Recap / Twin Peaks S 3 E 08 The Return Part 8

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Recap of Twin Peaks
Season 3, Episode 8

The Return: Part 8

"This is the water. This is the well. Drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within."

"I saw something in Cooper. It may be the key to what this is all about."

—Ray

Written by Mark Frost and David Lynch.

Directed by David Lynch.

Airdate: June 24, 2017.

The recently escaped Ray Monroe and Bob-possessed Cooper doppelgänger are fleeing in a car with South Dakota license plates when they stop so that Ray can urinate. The Cooper doppelgänger pulls his gun on Ray, but it only clicks when he fires, and Ray shoots the doppelgänger in the chest with a gun of his own; he was prepared. Dark translucent beings with matted beards tear into the body of the doppelgänger as Ray stands transfixed. The beings smear blood over the face of the body and dance in a circle before they pull a gray blob with Bob's smiling face from the chest of the body. A terrified Ray hightails it out of there and calls Phillip Jeffries.

Nine Inch Nails is introduced on the stage at the Roadhouse in Twin Peaks. The band plays "She's Gone Away".

The Cooper doppelgänger is lying on the ground where he was shot. He suddenly sits up and opens his eyes, still covered in blood.

We see a desert landscape on July 16, 1945, in White Sands, New Mexico, at 5:29 AM (MWT). A voice counts down from ten, and a bright light flashes. A small mushroom cloud is seen in the distance as "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima" plays. The camera soars over the New Mexico landscape until the screen is filled with smoky bursts and buzzing flickers.

A model-like 1940's gas station convenience store with cans stacked in the window is seen in the desert. The door opens and closes in a start-stop manner, and a plume of smoke builds by this door. Lights then flash in the store, and the windows melt as if an explosion was contained within the unshaken building, while the lightbulbs above the gas pumps burn unbroken. Suddenly, the bearded men with soot-stained skin, who pulled Bob from the doppelgänger, appear outside the convenience store. More of these men continue to appear and wander in a flickering manner outside of the store. These men then enter the convenience store until only the store is seen which moves in and out of focus. We then see the silhouettes of the men inside the store as they gather.

A feature-less female figure floats in a dark sky and vomits a descending frothy stream. Spheres of substance break away from the stream, including a dark bubble bearing the face of Bob. Beneath the surface of emesis, the humming flashes of color seen in the atomic explosion reappear. A pulsing golden sphere fills the screen, followed by streaking red lights.

Next, we see a shot of a vast ocean. The camera zooms to a tall chunk of rocky land topped with a strange building. We enter the building to see a woman listening to music from a gramophone, sitting beside a machine, which soon starts to flash and make a rhythmic sound. The Giant enters the room and eventually presses a button to stop the sound and flashing. He ascends a set of stairs and enters a room with a large screen. He watches some of the scenes we've already seen, including the bomb explosion, convenience store, and floating figure. He pauses on the bubble with Bob's face.

The giant begins floating, and a yellow light/substance is emitted from his head. The woman enters the room, and a golden bubble showing Laura Palmer's face floats down to her. She kisses it and appears to send it to the image of earth that is now displayed on the screen.

We cut to the desert in 1956. An egg appears, and a creature that seems to be part-frog, part-insect, with wings, hatches from it. The creature crawls away.

We see a young couple on a date walking home.

A bearded man like the ones before descends from the sky in the desert. He approaches a couple in a car and repeatedly asks "gotta light?" while moving and behaving in an eerie and unnerving way. The couple speed away. He walks to a local radio station, still looking for a light. A woman inside approaches him. He grabs her head, and she looks terrified. The man crushes her skull, spraying blood on the floor.

The bearded man approaches the radio station's DJ. He grabs the DJ's head, stops the record that is playing, and brings a microphone to his mouth. "This is the water and this is the well. Drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within," he repeats.

A waitress in a diner and a mechanic, both listening to him over the radio, collapse. The girl who was on a date falls asleep in her bed. The bug/frog creature from before flies into her window and approaches her face. She opens her mouth wide, and the creature crawls in.

The bearded man brutally crushes the DJ's skull, exits the radio station, and disappears into the desert. We hear a horse neighing in the distance.

