ABSTRACT
During the last 25 years the original Twin Peaks has fostered a cult following eager for David Lynch and Mark Frost to revisit the series. Twin Peaks: The Return could have been successful as a nostalgic reboot. Lynch and Frost, however, resist nostalgia by relegating key characters to the side and severely limiting the role of the most beloved character, Special Agent Dale Cooper. By frustrating viewer pleasure, the creators foreground the ways pleasure is manufactured. The Return avoids the nostalgic trappings of concurrent shows and reboots. The nostalgia exploited by reboots, particular those from the ’90s, share the ideology of MAGA by promoting a sentimentalised past that lulls the American public into complacency. By reading against these shows, this article examines how The Return radically condemns nostalgia through both narrative and content by exposing the desire to return as manipulable and built on false promises of an idealised past.
