YMMV / Twin Peaks

For both series

• Award Snub: Painfully so. Even though the show did win some awards, it was been ignored in the major ceremonies.
  • The original run was nominated for 18 Emmys total yet it only won 2, for costume design and editing, even if season 1 was considered and some of the absolute best of that year.
    • It found better luck in the Grammys and Golden Globes though.
    • Ray Wise's excellent performance going unnoticed has received it's share of complaints.
  • The Return also found mixed luck; for once, almost no fan expected the series to be popular amongst mainstream public so the lack of views wasn't surprising, but the lack of attention from the Emmys again even when many specialized sites, critics and magazines said it was probably the best thing of 2017 was pretty shocking. It was nominated for 9 Creative Arts Emmy Awards, and just 2 primetime Emmys for writing and directing, but neither Best Limited Series (despite the previously mentioned nominations) nor any acting nod.
  • The lack of an acting nod for Kyle MacLachlan was considered particularly egregious by fans, considering He plays three characters, all vastly different, and all perfectly. Evil Cooper, Dougie, and then later, the true Dale Cooper. If you want to get technical, he plays four characters, once "Richard" pops up in the finale, as he shows some personality traits that are far different than Cooper.
• Badass Decay:
  • According to The Secret History Of Twin Peaks, Douglas Millford goes from a secret agent, UFO searcher, and close friend of Richard Nixon to a petty old man who died during sex in the television series; the result is both jarring and hilarious. This is an intentional example on Frost's part...probably.
  • More directly in the actual series, Leo Johnson goes from a terrifying villain and witness to Laura Palmer's murder to a reluctant tough for Hank Jennings to a barely functional lackey for Windom Earle, who then kills him.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Subverted as it's best remembered for its Quirky Town weirdness but Rolling Stone did an issue based around the beauty of the women on the show. It's still an ongoing fandom debate who was the most lovely between Sherilyn Fenn, Lara Flynn Boyle, and Madchen Amick in a Betty and Veronica or Third-Option Love Interest sort of way. Note, this means Peggy Lipton and Heather Graham were considered runner-ups. On the female side of things, it's also a show which had Kyle MacLachlan, Dana Ashbrook and Billy Zane among its male cast. David Bowie as Phillip Jeffries joined the cast list as of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and Chrysta Bell, Naomi Watts, and Amanda Seyfried have joined the talk for fandom's Ms. Twin Peaks thanks to The Return.
• The Chris Carter Effect:
  • Writer and committed Lynch fan David Foster Wallace opined in an essay that Season 2 was some of the best television he'd ever watched, in that it was some of the worst television he'd ever watched. If one watches it all in a row, it's pretty clear that it's one long nervous breakdown on the part of Lynch as he never intended the mystery of Laura Palmer's murder to be solved, with the series intended to be more of an exploration of the characters. Executive Meddling forced him to solve the mystery mid-Season 2, which left him with literally no idea where to go from there and hence he opted to work on other projects. As a result, Lynch was hardly involved with the rest of Season 2—he didn't write or direct any of the next 14 episodes and returned only to direct the finale. There's a consensus among Twin Peaks fans that the episodes directed by Lynch are the best of the series.
  • Ironically, it seems to be an inversion of this trope: a show's downfall caused by the resolution of a plot thread that was never intended to be solved. The series had a Kudzu Plot driven by a Driving Question that was mistaken by ABC executives to be this, and the forced closing of plotlines led to Seasonal Rot and cancellation.
  • Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me was an attempt to avert this with Lynch planning two more movie sequels, presumably to wrap up the show after its cancellation, but the movie flopped and initially polarized many viewers, which subsequently led to the sequels being canned.
  • In 2017, the show returned for an 18-episode Mini Series—called The Return—that averted this, tying up loose plot threads Left Hanging from the second season. The Return also introduced new characters with their own stories but unlike the previous season, it was able to complete the new subplots by its penultimate episode. While the final episode notoriously ended with Agent Cooper and Laura Palmer trapped in an alternate universe, most viewers regarded it as one of the third season's high notes and a proper conclusion to a series known for Mind Screw.
• Commitment Anxiety: The original run is a collection of 30 hour-long episodes which pretty much all play into the central mystery. All of these episodes play into the The Return so that you more or less have to watch the entire show to get everything. That's not even getting into Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me or Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces, both of which are considered by David Lynch to be crucial viewing for The Return.
• Complete Monster: Killer BOB (Beware of BOB) is an entity native to the Black Lodge with a horrifying tendency towards rape and murder. Created long ago as a byproduct of the Trinity nuclear tests, BOB accesses the material plane by possessing hapless victims and forcing them to engage in sprees of rape, torture, and serial murder to nourish himself off of their agony. Responsible for the murder of Laura Palmer that drives the series, BOB committed the deed by possessing Laura's father Leland when Leland was a child, resurfacing to have Leland molest his own daughter through her youth before using him to finally rape and murder Laura. When cornered, BOB forces Leland to kill himself, and later saddles onto Dale's doppelganger at the end of the first series while leaving Dale trapped for decades within the Black Lodge in its stead.
• Creepy Awesome: The Black Lodge in general, the Man From Another Place and BOB in particular.
• Epileptic Trees: The show has more of these than the town of Twin Peaks has actual trees. Pretty much everything about the main plot is left up to audience interpretation, and theories on what's actually going on with the story have run rampant ever since the show first aired. It arguably started the trend in television of having a central Myth Arc with a ton of unanswered questions to keep the audience coming back week after week, like the show that would become the Trope Namer.
• Fan Nickname: Fans aren't quite sure what to call Cooper's Evil Doppelgänger, and so nicknames abound, including Booper (a contraction of Bad!Cooper or BOB!Cooper), Doppel Dale, and Coopelganger. In the series itself he goes by Mr. C.
  • A portion of the fandom likes to refer to Bad!Cooper, the original Cooper and Dougie!Cooper as Boop, Coop and Doop, respectively.
• Friendly Fandoms: Name anything that cites Twin Peaks as an influence or feels like it due to Follow the Leader, and odds are, its fans get along pretty well with the T.P. fandom. See Spiritual Adaptation. Due to Germans Love David Hasselhoff a lot of it comes from Japan.
