"The Owls Are Not What They Seem" A Twin Peaks Rewatch with the Theory in Mind: Twin Peaks: Part 8 "Gotta Light?"
The theory: Twin Peaks is the dream of William "Billy" Hastings, a serial killer. The result of his mother's abuse, at the hands of her father, Billy was abused by her in turn, keeping the cycle going. Playing with fire, as abused/neglected/antisocial children are prone to, he accidentally burned down the motel where he lived with his mother and grandfather/father, killing them. He was sent to live with his grandmother/great-grandmother, until she died too. Billy then went to live with his strict, born again uncle. In high school, Billy became obsessed with a schoolmate, the American Girl. He murdered her, the first in a string of victims, all similar in the way that they reminded him of his mother. To deal with his past and what he'd become, he constructed the world of Twin Peaks, allowing him to also "protect" and honor his mother, the woman he both loved and feared. Inside of the dream, Billy's family was represented by both the Hornes and the Lodge Spirits, while Billy's main avatar was our hero Dale Cooper. Inside of his dream, Billy sought to project his tragedy and sins onto his victim's family instead, which worked for a while. However, if the OG is a representation of how Billy got away with murder, the Return is how he was eventually discovered by the mother of his first victim, an act precipitated by his involvement with Betty, his final victim.
A longer essay on the theory: https://armsholdair.dreamwidth.org/7192.html
WARNING: A knowledge of the whole Twin Peaks series is needed for this, fittingly from A to Z and Z back to A.
- Ray drives away from Yankton, in the rental, while Mr. C discovers that 3 tracking devices were placed on the car. He tells Ray to pull up behind a truck, gets the license plate number and enters it into the phone, before throwing the phone out the window.
Well we've viewed Ray as connected to Leland. And we've seen BOB's hosts and enablers as vehicles/connected to them too. Any substance to Ray driving this "rental", which would mean something that doesn't really belong to him, and how we see BOB has never belonging to Leland? Yeah, we think so.
We have the number 3 again, to go with the three Dale's, whom we view as representing 3 aspects of William Hastings: an FBI/good self, a doppleganger/bad self and a tulpa/manufactured self.
Mr. C getting the license plate number draws attention to license plates, while we previously discussed that Dougie Jones' license plate being linked to identity might be trying to convey the Coopers as being the primary choice of transportation for Billy inside of his dream. Meanwhile, Mr. C is trying to get the attention off of himself, which could link to how Billy framed American Girl's dad for the crime he committed. A Ray, the name of Leland's actor, sitting beside him as he does it is wonderfully meta.
We have a truck being used now as a decoy involving identity. In the previous episode, we found out that Richard Horne used the farmer's truck when he went to see Red and when he killed the young boy. However, we also wondered if the Farmer was just another form of Billy, so the confusion, or layering, of identity might be expanded here. In Part 12, Charlie claims that a Chuck stole Billy's truck, but Chuck is just another name for Charlie, as Peppermint Patty could tell us.
The truck has a license plate of DEGWW 8. The phone has a green C (like what Earle wrote around Arkansas), FIRE (like in BOB) with blue triangles on either side and a D and X with a yellow circle with a red dot in the middle. Not completely sure what that all means but this is Part 8.
- Ray says Mr. C must be sore at him for what happened and thanks him for getting him out. He asks how he set it up and Mr. C says Darya told him about the arrest. Ray asks where Darya is and Mr. C tells him she's waiting by the phone until they get somewhere safe. They are going to a place called The Farm. Ray says they won't just let them walk and will look for them. Mr. C states Ray has something he's after. Ray says he has the numbers memorized but thinks it might make him some money. Mr. C directs him off the highway and to the right.
Ray is acting at this point, everything seeming as staged as Mr. C's own arrest, and Mr. C knows it.
Mr. C telling Ray that Darya was waiting by the phone connects perhaps to Audrey saying she was also waiting by the phone for a call from or about Billy.
Now Mr. C and Ray are going to the Farm which can connect to the Farmer in some odd way, further strengthened to how Richard will first see Mr. C there. A farm can also link to the cow that jumped over the moon.
And once again Mr. C betrays how focused he is on getting Betty's coordinates, even though she's supposedly just this unseen and irrelevant character, further making us believe that, in actuality, a lot of the events of The Return are actually motivated by the secretary and she, in truth, is really Naido, her coordinates leading to her.
Ray says he has the numbers memorized and yet he will have them written down at the farm.
- They drive for a while until Ray asks if he can pull over and take a leak. Mr. C permits it. While Ray is supposedly peeing, Mr. C gets the "friend" out of the glove compartment and then gets out and confronts Ray, saying he wants the information. He says Ray is out half a million but Ray disagrees with that, pulling out his own gun. Mr. C tries to shoot three times but the gun doesn't fire. Ray shoots twice and Mr. C falls to the ground. Ray walks towards him to shoot him another time.
Lots of yellow arrows to the right and then some lesser ones pointing left. We theorized that the left led to the truth more. This could be indicating that Billy is still distancing himself from the truth.
Lots of pee breaks this season too, now we can add Ray to Bobby, Cooper and Hawk.
Still more evidence of how badly Mr. C wants those coordinates from Betty in particular. We mean, he's not going after Ruth's body, infact if they want us to believe he or the woodsmen killed her, wouldn't he already have them? They were written on her arm! And why would Jeffries have them either, or why would Mr. C trust them? It's Betty's whose he has become obsessed with. Probably because Betty is real and not a substitute or creation inside of Billy's mind, anyway not until Cooper sees her and recognizes her finally at the Sheriff Station and then quickly swaps her with Diane.
Dale Cooper was shot three times at the very end of Season 1, something Ben reminded us specifically of in Part 7, as if it was of great importance. It might have been, but not in any way often discussed. We've gone on to theorize that directly dealt with Audrey being propositioned at One-Eyed Jack's by her own father. Since that directly involved the dreamer's own conception, his being Audrey and Ben's child, something Billy was trying to deny inside of the dream, the ramification was that Dale Cooper was shot, his being Billy's main avatar and escape from what he truly was. Now, believing that Billy is represented in the mirrors inside of his dream, from his habit of mirroring others, we can find deeper meaning within the fact that Josie Packard, the first woman shown not only in Twin Peaks but the first reflected inside of the first mirror, was the one whom shot Dale. She did it while wearing a mask, which hid her own identity; Josie was stated to also show others what they wanted instead of what was real. Idyllopus Press' own dissection of Part 8 helped us to realize and connect Cooper's having visited One-Eyed Jack's, and what he learned about Laura, with another aspect that concerns this theory. In Laura's autopsy, Albert found a piece of plastic inside of Laura's stomach. It's the J from off of the Jack (the name we believe Billy associates with a make believe version of his father) of a One-Eyed Jack's poker chip, a 1000 one at that. Cooper learns from Jacques - as Audrey has infiltrated her father's brothel without his knowledge - that Leo placed the chip in Laura's mouth and she took a bite from it, swallowing the bit of chip, specifically with the J. This in effect resembled a fake "pregnancy", Laura being an imposter of Billy's mom, the stomach being the belly but not the womb, and the money that Billy feels his mother sold them both out for being not real money inside of Laura but rather a fake poker chip instead. Audrey, on the other hand's own conception was connected to an explosion at a bank, where she heard a guard declare "It's a boy!". Banks contain real money and we even saw some of it falling down after the blast which resulted in Audrey's coma and her eventual violation by Mr. C, which led to the conception of her son. But, like Mr. C being shot in the stomach here, we believe that Dale Cooper being shot in "The Last Evening" in effect conveys Billy's conception/birth, irrevocably tied to Ben walking in to the "little flower" room to be the first to take the "new girl" whom is really his daughter. Ben entering the room, to his daughter's horror, was reflected in a mirror, which is, as mentioned before, a form Billy takes inside of his dream. The Log Lady, for her intro to "The Last Evening" stated that "Life, like music, has a rhythm. This particular song will end with three sharp sounds, like deathly drumbeats." She is comparing Cooper being shot to deathly drumbeats and yet beforehand she stated that this was about life. That is the key: this is all about life, Billy's life, a life he feels should never have been created, and only led to death and destruction, and so those deathly drumbeats aren't necessarily drumbeats at all...they are the first beats of Billy's heart. And what we see next, and what this whole episode revolves around, are abstractions of Billy's pained creation.
