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One of the most groundbreaking series is finally making its comeback. Twin Peaks is returning after 26 years off the air — picking up 25 years where it left off, and making good on Laura Palmer’s eerie promise from the original series. The revival has been shrouded in mystery since it was announced in 2014, but today at TCA, we finally got some answers.
Well, sort of.
Showtime executives David Nevins and Gary Levine announced during their executive session that Twin Peaks will have a two-hour-long premiere on May 21st. Hours three and four will be immediately available on Showtime’s streaming service. In total, the new iteration of Twin Peaks will be 18 hour-long episodes. Nevins and Levine have seen the whole series and described it as “the pure heroin version of David Lynch.” We also got confirmation that Lynch directed the entire series.
David Lynch himself was a surprise attendee and spent 15 minutes answering questions. Nevins, Levine, and Lynch all explained that this new series is intended to be a standalone series, but that none of them are shutting the door on a possible second series. As Lynch put it, “You never say no, but right now there’s no plans for anything more.”
The first question lobbed at Lynch was how he collaborates with Mark Frost. He launched into an extended metaphor: “We seemed to find some mountain and we begin to climb and when we rounded the mountain, we entered a deep forest, and entering the forest for a time, the trees began to thin…and we discovered this small town called Twin Peaks…and we discovered a mystery and within this mystery there were other mysteries.”
When asked again to elaborate, he simply said they work together on Skype.
Those first two answers helped set the tone for the rest of the panel, wherein Lynch offered tantalizing clues in fortune cookie-like riddles and blunt answers. Lynch did share that the standalone film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which recounts the last days of Laura Palmer, is “very much important to this.”
The ghost of Laura Palmer also came up when Lynch was asked to confirm what killed the second season of the original Twin Peaks. He said that Frost’s contention that the show fizzled because they didn’t have a plan for any thing past the original eight episodes. Lynch disputed this. “No, no, no, that’s not necessarily true,” he said. “What killed Twin Peaks originally — ‘Who killed Laura Palmer?’ was a question that we did not really ever want to answer. That Laura Palmer mystery was, like I said, the goose that laid the little golden egg and at a certain point we were told we needed to wrap that up. And it never really got going again after that.”
Lynch also revealed that he has not read Mark Frost’s book about Twin Peaks and has no intention to read it. He said, “I have my own ideas for the past and Mark has his.”
Lynch did reveal that it was Frost’s initial idea to resurrect the series. When he was asked why he originally left the project and came back to it, Lynch demurred and said that he “loved” working with Nevins, Levine, and the rest of the Showtime crew.
Lynch also refused to say how much of the new series was based on ideas he had for the original series, which suggests that some of the new series is a continuation of his original plan. He also said he imagined the whole 18-hour series “as a story.”
Laura Dern, Kimmy Robertson, Madchen Amick, Kyle MacLachlan, and Robert Forster were all on hand afterward to take questions. The cast was not able to disclose any information about the plot or the characters, so it made for a cagey panel. However, the cast all seemed to come back to one word: magic.
As Laura Dern said, “The opportunity of working with David, and I think I speak for all of us, was magic, hilarious…”
Robert Forster told a story about how he learned that by working with Lynch, you were living in someone’s dream. He said, “When David Lynch tells you to get on the panel and don’t tell anyone anything, do what David Lynch tells you.”
Twin Peaks finally returns to television May 21st.
