Twin Peaks season 3: A beginner's guide to David Lynch's cult series

The surreal Washington state town’s return to the small screen is clouded with mystery, but here are a few things beginners would surely be better off knowing

Damn fine return: Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) is back among the owls, coffee and general weirdness, 25 years on from where the story left off

We’re only a few days away from Twin Peaks’ highly anticipated return to television screens.

For ardent fans, it’s been a date circled in red on calendars with the fervent urgency of a thousand birthdays come crashing together; for those new to the show, however, the entire idea can seem a little daunting.

Boasting two seasons and its own prequel film Fire Walk With Me, only those dedicated to a weekend tethered to the couch are likely to be able to catch up now, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the uninitiated should be forced to skip out on the new season.

First off, creator David Lynch’s own special brand of surrealism likely means even hardcore obsessives won’t perfectly understand what’s happening in the new episodes, so the experience is unlikely to be too different either way. It’s all part of the fun, though.

Beyond that, we’ve collated together a guide to help you catch up with what’s already taken place in the eerie, remote town of Twin Peaks, alongside some of the familiar faces we’re set to meet once more, 25 years down the line.

*WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD FOR TWIN PEAKS SEASON 1 AND 2, ALONGSIDE TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME*

Who Killed Laura Palmer?

“She’s dead. Wrapped in plastic.” It’s the mystery that enraptured TV audiences of the early Nineties: who stood behind the murder of the homecoming queen, the shining star of a quaint, peaceful Washington state town?

It turns out, Twin Peaks is a town only serene on the outside; there are secrets everywhere, and even Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) is discovered to be living a secret double life tinged by drugs and prostitution.

FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) is sent to the town to investigate; though everyone comes under suspicion, Cooper is aided in his search by a series of strange dreams and visions.

Agent Cooper’s Red Room vision involves The Man from Another Place and Laura Palmer

Which is where the show’s famous “Red Room” sequences and use of phonetic reversal (with actors speaking backwards and the audio then reversed) come in, as two supernatural individuals – The Man from Another Place (a dwarf dressed in a red suit) and The Giant – offer a series of cryptic clues.

The killer, too, is revealed to be of a supernatural origin: BOB, a demonic spirit who takes possession of Laura’s own father Leland (Ray Wise) as a young boy. BOB spurs Leland to kill Laura, kidnapping both her and another girl, Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine).

Leland is also discovered to be responsible for the earlier murder of Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley) in a neighbouring town, alongside the death of Laura’s doppelgänger cousin Madeleine Ferguson (Lee).

What is the Black Lodge?

BOB is an inhabitant of a place called the Black Lodge, described as the extradimensional source of great evil, and a kind of opposite to the place of purity, the White Lodge.

Season 2 did expand the show’s narrative scope to introduce the villainy of Windom Earle (Kenneth Welsh), Cooper’s former partner and the man responsible for the death of his first true love (and Earle’s wife) Caroline; however what’s more important here is the show’s final episode.

It sees Cooper follow Earle into the Black Lodge after he kidnaps new love interest Annie (Heather Graham); here, he becomes trapped in a strange maze of two apparent Red Rooms linked by a hallway, each offering new nightmarish visions that bring together BOB, Laura Palmer, The Man from Another Place and The Giant. He even faces a sinister doppelgänger of himself.

However, what may prove particularly crucial for season 3 is what happens once Cooper leaves the Black Lodge and returns to the normal world; everything is seemingly back to normal, until Cooper enters the bathroom, looks in the mirror, and sees BOB in the reflection.

The final scene of Season 2... but is this the real Dale Cooper?

Smashing his face into the mirror and laughing manically, this is exactly the place where Twin Peaks left us.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

It’s easy to assume that the Cooper we see at the end of Twin Peaks is possessed by BOB’s spirit, as Leland was. However, Lynch has said the prequel film Fire Walk with Me is key to understanding the new series, and it’s here that a different interpretation is offered.

The film tracks Laura Palmer’s last week alive, illuminating events only spoken of in the original series, and creating a nightmarish vision of her torture by BOB and eventual murder at the hands of her father.

Laura’s dream in ‘Fire: Walk With Me’ hints at the fate of Cooper

However, we also see her dream of the Black Lodge, where she’s visited (somehow) by both Cooper and Annie, with the latter telling Laura to write in her diary that “the good Dale” is trapped in the Lodge and can’t leave.

Which seems to hint that the Cooper we see smashing his face into the mirror isn’t Cooper at all, but the evil doppelgänger he comes across in the Black Lodge.

The new episodes take place 25 years down the line, echoing one of the strange utterances of Laura to Cooper in the Red Room in Twin Peaks: “I’ll see you again in 25 years.” What that means for Cooper, Laura, and the Red Room will surely be uncovered soon.

The new Twin Peaks will premiere at 2am on Monday 22 May on Sky Atlantic and NOWTV, in a simulcast with the US airing on Showtime. The episode will then be shown again at 9pm on 23 May. You can catch up now on season one and two via Sky Box Sets.