  • For the original series we have:
    • The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
    • Silent Hill
    • Deadly Premonition
    • Alan Wake
    • Gravity Falls
    • The works of Satoshi Kon, especially Perfect Blue as he was usually called "The Lynch of Japan". Kon wasn't inspired by Lynch, neither Lynch by Kon but both of them were inspired by the same sources.
    • Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated
    • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable: There are striking similarities between their main plots. The search of justice, Reimi Sugimoto which is seen as some alternate parallel to Laura Palmer and David Bowie. While the inspiration hasn't been confirmed, both the similarities and the timing hint heavily at it.
    • Neon Genesis Evangelion: Despite not being any direct relation, their fanbases get on very well, usually seen as parallels in their respective mediums.
    • Revolutionary Girl Utena: Kunihiko Ikuhara did mention Lynch as an inspiration for the direction of the anime, and it shows HARD, both are extremely metaphorical Magic Realism stories with great enphasis on the characters over the lore of the show despite being seemingly more important at first sight. Digibro's review of Utena's first 9 minutes can interchangeably be used on any Twin Peaks review.
    • Final Fantasy VII: Producer Yoshinori Kitase did mention that his favorite show while making the game was Twin Peaks, and many people have noticed similarities on the soundtracks, even making a playlist mixing them both.
  • For The Return we have.
    • Control: Which is unsurprising because as with Alan Wake, Remedy are huge TP fans.
    • Final Fantasy VII Remake: For the same reason as above, besides, a remake of the original game with serious plot development changes that is more meta has been seen as taking inspiration on The Return.
    • Half-Life: Alyx: While not confirmed, the more meta approach of the plot and whole retcon aspect on an usually very static if complex series has also been seen as taking inspiration on the zeitgeist post The Return.
    • With the 2020 film Tesla, not only did they cast Kyle MacLachlan, they added a ton of references for fans as well as being a very surreal experience.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While the series is more along the lines of a Cult Classic in the U.S. and Europe, it was VERY popular when it aired in Japan, to the point people were doing borderline religious demonstrations, even going into tours to the filming location of the pilot to have mock funerals of Laura Palmer.
  • Lynch even filmed a series of Japanese coffee commercials, starring Agent Cooper and the rest of the gang. Can be seen here.
  • Notably, it's done excellent almost everywhere but Germany. The reason for this is infamous as dueling networks engaged in Trolling Creator behavior with an announcement of Laura Palmer's killer by one as soon as the other started airing the show. Which is a dick move worthy of Eric Bischoff.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The series is currently a running joke on the TV Tropes Forum, where it is regularly mentioned among anime. (The reason for this is that someone once recommended this in an anime recommendations thread where the original poster didn't explicitly ask for anime.)
  • "She's dead... wrapped in plastic." (said about Laura Palmer)
  • "The Owls are not what they seem." (Arc Words from the Giant)
  • "It's happening again." (originally referring to BOB!Leland murdering Maddie Ferguson as a repeat of his rape/murder of her identical cousin, Laura Palmer, this has become a tagline for The Return.)
  • "James was never cool" and variations became popular after the infamous character was described as "still cool" in The Return.
  • "Helloooo-oooo!"
  • After Parts 5-8 from The Return, the fanbase is pretty adamant that David Lynch is clearly trolling the fanbase and doing whatever the fuck he wanted, even going as far as to say that Lynch has gotten crazier since Inland Empire. This comes to a head in Part 8, with the Twin Peaks Reddit claiming that Eraserhead and Inland Empire weren't as crazy as that episode.
  • "Well. Glad that's cleared that up."
  • "Chad is such a Chad!" is a common refrain in online discussions about The Return. There couldn't be a more fitting summary of the character.
  • Albert's "touching tribute" to Gene Kelly in Episode 6 of the revival.
  • Captioning pictures of tragic, violent, or untimely character deaths from other works with Gordon Cole's "He's dead."
  • I am the FBI.
  • The phrases "Dammit, David!" and "L Y N C H E D" spread like wildfire in response to the last episode.
  • "What year is this?"
  • "See you all in another 25 years!" ^note  Also in response to the lack of closure generated by the finale.
  • "This is the water, and this is the well. Drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes, and the dark within."
    • Now with an 8 hour version.
  • "Got a light?"
  • The "Gordon Cole reacts to Something" series of Youtube videos such as Gordon Cole reacts to James' romance with Evelyn Marsh. Basically, like the Downfall videos of Hitler, they're having Gordon Cole's befuddled reaction to something related to Twin Peaks or David Lynch himself.
  • Photoshopping "STARRING KYLE MACLACHLAN" over pictures of different bands performing, after The Return's Every Episode Ending.
  • Due to his similarities to a certain other character with a Megaton Punch, Freddie Sykes has earned the nickname "One Punch Lad".
  • James's rather large forehead became this for some, especially due to how it gets when he emotes. Case in point: this◊.
• Narm Charm: The fate of Philip Jeffries. Bet you never thought a giant teapot with a Southern accent could be so creepy, huh? Welcome to Lynchville.
• Sophomore Slump: Fans usually consider the second season of the show to be the one with the most problems.
  • The first season and the beginning of the second were a cultural phenomenon, considered by critics to be some of the best television ever created. Then, creators David Lynch and Mark Frost succumbed to Executive Meddling and revealed Laura Palmer's killer, whose identity until that point had been the major driving force of the plot, and in so doing left the show directionless. To make things worse, Lynch—due to a combination of Artist Disillusionment after this and being busy with working on Wild at Heart—stepped back from the show, leaving it in the hands of writers who really didn't know what to do with it. The episodes post-Lynch were pure filler, and ratings plummeted, leading to its cancellation at the end of the second season. Luckily, there was a brief upswing in quality once the replacement writers got their game together, and Lynch came back to direct the (awesome) series finale.
  • The Laura Palmer reveal would not have led to the cancellation of the show only half a season later under most circumstances. Unfortunately, the development of the most viable remaining storyline on the show, Audrey and Cooper's romance, was forbidden by Kyle MacLachlan when the writers were preparing to do just that, leaving them scrambling for new storylines. Kyle did so because he didn't think Cooper would date a high school girl and this was given as the explanation in-universe. Cooper then proceeded to date a woman exactly two years older than Audrey. Eventually, Cooper's motivation was changed to his wanting to protect Audrey.
