The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys one hundred ten characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91 on ABC and 2017 on Showtime as The Return), the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), and The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday although patrons will have immediate access to each entry a month before it goes public. This entry is a preface surveying characters who won't get standalone treatment. There will be spoilers.
Despite the brevity of their appearances, and the very little we often know about them, these characters frequently make a sharp impression. Some are among the most memorable faces of
The Return - Ike the Spike, the bleeding, drooling prisoner, and of course the "he's gotta mean something, right?" Red. Even on many narrow lists of favorites, the warily resourceful Jade, the unsettling "ONE ONE NINE!"-screaming mother, and the unforgettable Wally Brando would probably find a place above regulars who have five or six times their screentime. On the other hand, several of these characters were more nondescript, stealthily assembling more or longer scenes than more prominent individuals.
As the third season of
Twin Peaks earnestly informs us, ten is the number of completion. Those characters who don't quite make the ten-minute cut-off for a standalone entry (and some of these folks came
really close) will get some satisfaction here, with at least a couple paragraphs each for thirty individuals, pairs, or groups who cut memorable figures onscreen in
The Return. These are the runners-up, the people who almost made the eighty-six-seat podium but a few snips of editor Duwayne Dunham's figurative scissors left them, well, eighty-sixed. Had I stuck with the original character series criteria - dialogue in three scenes - eighteen of them would have gotten their own entry. Humorously, to me at least, the much-vaunted Red
still would have been left out since he's mute in one of his three appearances.
All characters are featured exclusively in the third season, and therefore are only written by Mark Frost and David Lynch, and directed by David Lynch.