- Ray is stopped, as lightning flashes and woodsmen emerge from out of the blue, running to Mr. C's body. Several begin dancing around the body, while three seem to be moving the dirt beneath it until they begin to rub blood all over Mr. C's corpse instead. Ray watches on in horror, falling to the ground. Eventually, a woodsman lifts Mr. C's limp head as an orb with BOB's smiling face is seen coming out of Mr. C's stomach. Ray gets up and drives away as the woodsman continue their dance/healing and we see smoke. A crescent moon hangs over the sky.
We have the flashing blue light most often associated with BOB again. We previously made a link between "Dougie" and Sonny Jim making the light flash on and off in his bedroom, likening it to maybe some illustration of the father's effect on the son.
The song that plays as the woodsmen emerge is Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" and after this sequence is over Lynch will even show the crescent moon hanging in the sky. The song is playing so slow and dirge like that it is almost unrecognizable. Now what's interesting about the song choice, and what might strike the viewer more if it was instantly known, is how it links us back again to the Hornes and specifically Audrey's loss of virginity in "The Path to the Black Lodge". For it was directly after giving herself to Jack Wheeler (a wheel being a cycle in effect) Pete Martel offered to take the young woman fishing: "Audrey, there are many cures for a broken heart, but nothing quite like a trout's leap in the moonlight." Moonlight. And where does he supposedly take her? Presumably the same place Audrey referenced Jack said he would take her to too: Pearl Lakes. The same place where Leland Palmer stated he first met BOB! And presumably, while the now deflowered Audrey was off fishing in the moonlight on Pearl Lakes, we saw BOB reach a hand out from the curtains in Glastonbury Grove and then be free completely, as if born somehow. The name "Moonlight Sonata" wasn't given to the musical piece by Beethoven but by Ludwig Rellstab, whom compared the music to being like moonlight on a lake. Now, in Part 7 we were reminded not only of Cooper being shot in Room 315 but of the humming sound that began after Audrey rushed off to have sex with Jack, all as her father called out for her and almost fell to his knees on the steps in his office. The sound began and Ben looked in shock behind him, in the direction of his fireplace. We theorized Cooper being shot in "The Last Evening" and Audrey's loss of virginity and the hum in "The Path to the Black Lodge" both related to Audrey, Billy's mother, being abused by her father and conceiving his child. And in the previous episode both events were referenced, either directly or indirectly. Now we believe we have another illustration of Billy's birth all as "Moonlight Sonata" plays. To further this, the moon is most often associated with mothers and motherhood. To add specific connection between it and Audrey, we have Lynch showing Mr. C's rebirth as occurring during a crescent moon. The pointed ends of the illuminated part of the moon are called horns.
The woodsmen come out of nowhere and it seems that when BOB's host is in trouble they are there to save him. And yet they never did this with Leland. We could argue that it was because he was going to be imprisoned and so there was no use in saving him, but in Part 17, the woodsmen will make a second attempt to perhaps heal Mr. C, whom is similarly condemned. So is the intervention of the woodsmen, in association to BOB, specific to Mr. C only? And is that primarily because he, unlike Leland, masks Billy?
The woodsmen prove themselves to be BOB's helpers here, just as we theorized that they represented enablers of Ben (Billy's dad/grandad). Furthermore, if this is an abstraction of how Billy views his creation/birth we can then believe they show how such people facilitated Ben (the father) abusing Audrey (the daughter) and creating the grandson. Without their enabling, Billy's grandfather/father would have been prevented/stopped in his abuse and Billy would never have been born. Their actions around Mr. C represent this, assisting in his rebirth (illustrating how they kept Ben's atrocious behavior going) and how they urged Billy into existence, as illustrated in his rebirth.
While three woodsmen seem to be dancing around the body, creating a circle, three assist in resurrecting Mr. C. They start off by appearing to dig beneath his body and then by smearing the blood from the bullet wounds all over his body and face. The woodsmen digging a hole echoes the hole left by the Trinity test. However, it can also replicate Billy's mother's vagina and how Billy was born into the world. Similarly, the woodsmen might be covering Mr. C in blood to mimic the image of a child born and covered in blood.
The woodsmen seem to remove an orb with BOB's grinning face from out of Mr. C's stomach while strangely lifting Mr. C's limp head up. Okay, so this shows that Mr. C is dead and BOB is alive inside of him but it also conveys several other things. We have just compared this sequence to Billy's mom giving birth to Billy, but in turn we can see in this moment how Billy, in return, gave birth to BOB: the idea of the abuse running inside of his family personified by some abstraction of his grandfather/father. So when the woodsman lifts Mr. C's head, he could also be showing Billy his own "child" in the very same way a doctor would. The head lifting could indicate how BOB was born mostly in the mind, it being all in his head, which is also how the woodsmen kill and how Billy Hastings will also supposedly die. However Hastings most likely receives his own resurrection like Mr. C, the two being ultimately the same. And BOB is also just another facet of Billy as well, which makes Mr. C giving birth to BOB a variation to how Billy envisions himself as impregnating his mother with himself when Cooper becomes Richard. The scene also illustrates how Billy most likely feels dead inside except for this piece of his father that lives inside of him, compelling him to carry on the suffering. In this way, it can also invoke Ben Horne's poker chip lost inside of Laura Palmer, another creation of Billy, and how Billy became a "chip off the old block."
The scene of the Woodsmen pulling BOB out of Mr. C actually also conjures up another interesting hint that BOB always belonged to Cooper and so that makes their relationship unique from the Leland situation. In the European ending, when MIKE/Phillip has requested a meeting, whilst discussing BOB, the man states what most take to mean: “I was watching, Mr Cooper, for over a year, waiting for BOB to come out again.” However, it could easily read that he had specifically been watching COOPER for a year and waiting for BOB to emerge from inside of him and kill somebody. He then states, afterall, “I’ve known of your interests in the results of his endeavours...I too have been touched by the devilish one," creepily indicating that Cooper holds interest in what BOB does because he has been tarnished by him in some way akin to MIKE. For this theory, that easily goes alongside Billy being Ben Horne's son and MIKE being a form of Jerry, Ben's younger brother, and how both had been influenced by Ben, whom became BOB inside of his son's mind. Quite literally in Part 8 we see BOB "come out" of Mr C(ooper).
Actually, the woodsmen circling Mr. C remind us of the circle of candles seen in the European ending to the Pilot and the candles MIKE/Phillip has lit in his motel in a Missing Piece. There are six woodsmen here, we think, 3 attending to Mr. C and three dancing, whereas the candles in the European ending and the MP were 12, like the sycamores at Glastonbury Grove. We wondered about the significance of 6 and the utility pole, as well as Teresa Banks room number. Could it be an age marking something significant? The 12 we previously proposed might have been the age when Billy lost his grandmother, which might have further pushed him into becoming BOB after he went to live with the uncle.
