Any “Twin Peaks” fan worth their garmonbozia won’t forget the tragic fate of Josie Packard. In the Lesli Linka Glatter-directed Episode 16 of Season 2, the Packard Sawmill owner ( Joan Chen ) dies suddenly after a standoff with FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), her soul appearing to then live inside a wooden drawer knob in a room at the Great Northern hotel. It’s an unforgettable image, but a bit of a sad, anticlimactic one for Chen, who at that point wanted to be written out of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s show to pursue other opportunities.
(And as many “ Twin Peaks ” fans know, this was a crossroads where the series was becoming aimless, before Lynch tied it all back together with his return to direct the outstanding Season 2 finale.) The Hollywood Reporter revealed in 2017 how Chen appealed to David Lynch with a letter, asking for Josie Packard to be brought back into the series for Showtime’s “The Return,” or Season 3 of “Twin Peaks.” “Obviously, it didn’t work out,” Chen told IndieWire during a recent interview discussing her new Sundance winner “Dìdi” (Focus Features, July 26), in which she plays a Taiwanese immigrant mother to a middle-school son going through puberty.
According to “Twin Peaks” lore, early drafts of the script for the prequel movie “Fire Walk with Me” suggested Josie might be the sister of Judy, an evil, body-less entity that becomes the terrorizing force of “The Return.” But that doesn’t play o.