The Return of Twin Peaks: Squaring the Circle

By Franck Boulègue

In 2017, twenty-five years after its initial release, a new season of Twin Peaks shook the world of television.

This new book is a detailed analysis of the third season of the television series and aims to elucidate some of the meanings of Twin Peaks: The Return and explain these in terms of philosophical, mythological and spiritual approaches.  It focuses on the third season of Twin Peaks but also refers to the first two seasons, and to the film, Fire Walk with Me.

Divided into three sections, the book first examines the third season as expanded storytelling through the lens of Gene Youngblood's theory of synesthetic cinema, intertextuality, integrationist, and segregationist approaches in the realm of fiction, and focuses on the role of audio and visual superimpositions in The Return. It goes on to question the nature of the reality depicted in the seasons via scientific approaches, such as electromagnetism, time theory, and multiverses. The third and final section aims to transcend this vision by exploring the role of theosophy, the occult, and other spiritual sources.

The author’s focus on the role of spirituality and science in Twin Peaks is what distinguishes this book from other works on the famous television series. The work of a scholar who is also a fan, the book should appeal to any hard-core Twin Peaks viewer.  

Foreword by Matt Zoller Seitz, editor-at-large at RogerEbert.com, and the television critic for New York magazine.

This will be essential reading for fans of Twin Peaks and academics writing about it.

Also of interest for students with an interest in philosophy, religion, science or spiritualism in visual and popular culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Release date: Jun 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781789382792

Franck Boulègue

Franck Boulègue is a film critic for various research journals and co-editor of Fan Phenomena: Twin Peaks.

Book preview

The Return of Twin Peaks

The Return of Twin Peaks: Squaring the Circle is essential for all Twin Peaks fans who relish a ‘deep dive’. In this remarkable work, Franck Boulègue has assembled the literary, religious, historical and scientific sources that inform Twin Peaks: The Return and placed them on display for our edification. Thoroughly researched and wide-ranging, this book helps us navigate David Lynch and Mark Frost’s fascinating, confounding masterpiece. This book hums with electricity; once you cross over, it will all be different.

– John Thorne, Wrapped in Plastic and Blue Rose Magazine

In The Return of Twin Peaks: Squaring the Circle, Franck Boulègue explores, with erudition, flair and imagination, the most eclectic references embodying the world of Twin Peaks. Unprecedented in its scope and reach, and presented in an engaging writing style, this book offers a fresh perspective on the collaboration between David Lynch and Mark Frost.

– Lynchland, https://www.facebook.com/Lynchland/

Boulègue’s book provides a new, fresh perspective on Twin Peaks: The Return, repositioning it as a spiritual odyssey, rich in references to both western and eastern esotericism. The depth and breadth of the analysis is staggering, opening up surprising new avenues of exploration, while also acknowledging the series’ roots in ancient epic storytelling and mythology.

– Lindsay Hallam, author of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

The Return of Twin Peaks

Squaring the Circle

Franck Boulègue

First published in the UK in 2021 by

Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK

First published in the USA in 2021 by

Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,

Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Copyright © 2021 Intellect Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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The Log Lady: ‘The stars turn and a time presents itself’.

– Twin Peaks: The Return

Penelope: ‘The stars change their pattern in the sky only for others. Return, oh return, Ulysses!’

– The Return of Ulysses to His Homeland, opera by Monteverdi

To get the real gem you must dive deep.

– Sri Ramakrishna

Contents

Foreword

Matt Zoller Seitz

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1.Expanded Storytelling

The Web of Expanded Television and Synesthetic Cinema 26

Intertextualities

Integrationists and Segregationists in the Realm of Fiction

Audio and Visual Superimpositions

2.What Is Reality?

