Introduction

The leading question of this contribution stems from a personal endeavour: How can one come to terms with Twin Peaks season 3 a.k.a. Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) or, for short, The Return. The original Twin Peaks series is important to me, both personally and professionally. In searching for clues on how Lynch and Frost thought to continue Dale Cooper's story after what was, emotionally, the worst possible ending of season 2, I started researching and reading books such as Chris Rodney's Lynch on Lynch in an early German edition (Lynch and Rodney). This was the start of my career in film studies, which I followed up with a short film Lünsch – as part of my degree programme – about two young and aspiring student film makers kidnapping Lynch in order to force him to explain his movies to them. My first engagement in lecturing at a university as a student assistant was a David Lynch film course (together with one of the editors of this volume) and my final one, years later, offered a thorough study of Twin Peaks, much to the despair of some of my students. After that, I took a turn to a broader field of interest in media studies and left ‘academia’ in 2020 for the time being. However, the very personal, even intimate, significance of the original show stuck with me.

So, naturally, I was thrilled when in 2014 Lynch himself (or whoever is behind his official Twitter account) hinted in a tweet that he and Frost were about to revisit – or to revive – Twin Peaks. He did so by quoting a famous character of the series, the otherworldly Man from Another Place: ‘Dear Twitter Friends: That gum you like is going to come back in style! #damngoodcoffee’ (Lynch). Yet three years and eighteen episodes later I could not help but wonder: Had Lynch been wrong – or even outright lying – concerning his announcement back then? A great many people loved and appreciated the limited television event, which aired in 2018, but I am convinced that I was not alone in having a different (or limited or conservative) taste about season 3.