Best Season Finale Cliffhanger?

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Best Season Finale Cliffhanger?

S1: "Agent Cooper?" (aka Who Shot Agent Cooper?)
0
No votes
S2: "How's Annie?"
10
56%
S3: "What Year Is This?"
8
44%
 
Total votes: 18
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Jonah
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Best Season Finale Cliffhanger?

Post by Jonah »

Season 1, Season 2, or Season 3?
Last edited by Jonah on Tue Oct 15, 2019 5:46 am, edited 2 times in total.
I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
KyleRickards
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Re: Best Season Finale Cliffhanger?

Post by KyleRickards »

Jonah wrote:Season 1, Season 2, or Season 3?
2 for me


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Mr. Strawberry
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Re: Best Season Finale Cliffhanger?

Post by Mr. Strawberry »

Don't you mean

S1: "Agent Cooper?"

You know, I didn't realize it until this very moment, but man, that Season 1 cliffhanger is so very reminiscent of Mr. C's briefcase call. In both scenes, a perplexed Coop responds to a distorted voice from the phone by asking, "Who is this?"
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TwinsPeak
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Re: Best Season Finale Cliffhanger?

Post by TwinsPeak »

Went S2 for cliffhanger...but season 1 is my fav season
"Wanting something to be different will not make it so." "Explaining a different rule is not complaining for months. A lie will never be true." - Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes.
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Saturn's child
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Re: Best Season Finale Cliffhanger?

Post by Saturn's child »

Mr. Strawberry wrote:that Season 1 cliffhanger is so very reminiscent of Mr. C's briefcase call. In both scenes, a perplexed Coop responds to a distorted voice from the phone by asking, "Who is this?"
Nice catch!
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Jonah
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Re: Best Season Finale Cliffhanger?

Post by Jonah »

Mr. Strawberry wrote:Don't you mean

S1: "Agent Cooper?"
I changed it to that one to keep it in line with the other two, but I do like the whole 'Who Shoot Cooper?' tagline as it's so purposefully reminiscent of 'Who Shot JR?' from "Dallas".
I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
LateReg
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Re: Best Season Finale Cliffhanger?

Post by LateReg »

It's tough because I don't think of Season 3 as being a cliffhanger so much as an unorthodox yet perfect ending. So, as far as cliffhangers go, even though there wasn't a season 3 at the time, I would say that How's Annie serves as an incredible cliffhanger that truly feels like a cliffhanger, even if you could also argue it to be definitive in its own way: even Cooper was corrupted, and that's just the end.

But while I have trouble thinking of Season 3's ending as a cliffhanger, the fact remains that I consider those final seconds to be perhaps the strongest ending of Lynch's career, as well as one of the all-time great endings to any horror movie. So I had to vote for Season 3 as I feel it's simply a stronger and more powerfully strange and hard to replicate moment. Everything, from the slight breeze in Laura's hair to Laura's blood curdling scream to Kyle stumbling in the street to the eerie stillness of it all to Lynch's technical direction and editing of the lights shutting down is a perfect storm.
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Cappy
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Re: Best Season Finale Cliffhanger?

Post by Cappy »

I'm inclined not to think of the S3 ending as a cliffhanger, even though that was my initial first impression.

I will say though, I have no clue why Cooper utters "what year is this?". That's the thing that makes me keep thinking it might be a cliffhanger, but at the same time, it might wrap up the show. I feel like Laura is caught in this sort of eternal recurrence, moving between light and dark and back and forth through all time. She's doomed to realize her parents evil (or in Sarah's case, complicity) and confront and reject it for all time. She also has this blissful joy and love about herself, as illustrated in the ending of FWWM, the glowing white light behind her face in episode 2 of S3, and her divine creation in episode 8. Perhaps Cooper's meddling in part created this eternal recurrence, but I think maybe in the final moments of S3, he realizes that it doesn't matter what year it is, because it will always be happening for all time.
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Jonah
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Re: Best Season Finale Cliffhanger?

Post by Jonah »

Cappy wrote: I will say though, I have no clue why Cooper utters "what year is this?".
I have no idea either. And why does he appear to be studying the ground (the road or the curb) just before he says it?

I did read on reddit or somewhere that uttering "what year is it?" means he's in a dream and the fact that Carrie/Laura doesn't seem to know the answer means they realize they're in a dream too. Like it's the kind of question you might ask yourself in a dream, to realize you're in one, and snap out of it. This would sort of tie in with the other theories that Carrie/Laura screaming, hearing Sarah calling her and the lights blowing out, indicate the end of dream, the dream collapsing on itself, and the dreamer (or dreamers) waking up.

But I do wonder why Coop/Richard (is he even Coop? and who are Richard and Linda anyway?) keeps looking at the ground.
I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
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Re: Best Season Finale Cliffhanger?

Post by krishnanspace »

Jonah wrote:
Cappy wrote: I will say though, I have no clue why Cooper utters "what year is this?".
I have no idea either. And why does he appear to be studying the ground (the road or the curb) just before he says it?

I did read on reddit or somewhere that uttering "what year is it?" means he's in a dream and the fact that Carrie/Laura doesn't seem to know the answer means they realize they're in a dream too. Like it's the kind of question you might ask yourself in a dream, to realize you're in one, and snap out of it. This would sort of tie in with the other theories that Carrie/Laura screaming, hearing Sarah calling her and the lights blowing out, indicate the end of dream, the dream collapsing on itself, and the dreamer (or dreamers) waking up.

But I do wonder why Coop/Richard (is he even Coop? and who are Richard and Linda anyway?) keeps looking at the ground.
It looked like he was calculating something or wondering where did he go wrong. Like when we are trying to remember something, we look up and maybe mumble to ourselves. Same way Cooper was looking down at the road
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Cappy
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Re: Best Season Finale Cliffhanger?

Post by Cappy »

Cooper is also making a bit of a hand gesture similar to the way he opens the red curtains in episode 2. Not really sure what to make of that either, but maybe Cooper thinks that bringing Laura home somehow frees him finally from all this Red Room stuff. (EDIT: Maybe Cooper thinks this is where to story ends, but he doesn't realize it is always ongoing)

I also think that on some level this ending could lead Cooper and Laura to the FWWM ending, and is how Laura came to have this bright white light behind her face in episode 2. But if Laura is repeating all these things for all time, who's to say what the causality between any of these events even is anymore?

I also feel like Laura might've had a dream about the ending of S3, and written about it in her diary. Hence Carrie Page is the missing "Page" from her diary... Although where this dream would've fit into the timeline or effected Laura's actions is beyond me.
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Re: Best Season Finale Cliffhanger?

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

Cappy wrote:Cooper is also making a bit of a hand gesture similar to the way he opens the red curtains in episode 2. Not really sure what to make of that either, but maybe Cooper thinks that bringing Laura home somehow frees him finally from all this Red Room stuff. (EDIT: Maybe Cooper thinks this is where to story ends, but he doesn't realize it is always ongoing).
That would fit with his comment to Gordon, “See you at the curtain call,” both metaphorically and literally.
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Jonah
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Re: Best Season Finale Cliffhanger?

Post by Jonah »

Mr. Reindeer wrote:
Cappy wrote:Cooper is also making a bit of a hand gesture similar to the way he opens the red curtains in episode 2. Not really sure what to make of that either, but maybe Cooper thinks that bringing Laura home somehow frees him finally from all this Red Room stuff. (EDIT: Maybe Cooper thinks this is where to story ends, but he doesn't realize it is always ongoing).
That would fit with his comment to Gordon, “See you at the curtain call,” both metaphorically and literally.
Didn't he say that to Diane?
When I first heard that line, I though it was something meta, and there was going to be a dancing/singing "curtain call" closing to The Return, like the end credits of "Inland Empire".
Now I think it must have been referring to the "crossing", whatever it was.
I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: Best Season Finale Cliffhanger?

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

Jonah wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote:
That would fit with his comment to Gordon, “See you at the curtain call,” both metaphorically and literally.
Didn't he say that to Diane?
I had taken it as directed at Gordon, since Gordon had the last line previous (and due to the meta element of the Lynch/MacLachlan dynamic). I took it as referencing an event that we never see come to pass, since Cooper’s plan goes awry. But it could be that it is directed at Diane, and the “curtain call” is him emerging from the Red Room and the rest of P18.
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Jonah
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Re: Best Season Finale Cliffhanger?

Post by Jonah »

Mr. Reindeer wrote:
Jonah wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote: But it could be that it is directed at Diane, and the “curtain call” is him emerging from the Red Room and the rest of P18.
^ I think this. But still a weird way to describe it.
I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
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