Atomic Blasts, Electromagnetism and Sounds 152

Time and Time Again

Parallel Dimensions, Multiverse Theories, Outer Space and the Hollow Earth

3.Transcending the Return

Numerology, Tarot, Alchemy, Palmistry, ESP and Astrology 208

Thought-Forms and Theosophy

The Book of Revelation, Vedic and Mesopotamian Cosmologies

Conclusion

Correspondence Table

References

Foreword

Matt Zoller Seitz

In June of 2017, I had occasion to speak with two prominent showrunners whose work had been strongly and obviously influenced by David Lynch, just a couple of weeks after the debut of Twin Peaks: The Return. They were David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos, and Damon Lindelof, the co-executive producer of Lost and the co-creator of The Leftovers. Both of them immediately asked me if I’d seen the new Twin Peaks and what I thought of it.

At that point, I had seen it, but only the first four episodes – the same number everyone else had seen, as Lynch and his creative partner Mark Frost had decided not to release advance press screeners. But that was more than enough to recognize the magnitude of what Lynch and Frost were attempting. I told both Chase and Lindelof that even though I had to go through the formal charade of withholding judgement until I’d seen all eighteen, what I’d seen so far made me think that The Return was equal to but different from the original, and unlike anything else on television up to that point. A week later I would name Twin Peaks Show of the Year in the annual Vulture TV Awards, because even though I was breaking the publication’s rule against giving that award to a show that hadn’t finished its season yet (the piece ran right after the show premiered episode 5) I felt certain that even if the rest of the instalments were awful, The Return was still going to be the best thing on TV that year.

Chase and Lindelof were even less equivocal. Lindelof told me, just prior to a screening of The Leftovers finale at the Metograph Theater in New York, that he thought Lynch and Frost had raised the bar yet again for scripted television, just as they had the first time around. ‘Look, I’m proud of what we did’, he said, ‘but our show is here’, he said, holding his hand at eye level, ‘and David Lynch and Mark Frost are …’. Then he raised his hand over his head. Chase was attending an event at a television festival I had programmed in the West Village. ‘Do you think it’s as great as the first one?’ I asked him. ‘I think it’s greater’, he said. ‘I feel like I’m seeing something completely new’.

I feel the same way about Franck Boulègue’s writing on Twin Peaks, and everything related to the world of David Lynch. Most writing on the show is down here, but Boulègue is way up here. When I read him, I feel like I’m seeing something completely new.

Boulègue is working in the spirit of Lynch and Frost. He’s not trying to explain Twin Peaks or reduce its mysteries so that we can hold them in the palms of our hands. He uses words and pictures the way Lynch does: to create connections and associations, chains of influence and poetic effects. The information is arranged in sections according to commonality of subject or image (the American western, atomic power, time and time travel, parallel dimensions and the Hollow Earth, etc.) but nothing is self-contained; every section resonates with, or refers to, every other. It’s as much a visual and textual and visceral experience as an intellectual one. Reading Boulègue on Lynch and Frost is like entering the mushroom cloud in episode 8, revelling in the euphoria of going somewhere you’ve never been before, seeing things rendered that you might not think could be rendered, synapses firing like those white firefly-like embers/particles swarming against a black screen.

This is not how criticism is usually done. Not even criticism about Twin Peaks.

Even the best English-language writing I’ve seen on The Return (which Lynch and Frost think of simply as ‘Season Three’) is diminished by the impulse, whether conscious or instinctive, to ‘explain’ Twin Peaks, sum it all up, tell us what it means, put a frame around it and so on. It also tends to suffer from the limitations of written language itself. Even words wielded by a master writer might fail to evoke the intellectual and emotional impact of images, sound effects, music and performances arranged on-screen to evoke an emotional or visceral response, rather than to tell a linear story with some kind of conclusion or moral. That’s why so much criticism of film and television concentrates on characterization, plot and theme: literary values. Boulègue is interested in literary values and explores them in great detail, but he does it by returning, time and again, to the images, the shapes, the colours, the repetition of numbers or patterns: visual values. Mathematical values. Musical values.