• Spiritual Adaptation: This remains one of the most influential pieces of media created in the Nineties. Take a look at these.
  • On the video game end there's Deadly Premonition, Alan Wake, Psychonauts, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Silent Hill, Life Is Strange and now according to Hideo Kojima himself, Death Stranding Hilarious in Hindsight if you consider this game was created after Kojima's Silent Hill project was canned.
  • On the Western Animation end there's Gravity Falls and Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated.
  • Television series influenced by the series include The X-Files, The Killing, and Northern Exposure.
  • The podcast Welcome to Night Vale.
  • The Urban Fantasy series The Bright Falls Mysteries Jane Doe novels are Twin Peaks with shapeshifters.

The original run

• Adorkable: Pete Martell. His love of fishing, affable demeanor, and lack of ambition put him at odds with everyone else's scheming. Especially his wife's.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Dale Cooper a good guy or is he not or at least by the prequel... urh sequel? Fire Walk With Me. With Phillip Jeffries we saw what the Black Lodge can do to a man. In the film Future!Dale warns Laura from taking the ring; while taking it ensures her death it protects her from being possessed by BOB who has been catering her for years by that point, and if Laura doesn't takes the ring she doesn't die, but she gets consumed by BOB. That means that Dale doesn't have to go to Twin Peaks and get sent to the Lodge. Was he trying to save Laura or trying to do a temporal fix and save his own ass at Laura's innocence expense?
  • Is the Man from Another Place legitimately trying to stop BOB to prevent a catastrophe from happening, or is he an evil spirit trying to take control of BOB for his own purposes? Even with The Return, we don't have any answers yet.
  • His motivations remain mysterious in the show, but Fire Walk With Me lends a darker interpretation to his character. He seems opposed to BOB only in that BOB hoards garmonbozia for himself and deprives the other Lodge creatures of their rightful fill. The Man from Another Place is happy to slurp up the garmonbozia that BOB proffers after killing Laura and thereby inflicting suffering upon both Laura and Leland.
  • Further related to Fire Walk With Me, he claims to be "the arm," (likely) meaning Mike's arm - a remnant of Mike's own evil. I've always thought that the Black Lodge denizens were unhappy with BOB running amuck after Mike turned good. (If BOB was Mike's familiar, he probably had him on something of a leash.) BOB wasn't paying his garmonbozia taxes, so the MFAP and "Mrs. Tremond" etc. were therefore helping the investigation of who killed Laura more than they might have otherwise.
  • There are a couple of possible interpretations for Albert's involvement in Blue Rose cases as authorized by Gordon Cole. One is that it's necessary to have a skeptic on board so that the more supernaturally-attuned agents don't go too far in suggesting or pursuing supernatural explanations where there may be none, and Albert helps pull them back down to reality where necessary. Another is that in cases that do involve the supernatural, his lack of sensitivity to spiritual or supernatural matters makes him a less likely victim or target, with those who are more inclined toward less empirical and more spiritual/supernatural explanations (such as Cooper) serving as Designated Point Man: this in turn would allow Albert to keep the necessary investigation ongoing and to serve as a witness if it falls through (which The Secret History of Twin Peaks implies is also Tamara Preston's role). If the latter of these explanations, Albert might be considered to have the sixth sense equivalent of a Disability Superpower.
  • Given Albert's sneering opinion of people who live in the sticks, his advocacy of pacifism and love could be seen as a high horse he takes so he can feel good about himself.
  • Is Denise Bryson a male Transvestite, or a Transgender woman? The show never clears it up, as LGBT issues weren't as well understood in 1990 (at least, by those outside the community). The 2017 revival definitively states that she's a trans woman.
    • Can also be a shout-out John Edgar Hoover if he was in 2017.
  • Even some of the minor and one-off characters are subject to debate. For instance: "Do you want to hear about our specials? We don't have any!" The Movie leaves it very vague as to whether these are the words of a Deadpan Snarker or an outright Cloud Cuckoolander.
• Angst? What Angst?: The atmosphere at Leland's funeral is already pretty light-hearted for a funeral to begin with, but it becomes pretty jarring when you consider that, as far as most of the guests know, the deceased was a trusted and respected member of their community who had been revealed not only to have behind the grisly murders of several young women, but also counted his niece and own daughter amongst his victims, the latter of whom he had also sexually abused for years. You'd think that there would be a whole lot more awkward and uncomfortable silence at such an occasion, but all the attendees are pleasantly chatting with each other and generally having a good time.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Annie Blackburn. While she isn't without her fans, she still gets flack from Cooper/Audrey shippers. Generally, fans of the show thought Annie was an okay character Strangled by the Red String with Cooper but okay in her own right. It helped there were hints of a darker past which never got explored.
  • Windom Earle is a Large Ham Card-Carrying Villain with a lot of traits straight out of Scooby-Doo or Batman (1966) like killing people and putting them in giant chess pieces. However, he's at least having FUN in the latter half of Season 2, which a lot of people felt was missing. The fact he brutalizes Leo to the point of him almost becoming The Woobie helps with Earle's enjoyability to some viewers too.
• Better on DVD: While it's fine on its own, most episodes seem to make up a single day of investigation. Some details from the first few days come in a little later, when you might have forgotten about it.
• Complete Monster: Windom Earle is an obsessive sociopath who serves as Dale Cooper's most personal foe and a testament to the belief that some humans are no better than the entities residing inside the Black Lodge. Formerly Cooper's best friend and a celebrated FBI special agent before falling in love with the evil of the Black Lodge, Earle moonlighted as a prolific Serial Killer, murdering his own wife Caroline once she found out the horrible truth. Caring only for his desire to become Cooper's greatest enemy and the rewards that the dark forces of the Black Lodge could offer him, Earle starts another killing spree in order to play a twisted game of chess against Cooper, one where Earle's victims are the chess pieces. Earle's need to humiliate others extends to his only companion, the mentally-impaired Leo Johnson, whom he regularly abuses and eventually murders to cut off loose ends. Once Earle has entered the Black Lodge and taken Cooper's soul as a trophy, Earle intends on harnessing its demonic spirits to give himself the power to reshape the Earth itself to his own liking.
• Creator's Pet: David Lynch liked Joan Chen's performance, which is why she gets a lot of focus despite not being very popular with fans.