---

Tropes appearing in this episode:

• Alien Sea: The purple waves.
• Astronomic Zoom: The slow approach to the mushroom cloud over the New Mexico landscape.
• Atomic Hate: The Trinity test allows Bob to emerge.
• The Bait: Ray reasons that if Cooper is still alive, he will come after Ray. And since Ray told Mr. C where he was going, Ray can then kill Cooper at the Farm.
• Beard of Evil: The Woodsmen have straggly matted facial hair.
• Brown Note: The Woodsmen's chant, possibly.
• Call-Back:
  • The floating experiments who belches forward Bob seems to be the same white figure from the premiere, who appeared in the glass box and sliced the couple to ribbons.
  • When Cooper disappeared from the glass box in episode 3, he fell on the balcony of a building surrounded by a purple sea similar to the building seen in this episode.
  • The large bell-shaped device which alarms in the room with Señorita Dido was previously seen on the box floating in space, where the blind Naido guided Cooper in episode 3.
• Calling Your Bathroom Breaks: Ray asks permission to pull over so he can take a leak.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Booper helped Ray escape because he needs information from him.
• Character Outlives Actor:
  • Frank Silva appears as Bob using archival footage, despite having died in 1995.
  • Ray talks to Phillip Jeffries on the phone, despite David Bowie's death in 2016.
• Chest Burster: The Bob blob is pulled from the chest of the Cooper doppelgänger with lots of blood.
• Chiaroscuro: The bright spotlights of Ray's headlights illuminate the road when they pull off the highway.
• Continuity Nod:
  • We see the word "fire" on Cooper's phone.
  • The MC at the Roadhouse has a pinecone on his microphone stand, recalling Chad's pinecone in episode 4.
  • During episode 3, Gordon Cole had a large print behind his desk in his Philadelphia office of what appears to be an old black and white photo of the mushroom cloud seen in this episode.
  • A phonograph is seen in the room with Señorita Dido, similar to the one in the room with Cooper and the giant, in the opening scene of the premiere. The flooring and left wall are also similar, suggesting these may be the same room or at least the same building.
• Creator Thumbprint:
  • The stage where the giant watches the emergence of Bob is the same seen in Club Silencio in Mulholland Dr.
  • We hear The Platters sing their 1956 hit "My Prayer" and one of the singers is named David Lynch.
• Cult Soundtrack: Angelo Badalamenti created some amazing moments.
• Cutting the Electronic Leash: Doppel Dale tosses his phone out of the window to avoid being tracked.
• Dark Is Evil: The Woodsmen are dark shadowy beings.
• The Dead Can Dance: The woodsmen dance in a skipping circle around the body of the doppelgänger.
• Deadly Euphemism: Coopelganger says that Darya, whom he shot in the head, is "waiting for a phone call".
• Death Is Cheap: The Cooper doppelgänger, which Ray lampshades.

  Ray Monroe: Uh, I think he's dead, but he's found some kind of help, so I'm not 100%.

• Delayed Explosion: The Trinity explosion lasts from 16:54 to 21:20, over 4 minutes.
• The Dog Bites Back: Ray shoots evil Cooper.
• Dramatic Drop: Ray falls to the ground when he sees the Bob blob emerge from the body.
• Epileptic Flashing Lights: Flashes of bright light occur as the dark translucent beings attend to the fallen doppelgänger and when they later emerge at the convenience store.
• Everything Fades: The body of the Cooper doppelgänger fades away as the woodsmen tear at it, and they seem to dance in the empty space where his body was, before his body solidifies as the essence of Bob is drawn out. His body then seems to disappear again.
• Fade to Black: While the woodsmen dance after pulling the Bob blob from the body.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Ray and evil Cooper turn off the highway onto a small gravel road, signaling the right turn the episode was about to take.
  • Many of the lyrics in "She's Gone Away" as performed by 'The' Nine Inch Nails foreshadow a number of events in this episode.

    "You dig in places till your fingers bleed,
    spread the infection where you spill your seed."

    "A little mouth opened up inside..."

    "We keep licking while the skin turns black."

• Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Mr.C looks at his phone and mentions the tracking devices, we see "C", "Fire", and "Dox" on the screen.
• Gas Station of Doom: The gas station/convenience store with the contained explosion, which is overrun by woodsmen.
• Hobo: The woodsmen are dressed in dirty work clothes with soot-stained skin and beards.
• Homage: "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima" also played in The Shining, Children of Men, and The People Under the Stairs.
• Idiosyncratic Wipes: The expanding rings which transition from the convenience store to the floating experiment, recalling a horn.
• Island Base: The White Tower is located on a small island in the middle of a purple ocean.
• Local Hangout: We have a musical interlude at the Roadhouse 11 minutes into the episode.
• Lower-Deck Episode: We spend no times with Cooper/Dougie or the FBI agents. We only visit Twin Peaks once to see the Nine Inch Nails play at the Roadhouse.
• Madness Mantra: "This is the water, and this is the well..."
• Magical Security Cam: The giant watches the explosion and emergence of Bob on a screen, using footage the viewers have already seen. (Although in this case, it is quite clearly magical...)
• Meaningful Look: After the giant turns off the alarm, he holds the gaze of Señorita Dido and then leaves the room.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: The frog with insect legs and wings that crawls into the girl's mouth.
• Moment of Silence: After the Bob blob is ripped from the body of the Cooper doppelgänger, the music continues to play but Ray's screams are muted and he moves in slow motion.
• Monochrome Apparition: Dark gray beings molest the body of the doppelgänger after he is shot.
• Monochrome Past: 1945 and 1956 are filmed in black and white.
• Mysterious Protector: Señorita Dido and the giant seem to be monitoring earth and trying to help.
• Ominous Fog: The mist that surrounds the body after evil Cooper is shot.
• Only in It for the Money: Ray lets 'Cooper' know that he believes the numbers he has memorized are worth a whole lot of money.
• Opportunistic Bastard: Ray takes a contract to kill the Cooper doppelgänger for Phillip Jeffries.
• Origins Episode: We learn something about Bob's development.
• Pants-Positive Safety: Ray pulls his gun out of his waistband.
• Power Floats: The giant floats in the air while creating the golden globe.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Ray says, "Tricked ya, fucker."
• Professional Killer: Ray takes a $500,000 contract to kill evil Cooper for Phillip Jeffries.
• "Psycho" Strings: "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima" plays during the explosion.
• Reliably Unreliable Guns: The doppelgänger's revolver misfires when he tries to shoot Ray.
• Reveal Shot: The camera slowly pans up the sheer narrow rock jutting from the purple sea to reveal a sleek building, resembling an Ominous Floating Castle.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: The doppelgänger checks that the gun in the glove compartment is loaded before he gets out of the car, and seems surprised when the gun misfires, which makes sense as revolvers tend to have fewer malfunctions and are reliable guns.
• Rule of Symbolism: David Lynch most likely wanted Nine Inch Nails to perform "She's Gone Away" in this episode because he intended for "she" to represent Judy.
• Shadow Discretion Shot: The silhouettes of the woodsmen in the convenience store.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: The MC at the roadhouse in his tuxedo.
• Silence Is Golden: From 17:30 to 43:33, a 26-minute period, there is no dialogue.
• Slasher Smile: Bob's toothy grin.
• Special Guest: Nine Inch Nails plays at the Roadhouse. They are announced as "'The' Nine Inch Nails," which is also how they are listed in the credits (quotes around the "The" included), apparently suggesting that they are some fictional and not-quite-as-famous version of themselves.
• Splash of Color: The last 41 minutes of the episode are in black and white, except for the flashes of color in the Trinity explosion, the purple sea, and the golden Palmer sphere which emerged from the Giant.
• Stop Motion: The convenience store door flutters open and closed and the shadowy men move in a stop-start manner at this store.
• Stop Motion Lighting: The flashes of light as the Woodsmen harvest the Bob blob and at the convenience store.
• Stunned Silence: Ray stares in horror as the Woodsmen pull Bob from the doppelgänger.
• Supervillain Lair: Evil Cooper assumes that Ray wants to go to the Farm.
• Tracking Device: Mr. C notes that there are 3 tracking devices on their car.
• Undignified Death: We believe that the doppelgänger will shoot Ray while he urinates, but this is a Subverted Trope when the gun fails to fire.
• The Voiceless: Señorita Dido and the giant do not say a word.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The Experiment expels egg-like spheres, including one with Bob's features. This recalls Dougie's and the doppelgänger's explosive vomiting in episode 3.
• Weird Moon: A fade to black lightens to show a half-moon in the night sky before we cut to Ray calling Phillip as he flees the site of the shooting.
• White Shirt of Death: Evil Cooper dressed for his chest wound.
• Wild Goose Chase: The Bob-possessed Cooper doppelgänger resets the tracking devices to the license plate of the truck ahead of them.