He isn’t here to tell us what Twin Peaks is saying, or what it means, or to try to solve it like a jigsaw puzzle, although the way he puts observations and data together on the page does sometimes give the reader the feeling of watching an image take shape, a mass of lines or splash of colour at a time.

It’s not just that Boulègue is trying to get us to think. He’s finding a way to let us watch him think.

He’s answering one experience with another. It’s criticism as cinema on the page.

Reading this book reminds me what it felt like to watch the third season for the first time. You feel the detonation in your head, the buzz of synapses firing.

Matt Zoller Seitz is a television critic for New York Magazine/Vulture and editor at large for RogerEbert.com.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank David Lynch and Mark Frost for the countless hours of (traumatic) pleasure they have given me throughout the years, both on screen and in print. Both are truly bottomless wells of creativity, modern-day Homers who have imagined worlds profound enough to hold our interest for several decades, realms that continue to reveal new elements in their intricate and fascinating layers. It is a privilege to write about their work.

Thank you to Matt Zoller Seitz for spending time with this manuscript and writing its foreword. When I first sent him some of my ideas via Twitter, he did not know me but he nonetheless shared them right away, always supportive. Matt belongs to that rare breed of people who will listen to you whoever you are as long as he thinks that you have something interesting to say. I truly respect him and I am honoured that he agreed to write this foreword. Also, please support the charity his late wife Nancy Dawson created for non-binary teens at: https://www.transformcincy.org.

I would also like to thank the people at Intellect who have entrusted me for the third time with creating a book about Twin Peaks and its countless facets. It is always a true pleasure to collaborate with this continually supportive and open team.

Thank you to all the constructive aficionados from around the world with whom I have interacted on Twitter and Facebook (notably on Roland Kermarec’s Lynchland Gang), particularly: Jalal Kaiser Raja, Dawn Kiefer, Andrew Griffin, Emotional Support Yak for their support, suggestions, clarifications, and overall dedication and passion for the series. They have helped me test some of the ideas developed in these pages (and many others that have not made it into the book), and I owe them my gratitude for it. Additional support provided by John Thorne and Lindsay Hallam, as well as Jérémy Château has been much appreciated.

Warmest thanks go to Diana Heyne, who made sure that my use of the English language in this book proved more proficient than Dougie Jones’s. Her skilful editing and input were invaluable.

I could not have written such a monograph without the constant snuggling of my furry family of cats, rabbits and rats. A world without them would be quite lonely.

Finally, as always, my warmest love and thanks go to my wife Marisa C. Hayes who has had to watch, eat, drink and talk Twin Peaks on a daily basis because of my passion for the series. Although she is also a fan of the series, it is not easy being married to a die-hard Peaksie like me. She has also contributed endless hours of her personal time to help me proofread and edit the book you are currently holding, which would not be the same without her. This book is also partly hers.

Introduction

And the end and the beginning were always there

Before the beginning and after the end.

And all is always now.

– T. S. Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’¹

For three decades, Twin Peaks has been something of a second home for me. I am talking about a Twin Peaks of the mind that exists somewhere in the same United States as Derry, Arkham, Riverdale, Arcadia, Gravity Falls, Sunnydale and more recently Belgrave University (with its infamous Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose).² I am talking about a town situated between the realm in which we live – the one we call reality – and other fictional, mythical and possible places with varying degrees of ontological density. It was a narrative universe that most of us thought was gone forever, frozen in time at the beginning of the 1990s, when the series Twin Peaks left us with a horrifying cliffhanger; while the feature-length film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (TP:FWWM) met with indifference at best, and adverse reactions at worst. Until, that is, the gum we like came back in style and gave us the unexpected resurrection of the series for eighteen new episodes, produced by and aired on Showtime in 2017. This third and wonderful season is appropriately known as The Return, a return to Twin Peaks for its creators, David Lynch and Mark Frost, as well as for most of the original cast. It represents a long-awaited homecoming for many fans, including those who viewed the original broadcast and had to wait a quarter of a century to find out what had happened to the various characters. It also marks my own return to this universe, following a first book of essays co-edited with Marisa C. Hayes in 2013, Fan Phenomena: Twin Peaks (Intellect); the monograph I wrote just before The Return aired, Twin Peaks: Unwrapping the Plastic (UTP) (2017, Intellect); as well as a special issue of the Supernatural Studies Journal dedicated to Twin Peaks that I recently guest edited (2019).