  • David Lynch wrote a scene where Gordon Cole (played by himself) ended up in a makeout session with Shelly (Madchen Amick). David Lynch has stated it wasn't entirely because he wanted to kiss her.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Audrey is one of, if probably not THE most popular characters aside from ol' Coop. Sherilyn Fenn's charisma shines through every scene with her combination of Seemingly-Wholesome '50s Girl, Heroic Seductress, and Amateur Sleuth. The fact she was one of the more three-dimensional characters also helped her win over audiences.
  • Gordon Cole, Albert Rosenfield, and Maddie Ferguson all have pretty big fanbases despite not appearing that much. Notably, Gordon Cole (played by David Lynch himself) and Albert becoming Ascended Extra characters in The Return, temporarilly taking over Cooper's role as Occult Detective heroes, has met with near universal approval. Maddie Ferguson also got to give Sheryl Lee a much larger role as the "face" of Laura Palmer.
  • Windom Earle, in spite of being a character synonymous with the show's Post-Script Season (he was created to keep Cooper in Twin Peaks and fill in for BOB), really stands out as one of the better things in the latter half of season 2. Kenneth Walsh's performance was an unsettling yet quirky foil for Cooper, and he worked quite well as a villain very different from BOB. Another reason was that Earle's storyline was one of the more interesting amongst the season's tangled melodrama and kept the Black Lodge and other spooky elements in focus.
  • The Man from Another Place doesn't appear very often, but is arguably one of the most iconic characters in the whole series (or Lynch's filmography in general) and every scene he appears in is creepily memorable. The same can be said for the Giant.
• Fair for Its Day: Denise Bryson's transgender representation has some flaws, with the biggest critique from queer viewers being that she was portrayed by a cis man, David Duchovny, which may deprive the role of some authenticity and reinforce connotations that trans women are men in costume. The original run also doesn't firmly cement that Denise identifies as a trans woman and isn't a male crossdresser who stayed with the hobby. However, for the nineties, her representation is uncommonly genuine and respectful. She's introduced onscreen as a woman and Cooper, who had just discussed her by her former presentation and deadname, is quick to accept her (and quick to apologize when reflexively deadnaming her later)—their friendship and cooperation isn't upended by her transition at all. Audrey's first response to Denise is genuine awe and delight that women are working in government law enforcement, and while Denise has some comedic scenes, she's never truly the butt of the joke and isn't reviled by the script. She even saves Coop's life in a sting by exploiting her femininity as a Trojan horse. Later, The Return cements Denise as a trans woman and also includes David Lynch's character Gordon Cole staunchly vouching for her as a trans woman, helping to clarify her status and the positive intent behind her.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: The Cooper and Audrey pairing was preferred not only by fans, but by Lynch himself; explicit references were written out of the script at Kyle MacLachlan's objection to their relationship. Both were later given other (and fan-reviled) love interests in the second season.
  • While Sherilyn Fenn preferred Audrey/Cooper (and still ships them to this day), Billy Zane shipped John Justice Wheeler and Audrey. Then again, he may be biased.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Due to Seasonal Rot and Executive Meddling, the second half of Season Two (or the Wyndham Earle plot) is considered Discontinuity by fans. The network pushed for the show's main storyline to be resolved early leaving the writers grabbing at reasons to keep Cooper in Twin Peaks. After we learn that a possessed Leland Palmer was the murderer the rest is filler up until the awesome Lynch-directed finale. Where the series ends is up for argument.
  • In the name of the Fan-Preferred Couple, Annie and Wheeler never happened. And as of season three, Cooper and Diane never had any out of nowhere romantic feelings for each other.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Leo Johnson with his '80s Hair and love for plaid.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Don S. Davis being part of a secret military project involving aliens years before being part of a secret military project involving aliens is hilarious on its own, but the best part is when he advises Cooper against keeping secrets for the sake of the greater good, which was the crux of a lot of drama and the opposite stance he and most of the cast took on SG1.
  • The series features a dead girl named Laura, other characters named Audrey and Lucy, and an actor who would later be on The X-Files, David Duchovny. Fast-forward to Season 3, when Twin Peaks shares a timeslot with American Gods, which features... a dead girl named Laura, other characters named Audrey and Lucy (well, at least someone impersonating Lucy), and an X-Files alum, Gillian Anderson. Which has led to a few people joking about a Crack Ship involving Denise Bryson and Media, Duchovny and Anderson's respective characters. Not that weird, when you consider a few already shipped Denise with Scully.
• Hollywood Homely: David Lynch lampshades this in-character:
  Gordon Cole: THIS WORLD OF TWIN PEAKS SEEMS TO BE FILLED WITH BEAUTIFUL WOMEN!
• It Was His Sled: Mostly averted, but those who have never seen the show should still be wary of spoilers. Many fans who saw it when it first aired believe the show is now too old for anything to be a spoiler, despite the fact that many new fans, too young to have seen it the first time, are trying to catch up in preparation for Season 3 (or because they became curious after playing Deadly Premonition).
• Jerkass Woobie: Leo arguably becomes this over the course of his captivity in Windom Earle's cabin, during which he comes to understand firsthand the sort of horrifying abuse he inflicted upon Shelly.
• Narm:
  • The long, moody scene in which James, Donna and Maddy sing "Just You" can come across as silly due to the teen earnestness in which its delivered and the high-pitched singing voice James uses. Knowing the series, this might be at least partially intentional. The song becomes James' leitmotif for the rest of the series.
  • Windom Earle in general. He's such a goofy Card-Carrying Villain that he feels like he walked right out of a Scooby-Doo episode. His penchant for wearing wacky disguises during his crimes doesn't help matters.
  • Lana's breakdown after Douglas's death, mainly due to Robyn Lively's horrible and unconvincing acting.
• Narm Charm:
  • A big part of the show's initial appeal. The soap-opera melodramatics, which were (at least initially) parodying other shows of the time such as Dallas, were executed well enough to genuinely endear the characters to audiences while keeping a comedic edge to the show.
  • Windom Earle is halfway between Lex Luthor and a chess-themed version of The Riddler, but he's easily the best part of Season 2's latter half.
• One-Scene Wonder: Jimmy Scott only shows up in the last episode — in one of the most haunting scenes in the series.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Annie Blackburn, who was wheeled in out of nowhere purely to supplant Audrey as Cooper's love interest. Her winning the Miss Twin Peaks pageant is likely to produce the same reaction from viewers that it did from Mayor Milford: "She's been living in this town about fifteen minutes!"
