Even a second of googling has the fact it's moved on in time underlined. Though the different names (Carrie, Richard and Linda) has me feeling we're in a whole new reality for all intents and purposes. Opens the door to surreal alt character moments. Maybe there was a hint in the RR sign too, though I didn't see anything obvious.
Twin Peaks always took place in 2017.
Every iteration of Twin Peaks, each season and the movie, is Cooper (if that is even his real name) slowly coming to the realization of who he really is.
Think of "The Return" as the last 30 minutes of Mulholland Drive or Lost Highway…the part where all the facade of the dream state is being pulled away and the protagonist is confronted with the crushing reality that they aren't the hero in the story.
The reason Laura Palmer tells Cooper "see you in 25 years" is because Cooper knows he's not really in the 80's, his dream state is. He knows he's in his 50's probably in a coma or close to death somehow.
The final 10 minutes of the finale really hits home with that dawning horror. We have felt that sense of foreboding behind every peeling wallpaper facade and behind every quirky character's smile, but Coopers journey away from Twin Peaks, and more into the real world, ratcheted that dread up to 11.
Cooper literally wakes up from a coma (or is it metaphorically lol) with an urgency of knowledge that Twin Peaks as a place is done. It never really existed. He gives a reluctant farewell to the cast of characters he created in his head that coddled him in his disassociative state, and moves on. The Director Lynch leads both Cooper and Diane out of that construct. (Which is perfect following Director Lynch's conversation with Monica Belluci in front of Lynch's museum in France discussing Cooper's dream state and a meta commentary on Lynch's own works being his own dreamstates where his characters are doppelgängers of himself)
The Return showed us Twin Peaks with great amounts of reality seeping in. It wasn't like the Twin Peaks we knew exactly, but it also wasn't fully realistic. The end of The Return says goodbye to Twin Peaks and almost completely takes off the mask. Almost. The quant 50's motel where Cooper and Diane stop turns into a generic modern one. The diner he stops at is no where near as idyllic as the Double R (Lynch toyed with this in FWWM too). The Cooper we see isn't the boyscout we knew and loved, nor the morose Bad Coop…but a more realistic combo.
As I said in a previous post, Audrey in this season was what the blue key was in Mullholland Drive. This season was always leading to Cooper finally waking up. The ending is unsettling horror because of this.
Its one of my favorite finales of any show ever (no matter how you interpret it, it's a great finale)
TL;DR Twin Peaks The Return is a show about making the best of your time on earth and helping your fellow man as best you can, and Cooper's decision to Go Big instead of Going Home winds up both ruining his life (again!) and damning those who were close to him to a worse life without him around.
I like that, but I honestly believe Cooper is really a bad man. Every time Lynch takes control of this world, he always leads us back to there.
I think what you are describing is what Cooper wishes his path was. Twin Peaks was his psyche creation to morphine out on that beautiful notion as an escape of how his real life is so the opposite of that. The journey we followed is a person desperate to run from their own crushing guilt of things they did in life…during the final firing of brain synapses towards their end. Exactly like Mullholland Drive and Lost Highway. Twin Peaks was always Lynch's long form version of this idea. Lynch has been pretty clear these 3 works are connected that way (as clear as Lynch can be)
