How the deleted scenes of ‘Fire Walk With Me’ solve David Lynch’s ‘Twin Peaks’ puzzle
There’s always been an element of mystery in the works of David Lynch, but few of his works have provided as much conceptual and narrative intrigue as his iconic TV show Twin Peaks. Focusing on the investigation of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (played by Kyle MacLachlan) into the murder of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), Twin Peaks became one of the most beloved works of television of all time.
It’s the tone of the series that really defines Lynch’s show, though, and there is a brilliant combination of detective drama, supernatural horror and melodramatic soap opera that lends Twin Peaks a completely unique atmosphere. Lynch’s usual surrealism is in full swing, but there’s a sense of humour to the early 1990s offering that added laughter to the ongoing mystery.
That’s really the crux of Twin Peaks, and across two seasons in 1990 and 1991, the show’s audience persistently wondered what had become of Laura Palmer. This mystery, however, seemed to evade being properly revealed, meaning that Lynch continued to work in the Twin Peaks world across several other pieces of television and cinema.
Shortly after the Twin Peaks series finished airing, Lynch released a feature-length movie set in the same world called Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me after admitting that he could not stop thinking about Laura Palmer. The film is much darker than the series it is based on, though, and tells of the last seven days of Laura Palmer and an investigation into the murder of Teresa Banks.
However, in order to achieve a suitable theatrical runtime, Lynch had to cut down quite a substantial part of Fire Walk With Me. After the film was released in 1992, diehard fans of Twin Peaks learned of the deleted scenes and were desperate to see what was missing from the released version. The mystery surrounding the fictional Washington town raged on.
The European investors of the film, though, rejected any chance of Lynch releasing the deleted scenes. That was until 2014, when the feature-length compilation of the missing scenes, plus extended moments of what made its way onto screen, was released under the name Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces, some 22 years after the movie was put out, and three years before Twin Peaks: The Return arrived on TV.
Rather than arriving as a (somewhat) cohesive narrative as Fire Walk With Me and the original series had done, The Missing Piece is rather a sequence of interconnected vignettes featuring many of the wider cast of Twin Peaks, including David Bowie, who played Phillip Jefferies, while Cooper’s evil doppelganger also cropped up more frequently.
Interestingly, there’s a moment in The Missing Pieces that seems to tie together the entire mystery of Twin Peaks – or at least it tries to. Despite the compilation not being seen by a widespread audience, Lynch still treats it as canon. In the second episode of Twin Peaks: The Return, Mike (The One-Armed Man) asks Agent Cooper, “Is it the future, or is it the past?” This echoes a moment from The Missing Pieces in which The Man from Another Place asked Cooper the very same question in the Black Lodge.
This provides about as good an answer to the mystery of Twin Peaks as Lynch was ever willing to give, showing that his legendary TV show is one that deals in time loops. However, it was unlikely that fans of the show would have ever known about this moment, which is why Lynch was keen to return to it when he finally made his way back to Twin Peaks with The Return in 2017.
