In a new issue of Sci-Fi Now magazine, Mark Frost, the co-creator, with David Lynch, of Twin Peaks, says that the return of the show, canceled after just two seasons, is “something we talk about from time to time… If we ever do decide to move forward,” he adds, “I know we have a rich trove to draw from.” Those quotes come from the website Moviehole, which fans the flames by reminding readers of an interview from a couple years back with Bob Engels, who wrote several episodes (and also co-wrote the Twin Peaks movie, Fire Walk With Me). “I think if we could figure out a way to do” a third season, Engels said, “I think everybody would have fun going back… I think, all things being equal, they’d say ‘I’m in.’ I certainly would.”
The Frost interview gets more specific, speculating that “the third season could realistically be set 25 years on… picking up from the original’s iconic dream sequence between Cooper, Laura and the backwards-speaking dwarf, that took place in the original series 25 years into the future.” (That sequence aired in April 1990, so if production on the show really did resume shortly, new episodes would likely hit the air roughly 25 years after that dream.)
Much less reliably, an anonymous commenter on the infamous Internet forum 4chan claimed on New Year’s Eve that he or she was recently “in on a meeting David Lynch was having with some NBC executives.” You can read his comments at the Warming Glow, though at the moment we have no reason to believe they’re reliable.
This is hardly the first time fans of the show have gotten excited about the series’ possible return. A few years ago, Kyle MacLachlan, speaking off the cuff, said, “I have a crazy idea to bring back Twin Peaks on the net as five minute webisodes.”*
Still, David Lynch has gotten involved with TV again lately, with a recurring character on The Cleveland Show and a brilliant turn on Louie. The radical freedom FX has given Louis C.K. on the latter show seems like a more tenable model for the independent and wildly creative Lynch than, say, NBC. In hindsight, Twin Peaks feels like a forerunner of the ambitious cable shows that have flourished since The Sopranos hit HBO. And there’s always Netflix: The upcoming return of Arrested Development in particular has made the revival of dormant series seems like less of a pipe dream than before.
Will Twin Peaks come back? There’s no firm indication that it will happen any time soon. But it certainly seems more possible now than it used to.
* This post originally mispelled the surname of actor Kyle MacLachlan.