Smoke helps hide the "devil" and the woodsmen helped hide Billy's father's horrible sins.
And then we have the moon, with its horns, reminding us of the other horned items that haunt the story and how it all should lead us back to the HORNes of Twin Peaks.
- A driving Ray phones Phillip, telling him he thinks "Cooper" is dead, but he had help so he's not sure. He says he also saw something in him. "It may be the key to what this is all about," he claims. He told him where he's going, so he'll get him there.
BOB infact might be the key to everything if we think of him as representing Ben Horne and not Leland Palmer. Ben has just received Dale Cooper's old room key in the last episode and is set to send it on its way to Harry, before Cooper intercepts it and it leads him right to that basement closet in the furnace room of Ben's hotel, which will lead to the convenience store and then the Dutchman's.
- At the Roadhouse the MC announces the NIN and they perform "She's Gone Away."
The mic has a pine cone on it, usually found on trees. The last performance we will see at the Roadhouse is "Audrey's Dance". We see Audrey has being represented by Ghostwood forest, which is filled with trees.
The song the NIN originally submitted to Lynch was turned down because he wanted something more ugly, aggressive, menacing and unpleasant. That indicates that the general feel of this episode was to be extremely dark. Those adjectives also perfectly fit how we see this episode dealing with Billy's dark and horrible conception, one of pain and sorrow, and how his eventual birth is actually also the birth of a killer.
While the song wasn't supposedly influenced, from what we know, by any direct lyrical input from Lynch, we aren't always saying things were planned for this theory but that they proved to be providential accidents. "She's Gone Away" perfectly fits with this when we directly link it to what this theory suggests:
"You dig in places till your fingers bleed
Spread the infection, where you spill your seed,"
We mentioned how we view the scene of Ben's father passing the shovel to his eldest son illustrating the passing of the cycle of abuse from father to son. They are digging, just as Dr. Amp talks about and also what the Woodsmen appeared to be doing under Mr. C's body in this very episode. We likewise see Ben's father as spreading his infection when he fathered Ben and that Ben spread his infection into his daughter Audrey, whom carried that seed and brought forth Cooper/Richard/Billy out of it.
I can't remember what she came here for
I can't remember much of anything anymore,
Billy has difficulty in remembering his past, wilfully locking it away because it is too painful. If his mother came to him to continue the cycle (sex) he has blocked it, or rather placed it somewhere inside a fragment of himself where it leaks out inside of his fantasy.
She's gone, she's gone, she's gone away (x2)
Away (x2)
Billy's mother was gone, having left him when she died, which was due to his own actions. It is a pain that haunts him and he can't escape, partially why he searches for her in other women.
A little mouth opened up inside
Yeah, I was watching on the day she died
We keep licking while the skin turns black
Cut along the length, but you can't get the feeling back
A mouth opened up inside of Billy when his mother died. This could tie into how the Lodge spirits feed on pain and sorrow. Billy most likely saw the Red Diamond/Dutchman's burning when he set it on fire, burning with his mom in it. If she was disabled, as we think she might have been, her escape would have been doubly difficult. The skin turning black indicates that it has been burnt, the tongue licking could be either like a dog licking wounds or the act of feeding, just as Billy (sometimes presented as a dog) both wants to save and destroy his mother. He cannot make his mother alive again, nor can he make himself feel things as he previously did. He is dead inside now.
She's gone, she's gone, she's gone away (x4)
Away (x4)
(Are you still here?)
Once again, Billy's mother is gone, having left him by dying. We can't hear it past the noise, but the question of "Are you still here?" could indicate Billy seeing her alive in the woman he murders or his dream where she is the frightening spector of Judy or the more innocent one of Audrey.
- Out in the middle of nowhere, the woodsmen no longer seen, Mr. C sits up "reborn".
Okay, so we see Mr. C sitting up, which represents his and Billy's birth, which this whole episode deals with. And this is leading into yet more abstractions on that theme, none of them particularly pleasant as opposed to his version of Laura (American Girl's) creation.
- July 16th 1945, White Sands New Mexico, 5:29 AM (MWT), a voice counts down for the Trinity test, starting at 10 and going to 0. We see the bomb go off and then go into the explosion where there are a series of different patterns, some fire and lights.
And so we have a travel back into the past (is it future or is it past?), one where we witness the Trinity nuclear bomb test. White Sands is in Jornada del Muerto which translates to "Dead Man's Journey", "Route of the Dead Man" or "Journey of Death". It is an almost waterless 90 mile expanse of desert. Being waterless is akin to fire, while it is possible that the Dead Man in question reflects Billy himself, dead inside and possibly dead on the outside too if he is discovered to be a serial killer. Billy being a killer equates him with death as well, so this is all significant.
The countdown starts from 10, the number of completion. This number occurs within Twin Peaks several times, or, at least the numerology rounding of it. Here it is a common established use for a countdown, but two possibilities occurred to us, the first being that perhaps Billy lost his mother when he was 10, a fact that devastated him. We also have that it is going in reverse, just like the backwards occurrences in the series. That could, in fact, actually hint that the events we see playing out in this segment of the episode are happening in reverse order from how they happened to Billy. That would make this then the birth/abuse of Billy Hastings, both equally as destructive.
Okay, so, for us anyway, this can't be the birth of all evil, as is often stated, because honestly it's 1945 and there were atrocities committed long before that date! By extension then that dissuades us from seeing BOB as being the "evil that men do" as Albert said. No. This is something very personal to one person and that doesn't deal with the birth of evil so much as the creation of that same individual. We can easily connect this event with the explosion of the bank in the OG finale, further helped by the fact we were just reminded of it in the previous episode when Will Hayward brought up Audrey Horne and "That terrible business at the bank" that left her in a coma. A lot of the sequence in "Beyond Life and Death" echoes in this segment of Part 8 and that should stand out even more when we realize that we haven't actually seen Audrey since that scene. Here we see a bomb explosion, which ties in to how Andrew Packard set off the bomb Thomas had planted at the bank with another key. Before the bomb went off, Audrey had requested and drank a glass of water and then heard a Guard receive a phone call, wherein he exclaimed, "It's a boy!". We previously equated the destruction/defiling of nature with incestuous abuse throughout the series, most always associated with the Hornes. We believe Ben and his father's groundbreaking the bluff for the construction of the Great Northern actually dealt with the Elder Horne's abuse of his son. Likewise, we see the whole subplot of Benjamin trying to sell Ghostwood Forest for land development as being symbolic of his abuse of his daughter Audrey. So the Trinity bomb explosion could likely represent Billy's birth and also his abuse, both events the same to him. The word Trinity is interesting with this take on the bomb being used: three members of the same family all being children whom were abused. If anything could result in the creation of something so destructive as "BOB" it could very well be something like this.
A nuclear bomb is something with far reaching and devastating consequences. The abuse within Billy's family was the same, creating a man whom lashed out and destroyed those whom were not even in his family, spreading and eating upon pain and sorrow of people he didn't even know.
Benjamin Horne was born in 1940. He would have turned 5 in 1945 which coincides with the age we theorized Billy was when his mother, and possibly grandfather/father's, abuse of him began. Here Billy could be drawing a line, connecting both events since Ben's abuse also happened when he was only 5.