  • While Annie has some fans for at least having a role in the central plot, the same can't be said for John Justice Wheeler, who only serves to break up the Cooper/Audrey ship and reduces Audrey's involvement in the main storyline in favor of a romance subplot.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Almost. After spending Season One as a weak-willed pawn being manipulated by Catherine and Ben Horne before running crying to Sheriff Truman, it is revealed that Josie has secretly been working with Ben to frame Catherine for the mill fire, and also had a hand in her husband's death, which gave her the mill in the first place. Then, in the following season, it is discovered that Josie did all this at the behest of another person, turning her back into the easily manipulated victim. One step forward, two steps back.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Yes, that's a pre-The X-Files David Duchovny as Denise Bryson.
  • Apart from a small role in License to Drive, this was Heather Graham's first major gig.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: Several. Primarily to blame for the general consensus that the second season would've been much better if it had been half as long.
• The Scrappy:
  • James Hurley (for being monumentally stupid, even by the standards of Twin Peaks teenagers) and Josie Packard (for being a hysterical victim and nothing else); take your pick. Or Nadine (although some more recent fans love her for her eerie resemblance to the awesome secret agent Molotov Cocktease from The Venture Bros.). Annie and John Justice Wheeler, especially if you're a Cooper/Audrey fan.
  • Evelyn Marsh, who served no purpose to the main storyline and was probably only added to write James off the show.
• Signature Scene: The long awaited reveal that Leland Palmer was his daughter's, Laura Palmer's, killer while possessed by BOB. Revealed when he is once again under BOB's control and brutally kills his niece Maddy in the same way Laura was killed.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • The cup in the Black Lodge in the final episode that changes from a liquid, to a solid, and back to a very viscous liquid again. Upon closer inspection the solid tea is just a lump of plastic.
  • In a scene where Harold Smith is brandishing a hand rake, you can see the fake blood on the tips of the hand rake well before he uses it to claw his cheek. This is particularly obvious as he accidentally brushes the rake against his cheek before the actual clawing, which leaves a small red smear. If not for his groan of pain, you might think he's supposed to be simply painting red onto his face.
  • A scene where Nadine hurls a high school boy is done using very obvious undercranking. To make matters worse, the film is run backward and forward for a moment at the beginning of the shot as Nadine says an obviously looped line, making the film speed manipulation even more blatant and highlighting the sudden change in visual resolution.
  • The remastered version makes the border of Billy Zane's wig along his forehead very obvious whenever John Justice Wheeler gets a close-up.
• Strangled by the Red String: Both Cooper/Annie and Audrey/Jack are viewed this way by a sizable amount of the fanbase.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: A chronic issue in Season 2, especially with the James/Marsh siblings and Horne subplots. Not only are the Marsh siblings completely disconnected from anything else happening in the show, keeping James and Donna disconnected as well, but their little plot to frame James for murder, which is used to write him out, is entirely redundant narratively. By that point James has already decided to leave Twin Peaks for a host of perfectly good reasons—in fact, he only meets the Marshes because he leaves Twin Peaks—so he doesn't exactly need more motivation to leave. Meanwhile, Audrey's boyfriend and daddy drama takes up 99% of her time and prevents her from doing much, if anything, of actual interest. (Not coincidentally, the mountain lions become a widespread issue right after The Reveal. The writers were forced to name Laura's murderer much earlier than they'd been planning, and didn't have a new central mystery immediately on deck.)
• The "Fun" in "Funeral": Laura Palmer's funeral is solemn one... until Bobby's "AAAAAAMEEEN!" interruption. Then Bobby and James coming to blows the second they spot each other and Leland jumping on Laura's casket and hugging it, causing a malfunction on the lowering device, Crosses the Line Twice. Leland's reaction is even lampshaded later in Meals on Wheels, where some patrons make fun of the broken lowering device.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The death of Maddie Ferguson hurt the high schoolers narrative of Twin Peaks as her Love Triangle with James and Donna was pretty much the only thing either character had going for them aside from their Amateur Sleuth investigation of Laura's death. While her death was indeed shocking, it caused a hole in the narrative. Also, many viewers liked Sheryl Lee as an actress almost as much as the "main" cast.
  • Many fans agree that Donna's Perky Goth sister Harriett is an interesting and funny character with the potential to be a good semi-regular, and lament how she only has small roles in two episodes.
• Values Resonance: The character of Denise Bryson is remarkably progressive, regardless of whether one interprets her as transgender or just not comforming to traditionally masculine gender indicators. There are minimal jokes made about her, others accept her preferred identity at most with brief initial confusion, and she is shown to be a highly capable, mentally stable individual whose personality is not dominated by her gender identity.
• The Woobie:
  • Laura Palmer is the quintessential example as she was molested as a child by her father, became addicted to drugs to deal with the pain, and became a prostitute as part of a scheme to get out of town. Oh and she was also menaced by an Eldritch Abomination from adolescence up. This is all before she was found murdered and wrapped in plastic.
  • Harold Smith, the sad shut-in who commits suicide.

The Return

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Janey-E a cool, awesome doberman of a woman who refuses to be cowed by mafia hitmen or the general suckiness of her life, or is she a severely self-absorbed who completely misses that her husband has been literally replaced by another (albeit an Identical Stranger) man? Add to that the Questionable Consent of her initiating sex with a clearly mentally challenged version of "Dougie", and it makes for a Base-Breaking Character.
    • Dougie's boss mentions to the police that Dougie once suffered a head injury, suggesting they are used to him behaving erratically. Janey-E may have hoped the lovemaking would snap him out of his absentminded state.
  • Beverly's conversation/argument with her husband, Tom, has a bunch of this. He might be a Crazy Jealous Guy whose sickness is making him ornery all the time, lashing out at Beverly in a vain attempt to control her. Or Tom's just a sick man who's concerned that his wife may be having an affair and who is regularly torn down and insulted because of his illness. They could be just two people under a lot of stress or it could just be a mutually abusive relationship.
