In the wake of the tragic passing of David Lynch—a beloved director, painter, musician, and weatherman—it’s worth looking back to his final major project, Twin Peaks: The Return.
There was a lot to love about that surreal, ambitious final chapter of Twin Peaks, but the most affecting part is its constant meditation on aging and death. The actors in The Return were old at the time of filming; several of them (like Harry Dean Stanton or Miguel Ferrer) died not long after production.
Whereas other revival series try to gloss over the ravages of time, David Lynch leaned into it with The Return, an approach that paid off most clearly with the Log Lady’s final scene. The actress who played the Log Lady, Catherine E. Coulson, was dying of complications from cancer at the time of filming. Four days before she passed, she filmed a phone call scene with Deputy Hawk (Michael Horse).