Twin Peaks

Showtime’s Twin Peaks managed to keep reasonably opaque through three years of production, and even its first eight episodes, but can it survive Comic-Con? We’ll find out, as David Lynch’s cryptic mystery takes the main stage for its own 2017 panel; itself already impossible to decipher.

Showtime’s Twin Peaks may not have offered the ratings smash network heads hoped, but its online presence has given the mystery drama a major boost. Now, ahead of Sunday’s fifth episode premiere, new Twin Peaks is coming back in style with the first two episodes streaming free.

In the weeks before the new season of Twin Peaks premiered, none of the promotional footage we saw gave us any hints about what to expect. That was exactly how David Lynch wanted it: for a show this intricate and bizarre and tempting to try and dissect, there was to be no information that could lend itself to any early fan theorizing. Even the episode descriptions on Showtime’s website (for Episodes 1 and 2: “The stars turn and a time presents itself”) are deliberately oblique. Lynch himself thinks that all the promotional material we’re inundated with before a movie or a show premieres does more harm than good.

Commercials and Curb Your Enthusiasm are about as close to a Seinfeld revival as we’ll ever get, but in an age where new Twin Peaks graces Showtime, anything seems possible. In fact, giving Seinfeld the same eerie teaser as Twin Peaks’ return might just make the best case, in a new parody you have to see.

To paraphrase baseball great and latter-day Confucius figure Yogi Berra: it ain’t over ’til David Lynch states in non-ambiguous language that it’s over, and even then, you can never be too sure. As if from on high, the esteemed filmmaker has handed down to we mere mortal a new season of his cult-beloved TV series Twin Peaks, but his fans know full well that the good Lynch giveth and the good Lynch taketh away. For even as he was givething us new TV, the fear persisted that he had takethed away any hope of another feature film in the future.

Showtime’s ‘Twin Peaks’ remains as maddeningly cryptic as ever, but hits just the right note of Lynch-ian weirdness and intrigue, like a fine (if lukewarm) cup of coffee. Our review, after Sunday’s two-part premiere.

It looks like neither Showtime, nor David Lynch were pulling our legs after all: Twin Peaks is back! Atop the four new episodes available to watch on streaming, Showtime has released the updated opening credits for the 2017 series, haunting theme music and all.

Let’s be honest; even those who’ve watched the entirety of Twin Peaks have a hard time figuring it out, to say nothing of whatever David Lynch greenlights for Showtime trailers. So, without further ado, here’s a bunch of concerned-looking people. Some of them are walking places. Others are Miguel Ferrer. We miss that guy.

Good news and bad news, David Lynch fans: The good news is that the new season of Twin Peaks is so close you can almost taste the cherry pie glaze – but the bad news is that in a new interview Lynch has said, definitively, that he doesn’t plan to make any more movies.

The jury’s out on whether we’ll see an actual Twin Peaks trailer before Showtime premieres its May 21 revival, and even the last promo only gave us shots of the town itself. Thankfully, those characters you like are coming back in style, with some actual (albeit absurdly cryptic) footage of new Twin Peaks!