  • MIKE's appearance to Cooper at the Cafe at Dougie's office implies that he was the one who had Dougie buy the cherry pie that ended up saving his life. All of the other strange occurrences like the lights helping Dougie win money and do his job as well as the dream Bradley Mitchum had may have also been MIKE's doing all to help keep Cooper out of trouble.
  • Some fans debate whether Tracey and Sam have an established sexual attraction or relationship before she starts bringing him coffee, met that way and developed an attraction that way, or if Tracey is an Unwitting Pawn of BOB (since she does make him divert his attention from the glass box) or corporate spy out to seduce him to learn about the box.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: Everyone was sure that a 25 year old show that a bunch of people didn't remember getting a continuation in a decade full of so many competitive TV shows that it has been referred to as "The Golden Age of Television" for nearly a decade, whose low point had especially been reboots and remakes of old series would absolutely fail. And it did! If you're looking from the ratings and award-winning aspect, that is. On the other hand, the show totally delivered for its fans and for critics, it was declared the best show of the year/decade by several review magazines, even won awards as Best MOVIE on some others, and in artistic circles it became a new source of inspiration just as the original had been.
• Anticlimax Boss:
  • After a long time being built up as a major antagonist, Richard Horne is sent by Mr. C into a death trap intended for him, being dissolved into light without ever having to confront any of the protagonists. In the same episode, Hutch and Chantal, the Laughably Evil assassin couple, are gunned down by a random guy they got into an argument with, also without ever meeting any of the protagonists.
  • Badass Evil Cooper is defeated by getting shot...once...with a normal gun...by frigging Lucy!
• Arc Fatigue: The Dougie Jones storyline for some wears out its welcome fairly early on with Cooper sidelined as a Pinball Protagonist for a vast majority of the series runtime. It isn't until Part 16 that the real Dale Cooper finally returns after a twenty-five year absence.
• Awesome Music: The performances at the Roadhouse provide a lot. Special mention goes to "Shadow" by the Chromatics, "She's Gone Away" by the Nine Inch Nails, and "Axolotl" by the Veils.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Fans either love or hate Janey-E due to the fact she's strongly involved in keeping the real Cooper away from Twin Peaks. This is doubled after Part 10 when she had Questionable Consent sex with him, thinking he's her husband. A lot of fans still love her, though, because she's The Determinator and played by Naomi Watts.
  • Agent Tammy Preston has received a lot of hatedom from fans due to her actress being a singer with no previous acting experience. Accusations of being hired for her looks and worse have been thrown at her, even to the point she's commented on them. However, many Twin Peaks fans love that she's a Canon Immigrant from The Secret History of Twin Peaks and serves as a good The Watson to Gordon Cole and Albert Rosenfield's Bunny-Ears Lawyer. Also, she is damned beautiful.
  • Richard Horne, hoo boy. Ran over a kid, beats up his grandmother and gropes a woman in a bar. On the other side some fans like him as a character (a very purist, simple, hardcore, consistent example of an intended unlikeable character), and while he certainly manages that for a majority of the fanbase, some praise that he's well written.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Even though the original series is known for plenty of random scenes that served nothing to the plot, nothing takes the cake than this scene in Part 13 of The Return: James Hurley singing "Just You" at the Roadhouse for no apparent reason. Especially a BLAM in that he had been out of the show since Part 2. It becomes doubly crazy because if the musical performances are not only in-universe rather than theater, as that means that Nine Inch Nails performed at a small town venue but got LESS of a reaction than a local biker.
  • The convulsing girl that Bobby spots in a car accident is never mentioned after her one scene.
• Bizarro Episode: Lynch really outdid himself here. The revival really doubles down on the Mind Screw and Surreal Horror of the original, but nothing compares to Episode 8, which is 45 minutes of wall-to-wall insanity (including mutant frogs, demon lumberjacks, and an atomic explosion) that's freaky and strange even by Twin Peaks standards.
• Broken Base: Despite season 3 receiving nearly universal praise from fans and being cited as the best revival of the revival craze, there are still some things the viewers can't get along.
  • Some didn't like the full fantastic plot of the new season and said it destroyed the ambiguous interpretations of the original like Sarah Palmer's visions being the result of the drugs Leland gave her to sleep when he raped Laura, Laura hallucinating due to trauma, or Leland just repeating the behavior he received when sexually abused as a kid by a man named Bob while the rest of the fanbase prefer it because of how surreal it is, and for providing some definite answers.
  • For those who had any expectations to the new series and wanted the light-hearted by comparison feel of the original, or those who wanted it to be darker, especially those who still consider Fire Walk With Me as the Darker and Edgier installment of Twin Peaks with the new season being Bloodier and Gorier at best, or just plain raunchier at worst.
  • Dougie Jones' entire subplot where he's actually an Empty Shell for Agent Cooper has split the fanbase. Some fans love the character's comic relief in a very dark series while others want Cooper back, dammit. Others like the character fine but think his story was dragged out.
• Catharsis Factor: It is immensely satisfying to watch Richard Horne being electrocuted into nothingness after watching him do all the evil, despicable shit that he did throughout the season.
  • From the same episode: Cooper finally awakens from his Dougie-Coma, complete with Theme Music Power-Up. Twin Peaks fans have been waiting for this moment for 25 years. Many people cried.
• Character Rerailment: There were implications MIKE was just as evil as BOB in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, but he's back to being a good guy in The Return... probably.
• Complete Monster: The Doppelgänger, aka "Mr. C.", born from Cooper's entrance to the Black Lodge at the end of the original series, cut a slew of human suffering across America for 25 years. He houses the previous Big Bad, BOB, and the pair gorge themselves on the pain they cause. Upon his emergence, he tracks down Major Briggs, one of the few to realize his deception, and kills him. He later visits the comatose Audrey Horne and rapes her, conceiving Richard Horne, before dropping off the grid. When he reemerges, he poses as Cooper to get close to Coop's old secretary, Diane, manipulating and raping her before imprisoning her in the Black Lodge. From there he builds a criminal empire with a number of extortions and murders to his name. When he learns that his girlfriend Darya is plotting against him, he beats and murders her. When Cooper reappears he orders his subordinate, Duncan Todd, to kill him and when Todd fails The Doppelgänger has Todd and his assistant killed. When he encounters his son, Richard, years later, he puts the young man into a trap meant for him and watches emotionlessly as the latter is electrocuted to death.
