12 Days of Anime 2025, Day 7I watched through Twin Peaks for the first time this year and obviously found it to be Peak, perhaps the defining text of its genre and medium in the same way that Utena and Homestuck are for theirs (although Utena is resoundingly the only one of these with good filler). This has led to the original broadcast of Twin Peaks being one of the most deeply analyzed shows out there, and it sometimes feels like everything that could be said about it has already been said. The fans have had three decades, after all! So instead, I am going to focus on Lynch’s follow-up works and trace one particular line between 1992’s prequel movie Fire Walk With Me and 2017’s sequel series The Return. It is the dual image of the old woman and the child.Let it be known that Mrs. Tremond is an excellent character and I fucking hate her. Fire Walk With Me is a deeply upsetting movie in pretty much every way it could possibly be. There’s a layer of nightmarish dread to the whole movie, punctuated by graphic depictions of some of the worst things that could ever happen to a person. And even amidst all of this, the element that really manages to get under my skin is that old lady. In the show, she plays a fairly minor role, offering clues about Laura’s secret diary through putting on a little ghost story. She uses the family name Tremond and lives with her grandson. The previous two that lived in their house were also Tremonds, and the next two that live there will be as well. Upon Cooper and Donna’s prying, she seemingly reincarnates overnight into a new person just to fuck with them. Something’s clearly up, but the show never has time to dig into it, even during the dregs of Season 2. Instead, that’s saved for the movie, where the old woman’s status as a Black Lodge entity is made painfully clear. She’s seen moving back and forth between Twin Peaks and Deer Meadow, living nearby both of the young women that BOB goes on to rape and murder and wrap in plastic. She exists seemingly as a constant, looming in a more passively menacing way than any other Lodge spirit could.Perhaps the second worst day of Laura Palmer’s life kicks off when she finds Mrs. Tremond (going by by Mrs. Chalfont in FWWM) and her grandson standing at the far end of the Double R Diner’s parking lot, beckoning for her. The blue static swells in. The old woman gives her a painting; the young boy gives her the hint that BOB is coming from inside the house. They’re letting Laura know that they’re affiliated with the Lodge, and both of their offerings act to further ensnare her and make her feel helpless to her fate. In a movie with unsettling imagery by the minute, it’s that fucking painting that unnerves me the most. The way it becomes a set, and the old woman and the child become ushers to lead Laura right to the stage of the Red Room. Laura is fully trapped between the dreaming and waking world for a while there, just to be let in on the fact that a man named Dale Cooper is coming to try and save her, and that he will be too late.It is a passive and cruel evil that the Tremonds weave. The first two seasons of Twin Peaks are deeply concerned with the masculine and forceful use of violence, as most acutely manifested by BOB. The show offers a way out through the alibi of demonic possession, but Fire Walk with Me makes it clear that Leland knew exactly what he was doing. The flashback where Leland visits Teresa Banks for a threesome and flees after seeing his own daughter in the cohort ends with The Child dancing around in the parking lot, almost triumphantly. It’s almost like these wacky Tremonds are avatars of forbidden knowledge and terrible inaction spilling over into violent doom or something! If I think about Fire Walk With Me any longer I’ll get sick to my stomach (top 5 movie for sure, though), so let’s skip ahead twenty-five years to The Return.One of the first things that really sinks in about the third and final season of Twin Peaks is the age of the returning cast. Every new wrinkle and fold the actors have gotten over the years is captured on the characters with no hesitation. This feels most obvious in the drawn-out nocturnal scenes where Hawk, tired and older, converses with a dying Log Lady over the phone. Catherine Coulson herself passed away just days after those scenes were shot. Obviously his own death earlier this year has brought this line of thinking to the forefront, but it seems so clear that when filming The Return, Lynch knew there wasn’t much time, that this was the last and only chance to get everyone back together and make something beautiful again. And he did.Of course, beautiful can be a strange descriptor for The Return, as this is a deeply menacing show. Like a serialized, generalized Fire Walk with Me, it leaves no stone unturned in displaying the rot at the core of contemporary American society. BOB walks among us, and he’s tearing through the underbelly of the country seeking out forces just as evil as himself. And one of the ways this evil radiates out is all of the violence enacted upon and around children.There’s the child of the