The Trinity test created a crater, hole, which is what we see Ben and his father digging. A hole also can represent the birthing place.
A bomb is also associated with some secret that was hidden finally being revealed. Thus a bomb fits in perfectly here, the dreamer being the child of a father and daughter. Likely the family didn't know this, like the uncle whom rarely saw the niece or whom misunderstood something he saw with the nephew. And the child himself probably was also lied to until he found out the truth, making his existence akin to a bomb, one that destroyed both his and his mother's life. This brings an interesting parallel to Billy dreaming Laura trying to discover the identity of the abuser she hates in FWWM. He suffered something similar, only, whereas she discovers BOB is possessing Leland, the father she loved, Billy was trying to find out the identity of his father, whom he potentially idealized, and discovered to his horror that it was really the grandfather he hated.
The part that is hard to put into words is how, when we seem to enter the bomb itself Lynch conveys it in both frightening and beautiful images. It is something he obviously still finds some beauty in. Could this be some indication that, despite the series of abuses taking place, that there were moments of genuine love there? That though Billy thinks his mother hated him, she did love him too, or that if he feels he was worthless, that he still had the chance of making something beautiful of his life despite the horror? The use of color strikes us in the face in light of all the black and white imagery seen. Could this further emphasize how Billy had difficulty in seeing colors or shades of gray within his world? That everything was either black or white, like the Red Room floor? Could this also be why he clings to Dale Cooper's essentially Black and White suit?
- At the darkened convenience store, lights start flashing and the woodsmen appear outside of it, jutting in and out, as the light does the same.
Woodsmen can be linked to the destruction of nature and so they make perfect enablers for BOB with the analogy between incestuous abuse and the desecration of nature. Outside of this dream symbolism, they merely stand for all of those people whom enable the abuse either voluntary or involuntary. They are paid or benefit somehow from the situation so they go along with something that is harmful. These are the people whom allowed Billy's father to be immoral in one way or another.
This is a convenience store, the one where BOB and MIKE operated from and also where the meeting scene in FWWM took place. It will be used to take people to the Dutchman's (the ghost of Teresa's hotel), which seems to have equal importance. These are direct counterparts to two HORNE family run businesses: Horne Department Store and the Great Northern Hotel. You could say they are their shadow selves, but they might be the true selves just as much as Coop's shadow self betrayed more of the truth. Now a hotel/motel is a home you make a profit from and a similarity is drawn to the Convenience Store, in a way, since it is stated/shown that people make it into a home too. We have clear instances of homes being tarnished with material capitalism. We theorize that Billy resents his mother for staying with their abusive father, believing it had to do with money. That is a constant theme, as associated with the woodsmen and Ben's being able to buy people off to do his dirty work, be they low lifes like Hank Jennings and Leo Johnson or working men like Emory Battis or Leland Palmer or even his wife Sylvia.
- The Experiment barfs out a stream of liquid/vomit filled with eggs and the BOB orb to earth. We go inside of the stream and then see fire.
This essentially represents how Billy views his birth. Vomit is usually a sign of illness, and he views himself as a sign of his mother's sickness, both wrought from her abuse by their father. We can easily tie this to the sick girl in Part 11, whom hasn't seen her uncle in a long time. The woman driving that girl is constantly honking the car horn, invoking the Hornes.
The Experiment has horns, invoking the Hornes once again.
When he reversed his intent, having sold Ghostwood to Catherine, Ben Horne began a campaign to save Ghostwood for the Pine Weasels. Old myth once held that weasels vomited out their offspring.
The BOB orb is mixed in with the vomit. Is this BOB's birth solely then or does it also imply that the Experiment was possessed by BOB too? That would make sense if we believe Billy views BOB as an imago of his father that possesses him. When his mother abused him, Billy could have equally seen her possessed by the same father. She could also be giving birth to all of Billy's selves, one of which is BOB. Another option could be that the BOB orb being present denotes his role as father to the Experiment's mother regarding all of the eggs.
- We see a glob of gold and go through it. After travelling a little bit, we see the purple sea and travel over it until we see a large mountain with a huge building on it, which turns out to be the Fireman's. It has no windows it seems, but does have a doorway with no actual door on it and we go through it. We see a room with a woman, Senorita Dido, sitting on a sofa and swaying as she listens to music on an old gramophone.
Is the purple sea inside of the gold the reason why a gold pool is found by its entrance close to Jack Rabbit's Palace?
The Fireman's is on one PEAK. Does the name Twin Peaks hint at things being doubled?
This massive building is the Fireman's Place and it seems likely that the mansion room, where Naido was and American Girl is are located inside of it. Now, it is our belief, just as the convenience store and the Dutchman's are versions of the Hornes' places, this is a variation on the Palmers' house...which is really just a dream equivalent of Billy's first victim's family home. So that makes sense why the mansion room is located here: it's the daughter's bedroom, a room Billy trespassed into through a window we are assuming.
There are no windows that we see from this angle. Actually there seems to be only a doorless door. That's wonderful for our belief that Laura, whom we'll see spiritually born soon, is the door to Twin Peaks.
That the Fireman's place is synonymous with the Palmers' will become more clear in Parts 17 and 18. When Cooper attempts to "save" Laura in Part 17, and she asks where he is taking her and he replies "We're going home." However, in Part 18, when he has become Richard, a seemingly less idealized/dreamy version of Cooper, he simply takes her to the Palmer household. We reason that it's because if Billy had not killed American Girl and imagined the world of Twin Peaks to escape his fantasies would have been, well, less fantastic. The fantasy like Fireman's returns to being just a commonplace ordinary house, one which might have been as equally a fantasy to Billy.
The room we enter through it to find has strong similarities to the Palmers'. We have a couch and a divider and we also have a gramophone, a variation on the record player we often saw at the Palmer household, one they often played, just like it is playing here. The first song we heard played on the Palmer's record player was Pennsylvania 6-5000, which we mentioned before was the number to a famous hotel. The Fireman's record player was first seen when the Fireman told Dale to listen to the sounds, which we believe were of an insect and also of what had infiltrated the Fireman's house.
Senorita Dido, we theorize, is a different version of Sarah/American Girl's mom.
- A machine structure begins to set off an alarm at the Fireman's. The Fireman steps out from behind it, shares a long look at Dido, looks back at the alarm and then stares for a while straight in front of him. He looks back at the machine. He turns off the alarm, shares another look with Dido and then leaves the room.
The machine looks like what Phillip Jeffries turned into or is hiding inside, as well as the thing on top of the mansion room that shocked Naido. A whole room of them can be seen inside of the Fireman's. So are they people? This one seems to be an alarm. Interestingly, Phillip Jeffries seemed to serve the same purpose when he pointed out Cooper at the FBI Headquarters in FWWM and then tried to warn Cole about the Lodge meeting. We also theorized, in Part 3, that Naido/Betty was turning it to go back in time to Billy's first intentional victim: American Girl. Which now, come to think of it, that episode title matches the socket number of the room that American Girl is in. Phillip Jeffries will also send Cooper back in time. So Jeffries, and these machines, act as alarms and time machines. And in both cases they alert about the dreamer, BOB and Dale both being Billy, and take them back to the first murdered girl, American Girl and Laura also being the same.
