughter and her husband, but what has she been up to? In Part 12 she has a freakout at a grocery store and in Part 13, she's seen sitting in front of a boxing match that continuously repeats herself. Is she just traumatically haunted or does she know something? Her history with visions says the latter, but we're not sure.
- ShowtimeRay disappeared into the Black Lodge after Evil Coop shot him. It could've been just the ring that did it, but what if there's a connection between Ray and the Black Lodge? He said he was hired by Phillip Jeffries (or a man saying he was him) so there has to be something here. Was he another doppelganger, summoned like Dougie?
- ShowtimeSpeaking of which, what happened to Phillip Jeffries? He's a teapot now.
- ShowtimeAnd then there's this box in New York. When Coop tried to leave the Black Lodge he landed on it, was sucked into it and floated through it before ending up in some other weird dimension. Nobody knows who put the box there and paid some kid to stare at it all day, or what exactly it's supposed to do. Additionally, Albert reveals that Bad Coop knows about it and at one point he was there, along with a bald man in a lab coat.
- ShowtimeWhat happened between Bobby and Shelly? We find out in Part 11 that Shelly's last name is 'Briggs,' meaning the two original series lovebirds married at some point. They even had a daughter, Becky. But we see Shelly making goo-goo eyes at a drug dealer named Red (Balthazar Getty), so they're clearly not together anymore.
- ShowtimeWhat's going on with that magic drug dealer anyway? This character, credited as Red, showed up at the Roadhouse in Part 2, where he shot a finger gun at Shelly. In Part 11, we learn he and Shelly are an item, since she excuses herself from a family meeting to make out with him and tell him she'll meet up with him later. Then, in Part 6, he reveals himself as the person Richard is working for -- and he does a bizarre magic trick with a dime that freaks Richard out something fierce.
- ShowtimeWe were treated to a strange scene in Part 11 where Bobby goes to investigate gun shots and comes across a woman screaming in her car about somebody being sick. Then we're introduced to a young girl in the passenger's seat who's practically leaking green fluids as Bobby looks on. Just, what?
- ShowtimeIn Part 10, the Log Lady once again calls Hawk to give him a message, which reads in part, 'the Truman brothers are both true men, they are your brothers,' 'the glow is dying' and 'Laura is the one.' But what does it all mean?
- ShowtimeThe headless body introduced in the beginning of the series belonged to Major Briggs, who Bill Hastings claims to have met in an alternate reality he and the deceased Ruth Davenport called 'the Zone.' And he and Ruth found coordinates for Briggs in a 'secure military database,' and after handing them over Briggs started to float away while saying 'Cooper. Cooper.' And then Briggs's head disappeared. Where do we even begin with this?
- ShowtimeLuckily, when the FBI goes to the site -- directed by Hastings -- they do eventually find Ruth's body. However, we still don't know why her head and body were separated.
- Showtime25 years earlier, Briggs had given his wife a small tube to hide until Bobby, Sheriff Truman and Hawk all visited together. The tub contained some cryptic instructions that only Bobby could understand, as well as a copy of the transmission from outer space that Project Blue Book had received 25 years earlier. The one that was a bunch of normal gibberish but with 'Cooper/Cooper' tossed in the mix. Is the implication, then, that Major Briggs is the one who sent that transmission?
- ShowtimeWe should also note that the transmission, which Briggs showed Cooper way back in season 2, would have been sent before Briggs went into hiding. However, given that Briggs had not aged when Hastings and Ruth met him indicates that 'the Zone' works differently than Black Lodge that Coop was locked in for decades. Could there be a time travel element in this?
- ShowtimeAnd why was Dougie's wedding ring inside Major Briggs' body?
- ShowtimeBy the way: Bill's wife seems to have known Evil Doppelganger Coop -- who murdered her in Part 2. Were the other people in the Zone working with Bad Coop somehow?
- ShowtimeSo it turns out, according to Part 9, that Duncan Todd (Patrick Fischler) was working for Bad Coop (before his death)-- and thus Bad Coop was the one sending assassins after Dougie/Good Coop. How much did Bad Coop know about what's going on with Dougie?
- ShowtimeIs it just a coincidence that Johnny knocked a picture of White Tail Falls off the wall when he ran into it? What is the significance of that? And what was the point of that scene anyway?
- ShowtimeAt the end of Part 9, we see a young woman named Ella (Sky Ferrera) meet with a friend at the Roadhouse. She has a weird rash on her armpit, and she and her friend exchange weird sentences like 'Have you see that penguin?' So, yeah, what does this have to do with anything?
