We'll never know what Laura whispered into Cooper's ear, and that's why this is the final shot of Twin Peaks. Twin Peaks is not about answers, it's about mystery itself. It's the ocean in our minds, what we don't know, what we can't comprehend, what will always remain on the edges of our understanding--and the humility that comes with that. What we don't know will always vastly outweigh what we do know. Mystery will always haunt us, and we have to learn how to be okay with that.
But we do know. In the Return, Laura repeats everything she had said 25 years ago in shot for shot recreation of the same dream. 25 years ago, in that moment of that freeze frame, Laura told Cooper that her father killed her. With the final scene in the street, I believe Laura is waking up to realize what happened to her.
@antarcticaresearchprogram8349 this is revealed in the original show too. When cooper has the dream he says laura told him who killed her, but he couldn't remember.
Knowing this song (Dark Space Low) was one of the last things Angelo Badalmenti worked on makes it so much more poignant. It's such a beautiful yet haunting piece, and it fits so well with the slow motion footage of Kyle's reaction
Angelo Goodalamenti deserves way more recognition for his essential contribution to Twin Peaks. The show would be irreparably different without his memorable music.
@@omegamanGXE he's so monumental that he basically created a whole genre of music, or at least catalyzed its popularity. the amount of "dark jazz" bands i see with twin peaks-related names is just beautiful...he'll live on forever through his music and our love for him
@@SneedEnthusiast Gotcha, I was curious because it was worded as though it was this song in particular vs the Season 3 soundtrack as a whole, I misunderstood
Kyle should win an award just for his expressions here, the emotions you can see in his face---awe, an epiphany, confusion, pure and utter terror, shock, dread---and finally, a look of sadness and "resolution". He has accepted his fate.
Man, I keep going back to this ending. The music and final image is amazing. Maybe everyone wasn't happy with the way it ended, but I got so much out of it and am glad it was made.
Me too. Honestly I wasnt happy with the whole 'mindfuck' but it worked emotionnaly. That confusion during ep 18, that final scene and this music... That season was one hell of a ride and im grateful for all of it
That final image is so striking, just the whispering, ultraslow, locked in time, the two of them...it's stayed with me long after I finished watching it.
I didn't care much for The Return as a whole, but I thought the ending was brilliant. I wasn't "happy" with it at the time, but it was emotionally resonant and haunting in a way that most of the rest of the new show wasn't, and in a way that the best of Lynch often is.
The impression I really got from this was at a core level Cooper tried to fix things and either failed or just made everything worse. Something I think can resonate with a lot of people and is my favourite type of tragedy through the ages. Perhaps what Laura whispered is something he should have remembered, or remembered too late.
yeah it sorta plays into Coop being a man who cant help but be righteous, looking for people to save and do better by even when he already did enough in everyone's eyes, a "heroic" quality but also one that doesn't so easily contend with reality and we see the cost of that here.
It was first time in many years when I finished watching a movie and I cried not from sadness but from overwhelming feeling of pure terror. It's really been a loooong, long time since an audiovisual material projected on a screen made me feel physically sick. The subtle breaking of 4th wall in this episode actually affected me as a viewer, making it seem hyperreal. Not a single horror movie, or a realistic war drama came close to what I felt after credits rolled. In my entire life. I felt disoriented, disjointed, nauseous and furious. It was like I wanted to hug and punch Lynch simultaneously for making me feel so dualistic. On one hand I was moved about it being the last TP seconds ever (and probably last Lynch seconds too), but on the other hand the whole surreal affair Part 18 gave me so many claustrophobic, haunting, out-of-there moments I couldn't really collect my thoughts together. I will remember this rare and exceptional experience till the rest of my days...
Pineal Dreams Lynch doesn't feel like the type to simply retire and quit altogether. I feel like he just lives comfortably until a few ideas spark and he wants to create things. be it music, art, film or whatever
I was profoundly disturbed by the ending. I want to believe some of the theories I've read that say Cooper's plan succeeded, but I dunno man... when I watch it I just have this very strong feeling that evil won.
It's not that evil won. It's that suffering was needed and that makes it dark even though the plan succeeded. In order to fight evil, Laura still had to suffer. She had to live a life in that world fighting against the same kind of destructive men who broke her down in Twin Peaks. Remember the dude who was shot in the head in her house? It seems strongly implied that he was abusing her and she managed to kill him after enduring a lifetime of suffering so she could try to defeat Judy. Diane had to have sex with an emotionally vacant Cooper, which mirrored her rape, in order to bait Judy, good people had to make real sacrifices. So even though evil didn't win in its purest form, suffering won. Maybe the future will be better, but there is blood on the tracks.