The Fireman, we believe, is a Lodge representation of Leland/American Girl's dad. He was also the waiter at the Great Northern, whom offered Leland the gum he used to chew as a child. Now Leland mentioned he first met BOB at his grandfather's place. This presents an interesting possibility...that the elderly waiter/Giant we saw in the series was actually Leland's grandfather in some form. Technically an employee of Ben Horne, with the waiter being elderly, it also seems likely that he worked for Ben's father as well. Hmm...and if the waiter/Giant was Leland's grandfather...that makes Leland his grandson...the very thing Billy was and haunts the series as in his younger form. That is why the Grandson seems to, at times, align with Leland also, both of them being grandsons. However, it seems likely that Leland's grandfather was benevolent and the relationship between Leland and his grandfather was good, as opposed to Billy's one with his own grandfather whom was also his father. But that could be another reason why he forces BOB onto Leland inside of his dream. Just like he partially hated women like American Girl because they had the ideal life he believed his mother was robbed of, Billy loathes men like her father, whom experienced idealistic boyhoods, not darkened by abusive fathers/grandfathers. So, inside of his dream, he punishes the figures of Laura and Leland to "atone" for the "grievance", making them walk a mile in his family's shoes, so to speak.
The Fireman's relationship with Senorita Dido seems somewhat estranged. This would actually go along perfectly with Leland's Between Two World's interview where he makes it seem that he truly loved Sarah in the beginning, but then things changed and they seemed to distance themselves from each other. However, they are still aware and acknowledging each other.
When the Fireman stops and turns towards the camera, what he would be looking at would be the doorless door of the mansion. Afterall, the camera zoomed into the building and then straight to the door and through it, finding this room, where Dido was listening to the music. So if he's looking in consternation at the door, this could fit with our seeing Laura as a door and the general importance of doors leading Billy to certain dreams. It could also fit in perfectly then with the Fireman scuttling off to create Laura, the door that leads to Twin Peaks. More eerily, his focus on the door could deal with his later words to Dale that "It is in our house now." He might be aware that something evil is coming to threaten his and Dido's sanctuary and so the doorless door is of great concern to him. On a far out extension of this possibility, he might be making Laura as a door to distract "it" from entering his house, essentially creating her as a door to lead "it" elsewhere. However, by in preventing Laura's death, Billy then had her become BOB instead which led to her becoming the very door to this doorless one that led him straight into the Fireman's/Palmer's house.
- The Fireman goes up a set of stairs, that look like they belong in a movie theater, and then turns right.
Hmm...very interesting that the Fireman's seems turned into a movie house all of a sudden. Those were what Billy grew up on, old movies/tv and books, anything with a story he could escape into. Now the Fireman's/Palmers' is turned into a place dedicated for such things. That works in two ways, the first that Billy projected all of his family's horrors onto the Palmers (American Girl's family) instead. It also helps to illustrate that what Billy resented about American Girl's family may not have been true. While not as horrific as his own family situation was, usually what we see as any "perfect" family is in itself an illusion. Each family has their own problems and sorrows, no matter how they hide them. In the Palmers/American Girl's it was probably that the mother and father had drifted apart to where the father was seeing prostitutes and the mother might have had her own affairs, as perhaps illustrated by Shelly's distraction from her daughter. The daughter might have felt ignored/forgotten about and so she was prey to someone mentally unwell like Billy to obsess over without her parents realizing it.
We have previously wondered if the left side offered the truth and the right fell more in with illusion.
- The Fireman walks across a floor and then up some steps to a movie screen. He makes a motion and clips of the Trinity bomb going off, the woodsmen at the Convenience Store and the Experiment barfing out BOB suddenly appear on the screen. It freezes on the BOB orb and the Fireman stops, turns and levitates.
So, while the Fireman is watching the bomb and the Woodsmen, it is still BOB he focuses on, pausing his image...and so Laura becomes a result of BOB in particular. The Fireman has a direct idea to combat him it seems, or maybe to balance it out, setting out almost to enact his own more positive version of what he just saw.
Once again, this seems to be about "projection" which is what we believe Billy often does with his victims and their families.
- Senorita Dido is shown walking across the floor, as lights flash. She walks to the movie screen where BOB is still paused. A spotlight shows her shadow and then her walking the steps as she nears BOB's image. When she gets near to the screen it switches to stars in space.
Hmm...this is interesting. When the Fireman was walking there were no flashing lights but when Senorita Dido is coming across the floor there are. So, since we associate the flashing light with BOB (and the relationship between a father/son or father/child) is this a result of BOB being paused on the screen or the Fireman creating the Laura orb in the air?
If the flashing lights were because of BOB, it could foreshadow - with our viewing Senorita Dido as a representation of Sarah/American Girl's mom - that BOB (Billy) is coming for the woman. This could essentially be strengthened by the fact that we see Senorita Dido's SHADOW first moving towards the image of BOB. It could also indicate how American Girl's mom was essentially fooled by Billy, the real killer of her daughter, into believing a lie: that the father had killed their daughter. At this stage, the Fireman is ascended and at a distance from Dido and we won't see the two together again.
- She looks up happily to see the Fireman spewing/singing out what looks like a golden galaxy as he hovers in the air above her. Suddenly a golden orb appears out of the mini galaxy and drifts down to Dido whom holds it. We see Laura's homecoming Queen portrait in the orb. Dido kisses the orb then seems to send it on its way, floating up to a pipe type thing that then shoots it to the projected image of earth on the movie screen. Dido smiles at its journey as the Fireman continues to spew out the gold galaxy.
Now we have Laura's birth to go along with BOB's. However, while BOB's was associated with sickness, this is a more beautifully portrayed affair, with Laura almost sung into existence, her coming from out of what looks like a galaxy and not vomit. Therein lies the difference between Billy and his victim: Billy was not wanted, equated with a sickness more than anything, whereas American Girl was wanted and was infact the whole world to her parents.
If we view the Experiment as Audrey (Billy's mom) and the Fireman as Leland (American Girl's dad) this whole scene, paired with BOB's birth, bears a wonderful connection to the scene in "Cooper's Dream" where Leland breaks down over his daughter's death and Audrey, watching him from behind a totem pole, cries as she deals with complicated feelings for the father she seems to hate and love. Both characters reappear now, in this episode, in different forms and yet dealing with riffs on the same subjects that brought them to mutual tears in that episode: Audrey/Experiment having born her father's child and Leland/Fireman fathering the daughter he is set to lose to her child. Shared sorrows, shared births.
Dido obviously loves the Laura orb. In this, we have another difference between BOB/Billy and Laura/American Girl, that the latter was the creation of a union that did share love between them, natural, while Billy was the result of a daughter being used by her own father for his selfish gratification, as well as the spreading of the abuse that had also been forced upon him.
We have the interesting possibility here that Laura was not sent to destroy BOB so much as to balance him out. A pool of oil lies outside of the entrance to the Black Lodge while a pool of gold lies outside of the one to the Fireman's; those colors match the respective colors of BOB and Laura's orbs. It's also the colors of the pedestal where the Owl Cave Ring rests inside of the Red Room. This could even be hinting at the warring forces of good and evil inside of Billy himself, when viewed from a certain angle.
We also have the possibility that Billy could be under the warped delusion that American Girl was created for him and that the Fireman and Dido serve him by making her (Laura) for him. Afterall, Billy is a narcissist. He could believe that she was also created to help "save" him, something he punishes her for when she inevitably fails, him needing to dig his own self out of the shit and save himself rather than have someone else sort out his issues.
- We go from 1945 to 1956, August 5th, the New Mexico desert. In the desert one of the eggs that the Experiment barfed out hatches and a creature emerges which looks part frog, part moth. It crawls over the sand.
