Twin Peaks · Season 2 · Episode 29 · 10 June 1991
S2E29 Beyond Life and Death
THE MOMENT Cooper's final encounter in the Black Lodge - the image that ended the original run and would not be resolved for 26 years.
Lynch returns to direct the Season 2 finale, pulling the show back to its Black Lodge mythology with full force. The Red Room sequences here are among the most unsettling twenty minutes in broadcast television history. After a second season that frequently let down its audience, this hour is a reminder of exactly what the show was capable of at...
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Twin Peaks Season 2 Episode 22 'Beyond Life and Death' aired June 10, 1991 on ABC as the series finale. Season 2 holds 65 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, reflecting the uneven middle stretch that preceded it. Lynch returned to direct the finale personally, and the episode pulls the show back to its Black Lodge mythology with the force he had reserved for Season 1 Episode 3. The Red Room sequences in this episode are among the most unsettling twenty minutes in broadcast television history: their disorienting logic, their specific visual grammar of red curtains and geometric floors, and the performances operating under their reversed-dialogue instruction together created an atmosphere that the season's weakest episodes had made viewers doubt the show could still produce. The finale's final image - Cooper's fate reversed, an entity wearing his face - ended the original run on a cliffhanger that would not resolve for 26 years. It is the episode that made The Return's existence possible.