Twin Peaks season 3, episode 16 review: A time for awakenings

*WARNING: SPOILERS FOR TWIN PEAKS SEASON 3, EPISODE 15*

We waited, and we waited. Now the wait is finally over.

So much of Twin Peaks: The Return’s teasing brilliance has been in its own inaction. It’s been a series so far largely about states of being, people trapped between past and future, always in seeming anticipation of something. We constantly looped back to footage of a dark, winding road, exactly how this episode commences – an endless nocturnal journey with a destination unknown.

But now, however, Twin Peaks has laid down all of its cards. After last week’s episode hinted at Dale Cooper’s return as a result of Dougie’s electrocution stunt, the sense of anticipation reached its peak here. It seems almost trivial, at this point, to see both Tim Roth’s Hutch and Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Chantal meet their untimely ends in a dramatic shoot out with one of the Jones’ neighbours, right under the nose of the FBI and the Mitchum brothers. “People are under a lot of stress, Bradley,” Rodney shrugs. Indeed.

When the final delivery arrives, it’s satisfying in the simplest of ways. A visitation from MIKE to Dale's hospital bed brings the proclamation: “You are awake.” Dale replies, “100 percent.” That peppy succinctness is like music to the ears of a Twin Peaks fan, so unmistakably like Dale in its quality. He immediately snaps into FBI agent mode, his task now clear: he asks MIKE to make another seed, offering a clump of his own hair. In his emotional goodbye to Janey-E, promising Dougie will return, we understand why: he’s attempting to create another doppelgänger.

What followed was like the awakening of Sleeping Beauty, the beautiful return of life and spirit to the world. The classic Twin Peaks swells as Dale – fully conscious - breathes in the outside world for the first time in 25 years. His confident response of “I am the FBI” to a question about an incoming visit from the agency is a true first-pumper of a line. It’s like a rainbow suddenly burst overhead.

But, for how long? Bad Dale is also still on the move. Having crossed paths with Richard Horne upon leaving the gas station, he leads his unwitting lackey to the location indicated by two of the coordinates in his possession. Richard is sent ahead, before he’s disintegrated in a nightmarish flash of electricity and fireworks, as Jerry Horne stumbles across the scene and watches in horror.

“Goodbye, my son.” The words Bad Dale leaves Richard with. We knew this all along, but the confirmation is still brutal: Bad Dale raped Audrey while she was in her coma. Every step closer he gets to his goal, the true horrors of this demonic creature become even clearer. Dale’s resurgence has only lent more power to his doppelgänger, who now sends Diane the text of “: - ) ALL.” with a smirk.

Here’s where any jubilation about Dale’s return suffers a quick death. Something is definitely wrong with Diane. In fits over Bad Dale’s text message, she sends him the full coordinates to Twin Peaks. Then she heads straight to the room where Gordon Cole, Albert Rosenfield, and Tamara Preston are working. The scene is so tense, it’s immediately clear she means them only harm. But first: a terrifying confession, now that her memories have returned.

Beyond distraught, Diane explains how the night Cooper visited her, he raped her after he sensed her fear, before taking her to the old gas station. “I’m not me. I’m not me,” she suddenly cries out, before lifting her gun to Cole, Rosenfield, and Preston. She’s incapacitated before she can fire on them, as her form shoots off suddenly into the Red Room. She was a tulpa, a doppelgänger: but does this mean the real Diane is dead? Will she ever be reunited with Dale?

Diane may be gone, but Dale isn’t the only one awoken in this episode. We ended with Audrey Horne suddenly entering the Roadhouse. Not the same Roadhouse we’ve visited before, however, as the one of Audrey’s coma sees the host stop proceedings to introduce “Audrey’s Dance”. That cool, sleek jazz we know so well starts to play once more, as Audrey’s memories are triggered by the sounds coursing through her body, retracing the movements like a zombie. After a fight snaps her from her daze, she screams, “Get me outta here.” Cut to: Audrey in a bright, white room. Is she free?

Twin Peaks airs 2am on Mondays on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV with the Entertainment Pass, in a simulcast with the US. The episode will then be shown again at 9pm on the following day. You can catch up now on season one and two via Sky Box Sets and NOW TV.

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