Okay, so this is actually happening a day after Ben Horne's 16th birthday party, if we're going by the supplemental information, his birthday being the 4th of August.
This is one of eggs that the Experiment barfed up and we believe that the emerging creature inspires the mask that the grandson wears, which is also like the Jumping Man's face. It is a frog and moth hybrid. Now, at his room at the Great Northern, Cooper could often hear the sound of insects and frogs. Dale/Dougie was also fascinated by a moth orchid in the previous episode. Frogs jump, like the grandson was doing outside of the Red Diamond. This one, however, being just born, seems to crawl, almost like a baby. We see this as being another representation of Billy. It came to earth with BOB, another aspect of Billy, that one being the imago of the father.
Earlier, we discussed how Mr. C being shot here was like his being shot at the end of the first season. In the second season opener, Will Hayward shows that one of the bullets got Dale as well as a wood tick. Not the same insect, mind you, but still an insect.
- A full moon is shown.
The moon's connection to motherhood again might be being established, as well as the symbol that lies beneath it, the one that Mr. C is searching for. Is he looking for his mommy? The scratches on the card were likely made from the safety/diaper pin on the addict mother's desk. Mr. C's search for Judy could also echo Laura's search for BOB in FWWM. What Billy is choosing to deny by forcing this on Laura and Leland, is the answer that Mr. C is really searching for: Judy is his mother.
- A girl and a boy walk together in the dark. "Do you like that song?" the boy asks, the girl says she did. She finds a penny. It's heads up, she exclaims, which means good luck. She looks at the Abe Lincoln on it. The boy hopes it brings her good luck.
We are seeing this girl as another representation of Audrey/Billy's mom. She's still young but on the edge of becoming a woman. This is most likely the age that Billy's mother was when she became pregnant with him...and this innocent walking with a boy could just as easily be twisted into the veil her father used to hide the fact that it was he whom had gotten her pregnant; He blamed it on someone else.
Very important here...the girl finds a penny before her soon to be impregnation by the frogmoth. This is the endlessly repeating theme within the series that Billy links his birth and childhood to money, believing his mother made them stay with their abusive father for the financial stability and material comforts he offered. It links to Audrey chaining herself to the bank vault door, where all of the money is kept, before her own conception of her son. And later on we will see the very same woodsmen, whom leads to the impregnation of the New Mexico girl, resembling Abe Lincoln, the same man on the penny the girl found. Billy's father/grandfather equally used money to help others facilitate and keep the abuse of his daughter secret, just like Ben Horne paying off several people for his own sins, like we often saw revolving around his plans for Ghostwood. Billy's mother than becomes a sacrifice to riches as well, giving a different meaning to Audrey chained to the bank.
The girl seems very happy to find the money, showing perhaps an interest in riches. However, it can also just be the luck it involves, although fortune is another word for luck. Dale/Dougie works at Lucky 7 Insurance and we theorized when he touched the 7 on the logo, after a maternal kiss from his "wife", he was recalling his mother (Audrey).
When Audrey went to the bank in the OG finale, Dell Mibbler said it was his fortunate day. When the bank exploded, we saw his glasses along with falling money.
We saw a coin play a pivotal role in the scene between Red and Richard, Audrey's son, and we believe what is about to happen echoes Audrey's conception of Richard.
- A woodsman is seen descending from pure air and soon he's on the road, approaching a car containing a middle aged couple driving towards him. "Got a light?" he asks the driver repeatedly as lights flash. Another woodsmen shows up as the driver seems somewhat entranced and his wife freaks out. The man finally drives away as more woodsmen are seen.
Hmm...the Woodsman first approaches a man inside of a vehicle for a light. We speculated that the woodsmen were representative of Billy's father/grandfather's enablers, whom were often associated with vehicles in the series.
Could this couple also be partly symbolic for the Log Lady and her husband? We suspected he had worked for Ben Horne and had been killed by Ben also, that being the devil and the fire he had met. The Log Lady we also theorized was the same as the woman honking the horn and trying to get the sick girl to see the uncle and the woman whom came to Teresa's trailer. We saw them as representations of the wife of one of Billy's grandfather/father's workers, someone whom suspected Billy's mom was being abused and tried to help but was ultimately thwarted.
"Got a light?" was what RICHARD Tremayne asked in "Arbitrary Law" right before he set off the sprinkler system that motivated BOB to vacate from Leland, killing his host in the process.
- The young couple continues to walk, the girl asking if the boy lives in town. He says he does. She says by the school and he asks how she knows, which she replies, "I just do." The girl states she thought he was going with Mary. He says that's over. She asks if he's sad about that and he answers no. She repeats that's good and they stop outside of her house. She says it was good of him to walk her home and he admits he wanted to. He asks if he can give her a kiss, she seems reluctant and he says just one. He kisses her and she says, "Just..." before running off to her house. "See you," they exchange. They wave, she enters the house, and he walks away.
That the girl knows where the boy lives is often used to further Mark Frost's depiction that she is really Sarah Palmer. We aren't really going to argue that because we believe that Billy confuses people inside and outside of his dream, not to mention his projecting his family directly on to the Palmers, and so his mother and American Girl's mom could also very likely be morphing. Or it simply could be that she's been paying secret attention to this boy, she does know he's been seeing Mary afterall.
Mary happens to be the name of the nurse (?) Sylvia has looking after Johnny. She might, or might not, be the same Mary that Natalie and Angela despise, but whom has been going out with the Clark Angela fancies. So, um, is there any chance, given the confusion over time and everything, that this boy is Clark and the girl is Angela? The whole Mary/Clark/Angela situation mirrors the Tina/Billy/Audrey triangle, with Audrey dreaming about Billy, just like Angela was dreaming of Clark. That could link Audrey to this girl. It was also stated that Angela had lost her mother. A while back, with the introduction of Blackie "Black Rose" we wondered if Billy's mother's mother had died, which might or might not have been from the grandfather/father's doing. BLACK Rose was the dead maternal grandmother, the RED Rose was the mother and the BLUE roses were the women Billy killed because they reminded him of his mother. The maternal grandmother's death certainly would have allowed the father to abuse the daughter more freely however, and we don't know what the New Mexico girl's family situation is; her mother might be dead.
The girl seems highly reluctant about that kiss, trying to explain something and then stopping. If she was being abused by her father and was afraid he was watching and she'd be "punished" it could explain why. Billy had a similar situation play out in his dream of FWWM when James comes to speak to Laura and she's nervous because Leland is watching. This girl tries to confess/explain something again after the kiss but goes to her house instead. If she was being abused, she wouldn't know what to say or how to tell him that.
- The Abe Lincoln woodsman goes to a radio station, KPJK, which is broadcasting the Platters song "My Prayer". A mechanic working on a vehicle is listening to the channel, as is a waitress at a diner (Pop's). So is the girl who was walking with the boy. She sits on her bed, the bedroom window open and the curtains blowing in the night breeze, dreamily listening to it.
The Woodsmen seem to enjoy broadcasting/radios. Above the convenience store they seem to use radios for different purposes, we just see them most often from the back.
Audrey Horne once said her own "prayer" to Dale Cooper, in the 2nd season opener, and it has its own accompanying piece of music, one that then was often featured during the romantic scenes, one being when she went to Cooper's room to talk about her father and then crawled into Cooper's bed, which, it being her family's hotel was really her own bed, so Cooper was sleeping in her bed too.
