Twin Peaks: The Return Premiered with Die-Hard David Lynch Fans at NWFF

Nighttime outside Northwest Film Forum

The Evergreen Echo

**No spoilers in this piece**

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Twin Peaks, and indeed the entirety of David Lynch’s oeuvre, was and will always be a communal experience for me. I saw my first David Lynch movie, Mulholland Drive, in an almost-sold-out screening at the SIFF Egyptian in 2023. From then, I watched Blue Velvet, Inland Empire, Eraserhead, and more, reporting my jumbled but inspired thoughts, theories, and emotions back to more senior Lynch fans and friends. Though an endlessly long watchlist prevented me from visiting the humble, beloved town of Twin Peaks, Lynch’s passing in 2025 awakened the urgency to make the trip. Two regulars at my coffee shop (thank you, Megan and Sara!), lent me a stay at the Great Northern Hotel in the form of a complete blu-ray set of the series.

Image from Twin Peaks

via Wikimedia Commons

How to describe the liminal alternate dimension of Twin Peaks? Enchanting, but frigid, hair-raising. Comforting, like the sandpaper bristles of a cat’s tongue. A knee-slapping hoot of a time, too! Really, the only way to relate the experience of Twin Peaks is to watch it. Thankfully, the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF,) Beacon Cinema, Grand Illusion Cinema, and Northwest Film Forum (NWFF) have partnered to bring the impenetrable and unforgettable Twin Peaks: The Return to the big screen.

“This is the last missing puzzle piece of the city-wide retrospective of David Lynch after his passing in January,” said Cole Wilder, the Director of Exhibition at NWFF. Of Twin Peaks: The Return, he said, “It is the perfect stuff of cinema.”

The SIFF, Beacon Cinema, Grand Illusion Cinema, and NWFF are staple establishments for Seattle film buffs. We live in an increasingly isolated era in which film critics, filmmakers, and laypeople alike bemoan the supposed death of in-person cinema, but these art house theaters prove the sentiment wrong again and again. Every viewing I’ve attended at said locations have been packed with passionate, eccentric, and delightfully intelligent people more than willing to loiter with you outside of the venue and talk films over cigarette smoke. Though I cannot deny the luxury of corporate cinemas’ plush leather recliners, local cinemas’ tightly packed seats, uncomfortable shimmying, and collectively held breaths invokes a memory of watching a forbidden film with friends crammed under a blanket fort.

These theaters and fellow film-lovers guided me to and through my Lynchian journey. In that light, re-watching Twin Peaks: The Return in theaters felt natural—like a homecoming. In their promotion summary of the screening, NWFF confidently asserts: “This is the opportunity to see the series how it’s meant to be seen” (their stylization). Truly, the reverent dark theater elevated the already tense, funny, absurd, and breathtaking experience of Twin Peaks. On the big screen, iconic Black Lodge devoured all else, all swirling red curtains and dizzying black and white checkers; the bewildering silences between Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlin) and Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) held my respiratory system hostage; the unforgettable main theme by Angelo Badalamenti echoed into my ears and swelled and reverberated in my ribs. The theater transported us to an alternate dimension, a den of darkness illuminated only by the projections of master storytellers, actors, musicians, and artists of all kinds. 

You enter as one person; you exit as another.

The audience at the NWFF for The Return’s first two episodes was small and reserved, consisting of quiet duos and fellow lone wolves. Alone and separated, but still together in community, we settled into the grainy silence and spine-tingling creaking that characterizes the first scene of the series. Everyone here, it seemed, was already a fan of Twin Peaks; indeed I would be hard-pressed to recommend The Return to those unfamiliar with its first two seasons or Lynch’s other works. Though I knew no other attendees, I felt like a member of a club composed of fellow weirdos who regarded Lynch’s work with deep respect.

Many of my Lynch-appreciating friends told me that they have plans to attend a screening, and I certainly hope to watch more myself. Luckily, the alliance of local art house theaters are offering a large spattering of showings across November and December, with The Beacon in particular screening episodes multiple times. Still, I wouldn’t slack on grabbing tickets to the disturbing, prescient, and suffocating Episode 8 on the biggest screen of the venues at SIFF Uptown. (If you know, you know.)