This might just be my favourite part of the whole series, and thus one of my favourite episodes of television ever aired. 

Third time and I am truly struggling for words. The final 5 minutes of this was something I’d heard a lot about before seeing this the first time, in all the reviews it was always Part 8, and closing minutes of The Return. And you really can see why. It’s a different kind of fear, sure, but I still find it hard to believe that Lynch topped himself in making something even more terrifying than the Bum from Mulholland Drive and the Hallway Phantom from Inland Empire. 

I can’t truly verbalise my feelings about this, which is exactly what the best kind of art should be able to do. By tapping into the subconscious, Lynch, through his art, truly manages to make you feel things you didn’t even know you were capable of feeling, and that is just magic. 

I think Cooper (or Richard?) inadvertently lost grip of Laura and got trapped in our dimension, where Judy resides, hence the only use of The Platters’ ‘My Prayer’ being in this part, and part 8, which I believe to also be in our world due to the use of the atomic bomb test. Still incapable of letting go, Richard then practically kidnaps this version of Laura and then obviously meets the real life owner of the Palmer household, again leaning further into my ‘they’ve literally broken the fourth wall and entered our world’ theory. 

Truly though, this just doesn’t matter. It’s more what this represents and makes you feel that’s relevant. This ending to me speaks on many levels, but the main one feeling like Lynch directly addressing his audience, saying that when you keep trying to change the past, or find out every little secret and solve every mystery, you get further wrapped in illusion and disassociation. Our lead character cannot let go of the fact he couldn’t save Laura, and through this has to suffer an unknown fate. Laura cannot escape her inevitable demise, she was doomed, and always was, because simply put, evil, Judy, trauma, however you want to put it, won. The only characters that got a good ending, Sonny Jim and Janey-E, are those that got wrapped up in this mystery by accident. They always rolled with the punches, and never got caught up in the past, and so are rewarded. 

We, the viewer, will never get closure, because we, like Cooper, still want to hold on to the past, we want Laura to live a long and happy life. She’s such a deeply tragic character, and as much as we should mourn her, we shouldn’t try and figure out her killer, we shouldn’t try and bring her back, we need to let her rest, and move on. 

The past dictates the future. 