[page 209] Although it is entirely possible to watch Twin Peaks: The Return as a standalone work of television, such an approach limits the richness of its narrative that continuously references other “texts”—whether written or audiovisual—to weave its story. These “hypotexts,” to use Gérard Genette’s terminology, when recognized, inform our understanding of the narrative that references them, the “hypertext.” At the very least, one notes that the former were meaningful enough (as an influence or inspiration) to the series’ creators to be incorporated, and the public is free to spot them (or not) and to understand their relationship to what takes place on screen.
Mark Frost has been particularly open about explaining that he referenced key works in his scriptwriting, such as Homer’s The Odyssey (with its archetypal story of a return home) or the tale of Pandora releasing all of the evils of humanity upon opening her box (in Part 8, the atomic explosion appears to trigger the release of BOB into the world). Similarly, the season abounds with echoes of Franz Kafka, Alfred Hitchcock, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and Stanley Kubrick, to name only a few.
The three papers in this section, while focusing on distinct sources of intertextuality, nonetheless tackle the same fundamental issue at work in the season: that of the Trinity Test and its effects on the spacetime continuum, i.e. the metaphysical consequences of mastering and using atomic power. It is as if the explosion that viewers witness in Part 8 creates a hole in the texture of reality, enabling interactions between all sorts of fictional and philosophical worlds, weaving together a complex tapestry of textual influences.
In “‘What Year is This?’: Time, the Nuclear, and Trauma in Twin Peaks: The Return,” Simon Bowie looks to this seminal moment in order to analyze the way that trauma linked to the advent of the nuclear age has impacted our perception of time, in reality as well as in fiction, as well at the collective and indi-[page 210]vidual levels. The western notion of a universal time was shattered by this explosion, as temporal distortions, disjunctions, and warps abound in The Return. Bowie draws on examples including the film Back to the Future (1985), the television series Dark (2017-2020), and the comic book series Watchmen (1986-1987) to examine how such a shattering of the space-time continuum has been depicted in other media, potentially impacting The Return. He uses the formalist concepts of ‘fabula’ (the flow of time within the story) and ‘syuzhet’ (the way that the story itself is organized) to explain what is at stake for the narrative. He concludes by using Hayashi Kyōko’s depiction of temporal disjunction in the book From Trinity to Trinity (2010) to present how “The Return’s depiction of time distorted in the fabula by personal trauma parallels that depicted by Hayashi and how these are linked by the trauma of nuclear destruction.”
The study of works by William Burroughs (rumored to have been considered for the role of Mayor Dwayne Milford or that of his brother Douglas in the first season of Twin Peaks) enables Tommy P. Cowan to, in his paper “BOB, the Bomb, and Bill Burroughs: Notes on Lynchian Demonology,” discuss the connection in The Return between atomic weapons and demons, a link that takes the reader from the scientific to the esoteric. Noting that the connections between Burroughs and Twin Peaks are multifold (including UFOs, Aleister Crowley, and L. Ron Hubbard), he writes: “Burroughs suspected that radiation could have metaphysical consequences. These consequences include the potential that nuclear radiation blasts could destroy the soul and catalyze genetic mutations.” Burroughs went as far as to describe radiation-activated viruses (something reminiscent of the lyrics by “The” Nine Inch Nails in Part 8, just before the atomic blast: “You dig in places till your fingers bleed, Spread the infection, where you spill your seed”). BOB, argues Cowan, is a demonic virus generated by the Trinity Test, spreading from person to person whom he possesses to feed on their fears, similar to Burroughs’ Virus B-23 in Cities of the Red Night (1981). [page 211]
Finally, Ethan Warren’s “‘It’ a Strange Carnival’: Tensions between Camusian and Nagelian Absurdity in Twin Peaks: The Return” approaches The Return from a philosophical perspective born from the aftermath of World War II and its senseless devastation, a feeling that human life is pointless and illogical. This approach led postwar artists to create what Martin Esslin described as a “Theater of the Absurd,” evocative of the nonsensical nature of existence. One wonders if this might not be why The Return evokes on multiple occasions the world of the theatre (“I’ll see you at the curtain call,” says Dale Cooper in Part 17). Warren personifies a philosophical conversation between Thomas Nagel and Albert Camus through the version of Cooper who replaces Dougie Jones and Dale Cooper, which leads to questions about the outlook on life that Lynch and Frost give the series. This might not be “Existentialism 101,” to quote Charlie in Part 13, but this certainly leaves us enjoying Twin Peaks’ “strange carnival.”
MLA citation (print):
Boulègue, Franck. "Intertextualities." Supernatural Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Art, Media, and Culture, vol. 11, no. 2, 2026, pp. 209-211.