Although it appears that the idea to call the season The Return was something of a marketing ploy designed by Showtime, and although Lynch himself advises calling it simply ‘season 3’ or ‘Twin Peaks 2017’, I will refer to these eighteen new episodes as The Return in the following pages, for several reasons. First, because this is how the season is now widely referred to, by fans and critics alike; everyone understands what is meant by The Return. The idea to simply call this new chapter of the Twin Peaks universe ‘season 3’ seems a bit confusing, as this season – described by Lynch himself as an eighteen-hour-long film – is widely different in tone and form from seasons 1 and 2. Although this is a continuation of the Twin Peaks from the 1990s, The Return is much more than that. All the episodes were shot by Lynch himself, contrary to the first two seasons, and the tone is much closer to TP:FWWM, darker and much less soap operatic. In other words, more Lynchian. And finally, calling season 3 The Return is true to the meaning of the season, as so much of its underlying themes deal with this idea, as will be made clear in this introduction.

Writing about Twin Peaks sometimes makes me feel as if I were a part of the FBI. The series is a puzzle, with so many clues and symbols spread out here and there, both visually and audibly, that it is necessary to consistently re-evaluate my hypotheses in order to attempt to piece the whole system together. The Return is extremely difficult to summarize, leading the viewer on fractal twists and turns worthy of Alice in Wonderland. For this reason, I recommend watching the season again, before or while, reading the following chapters. The new season of Twin Peaks has turned into a treasure trove for those who are fascinated with the occult and conspiracy theories. In this context, I have attempted to remain neutral while diving into a vast array of religious and spiritual traditions, however controversial they may be, that both Lynch and Frost have voiced interest in. The universe of the series is similar to a vast encrypted book that awaits decoding: ‘break the code, solve the crime’, to echo Agent Cooper in season 1, episode 4. This situation is reminiscent of what James Joyce said of Ulysses (1922), his tribute to Homer’s The Odyssey, and of importance for a thorough understanding of what is at stake in The Return:

obfuscation was one of Joyce’s strategies for acquiring lasting fame, as was his decision never to challenge the numerous, often conflicting interpretations of Ulysses and Joyce famously said as much to his French translator: ‘I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of ensuring one’s immortality’.³

Immortality is one of the main (obfuscated) themes of The Return:

What did The Double want, if it ever actually made it to this place? What was it after? Some kind or form of even greater power than it already appeared to possess? (What would that be? Immortality?).⁴

Beyond this alchemical quest for immortality, it is clear that hidden meanings of all sorts are omnipresent throughout the season, from the etymological roots of the characters’ names to the various locations travelled within the United States, creating layer upon layer of clues awaiting interpretation. Contributing greatly to this, Frost’s The Secret History of Twin Peaks (TSHOTP) is a book that improves with each reading. It was difficult at first to understand how rich it truly is, as most readers were more focused on what had happened to their favourite characters. The book’s mythological approach to the Twin Peaks universe lost many fans in its complex web. But once The Return was screened, it proved a valuable, multilayered reference. The Final Dossier (TFD), in contrast, is much more focused on filling in the remaining narrative gaps.

Of course, contrary to this idea of exegesis, one can find the following statement in TSHOTP:

[A]‌ real mystery can’t be solved, not completely. It’s always just out of reach, like a light around the corner; you might catch a glimpse of what it reveals, feel its warmth, but you can’t know the heart of it, not really. That’s what gives it value: It can’t be cracked, it’s bigger than you and me, bigger than everything we know.⁵

Readers will have to decide for themselves whether or not I was successful, in spite of Frost’s warning, in my attempt to solve some of the season’s mysteries. This book is the result of two years’ worth of research, exchange, including both false trails and eureka moments, condensed and organized into these pages. It approaches the series from a variety of angles in order to give the reader the best overall understanding of the major themes underscored in The Return.