There’s so many ways to look at it, but imo neither good or evil won, everything was swallowed by the progression of time. There is still an echo though, and perhaps that echo comes from us, watching at home, wishing it could be neatly tied up, but in doing so we dig up that trauma once again.
I mean in a way he did save Laura’s life, which means Judy lost and can’t grow more powerful from her. But it’s still around and will definitely continue its evil cycle, plus now Laura & Cooper’s lives are ruined, being in an alternate reality with no way back. So I’d say it’s all kind of bittersweet.
I think lynch is showing us that no matter what one can do/think, you can’t change terrible things. In this case, Laura was murdered and that can’t be changed.
Lazar Mladenoski and Laura’s Death May have been prevented in the original 1989 timeline but in turn of doing that, everything that happened post 89 never happens and Cooper never goes to Twin Peaks in the first place since Laura may be alive. But now 2017 Cool and Laura are stuck in the lodges or whatever is in between while their doppelgängers (Dougie and Carrie Page) live on their lives for them
Was watching the finale with a friend of mine. The second "starring Kyle Maclachlan" showed up I screamed "NOOOOOOO!!!". We spent the next hour walking around in my apartment trying to make sense of everything.
The ending aired on a holiday weekend here in the US. I was so glad to not have to go to work the next day, because I wouldn't have been able to sleep. I called my brother, and the two of us emoted to each other for an hour, so confused. Then, I had to call a friend and go out for a drink just to get away from it. Maybe one of the most gutting moments in film/TV I've ever experienced, and this song still hits me.
The best theory I've heard is that Twin Peaks is best explained as a commentary on television of its era. This is why David Lynch left mid way through season 2. He didn't want to reveal to murderer of Laura Palmer, but was forced through producers and fans to do so, since everyone was so eager to know who it was. Many of the super natural characters are aware that they are on a tv show. They are aware that the only way anyone in their universe exists or is relevant is through the murder of Laura Palmer. Because, American audiences are so attracted to murder and violence on t.v. So Dale Cooper, representing the audience, goes back in time to prevent her death in turn preventing the show from ever being made, making their universe collapse in on itself. This ending is almost like a middle finger to everyone. Dale, again representing the audience, "solves" mystery, thus hollowing out the core of the show. The last image is her essentially telling him his life, and the audiences' obsession, is a lie.
Did anyone expect The Return to be _this_ good? I didn't. These returns to old shows almost NEVER work. And yet this was better than the original series, maybe because I was too young to have watched them back in the day, so I'm not nostalgic about them. And the fact that some people just could not get past the first couple of episodes(which I can understand tbh) means it's a bit of a secret wonder for everyone who watched the whole thing. I caught up on a LOT of classic boxsets over the last three years: Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Wire. And there are days when I rate The Return as second only to The Sopranos as greatest TV show ever.
Imho it was so good because it refused to cater to the "coffee and cherry pie :DDD" nostalgia crowd and nested itself in contemporary TV genre tropes instead of the soap opera stuff that was popular when the first series came out. As Tony Soprano says "remember when" is the lowest form of conversation
@@unadulterated exactly. It basically transported the characters we knew from the original series but didn't cave into the nostalgic and sentimental aspect of reboots where there are just callbacks and fanservice moments. It instead combined that with something more akin to the tone we had in FWWM and as you said, the modern television landscape. It excelled so well by paving new ground and taking insane risks which paid off. Also, Lynch had unrestricted freedom
@Cabra Marcado What did you want from it that you didn't get? I had no expectations at all. I wasn't a huge fan of the original series and I watched the first two episodes out of curiosity because the reviews were so polarised between 'brilliant' and 'unwatchable shit'. Then I just kept watching. There are stretches of it where it's boring. Where it's cloying, sentimental, or where it's just silly. But they're overwhelmed by all the moments of deep, rich, completely unfathomable beauty. I love that it's inexplicable. I'm sick of art that holds my hand. I want to be left reeling and confused at what I've just experienced. On that level and a lot of others The Return delivered.
@Cabra Marcado I've always assumed the shonkiness of the effects works is intentional. There's a moment where a couple are watching a glass box, and something escapes from it and kills them. The effects are technically awful, so bad that they must be intentional: the screen just shakes a bit and there are some red lines on the screen. That's it. But it still gives you a sense of ferocity. It implies great pain and violence even though the effects literally look like a child made them. I think at least some of what you see as amateurish is intentional. There was a recent short Lynch made - an insane noir-ish thing with a monkey that sings a soul ballad at the end. The effects on the monkey's mouth are hilariously crap: they're the same effects cheap comedy shows used in the nineties to make still photos of celebrities say funny things. But the way Lynch uses it makes it look really unsettling. He has a knack for seeing the eerie in the mundane and a lot of that comes down to his striking use of cheap effects.
