Twin Peaks: The Return is a Masterfully Written Piece of Horror Television

Twin Peaks: The Return is officially the best horror show ever written. I cannot put into words how much I truly enjoyed this masterpiece. This show exceeds Hollywood expectations, delving into a whole other universe where not everything is ever explained, but you can’t look away. We return to the small town of Twin Peaks 25 years later, and we are now in modern times.

Dale Cooper is still stuck in the Red Room after his heroic sacrifice to save Annie Blackburn, who had been kidnapped by a serial killer at the end of season 2. Dale unfortunately ended up stuck in a supernatural realm for 25 years, and his evil doppelganger known as Mr. C was the one to take his place in the real world, causing havoc for more than 2 decades.

While Mr. C is one of the few dangerous entities from the Black Lodge, there were also those that wanted to help both Dale Cooper and his old companions from Twin Peaks. We are exposed to more of the world within the Red Room, as we slowly get a strong build up to the final battle of Mr. C, who is being controlled by the scariest entity of the Black Lodge, Bob, who was responsible for the death of Laura Palmer, that brought Cooper to Twin Peaks many years ago.

We even finally get an incredible origin story of how the Black Lodge came to be, including how Laura was brought to Earth. We learn that Bob, along with other dangerous entities were created by an explosion in the world back in the day, a source of evil. The Giant, another entity of the Red Room, creates Laura, the one person who would battle the Black Lodge, and Dale Cooper would continue Laura’s fight after her death.

One of these entities was known as the Firemen from the Black Lodge, who killed several people in a radio show station and repeated a poem over and over, to have one entity from the Black Lodge possess a young girl, (this was strongly hinted to possibly be Laura’s mother), to begin the future takeover of Bob going after Laura.

Dale Cooper is able to eventually leave the Red Room, but he takes the place of another man named Dougie, due to Mr. C refusing to go back to the Black Lodge. He loses his memory, and Cooper takes on the persona of Dougie, bringing good things to the people around him, including his new family, a wife and child. Both Twin Peaks and Cooper’s old friends in the FBI are continuing their investigation into Dale Cooper, getting ready to face his doppelganger when that future battle comes.

David Lynch beautifully tied all of these storylines together, while introducing side storylines that still left me baffled, excited, happy, and terrified of the horror taking place.

It all led to an insane conclusion, and while I had heard that the ending of Twin Peaks was going to end on a cliffhanger like the last two seasons, this ending felt extremely haunting compared to the other seasons. This is the only television show that could have gotten away with another cliffhanger like ending, but the way that it was executed was scary as hell.

It’s one of the darkest endings I have ever seen to a horror television show, and only David Lynch could have pulled off this masterpiece.

Twin Peaks: The Return is a horror triumph, and it’s a television show that will continue to remain a cult classic.

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Thank you for reading!

Emy Quinn