Hmmm...we have a mechanic, which deals with cars again, which we discussed were connected to helping Billy's grandfather/father, plus a waitress. This goes with Big Ed and Norma actually. It also can go with the mechanic "Jack" whom we discussed was connected to Billy's father in certain ways and that Teresa (a substitute for Billy's mom) once worked as a waitress. A mechanic keeps certain "drives" running smoothly while a waitress services hunger. Is this about how Billy's grandfather/father used Billy's mom to satisfy his appetite and his various drives? The waitress works at a place called Pop's afterall.
The girl sits listening dreamily to the song on her bed. Is this the song she was talking about with the boy earlier? As said before, Audrey said her own prayer to Cooper. This song will replay when Diane and Dale have sex in Part 18, when we theorize he is imagining Diane is his mother (Audrey). The words of the song are as follow:
"When the twilight is gone
And no songbirds are singing
When the twilight is gone
You come into my heart
And here in my heart you will stay while I pray
My prayer is to linger with you
At the end of the day in a dream that's divine
My prayer is a rapture in blue
With the world far away
And your lips close to mine
Tonight while our hearts are aglow
Oh, tell me the words that I'm longing to know
My prayer and the answer you give
May they still be the same for as long as we live
That you'll always be there at the end of my prayer"
They are a nice compliment to "Questions in a World of Blue" where the dream that should have been divine has ended. We suspect that Twin Peaks is partly Billy's dream and that inside of it he has placed his mother inside of her own dreamworld where they can be together. That is another function of the dream.
The girl is holding a teddy bear, like Johnny Horne will have. Her wallpaper is of roses, like the Blue Roses. She has two windows joined at the corner of the room. One of the windows is open. We suspect that Billy enters his victims' room through the window. The curtains are blowing and we are reminded of the curtains in the Red Room. There is a glass of water close to the window. Audrey asked for a glass of water before the bank exploded and she soon after became pregant, Billy Hastings had a glass of water at the police station and soon the Woodsman will repeat a weird monologue about water too.
- The Woodsman enters the radio station and kills the receptionist working there by crushing her skull in. He then goes into the main Broadcast room and grabs the DJ's head in a similar fashion. The mechanic, the waitress and the girl all look as the song is stopped.
Hmmm...well this receptionist doesn't seem too different than a secretary, so that theme comes out again. Considering that she gets killed and so does the DJ, we can form a parallel between these two poor doomed coworkers and Sam and Tracey, and by extension Billy and Betty, especially since their heads get crushed like all of the above, minus Betty.
So the receptionist seems to be entranced against her will to go to the woodsman and then forced onto her knees. This is uncomfortably like a coerced rape of some sort.
- The Woodsman begins to repeat a very strange message over the airwaves, "This is the water. And this is the well. Drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within."
So the Abe Lincoln Woodsman, just connected to money by the penny and whom also is a servant of BOB, is giving a broadcast that influences the listeners and will lead to people becoming unconcious and the girl impregnated by the frogmoth.
The Woodsman mentions water, "This is the water. And this is the well. Drink full and descend." We went into the water previously but let's do another analysis. Well, when Audrey chained herself to the bank, in the original finale, she asked the bank worker to get her a glass of water. Frankly, that was a little odd. Why wouldn't she have made sure she had some before she chained herself if she knew she might be there for a while? For that matter, why would she ask for water when it would lead to her having to pee? But for some reason it was included. And then what we see is Mibbler, the bank employee linked to the handling of the money, is the one whom holds it up for her to drink...She drinks full and soon descends into a coma when the bank explodes. In another money focused theme, we can look at money as the "water" that some people live for. A bank would then become the well that holds the money. We can then view the act of the girl's impregnation, and how the chant about water enables it, as an analogy of how Billy's father/grandfather used his wealth to ensure that people looked the other way when he abused his daughter and eventually got her pregnant. There is a glass of water on the girl's window sill when the frogmoth comes to her as well, strengthening the connection between the girl and Audrey. Then, in Part 1, what would directly follow the OG finale besides the intermission of FWWM, Lynch clearly shows a glass of water on the table before Billy Hastings, as he sits behind the two way mirror, his head in his hands. We likened this scene to the glass box in NYC, stated how we believed Twin Peaks etc...was all going on inside the man's head and likened him also to a mirror. That he is shown with a glass of water, connecting him to Audrey and the Woodsman's chant, is significant. The water is even pointed out when Macklay offers him coffee and Billy replies, "I'm good with the water."
"The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within" is usually used for the belief that Sarah looked away from Leland abusing their daughter. Well, we believe that Billy projected that whole scenario onto the Palmers so this could be true, to a certain extent. When BOB/Leland drugs Sarah's drink, she hesitates, knowing something is wrong, but he coaxes her into finishing it. So that shows someone suspecting something but easily being persuaded to turn a blind eye. However, this scene takes place in front of a mirror which we argue Billy is. Billy reflects what people want him to be and he can also reflect them as what he wants to see them as instead, and in the Palmers case he wanted them to bear what truly belonged to his family. So the turning of a blind eye can then fit the Hornes instead, as also indicated by the owl light (a source of enlightenment) appearing during this scene. We also have the fact that Sarah is drinking milk and not water in that scene. The looking away of Ben's abuse of Audrey led to darkness. It created Billy (the Magician) whom longed to see through that darkness, and chose playing with fire to do it. It also led to death, irrevocably linked to the horse, when Billy killed his father and mother and a string of women whom similarly reminded him of his mom. One of the women he killed might infact be Sarah/American Girl's mother, to prevent her from remembering something that connected him to her daughter's death.
Okay, and so Billy might be mixing up/projecting people, this girl could still represent Sarah/American Girl's mother partially as well. She effectively went to sleep, forgetting something which could incriminate Billy of American Girl's death. The frogmoth effectively blinds her to it and restricts her from telling on him, which could lead to her death when she sees again and tries to regain her voice.
The white horse seems linked to death, so this all ties back to death and how the Trinity test happened in the Jornada del Muerto.
- The waitress and the mechanic fall unconscious as they listen to the broadcast and the frogmoth crawls slowly towards the girl's house. The girl meanwhile looks at her radio and lies down on her bed and falls asleep or into unconsciousness. The frogmoth flies up to her window and enters it. As the girl lies unconscious, the frogmoth goes up to her. Suddenly she opens her mouth and it crawls inside of it, disappearing into her. She swallows.
The girl falling into unconsciousness is portrayed differently than the mechanic and waitress. She appears to be almost falling asleep more than passing out. Billy dreams a more gentler violation of his mother, saving the harsh reality for other figures like Laura and Diane.
The frogmoth, which had been crawling still like a baby towards her house, suddenly uses its wings and flies up to her window. Now the window is how BOB used to pay Laura a visit. We also saw Dale gain access to the mansion room through a window. Now we have the frogmoth visiting this girl through a window. Of course, as stated before, we suspect Billy killed American Girl by climbing in through her bedroom window and that might be his repeated routine while killing.
The frogmoth coming to the unconscious girl perfectly reflects how Mr. C went to see Audrey, while she was in a coma, and impregnated her with their son Richard. It echoes it to the very fact that the frogmoth seems to impregnate this girl with itself and Dale Cooper, whom really is just Mr. C, will become Richard in Part 18. Essentially Cooper impregnated Audrey with himself, just like the frogmoth does here. We've said before that this represents how Billy believes he in essence violated his mother with his conception. He raped her as much as their father.