It’s so great to see the cast and crew talk about returning to do this season especially Kyle because he admits reading the script seeing David and Mark coming up with some UNBELIEVABLE stuff he’s work with them long enough to trust their vision for the show and the characters and did his best to carry out Cooper’s Return the way it seems to them and I honestly think they couldn’t have done it better. This seasons needs to be nominated for some more awards
Usually, the ending logos have an electrical sound coming from them. The reason this isn't there in the last episode is because Twin Peaks is over. By saving Laura Palmer, Twin Peaks never happened. The electricity and flashing lights in the show always referenced the electricity in our TV, bringing us this show, the characters, the information. The is no electricity needed anymore to bring us the story, it's over.
@@WhoopsieDayZ So did you watch this: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-7AYnF5hOhuM.html ? I finally watched it this year. I get all of it now. I had my own interpretation after a few years of introspection on it. But that analysis actually made all the sense in the world. I still like thinking about it, but that explanation by someone who had way more info on Lynch than I ever did really helped.
@@stillinhere I watched this a couple of days ago. I can't remember all of it, as I was half-drunk and tired, but I think he's 100% right. I always thought Twin Peaks was a story about people in a TV show and this video explains that perfectly.
The music is mesmerizing, but it's not just that, the weight of the situation, too. The ambiguous ending. The mystery. I'm not that good to explain this in words, but every time I watch this, it stops my breath and overwhelms my thoughts for a moment.
That track with the visuals makes me so emotional every damn time. It feels like...Coop is still trapped, even when he seemingly got out of one prison. He's in his own cycle of eternity
The end scene; when Laura/Carrie hears Sarah's call "Laura, Laura", she starts waking up from her dream, and will soon get ready for breakfast before getting to school, back in February 1989. The troubled expression on Cooper's face during the end credits is him hearing Laura whisper that she made him up in her dreams, and that he never really existed.
Dreams are portrayed in Twin Peaks as something so much more than the traditional conception of “less-than-real worlds.” This is an interpretation of the dreamer angle that renders everything pointless in a manner I don’t think Lynch would ever approach.
Fire Walk with Me ends with Cooper consoling Laura in bright light as she cries tears of joy and relief. The Return ends with Laura whispering to Cooper in darkness in an expression of pure despair. It's one of the most haunting, unsettling ways to end a story. This isn't a positive ending; it's Lynch letting the audience know that revisiting a series destroys what made it special in the first place. It undoes everything that was wrapped up and laid to rest.
I really can't stand these overly "meta" interpretations, you can very well revisit a series and not destroy it. I think its a great ending but thinking the show is just lynch dunking on the fact that there is even a third season does it a serious disservice. People also seem to forget Mark Frost was writing too.
@@MegaAngryspoon Dude, if you CANT see how Lynch is dunking on his own product, you don't want to see it. That's the general feeling of The Return. A cold, soulless shell of what Twin Peaks once was. It's intentional, and genius. I think you disregard the meta interpretations simply because you don't want them to be true. I did the same thing for a while, convinced they were pretentious twaddle. The more you re-watch though, the more obvious it is. 'What year is this?' is a question to us, directly, that summarises everything wrong with nostalgic reboots.
@@pinealdreams1064 No way man, that’s such a lame way to look at this work of art. People saying “it’s all the dream of such & such” or “it’s about trauma” or “it’s a meta unraveling of Twin Peaks in the first place” are taking these overly simplistic, reductive stances on what’s clearly supposed to be an endlessly conceptual work of art. Frost & Lynch returned to Twin Peaks because upon rewatching the first season they realized they had a narrative end they wanted to meet. Not because they wanted to spend several years writing a 16 hour masterpiece about why people shouldn’t revisit the past. If anything a more present theme is the futility of the past & the inaccessibilities created by borders in realities, the gates kept by forces outside our own. There is much more meaning to be had in Laura’s whisper.