• Crazy Is Cool: Cooper-as-Dougie Jones doesn't get to show himself very often, but when he does, it's spectacular. As one online fan observed, only Cooper could bring a cherry pie to a Mexican Standoff and win.
• Creator's Pet: Tammy Preston is often seen as this being a divisive character who feels creator pushed.
• Creepy Awesome:
  • The Woodsmen, strange beings that look like homeless men covered in ash, capable of crushing heads with their bare hands and speaking exclusively in Word-Salad Horror.
  • Part 8 could be this in its entirety, but in particular the sequence of the Trinity Nuclear Tests, almost 10 minutes of Visual Effects of Awesome that feel like they came out of 2001: A Space Odyssey scored to the "Psycho" Strings of "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima".
  • Philip Jeffries came back as a giant kettle, the scene where he speaks to the Doppelganger in person is so creepy and captivating.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: The soundtrack, really. Good thing too, because most of it consists of a few tracks played over and over in each episode, and if it weren't so good it would drive people crazy. Now has its own page.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The entire conversation with Lucy, Andy, and Hawk in Part 3 about how something is missing that is tied to Hawk's heritage. Lucy and Andy are Innocently Insensitive taken to the 11 as they point out Hawk is an Indian as well as debate whether chocolate bunny eggs could be related to Native American stomach gas cures. Hawk is clearly trying to debate whether he should be offended or acknowledge they're too stupid/nice to be doing this deliberately. It is HILARIOUS.
  • Janey-E having sex with Dougie - who isn't in any condition to be giving consent - would normally be quite tasteless, but when put into practice manages to be the best example of Black Comedy Rape since Young Frankenstein. Janey-E screaming "DOUGIEEE!!!" while she's having sex with a 50-something man who doesn't do anything outside of flapping his arms and looking spaced-out makes the scene just ludicrous enough to be palatable. Also Janey-E wakes Sonny Jim.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: As of The Return, Diane Evans, mainly due to being a Deadpan Snarker Lady Swears-A-Lot who steals every scene she's in.
  • Freddie Sykes, the Cockney-accented security guard with his magic green punching glove. Taken up to eleven in Part 17 when he knocks out Chad and kills BOB.
  • Bradley and Rodney Mitchum, who are funny, cool, and genuinely likable. Even fans who weren't satisfied with The Return as a whole admit that every scene with the Mitchum brothers is pure gold.
  • Candie, one of the Mitchum brothers' girls. Despite being practically a background character and having very few lines, her sweetness and her portrayer's endearingly odd performance have gained her a lot of fans.
  • The Polish accountant.
  • Carrie Page, despite appearing only in the final episode, has become one of its most memorable characters, probably because she's a resurrected Laura Palmer. Maybe.
  • The Woodsmen.
• Evil Is Cool: Despite being a murderous Diabolical Mastermind, rapist, and Serial Killer, Doppel Coop has quite a few fans. This is due to Kyle MacLachlan's amazing performance. It's notable he tends to Pay Evil unto Evil with the majority of his on-screen victims so far having tried to either kill him or being involved with his criminal schemes. The fact BOB chooses to let Doppel Coop remain in charge of their body shows this is true in-universe.
  • This also applies to the Woodsmen. They're a force of pure, demonic evil who commit gruesome acts of violence and serve the series' Big Bad, but they're also one of the most memorable parts of The Return, and the scenes they appear in are universally considered to be some of the most terrifying and atmospheric moments in the series. The mantra associated with them has also gained Memetic Mutation status.
• Even Better Sequel: It's not a universal take, but a number of critics and fans believe it's better than the original series and possibly the best thing David Lynch has ever done.
• Fanfic Fuel: The series was already this before season 3, but now is just ridiculous.
  • Many fans believe the many random pseudo-plot vignettes in the roadhouse are all linked to each other and with Bobby's investigation of drug trafficking, and everything bad that happens in the town that isn't related to the main plotlines.
  • Hours upon hours have been spend trying to explain the plot from blogs to video essays about parallel dimensions, time traveling, Buddhism, but the most popular until now has been that it was a dream all along. While this would normally be a cheap twist, it is thematically in tone with the series.
• Fanon Discontinuity: After the finale and other controversies of season three, some have applied discontinuity to the whole season. A milder variation is to simply disregard the last episode, preferring to end the story at episode 17. On the other hand episode 18 raises the Gainax Ending to a new artform, providing plenty of opportunity for each and every fan to be happy with their own theory of what the heck happened - just try to find two reviews or fans who subscribe to the same interpretation.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: The Doppelganger with his Danzig-like mullet and leather jacket. Though in his case it arguably adds to his uncanny nature to make him even creepier (the costume designers explicitly stated they were inspired by the design of Anton Chigurh).
• Harsher in Hindsight: The 2017 revival was filmed at the exact right time, with three major actors (Catherine Coulson, Miguel Ferrer, and Warren Frost) living just barely long enough to be part of it, and another (Harry Dean Stanton) dying only a few months afterwards. This also makes the 25 year prediction in the finale even more eerie.
  • Peggy Lipton also dying of cancer two years after the new season ended makes Norma and Ed’s final scene together especially more poignant.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Matthew Lillard's performance has been pretty well-received, especially with people who were only familiar with him as Shaggy.
  • James Belushi's reputation can largely be summed up for the most part as "that other, less funny Belushi brother", but many people have called his work as Bradley Mitchum one of the best parts of the new show, and the interplay between him, Robert Knepper, and Kyle MacLachlan is considered to be genuinely hilarious.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Laura's final line of the original series was "I'll see you again in 25 years". This prediction is almost exact for the revival of the series.
• I Knew It!:
  • Laura Dern's character's identity wasn't revealed in the lead up to the premiere of the third season, and interviews consistently stressed that she was playing someone important. Very few fans were surprised when it turned out she's playing Diane.
  • Many viewers correctly guessed that Richard Horne, with his extremely violent behavior, was the son of Mr. C and Audrey.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Diane is hostile and snarky towards everyone in the FBI, which becomes more understandable in her conversation with Doppelganger!Cooper when it's revealed that he raped her. Made even worse when she's revealed not to be Diane at all, but rather, a tulpa manufactured in the Black Lodge who has all of the real Diane's memories, and has no choice but to serve her own rapist.
