Twin Peaks: The Return, or Twin Peaks season three, or the greatest TV show of all time, whatever you prefer to call it, hasn’t been a ratings smash for Showtime. But it’s created a huge uptick in subscriptions, and the network is apparently open to doing more seasons — if David Lynch is, too.
Laura Dern as Diane in Twin Peaks: The Return. Image: Showtime
As it stands, that conversation has not happened yet. If it does happen, it won’t be until some time after Twin Peaks airs its final episode around early September. Speaking at a Television Critics’ Association event, Showtime president David Nevins noted that Lynch has been in France ever since the Twin Peaks premiere, and that it will be up to Nevins and the network to get the ball rolling on talks about a return of The Return.
Though anyone who’s been watching the show can tell that Lynch was allowed total creative control, there was a snag early on when Showtime lagged in agreeing to the director’s budget demands; at one point in 2015, he announced he was leaving the project. “The only thing I would do differently is I would have given him that deal three weeks earlier,” Nevins admitted.
It remains to be seen if Lynch will even want a new deal to make more Twin Peaks. Frankly, it seems unlikely, considering that The Return seems specifically constructed to convey everything Lynch wants to to say within its 18 hours — to say nothing of his negative experience making a second season for ABC back in the early 1990s.