"My father killed me." That's what she had said in the original scene, that the Return does a shot-for-shot recreation of. Everything else she said was the same, and her odd hand gesture was in reference to her journal, which contained that secret as well. Fire Walk With Me blurred the distinction between Leland and BOB, and really made that a crucial focus of her character that the show didn't really have. When the Laura that Cooper saves and brings home realizes this, she screams, and probably wakes up, thus ending the show. She was the dreamer after all. “We live inside a dream.” Now what I find interesting about this line, is that if you speed up the audio when overlay-coop says it, he sounds like Dougie Jones. Which is to say, Dougie is the one saying that line, not Coop, though I don't know what that implies. The point is, the “we live inside a dream” line isn't what Laura is saying here. That statement is true, and Laura is the dreamer, but it's the shocking truth that awakens her, for realizing the truth is what got her killed 25 years earlier.
When at the end of season 2 (e22) lealand appeared he said the line "i did not kill anybody" which means that there was a split in the timeline and some dark forces had the power to enable it .....DAMN COOPER WAS TRICKED TWO TIMES ! it hurts so bad!..Maybe she told him that he never left the black lodge and that this was all a kind of dream and in the same way --OUR DREAM-- to bring back the tv show somehow but did never happend at all .... but anyway this season was a great show thank you david lynch
I come back to this scene and song when I'm sad. And in a way, its comforting, because just as I know the future is uncertain, so does the song, and somehow that comforts me...
I reassessed the ending as being hopeful- that Laura /Carrie "awoke" and her primal scream was an act of strength destroying the evil of the Mother/ Judy
I think Cooper got swallowed up and would be what the agents referred to as never heard again. Just like in FWWM when they find the names Judy uses, those people often vanish as well. I think they are clues. We still may never know about Judy but maybe she is the form of enveloping and snaring negative force that creates her own alternate realities in where the person is missing, never existed, and where they actually went. She condenses time like a black hole, and when they box is introduced we aren't certain if that is her or not. But I like to also mention the sign for her is almost that of a bug or an ant which lynch loves to use. I think she has since the Trinity event infiltrated in the form of a bug and one might compare her alternate worlds as colonies carefully crafted to bring food/lure someone in.
All I can think of when I hear this is the Platonic-Gnostic view that we're never learning but remembering; how our immortal souls saw the Truth before we took on our mortal shells, and in mortality we seek to rediscover it. I'm not sure why I think of this... maybe I'm trying to remember something.
The only show that ever made me feel so many feelings but has stuck with me and left me thinking about it a year later. Funny enough the day im commenting is when this vid was posted so there you go lol. Still I miss laura...
I'm just curious if what Laura tells Cooper while they filmed this scene was anything truly relevant to the story or just gibberish and it was left to him to react in the way that Lynch told him to.
Probably the latter, IMO. Lynch isn’t the type to spring surprises on his actors like that. He’s very meticulous in his direction and I don’t imagine he’d leave a reaction up to chance.
Damn... to be honest I didn't expect such sad ending. Even season 2 ends happier, because it gave us hope that Cooper will left the logde someday. And know this :( It's well done ending but very sad at the same time.
The ending reminds me of this poem by Walter de la Mare The Listeners BY WALTER DE LA MARE ‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest’s ferny floor: And a bird flew up out of the turret, Above the Traveller’s head: And he smote upon the door again a second time; ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said. But no one descended to the Traveller; No head from the leaf-fringed sill Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, Where he stood perplexed and still. But only a host of phantom listeners That dwelt in the lone house then Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight To that voice from the world of men: Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, That goes down to the empty hall, Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken By the lonely Traveller’s call. And he felt in his heart their strangeness, Their stillness answering his cry, While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, ’Neath the starred and leafy sky; For he suddenly smote on the door, even Louder, and lifted his head:- ‘Tell them I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word,’ he said. Never the least stir made the listeners, Though every word he spake Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house From the one man left awake: Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, And the sound of iron on stone, And how the silence surged softly backward, When the plunging hoofs were gone. Source: The Collected Poems of Walter de la Mare (1979)
I just finished the series today, and I can’t stop thinking about this ending. My sister and I literally screamed out loud as soon as it read “Starring Kyle MacLachlan.” Out of anger, out of shock, out of confusion, out of the fact the show just ended. The music, the image of Laura whispering into Cooper’s ear. It is/was such a profound ending for me.
i think people are overanalyzing this. if there is a lesson here, its that Twin Peaks is a compromised story - compromised by money, studio cowardice, and bad taste amongst audiences. in this final scene, we see that Cooper is not out of the water yet, and that he has made yet another mistake that he will have to skillfully maneuver his way out of. Sometimes you have to make the same mistake again and again before you learn.
I don’t know why I expected any kind of closure from the ending of season 3… looking back, though, it ended perfectly. Personally I take the ending as a happy one despite this somber end titles music.
