News & Interviews for Twin Peaks: The Return

Critic Reviews for Twin Peaks The Return

All Critics (95) | Top Critics (40) | Fresh (87) | Rotten (8)

The return of Twin Peaks would bewilder anyone unfamiliar with the show. But the visuals were still arresting.

May 22, 2017 | Full Review…

Hal Boedeker

Orlando Sentinel

Top Critic

Beyond the cast, the show was beautifully shot by Peter Deming, and Angelo Badalamenti's score is as iconic as ever. The pieces of this puzzle inspire rapture. But when you try to assemble them, what kind of picture do you create?

May 22, 2017 | Rating: B+ | Full Review…

Liz Shannon Miller

indieWire

Top Critic

Twin Peaks defies ultimate analysis, and ultimate judgment. That's its secret and mystique, and why it's back after 25 years, as a reminder that TV -- like art -- doesn't have to be reduced to nuts and bolts, or to specific meaning either.

May 22, 2017 | Rating: A- | Full Review…

Verne Gay

Newsday

Top Critic

For fans who have loved the show's surreal, subversive spirit, Lynch has supercharged every element that made the original series a TV classic.

May 22, 2017 | Full Review…

Eric Deggans

NPR

Top Critic

What a good show this is. Who cares who killed who?

May 22, 2017 | Full Review…

Tim Molloy

TheWrap

Top Critic

We have returned to Twin Peaks at last, and it is a weirder place than ever.

May 21, 2017 | Full Review…

Travis Johnson

FILMINK (Australia)

Top Critic

This is not the story of a sleepy Northwestern town full of quirky characters. This is the unfiltered product of Lynch's TM practice, a direct line into the subconscious mind of one of America's great film directors.

Jan 15, 2020 | Full Review…

Chris McCoy

Memphis Flyer

If the series continues like this, it is likely to be remembered as another memorable piece of Lynch's filmography, at the level of his most popular films. [Full Review in Spanish]

Aug 15, 2019 | Full Review…

Jorge Loser

Espinof

An anxiety consumes you as you watch The Return, a wildness of connections-like some radio telescope scanning the universe for signals.

Mar 6, 2019 | Full Review…

Adam Thirlwell

The New York Review of Books

More intellectually and emotionally stimulating than anything I've seen in a long time.

Feb 11, 2019 | Full Review…

May Leitz

Nyx Fears

Twin Peaks: The Return was ghastly, comic, romantic, mysterious, and unlike anything ever to come before it. It was some damn fine coffee.

Oct 30, 2018 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…

Sean Mulvihill

FanboyNation.com

Twin Peaks is a peculiar kind of game, one almost intended for online channels-a game that we play in order to figure out its rules.

Oct 26, 2018 | Full Review…

David Phelps

MUBI

View All Critic Reviews (95)

Audience Reviews for Twin Peaks: The Return

• Jun 28, 2020

  Very very disappointing
  Simone G
• Jun 26, 2020

  'The Return' is just as funny and enigmatic as the first 2 seasons. The fact that it was made for TV and shown on TV as an episodic season is brilliant and impressive in and of itself. That being said, it doesn't come off as "abstract" and "surreal" so much as it does esoteric and unconventional for the sake of being esoteric and unconventional. I believe its purpose is not to compel or entertain but to simply just exist, and evoke emotions in the viewer. In other words, it's art, and it doesn't merit a numerical rating -- its quality varies widely from episode to episode, even scene to scene. I respect this for being experimental and avant-garde, but I've seen many other shows/films with similar intentions that are much more entertaining or at least thought-provoking -- but less lauded. 'Legion' and 'Off the Air' are just as incoherent and psychedelic. It seems obvious Lynch had no desire of continuing the story of 'Twin Peaks,' but rather throwing ideas at the wall to see what would stick in 2017. Either that, or he used a Twin Peaks revival as a medium to shoehorn in all the inscrutable ideas he's come up with since the original show went off the air. And, even though there's more good than bad, it doesn't work. This show is and always has been many things, but unfortunately, this season is something the other two never were: boring. I wouldn't dare try to understand the narrative, but nothing here is campy or charming. Except for some scattered moments of genius, there's no driving force to what happens onscreen and the cinematography is disgusting. It reminds me of a bad season of 'Fargo.' I know this show is more about how it makes you feel than anything else, but it just makes me feel like I mixed xanax and ambien and am having a bad reaction.
  

  Jack Z
• May 23, 2020

  The best thing ever made for TV.
  Michael G
• May 21, 2020

  Season 3 was just a total disappointment. The acting was horrible.
  

  James B
• May 10, 2020

  This is really a film in eight installments, a sixteen-hour masterpiece. Given the freedom of cable and time, Lynch is able to explore and unwind his American obsessions, perversions, themes and images in unequaled depth and detail. A completely unique work of art that at the same time touches on many of the archetypes, the gods and the devils, that are central to our culture. Perhaps Frost provides just enough of a check to Lynch to keep him from wandering into a purely interior dreamscape (as with Inland Empire), I can't say. However it happened, it did happen, with Lynch creating his greatest single work at an age when most American artists have become stale and repetitive.
  Robot B
• May 03, 2020

  If you expect a return to the town of twin peaks, you won't get it ...
  
• Apr 21, 2020

  Episode 8 is so bad, I created an account just to tell you all that. I even watched it a second time, totally high, and it was no better. I read long, boring literary fiction and I was still rolling my eyes and fast forwarding. You should be suspicious when any show or film has a perfect critic rating like Episode 8 does. Consensus is inhuman. The critics will eat up any garbage Lynch throws at them. This whole season needed editing so desperately, but no one will touch Lynch. The few hours of actual plot we get in the season are all right, but not worth all the fanfare after a 25-year wait. I only gave two stars because of the actors. They deserve more for having to put up with such a deranged director. God, I'd rather read the 75 pages Melville wrote about sails in Moby Dick five times in a row than suffer through Episode 8 again. Can't believe I wasted time and pot on this episode.
  Brian W
• Apr 19, 2020

  Out if all the series of Twin Peaks this is my favourite with many genuinely funny and surreal moments.
  Robert S
• Apr 15, 2020

  so far up its own ass it has emerged into the black lodge
  

  Shiloh O
• Mar 29, 2020

  Extraordinary piece of art. We are not talking about a tv series, this is much more. David Lynch comes back to end his masterpiece and it is simply awesome.
  Davide M

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