Twin Peaks: Season 3 Finale "What is Your Name?" Review

 "What's going on?"

-Carrie Page

The final episode of The Return picks up with MIKE (Al Strobel) creating a tulpa of Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and sending him back to Janey-E (Naomi Watts) and Sonny Jim (Pierce Gagnon).

Cooper ends up back in the Black Lodge and when he leaves, he finds Diane (Laure Dern) waiting for him.  They drive for 430 miles before coming to a stop.  They kiss once before continuing onward.  They appear to drive into a different timeline of some kind and day immediately becomes night.

Cooper stops at a motel and goes inside to get a room.  While he does that, Diane sees herself watching her from nearby.  Cooper and Diane go into the motel room and have very uncomfortable sex.  The next day, Cooper wakes up alone and finds a note to Richard from Linda saying that she was gone and not to look for her.

Cooper continues on to Odessa, Texas and stops at a diner called Eat at Judy's.  He asks the waitress, Kristi (Francesca Eastwood), if there is a second waitress who works there.  There is, but she hasn't shown up to work for three days.  A group of cowboys harass Kristi and Cooper intervenes.  He disarms them all after shooting one of them in the foot.  He puts the guns in the deep fryer before getting the second waitress' address and leaving.

He goes to the address and meets Carrie Page (Sheryl Lee), who looks exactly like Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee).  She claims to have never heard of Laura Palmer, but gets confused when Cooper mentions the names of her parents.  Cooper asks her to accompany him to Twin Peaks.  Carrie agrees because she needs to get out of town.  As she gets her bags, Cooper spots a dead body in her living room, but they leave without addressing it.

They drive all the way to the Palmer house in Twin Peaks, but Carrie doesn't recognize anything.  The current owner of the house is Alice Tremond (Mary Reber) and has never heard of Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie).  She claims she bought the home from a Mrs. Chalfont (Frances Bay).  They leave the house with Cooper, very confused, asking what year it is.  Carrie hears Sarah shouting "Laura?" and screams.  The lights of the Palmer house go out.

What Works:

At least one good thing happens in this episode.  Janey-E and Sonny Jim get their very own Cooper to keep.  I would watch a whole sitcom of the three of them and their wacky antics.  Hopefully it's very lighthearted.

The rest of the episode is just bizarre, even by Twin Peaks standards.  It feels like we leave the show behind and move on to something else.  It's tricky to write about because I don't know what this new show is.  This episode feels like it is setting up storylines for a next season, but we don't ever get that, at least as of 2024.  That said, all of this set up is really interesting.  I have lots of questions about who Carrie, Richard, and Linda are.  

Both Laura Dern and Sherly Lee are excellent in this episode.  The sex scene between Diane and Copper is simply unnerving because of Dern's performance.  It's genuinely upsetting to watch.  And Lee does such a good job of playing Carrie, yet riding the line of her connection to Laura.  Her facial expressions are fantastic and sell her scenes a lot more than the dialogue alone.

Finally, the end of the season is pretty chilling.  Cooper failed at whatever he was trying to do and he and Carrie seem stuck.  We end with Carrie screaming and the lights going out.  It's a chilling, if frustrating, way to end the season.

What Sucks:

When Twin Peaks ended the first time, it ended on an absolutely brutal cliffhanger.  So when The Return came about, I was excited to finally get some closure.  And while the season 2 cliffhanger is resolved, of course we end on another brutal cliffhanger with no sign of satisfaction in sight.  I remember being absolutely furious with the ending the first time I watched this.  I just want some closure, damn it.  I get the point that we don't always get closure.  I think Lynch succeeded in exactly what he was going for, but I don't have to love it.

On the rewatch, this is still a very effective episode of Twin Peaks, but for me it loses some impact in knowing that this is the end.  If there were another season of the show or maybe another movie or a book or anything, that could change.  But we're introduced to a whole new world in the final episode of the series.  It's hard to get attached. 

Crystal Coffee:

The Crystal Coffee Award goes to the most competent character of the episode.  For Part 18, there aren't a ton of options, but I'm going to give it to Dale Cooper for disarming the cowboys and convincing Carrie to go to Twin Peaks with him.  Here are the final standings:

Dale Cooper: 12

Mr. C: 8

Windom Earle: 4

Audrey Horne: 3

Bobby Briggs: 3

Sheriff Harry Truman: 2

Deputy Andy Brennan: 1

Major Garland Briggs: 1

Jonathan Kumagai: 1

Deputy Hawk Hill: 1

James Hurley: 1

Evelyn Marsh: 1

Lana Milford: 1

Catherine Martell: 1

Father Wesley (From the "Dual Spires" episodes of Psych): 1

Gordon Cole: 1

Janey-E Jones: 1

The Woodsmen: 1

Albert Rosenfield: 1

Miriam Sullivan: 1

Gary "Hutch" Hutchens: 1

Sarah Palmer: 1

Chantal Hutchens: 1

Freddie Sykes: 1

Verdict:

I think I respect the finale of The Return more than I enjoy it.  I think David Lynch fully succeeded in what he was trying to do, I just don't really like what he was going for, but that's okay.  We do get a happy ending for Janey-E and Sonny Jim at the very least.  Plus we have great performances from Laura Dern and Sheryl Lee, as well as a memorable end to the show.  I don't love the lack of closure and it's hard for me to get truly invested on the rewatch knowing that this is the end, but the episode as a whole is a solid piece of art.  My feelings on it could definitely change, especially if we get another entry in the series in some capacity.

 8/10: Really Good