A Pilgrim's Peaks - Episode 29

I would be remiss not to note that during the original broadcast of Twin Peaks, the last episode was combined with this one into a two-hour season finale. This helps explain why that one felt so listless and abbreviated on its own. It seems like the obvious solution would have been to just make a single, ninety-four minute episode along the lines of the pilot and season two premiere, but that probably wasn’t an option because of the continuing meta-problem this season has had of the need to produce a certain number of episodes first and tell a story second. 

The evil vibes are now erupting in acts violence all over Twin Peaks. Audrey Horne has chained herself to the vault of the Twin Peaks Savings and Loan just before Andrew Packard and Pete Martell show up with a key that was hidden at the heart of Thomas Eckhardt’s parting puzzle box. Opening the safe deposit box with the key sets off an explosion that destroys the bank’s windows, blows the manager’s glasses into a nearby tree and leaves all of their lives in question. Donna Hayward has packed to leave her parents in fury at the apparent lies she’s been told all her life about her parentage and Doctor Hayward punches Benjamin Horne in a fit of rage over how the latter’s narcissism has torn apart his family. As Ben falls, his head hits the marble fireplace and he is, at the very least, knocked out while the doctor appears to start losing his mind instead of trying to help the injured man. 

It’s not all a symphony of horrors, though, as Lucy Moran and Deputy Andy Brennan share a nice moment together at the beginning of the episode. Deputy Brennan is also the source of the episode’s gentlest, most caring moment as he sits with Sheriff Truman in the forest while the latter maintains his vigil for Special Agent Dale Cooper. Andy offers to bring him a thermos of coffee, food, and dessert. It’s a striking act of kindness by a character who has regularly shown himself to have a good heart, despite consistently being the butt of jokes throughout the series. His aid allows Sheriff Truman to be there for Agent Cooper when he reappears with Annie. It’s an all-too-rare series of instances where men selflessly help each other and allow themselves to be helped.

Windom Earle occupies the other end of the spectrum, operating completely in his own self-interest and also perpetuating the use of women by men as a tool for growth and the acquisition of power. In the real world, this typically takes the form of women being the vessel through which men are allowed to express feelings. The mothers, girlfriends, and wives of the world who act as repositories, performing emotional labor for men who’ve been raised in a culture that discourages them to show or talk about emotions with each other. Which leads to fiction where women become the forge through which men must pass in order to become their full selves; to turn from the man-children of first- and second-act rom-coms into their eventual marriageable, or at least long-term shippable, full selves. 

We saw this in full effect in the last episode when Agent Cooper, generally the most emotionally developed and intelligent man in Twin Peaks, was confessing to one woman, Diane, about how much another woman, Annie Blackburn, has changed him. How much Annie has made him aware of the gray, walled-off existence he had been living after the death of Carol, the last significant woman in his life. It’s the full female emotional industrial complex on display and Windom dragging Annie through the woods so he can attain entry to the Black Lodge is just a literalization of the work that most men lean on women to help them do. 

It really highlights how much of a poser Windom is. The more this hyper-talkative antagonist cannot shut up about how much he likes evil and wants to harness its power, the more he comes off like a moody teenager drawing skulls and flames in the margins of his middle school notebooks. It’s impossible not to laugh when he rejoices with lines like, “fear - my favorite emotion!” and that’s exactly the thing that would have been most capable of derailing his plans before he got to the Black Lodge. If anyone but Leo Johnson, a recovering coma patient and victim of torture, were in the room, it’s hard not to imagine them popping his bubble by cracking up at such a childish sentiment. But like most perpetrators of violence, he’s a loner and has no such checks in his life. 

So he kidnaps Annie to help complete the vaguely defined ritual for gaining access to the Black Lodge and the power within it, which requires a woman as some form of key or sacrifice. And because he’s a punk who’s more obsessed with the idea of power than the responsibilities of wielding it, his plan backfires and as soon as he tries to wield the power of the Black Lodge to gain control over Agent Cooper. The lodge not only immediately undoes Earle’s first attempt to use that power, a strong tell of how little it was invested in him, it also takes the form of BOB and then scoops everything Windom was out of himself, turning him into the husk of a tool that he always was - a lure for Agent Cooper, who’s then pursed and captured, apparently giving the Black Lodge the same ready access to our world that it had with Leland Palmer.

A suggestion that’s confirmed in a final scene for the ages as an oddly stiff Agent Cooper excuses himself to the bathroom after waking and gleefully begins squeezing all the toothpaste out of its tube before slamming his head into the bathroom mirror, shattering it and revealing BOB. Their shared rictus grin is broken only by blood flowing down Agent Cooper’s face, his uncontrollable laughter and the repeated question, “How’s Annie?” The bleak suggestion of violence perpetuated hangs in the air and the only comfort we have comes from the inevitability of the end credits. 

It’s been odd seeing Laura Palmer’s face continue to come up as the credits of each episode play out, even after her murder has been solved. It’s not like it couldn’t have been changed;  there are episodes after that mystery is solved where some other image, or clip, is used before the logos come up. Ultimately, it felt like a reminder. Everything we’ve been witness to has been the result of her murder and the suffering that she went through before it. Her reappearance in the credits in a different context - as a reflection in the coffee left on Agent Cooper’s chair in the Black Lodge, smiling and blue-eyed, reminds us of where she remains. It reiterates the consequences of violence in a different way, because we’ve been witness to Laura’s nightmarish doppelgänger that occupies the Black Lodge, forever screaming and eyes clouded over in death.