drug addict in Rancho Rosa, who receives a front-and-center view of Dougie’s car exploding and burning a man to death. There’s the boy horrifically and meaninglessly gored by Richard Horne as he speeds in anger from having his criminal enterprises upstaged. Episode 11 sets the record, as we get the children who discover a bloodied woman beaten nearly to death by Richard for witnessing his prior hit and run, followed by a twofer at the Double R Diner. A boy gets his hands on his father’s gun and starts firing into the diner, prompting active shooter panic in the restaurant and a prolonged family dispute outside. Even as the situation is resolved, the car stuck behind them just keeps fucking honking, prompting Bobby to check on them and finding a girl throwing up, almost oozing bile in the car as the mother just honks and screams. It’s perhaps the single scene in the show where society feels the most irrevocably broken, and that’s saying something. And of course, we have the young girl in episode 8 who may or may not be an unnamed Sarah Palmer, who falls under a woodsmen-induced coma and has an evil frog-bug crawl into her mouth and this may or may not be the source of all of her Horrors.The takeaway from all of this? The children are facing inordinate amounts of suffering, and anyone or anything that could have helped them has long since faded, if they ever existed. The nuclear family alone certainly can not save them. How could that have possibly held together in the wake of what happened to Laura Palmer? Her dad raped and murdered her, all while her mother Sarah just did her best to ignore it. Then afterwards, Sarah willingly let her niece stay in the same house, where the same damn thing happened. Throughout Twin Peaks, she asserts control over her life by acting like nothing is wrong, until eventually she just…. breaks.Sarah is the only Palmer left to reach old age, and it is not a blessing. The years have only left her bitter, isolated, and paranoid. She spends her days drinking and chain-smoking and watching violent fights on television. One of the most heartbreaking scenes in the whole show is her buying a cart full of alcohol and Bloody Mary mix at the store, and halfway through checkout suddenly becoming agitated and rambling worriedly about “men” coming before running out of the store. Hawk knocks on her door for a check-in afterwards, and she refuses all help. It’s a familiar, painful situation to anyone who’s watched their older friends or family descend into delusion. Sarah’s scenes are often followed up with those of Audrey’s, who spends this series trapped in something of a domestic Waiting For Godot with shades of complete mental breakdown. This is not a parallel you want to have. Oh, and she’s also probably the host of a great maternal evil or something. The last few episodes of The Return make repeated reference to an ancient demon known as Judy, who Dale Cooper seeks to vanquish for Blue Rose purposes, and Mr. C seeks to ally with to expand his criminal enterprises and domain over human suffering. It’s almost like these two men are two sides of a coin! Sarah’s last major scene in the show has her pulling off her face after a man approaches her at the bar to reveal the void underneath, with an emerging grin that tears into his throat. If she’s a host of Judy, then this guides and has guided much of her passive cruelty in the same way that BOB drew the capacity for terrible violence out of Leland. It’s a perfect little echo, the yin and yang of feeding on garmonbozia.The last episode of The Return depicts a “crossing” – Cooper’s intent to create a new world where Laura didn’t have to die, where none of this BOB and Judy shit had to happen. In practice, it plays out like a sick joke, leading to a perfectly haunting ending. I believe that the Coop we see at the end of the show is something of an integration of all his selves – the heroic FBI agent always just a step too late, the quiet and unpredictable Dougie, and the calloused Mr. C more than willing to resort to violence. He has always been capable of being any of these people, and he will not admit it. As the rape of the land through atomic hellfire creates BOB and the woodsmen in Episode 8, Cooper’s rape of Diane guarantees that those same forces will be a part of the next world too. And because he’s both an investigator and a sadist, the only thing he can think of doing in this new timeline where Laura Palmer has ostensibly been saved is to track her down and take her to the scene of her original trauma. Cooper and Laura – or Richard and Carrie – eventually arrive in Twin Peaks, and knock on the door. To bring things full circle, a new Mrs. Tremond opens the door, provides no relevant information, and reveals that she bought the house from a Mrs. Chalfont. This information leaves Cooper flummoxed and Laura screaming. It’s as if she’s suddenly become acutely aware that across decades, timelines, and identities, this specific entity continues to torment her. Oops! Better luck next life, Coop.
Dec 20, 2025 • Subscribe
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