In addition to the giant treasure hunt for meaning that this season has become, with its multiple clues, sometimes found in plain sight, the fundamental incompleteness of any story is accentuated in The Return by a constant desire to erase portions of the narrative, kept hidden from the viewers, and only present in their undivided form in the mind of the creators. The audience is led to complete the story by guessing how the pieces fit together, taking leverage from the elements and hints left by Lynch and Frost. This jigsaw puzzle, for which it is also possible to use the canon of Twin Peaks books that accompany its audio-visual corpus, is made even more complex thanks to the uncertain nature of some of its material. For example, should one understand the bonus footage The Missing Pieces of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (TP:FWWM, 1992) released in 2014 as part of the official corpus, even though they were cut from the final film, or are they to be ignored completely? Depending on the answer, different conclusions can be drawn about the meaning(s) of the series.

One thing is certain: it must have been a formidable task for Lynch and Frost to weave together the plot of The Return, leaving numerous elements unexplained while managing to always maintain just enough in the final script for viewers to eventually make sense of the ins and outs of the narrative. It will be clarified later in this book that the season owes much to the acts of weaving and sewing, and one can argue that because of its links to Homer’s The Odyssey, Lynch and Frost acted as rhapsodes of sorts when they crafted the script.⁶ Rhapsodes were performers of epic poetry in classical Greece, ‘sewing songs together’ (the etymological meaning of rhapsode) according to the preferred taste of a specific location’s audience. The Return is a complex and colourful embroidery, minutely stitched together by its creators. Interestingly, in an interview he gave to the Los Angeles Times,⁷ Lynch’s answer to the question ‘Any medium left to try?’ was: ‘Sewing. I got an industrial sewing machine. I would like to be able to sew things and make stuff’.

While Laura Palmer was without a doubt the focus of the first two seasons of Twin Peaks and TP:FWWM, and while she remains the raison d’être of season 3, appearing at both extremities of The Return (in parts 1 and 18), Cooper and his various avatars can be considered the centre of the narrative this time around. As a result of his possession by BOB at the end of season 2, and contrary to TP:FWWM which took the viewer back in time to Laura’s Christlike passion,⁸ this continuation of the story is carried by Cooper’s fractured identities of Dougie, Mr C, the original Cooper, and Richard.

A colour photograph shows the blurred head of Dale Cooper overlapping with the head of his doppelganger, Mister C. within a grey oval frame. Red curtains are pictured in the background.

Figure 1: Dale’s fractured identities. All images are screengrabs from season 3 of Twin Peaks on Showtime, directed by David Lynch, unless otherwise stated.

This is the case until Cooper finally manages to mend the split in his personality and comes back to his original quest, attempting to save Laura in a return to unity that characterizes the end of the season as a whole. One might argue that the overall journey of The Return takes the season from multiplicity (Cooper’s several avatars, diverse locations over the United States) to unity (Cooper integrating his split personalities, return to Laura as the ‘One’, return to the town of Twin Peaks). This is confirmed in the opening credits of the season, which also depict a process of elements melting into one another, contrary to the credits of seasons 1 and 2 that were about the rise of duality in the world: the cutting of the original cosmic tree on which a bird sat at the beginning of the credits for seasons 1 and 2 leads to a multiplicity of logs, symbolizing a dividing of the world.