  • Becky got her Woobie status updated when she reacted to the discovery her husband was cheating on her with Gertsen Hayward by getting a gun, stealing her mother's car, driving her car with her mother on its hood, and then going to shoot Gertsen's door repeatedly because she wasn't there.
• Love to Hate:
  • Just as in-universe, nobody, nobody in the fandom likes rude, mouthy Manchild Chad except for a few viewers who mostly just love to hate him or enjoy watching him make his co-workers uncomfortable.
• Memetic Badass: Freddie Sykes, James's Cockney-accented friend who always wears a mysterious green glove that gives him the ability to Megaton Punch people like a comic book character.
  • The Polish accountant who responds to Hutch and Chantal blocking his driveway and swearing at him by ramming his car into theirs and shooting them about five hundred times with an automatic pistol. Fans have jokingly suggested that he was clearly an agent of the White Lodge, or that if he was an FBI Agent, BOB would have been caught and destroyed within the very first episode.
• Moral Event Horizon: Richard Horne hitting a little boy with his truck and driving away without even slowing down definitely counts if his Establishing Character Moment doesn't. Of course, somehow, Richard Horne actually made himself even worse in fans' eyes when he beat up and robbed his grandmother in a scene considered many to be heinous, even by the show's Darker and Edgier standards.
• Once Original, Now Common: A major worry of the fanbase and critics before the premiere was: How was Twin Peaks going to compete against nearly three decades of original, weird and even indirectly or directly TV shows inspired by the original? Thankfully, our fears were unfounded.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Wally Brando, Andy and Lucy's grown child is already gaining this reputation, based solely off of his bizarre, stilted monologue delivered in Episode 4 of the revival.
  • Dougie's unnamed neighbor, credited only as Polish Accountant. He gets into an argument with Chantel and Hutch over them parking in his driveway and the scene escalates into a full blown fight, resulting in him killing them with a machine gun.
• Questionable Casting: Chrysta Bell as Tammy Preston, due to being a singer rather than an actress. This is not exactly deserved since David Bowie and Chris Isaak - both singers themselves - have had major roles in Twin Peaks.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The beginning of Season 3 takes its time in moving the plot along. Most notably 6/18 episodes in and Cooper is still in an Empty Shell state, though he does look like he's slowly starting to shake it off. By Episode 7 the plot has picked up a bit and Episode 8 is... well... Episode 8.
• Signature Scene: For The Return the entirety of Episode 8 is on its way to becoming the revival's "Signature Episode."
  • The cherry pie scene.
  • The final scene of "Part 18": "Carrie"'s horrified scream.
• Signature Song: "Shadow" and "She's Gone Away".
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Some of the effects in The Return have drawn criticism as looking cheaply-made and unnatural, particularly the new form of the Arm and the figure in the Buckhorn jail floating away. Others have argued the unnaturalness creates an appropriately uncanny and otherworldly feel.
  • Harry Goaz apparently wears an extremely unconvincing fat suit as Sheriff Andy, which gives him a large belly but nothing is done to make his neck and arms appear thicker.
• Strangled by the Red String: Cooper is once again victim of this. His reunion with Naido, revealed to be the real Diane, is played as if they were longtime lovers. They share passionate kisses and a night of love despite the fact that such a dynamic wasn't hinted at at all in the original run.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Averted somewhat with The Return. Gone is the campy, soap opera-like humor and quirkiness of the first 2 seasons. The new episodes are much more darkly comedic and unnerving, sharing thematic elements with some of Lynch's film work such as Eraserhead, Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire. While you would expect this to turn off fans of the original seasons, this doesn't seem to have affected the hype and enthusiasm one bit.
  • The Man from Another Place's new form got a bit of this. For some, Michael J. Anderson was a crucial part of the series and it just wasn't the same having replaced him.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Not as strongly felt as many examples of this trope, but The Comically Serious Sam and Tracey could have survived and gotten an interesting subplot of trying to track down and recover The Experiment who broke out of the glass box.
  • Wally Brando could have easily filled the void James left after he grew out of his James Dean phase.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: After Audrey's interest in being an FBI agent was established, it would have been a great storyline to have her be the FBI agent who's investigating now (especially as that would also circle back to her line about "You better watch out when I'm all grown up and out on my own"). Audrey's actual plotline feels like a bit of a let-down after that setup.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The third season might do this for some since it is much Darker and Edgier than the original two seasons and also much, much, much Bloodier and Gorier, which might take away from the show's original quirky charm.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The atomic blast, hell everything in Part 8 of The Return is appropriately awesome and terrifying.
• Wangst: Done again in Hastings' interrogation. He's understandably upset over the death of his mistress, but his meltdown takes a turn for the ridiculous when he starts reminiscing about their plans to go to the Bahamas, drink mixed drinks, and SOAK UP THE SUUUUUUN, look at the beautiful sunsets, and go scuuuuuba diving. Knowing Lynch, this is almost certainly intentional.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Media critics often went out of their way to point out that The Return spends a lot of time harping on the suffering and anxiety of the rural working class. One example is the show's portrayal of the Deer Meadow trailer park. The suffering and anxiety of Deer Meadow residents knows no party, but is defined by skepticism of political and economic forces perceivably beyond the average rural joe's control. In Twin Peaks itself, this leads to a search for hope and meaning in the sometimes wacky views of opinionated troublemakers like Jacoby's character of Dr. AMP. Then there's the series' unresolved subplot about a designer drug crisis which the police don't do anything about - and which could be taken as a commentary on the mid-2010s opioid addiction epidemic. Not to mention the series' massive surrealism-tinted Green Aesop in episode 8.

The Books

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: The Final Dossier reveals the unpleasant fate of Annie Blackburn. She spent the rest of her life in a catatonic state and attempted to commit suicide.
• Epileptic Trees: Various continuity errors in The Secret History of Twin Peaks lead fans to claim that someone in The Return would change history This ends up being true, but it's unclear if the errors are directly related.
• Paranoia Fuel: Mark Frost is an excellent Conspiracy Theories writer and The Secret History can easily contain the whole Historical In-Joke super trope to the magnitude it almost blurs reality from fiction, especially the audio book at night.
  • The Final Dossier does it again with a constantly changing canon. Combined with the ending of The Return, it's overwhelming.
• Squick: The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer is filled with it. The incest element is just the tip of the iceberg.

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