Beneath the slap and pop bass lines and brightly colored ‘90s clothes of Seinfeld’s exterior, there exists an infinite void of existential dread. The show itself—famously “about nothing”—explored the meaninglessness of our daily lives on its own terms, but that wasn’t enough for other people on the internet who want to see Seinfeld reimagined as aesthetically terrifying, too. In the past year alone, we’ve seen fan fiction about the gang dealing with the coronovirus pandemic and video games that turn the show’s apartment into a house of surreal horrors. Now we have Seinfeld: The Return, a Twin Peaks-inspired vision of what it might look like to revisit the cast 25 years after the sitcom ended with Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer locked into a prison cell.
Dominick Nero, a video editor who’s explored both Twin Peaks and Jerry Seinfeld’s dark heart before, first played with the concept back in 2017, but he’s returned to it with three episodes that elaborate on the idea.
In the first episode, Kramer announces Jerry’s death and we return to his empty apartment, the subway shaking its walls, before finding the comedian held prisoner. This is followed up with another episode where Elaine loads a gun while listening to George’s Greatest American Hero answering machine message and ominously amplified room noise. A black-and-white flashback of Kramer “at the nexus of the universe” brings viewers deeper into the psychic torment of the show’s central mystery.
The most recent edition shows us modern-day Newman and gives us new hints as to how George has found himself rent apart, Agent Cooper-style.
Nero tweeted that he’s already got the next three parts of the series mapped out, which is good since we’re now fully invested in learning as much as we can about Jerry’s apparent death and the forces of evil responsible for it. Maybe Seinfeld: The Return will also resolve these questions with a reality-piercing scream that resounds through time and space. Or, maybe, it’ll just end with Elaine yelling “Stella!” over and over again as the credits roll.
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