- ShowtimeIn Part 1, our favorite otherworldly giant (Carel Struycken) returned to present Agent Cooper with some knew cryptic sayings: 'Remember 430. Richard and Linda. Two birds with one stone.' We know now who Richard and Linda both are but what is their connection, especially now that Richard is most likely dead?
- ShowtimeAs Agent Cooper was journeying out of the Black Lodge toward reality in Part 3, he encountered the spectre of Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine) in some new extra-dimensional space. She warned him that he needed to hurry because 'my mother is coming' -- possibly implying a new major paranormal force. And another thing the giant said was, 'It is in our house now,' which maybe could be referring to that 'mother.' But what is it?
- ShowtimeIn Part 8, we saw a floating woman with what looked like an umbilical cord coming out of her face -- and an image of BOB appearing on the cord. So is this 'Mother?'
- ShowtimeWho is the woman in the evening gown (credited as 'Senorita Dido' and played by actress Joy Nash) with the Giant in Part 8? They live on some part of the spectral plane and appear to have been monitoring that mysterious Mother somehow -- and they apparently created Laura Palmer in response to seeing BOB's face in the umbilical cord. So... what's all that?
- ShowtimeWhat's the deal with the hobo ghosts, aka the woodsmen? We'd seen them a couple times in the 'Twin Peaks' revival in random spots, but they were front and center in Part 8, seemingly resurrecting Bad Coop and then showing up all over New Mexico in the 1940s and '50s. But what did they actually <em>do</em>? And where did they come from? Did the atomic bomb test bring them into this world from the Lodge?
- Who was the girl in New Mexico? The frog bug thing, which we believe is BOB, crawled into her mouth, but we have no idea who she is. Sarah Palmer maybe? Could the bug actually be the Laura spirit rather than BOB?
- ShowtimeIn that other dimension with Ronette and the woman (listed in the credits as 'Naidu') whose eyes were covered in flesh, we see a couple of strange machines -- one labeled 15 and the other, which transported Coop to the real world, labeled 3. Later, Coop finds a hotel key from the Great Northern in Twin Peaks for room 315, which is the room Coop stayed in during the original series. Connected?
- ShowtimeIn Part 6, Hawk took apart one of the bathroom stall doors and discovered three missing pages from Laura Palmer's diary -- including the page on which she wrote the supernatural message from Annie from 'Fire Walk With Me.' Hawk speculates in Part 7 that Leland Palmer hid them there when they brought him in for questioning for Jacques Renault's murder. But where's the other missing page, and what does it say?
- ShowtimeHow's Annie? Heather Graham has said she wasn't returning for the 'Twin Peaks' revival, which could be misdirection -- or it could mean she's dead or missing or some other nefarious 'Twin Peaks' thing. We've had multiple reminders of her important role in the past, though, which would seem to imply she's still important now, in some way.
- ShowtimeWhat is this black box sitting in an ashtray in Buenos Aires? In Part 5 we see it twice, first when the assassins trying to kill Dougie Jones report in to a woman named Lorraine, who then calls the box. Then, later, Bad Coop seemingly also calls the box from prison, after which it morphs into a small piece of metal. Also, Phillip Jeffries (David Bowie) is said to have disappeared from Buenos Aires in 'Fire Walk With Me.' And Rosenfield says Bad Coop and Jeffries worked together on a thing together in Colombia at some point? And apparently Phillip wants to kill Bad Coop. So what does all this mean and how do the dots connect?
- ShowtimeWhat was that weird hum/ringing sound that Ben Horne and Beverly Paige heard in the Great Northern in Part 7? It seems to be coming from everywhere and nowhere -- could this be Josie Packard continuing to haunt the place? Remember, Ben Horne previously saw her face in a drawer pull in season 2 after she died.
- ShowtimeWhile Carl is in town, he has a sort of encounter with Richard Horne, when he witnesses Richard plows over a young boy with his truck. In a weird way, we could consider this Carl's 'Richard and Linda' day, though that could be a reach. Also, Carl seemingly saw the boy's soul float away after he died -- we know that Carl likely was taken to the Lodge when he was young, but why would a Lodge-related vision manifest for him now?
- ShowtimeWe finally get to meet the kid Lucy was pregnant with all through the original series, and he's a weirdo named Wally Brando played by Michael Cera who makes this really bizarre speech to Sheriff Other Truman (Robert Forster). Somehow this scene is weirder than everything else in the show thus far. What the hell?
We examine all the new mysteries (major spoilers ahead)
At just under 18 hours long, the 'Twin Peaks' revival is the longest David Lynch movie ever, so it's only natural that we're gonna have a whole lot of questions nine hours in. There are, of course, lingering questions from the original series -- but for now let's focus on the many new questions we have before the finale (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD).