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I hope for an ending that leaves us with plenty to discuss and makes the world of Monkey Island mysterious and hard to describe. I can‘t really put my finger on it, but the ending of Twin Peaks - The Return was amazing. It wasn't a concluding ending I hoped for, instead it left me speechless and I had to digest it first. The Twin Peaks world is too big for me to understand, and I think that’s beautiful.

This is what Ron had to say about it on the TWP forums. Basically confirming your thesis. Link to the original post for validation purposes.

You're very welcome! I think I do have an account on the TWP forums but never really posted there. I love that there's direct contact with Ron, Gary and David but on the other hand their presence there also causes a level of kissassery from regular users desperately trying to impress them / look smart that is a little too much to bear for me. I lurk from time to time though, because of interesting posts from the authors like that one.

Agree with all of this. The parallels between the Monkey Island games and various David Lynch properties have been there all along -- MI2 was obviously released before Mulholland Drive but there was a weird amount of similarities between the two. (Let's just assume Lynch ripped off MI. (Let's not.)) Seeing Gilbert is a stated fan of The Return -- let's just assume that is where he got the ReMI title from (let's not) -- I wouldn't be overly surprised if there were some tonal similarities at least.

Thank you so much for bringing this up. I knew I read this at some place and you found the source. I'm in TP forums too.

If you watch Twin Peaks I recommend the Twin Peaks Rewatch Podcast by @Jake and Chris Remo. 🙂 https://www.idlethumbs.net/twinpeaks/

OK, I'll have to watch it now. That's it.

That'd pretty much be an essay -- I will type it in when I have more than a few minutes.

Damn, you guys are making me want to watch Twin Peaks. I know barely anything about it too, other than it's a murder mystery in a small town and there might be some paralell universe stuff (?)

Yes! I am a huge Lynch fan, and a huge Twin Peaks fan. (Unrelated to my level of fandom, but I was once married to someone who worked on the show. I know a LOT about Lynch and TP in general.) The Return was a difficult first watch, because I wanted the original show back sooo much. (I took the day off work to watch it — it actually started on my birthday, nice coincidence.) There were staggering highlights (eg.Part 8 and the amazing ending), but it took some adjusting. But FWWM was the same, and now it might be my favourite slice of Peaks. When I watched The Return the second time I enjoyed it a lot more though. It really is a GREAT series that ties together nicely, and you can appreciate that a lot more on the second run. But the ending was always amazing. Gave me goosebumps. (I hate it that the clip of the scream is used everywhere — that should be banned so it shocks first time viewers.) Anyway, as much as I love that ending, all I want from Return to MI is a GOOD ending. Season 3’s ending was a GOOD ending. It wasn’t particularly divisive, (it was generally well received in the TP community) but it was still challenging and provocative. I just don’t want Ron to try and create an ending that he hopes half the people who see it will HATE. Because that’s not being true to the story, it’s being disingenuous and contrived. Lynch and Frost didn’t sit down and say, “what could really fuck off half the audience?” They wrote the appropriate ending to the story they were telling. And it worked wonderfully. I think we’re all ultimately saying the same thing. Sorry, that was a long answer to a short question. On some topics I just get carried away

Thanks for your extensive answer! The things Ron said are very interesting! I'm very grateful to you for sharing it!

I love you for bringing Twin Peaks’ ending up in this context! That was absolutely amazing! Monkey Island shouldn’t focus on being a David Lynch thing, but it would be wonderful if the ending had the same kind of impact! @ThunderPeel2001, did you see TP3? Just curious, since you hated the Thimbleweed Park ending, what did you think of thát ending?

Yes!! Finally my starting word came around! I was so proud of it! 👕 I beat #Mojole and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 1/6 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

Pretty good Thrik. The time for my new starting word to shine is coming. I can feel it. Today is not the day, but I was pretty lucky with my second word. 👕 I beat #Mojole and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 3/6 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤💚💚💚 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

I know I'm repeating myself, but I wouldn't get your hopes up. I have a strong feeling Ron didn't have a clue about that ending and didn't have any way to resolve it. I think he just did it and was going to worry about it later. And here is why I think that: Ron discussed difficult endings at PAX Australia in 2013 and he talked about them as if they were a thing unto themselves. Not an unfortunate side effect of not finishing a planned trilogy, but something you should aim for. See what you think of what he said here (emphasis added by me): I understand what Ron is saying, and I even agree with it. But I especially agree with: "You shouldn’t enrage your audience all the time just to enrage them." And I feel that's what he tried to do with Thimbleweed Park. It was like, "I know, the game just never resolves anything and just ends! That will be interesting!". I think the truth is more complicated than Ron believes: You can't just choose to polarise an audience, because you actually need to make them care first. (This is why Thimbleweed Park's ending didn't work for me, even as a shock. I didn't care. I didn't care about the world. I didn't care about the story. I didn't care about the characters. The only thing that could have made me care was a clever ending that tied everything together. I doubt I'll ever play it again -- I've tried and quit.) I understand the desire to provoke an audience, but it's not something that's easy to do well. And if you fail, you fail harder than if you tried to satisfy them. (And I don't mean "fail" in the cool, edgy way Ron is trying to romanticise -- I mean fail in the "leaves audience feeling meh" kind of way.) The worst way Ron could end Return to Monkey Island would be to try and "top" his ending for MI2. At this point it's become expected. "Oh gee, Guybrush is just series of computer signals in the computer I'm playing -- how meta!" or "Oh gee, Guybrush is a construct of the author and the audience -- how meta!" or "Oh gee, Guybrush is really the player wanting to be somewhere else, but why do I want to be somewhere else? What does that say about modern living? How meta!" I can also see the game attempting to walk a tightrope between "is this reality, or is it just a child's dream?" the entire time. Like that episode of Buffy from 20 years ago which did exactly that ("Normal Again") or that movie K-Pax. Right now I'd challenge Ron to give Return to Monkey Island a good story and satisfying ending. If Ron resisted the urge to try and provoke the audience and focussed instead on crafting a good story. That would surprise me. I think if you're deliberately trying to provoke ranty emails in 20 year's time, there's something disingenuous about that. With MI2 the ending truly came out of nowhere because that's how it was discovered: It just appeared one day and felt right to Ron. I think provocative endings have their place, but the truth is that once you've made the audience care what happens, it's easy to be provocative: Just don't give what they hope to see. Voila! A provocative ending. Unfortunately when such an ending is expected it's no longer provocative. This is just a long way of me saying: I love Monkey Island for the world, the characters and the story. I didn't love it just for the few minutes at the end of Monkey 2. So, you know, don't fuck this up, Ron! Watch Ron's whole keynote here: UPDATE: July 2022. I actually replayed THIMBLEWEED Park and completely revised my opinion of it, and its ending. In short: I found it completely different the second time around and LOVED it. I was as surprised as anyone. So my reservations about Gilbert and endings has totally changed. I think (well, hope) that he’ll give the Return a proper ending, rather than just one that will calculatedly divide fans. I’m far less worried, anyway!

I like to imagine that at some point the real Captain Marley shows up and it transpires that Herman’s “revelation” in Escape was caused by him being hit over the head too many times.

The Font used in "Lucasfilm presents" is called Post-Antiqua and can easily be found free online.