In UTP, I discuss the importance of the notion of return to a heavenly in utero state, omnipresent in Lynch’s filmography:

It could also be argued that Twin Peaks’ characters return daily to the life of the womb when they go to sleep; the Red Room itself, with all its drapes, might very well be understood as a surreal visualization of in utero existence.⁹

The idea of a lost Paradise, if only that of the 1950s (Lynch’s childhood years), is a leitmotif in the director’s filmography. Returning to this Golden Age appears almost impossible and fraught with danger. It nevertheless remains an obsession of many of his characters, from Eraserhead (1977) (with Henry’s longing for the Lady in the Radiator) to the doppelgänger in The Return (his modified ace of spades¹⁰ card in part 2, depicting what he wants, strongly resembles, among other things, a hole/flying egg/dark matrix/uterus¹¹). Of course, while some of these characters envision such a return as a romantic dream, a regression to a more innocent phase of their development, others such as the doppelgänger are willing to use force in order to get there, to ‘rape’ whoever gets in their way in order to be given access to the matrix they desire. However, while such an obsession might be linked to the desire of a return to the mother’s womb, it is Mr C who is shown ‘giving birth’ to BOB in part 8 and finally doing so, while dying, with the help of the Woodsmen, who act as surgeons/midwives, delivering BOB out of Mr C’s belly/chest during a supernatural caesarean section.¹²

TP:FWWM already represented a return to the roots of Twin Peaks mythology. Rather than continue the story where season 2 had left it and provide closure to the various narrative threads left unresolved at its conclusion, Lynch felt the need to go back to the ‘One’, the person around whom the fictional universe gravitated: Laura Palmer. He appears to constantly feel the urge to return in order to move forward, as if the best way to advance were to look in the rear-view mirror – mirrors and twins are of the utmost importance in Twin Peaks. In the process, Lynch remains anchored to what takes place in the series. When TP:FWWM begins, one already knows how it is going to end; fate plays the central role.¹³ Nevertheless, Lynch did not see this as a weakness but as a strength underlying the tragedy of Laura Palmer’s last days. In his book Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (1982), French literary theorist Gérard Genette outlines these ideas about different types of continuations, whether they are moving the story forward or take place prior to an established beginning, arguing that it is necessary to distinguish between a ‘continuation from the front (that is to say, the after)’, described as ‘proleptique’, and a continuation ‘charged with going back, from cause to cause, to a more absolute starting point’ described as ‘analeptique’.¹⁴

Similar to the series of Twin Peaks, ‘The Odyssey is here nothing more than a source of retrospective information and an ultimate terminus’.¹⁵ Finding the starting point thus seems to have been Lynch’s obsession with TP:FWWM, and one could argue that this is also the case with The Return, as the sequences set in the 1940s and 1950s of part 8 underscore. Even when moving the plot forward, Lynch nevertheless finds a way to take us back to the origin of the story, and so does Frost, with his mythological approach to the narrative. It is worth noting that in a cyclical world, one that fundamentally functions according to the Nietzschean eternal return (or recurrence) of the same, it does not really matter which way one is going, as both ends of the distant past and future meet ‘time and time again’. This is a notion that resonates with Lynch’s interest in the Vedas, and Transcendental Meditation in particular. In his recent autobiography Room to Dream (2018), he notes thus:

I do know that a lot of who we are is already set when we get here. They call it the wheel of birth and death, and I believe we’ve been around many, many times. There’s a law of nature that says what you sow is what you reap and you come into life with the certainty that some of your past is going to visit you in this life.¹⁶

These are references to reincarnation, to the laws of karma (the idea that intent and actions of an individual influence the future of that individual) and to samsara (the cyclicality of all life, matter and existence). This idea of the return is strongly tied to Hinduism, with its concept of a cycle of rebirths, and with Vishnu’s expected return. It is indeed believed that his avatars (such as Rama, Krishna, Buddha) descend whenever the cosmos is in crisis. He thus regularly returns to Earth to restore the cosmic balance between the forces of good and evil. In the Vedas, nine avatars of Vishnu have descended to Earth so far, the ninth being Buddha. Kalki, his tenth avatar, has not yet returned. When he does, Hindus believe that he will be the one who renews and restarts the cosmos at the end of Times. It will become obvious, notably in Chapter 2, that this idea plays a major role in The Return, a season that deals with eschatological themes, particularly in part 18. Erich von Däniken, the Swiss author who has written many books claiming extraterrestrial influences on early human culture, elaborated on this idea:

[T]‌his golden age of Hinduism is, so to speak, only a wish projected into the far distant future. As it was in the ‘dream age’, so it will be once more in the future. A time of beauty, strength, youth and harmony will return.¹⁷

The following statement by the same author resonates with the importance of the various bell devices present in the Fireman’s Palace:

When one epoch ends, and new tirthankaras¹⁸ are due to be born, a bell sounds in the chief palace of ‘heaven’. This bell causes bells to ring in all the other 3,199,999 heavenly palaces. Then the gods gather together, partly out of love for the tirthankaras, partly out of curiosity. And then, borne on a flying palace, they visit our solar system; and a new epoch begins upon the earth.¹⁹

Returning to Homer, Chapter 1 underlines the fact that The Return owes much to The Odyssey. This makes perfect sense, as the Greek epic tells the tale of Odysseus (also known as Ulysses in Roman antiquity) and his return to his home Kingdom of Ithaca, many years after the end of the Trojan War in which he fought alongside a contingent of other soldiers from Greece; a situation reminiscent of Cooper’s journey home towards the town of Twin Peaks after his 25-year imprisonment in the Black Lodge, including his position as a castaway in Las Vegas as Dougie Jones; questions of identity are also a central theme of The Odyssey. This transposition of Homer’s epic poem to modern-day America is typical of what one expects from such an endeavour, if we subscribe to what Gérard Genette has to say on the subject:

The usual movement of the diegetic transposition is a proximate movement of translation (temporal, geographical, social): the hypertext transposes the diegesis of its hypotext to bring it closer and to actualize it in the eyes of its audience.²⁰

Such a transposition makes it easier for the audience to relate to the adventures depicted. Homer’s heroic poem does not constitute the only source of inspiration for The Return,²¹ but it seems to be the central reference that guides its plot and narrative developments, as acknowledged by Frost himself.²² Gérard Genette writes of James Joyce’s Ulysses:

The innocent reading of Ulysses in its ‘closure’ as a sort of naturalistic novel about modern Ireland is perfectly possible; it would nevertheless be an incomplete reading.²³

Likewise, a reading of The Return without considering its links to both The Odyssey and Ulysses, is possible, though bypasses many references woven into the script by Lynch and Frost throughout the season. One could even argue that The Return is a type of palimpsest of The Odyssey.

What is a palimpsest? In textual studies it is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off so that the page can be reused for another document (a common practice in earlier eras when writing surfaces were often of vellum or parchment and too expensive to waste). What is interesting about palimpsests is the fact that one can sometimes still read the original text that remains visible under the new text. Both texts somehow coexist on the page, though it is obvious which one came first. The term is used figuratively in literary theory in reference to writing derived from former texts, whether the connection results from a transformation or an imitation. Reading the newer text (known as the hypertext) becomes a way of also reading the original text (known as the hypotext).

Watching The Return (the hypertext) is a way to know the general structure and motifs of The Odyssey (the hypotext). The first is a rewriting of the second, a mutation that mixes references to Homer’s works in the context of the Twin Peaks universe. Not to be confused with plagiarism, it is rather a tribute based among other influences on the themes and development of one of the major mythological works of humanity. This dialogue with such an important source confers a distinct mythological feel on these new adventures of Cooper and Laura, the ‘twin peaks’ of the series. Their quest gains a certain cosmological gravity that departs from the soap opera elements of seasons 1 and 2, towards the mythological. In order to truly understand this, it is necessary to ‘break the code’ and read both texts simultaneously, as with a palimpsest, so as to recognize and make sense of the references to The Odyssey throughout The Return. It is possible to watch and appreciate The Return without any knowledge of The Odyssey,