Actually, this scene reminds us in a way of what we took to be Dale's doppleganger being born into the world on the series finale too. We saw the Red Room curtains as being representative of his mother's birthing area and his violent struggle out of them being the shadow self's violent birth. As the frogmoth enters the girl, we see the shadow of the girl's bedroom curtains billow behind the sleeping girl, which echoes that scene, the frogmoth still symbolic of Mr. C/Billy. Only, whereas the Twin Peaks original finale depicted a birth this was a depiction of the conception.
This being an illustration of Billy's painful conception, we return back to the Experiment barfing up the eggs and BOB and how now we have witnessed the conception that led to that birth and the destruction that followed.
This scene could also hint that, when Mr. C visited Audrey at the hospital, he also placed her safely inside of her own dream where he could be with her while at the same time causing pain and sorrow outside of her dreams, but without her knowing about it.
The frogmoth entering the girl brings back the Fireman's statement that, "It is in our house now," the frogmoth potentially being the insect sounds on the gramophone as well as a representation of the grandson/Billy, and how the two names the grandson went by - Chalfont and Tremond - will be invoked when Richard/Cooper brings Carrie/Laura to what should be the Palmers' (Fireman's) house.
- The Woodsman finishes the broadcast and crushes the DJ's head. He then walks out of the station into a night that begins flashing and then into darkness as a horse neighing is heard.
The violent disposal of the receptionist and the DJ contrast with the almost peaceful invasion of the girl, which we believe is Billy's mom. Perhaps this could also be his punishing those whom facilitated his mother's abuse and his conception, while gently protecting his mother's memory, although it still can't help but come off as creepy.
We see the flashing light synonymous with BOB but then the woodsman goes into darkness as a horse neighs. This could once again go with the journey of death, the horse going hand and hand with death. It also is a throwback to Dale seeing the Red Room curtains lift and a white horse standing in the darkness, which we theorized represented the death of Billy's dream or self. Come to think of it, that could also fall back to the whole, "the horse is the white of the eyes and dark within" line.
- The credits roll over a scene of the girl still lying unconscious on her bed. She seems to be having a pleasant dream which eventually sours.
This goes along with the belief that the frogmoth entering the sleeping girl also indicated how Mr. C (Billy) placed Audrey (his mother) inside of her own little dreamworld when he visited her in the hospital. The girl looks like the dream she is having is pleasant and then her face contorts and it looks as if it has suddenly turned bad. This happens to Audrey as well when she can't find Billy and starts to question who she and Charlie are. This leads to her running to Charlie and pleading with him to get her out of there when the Roadhouse falls into violence. We believe the equally frightened Charlie grants his wife's request, showing Audrey the truth...that he really is Billy too, the mirror, and she is still in her coma and dreaming inside of his own dream, hence why she is in the hospital gown and the white light and the sound of electricity permeates around them. A faint sound of electricity/static can also be heard as the New Mexico girl sleeps, electricity potentially linked to dreaming.
The theory: Twin Peaks is the dream of William "Billy" Hastings, a serial killer. The result of his mother's abuse, at the hands of her father, Billy was abused by her in turn, keeping the cycle going. Playing with fire, as abused/neglected/antisocial children are prone to, he accidentally burned down the motel where he lived with his mother and grandfather/father, killing them. He was sent to live with his grandmother/great-grandmother, until she died too. Billy then went to live with his strict, born again uncle. In high school, Billy became obsessed with a schoolmate, the American Girl. He murdered her, the first in a string of victims, all similar in the way that they reminded him of his mother. To deal with his past and what he'd become, he constructed the world of Twin Peaks, allowing him to also "protect" and honor his mother, the woman he both loved and feared. Inside of the dream, Billy's family was represented by both the Hornes and the Lodge Spirits, while Billy's main avatar was our hero Dale Cooper. Inside of his dream, Billy sought to project his tragedy and sins onto his victim's family instead, which worked for a while. However, if the OG is a representation of how Billy got away with murder, the Return is how he was eventually discovered by the mother of his first victim, an act precipitated by his involvement with Betty, his final victim.
A longer essay on the theory: https://armsholdair.dreamwidth.org/7192.html
WARNING: A knowledge of the whole Twin Peaks series is needed for this, fittingly from A to Z and Z back to A.
- Ray drives away from Yankton, in the rental, while Mr. C discovers that 3 tracking devices were placed on the car. He tells Ray to pull up behind a truck, gets the license plate number and enters it into the phone, before throwing the phone out the window.
Well we've viewed Ray as connected to Leland. And we've seen BOB's hosts and enablers as vehicles/connected to them too. Any substance to Ray driving this "rental", which would mean something that doesn't really belong to him, and how we see BOB has never belonging to Leland? Yeah, we think so.
We have the number 3 again, to go with the three Dale's, whom we view as representing 3 aspects of William Hastings: an FBI/good self, a doppleganger/bad self and a tulpa/manufactured self.
Mr. C getting the license plate number draws attention to license plates, while we previously discussed that Dougie Jones' license plate being linked to identity might be trying to convey the Coopers as being the primary choice of transportation for Billy inside of his dream. Meanwhile, Mr. C is trying to get the attention off of himself, which could link to how Billy framed American Girl's dad for the crime he committed. A Ray, the name of Leland's actor, sitting beside him as he does it is wonderfully meta.
We have a truck being used now as a decoy involving identity. In the previous episode, we found out that Richard Horne used the farmer's truck when he went to see Red and when he killed the young boy. However, we also wondered if the Farmer was just another form of Billy, so the confusion, or layering, of identity might be expanded here. In Part 12, Charlie claims that a Chuck stole Billy's truck, but Chuck is just another name for Charlie, as Peppermint Patty could tell us.
The truck has a license plate of DEGWW 8. The phone has a green C (like what Earle wrote around Arkansas), FIRE (like in BOB) with blue triangles on either side and a D and X with a yellow circle with a red dot in the middle. Not completely sure what that all means but this is Part 8.
- Ray says Mr. C must be sore at him for what happened and thanks him for getting him out. He asks how he set it up and Mr. C says Darya told him about the arrest. Ray asks where Darya is and Mr. C tells him she's waiting by the phone until they get somewhere safe. They are going to a place called The Farm. Ray says they won't just let them walk and will look for them. Mr. C states Ray has something he's after. Ray says he has the numbers memorized but thinks it might make him some money. Mr. C directs him off the highway and to the right.
Ray is acting at this point, everything seeming as staged as Mr. C's own arrest, and Mr. C knows it.
Mr. C telling Ray that Darya was waiting by the phone connects perhaps to Audrey saying she was also waiting by the phone for a call from or about Billy.
Now Mr. C and Ray are going to the Farm which can connect to the Farmer in some odd way, further strengthened to how Richard will first see Mr. C there. A farm can also link to the cow that jumped over the moon.
And once again Mr. C betrays how focused he is on getting Betty's coordinates, even though she's supposedly just this unseen and irrelevant character, further making us believe that, in actuality, a lot of the events of The Return are actually motivated by the secretary and she, in truth, is really Naido, her coordinates leading to her.
Ray says he has the numbers memorized and yet he will have them written down at the farm.
- They drive for a while until Ray asks if he can pull over and take a leak. Mr. C permits it. While Ray is supposedly peeing, Mr. C gets the "friend" out of the glove compartment and then gets out and confronts Ray, saying he wants the information. He says Ray is out half a million but Ray disagrees with that, pulling out his own gun. Mr. C tries to shoot three times but the gun doesn't fire. Ray shoots twice and Mr. C falls to the ground. Ray walks towards him to shoot him another time.
Lots of yellow arrows to the right and then some lesser ones pointing left. We theorized that the left led to the truth more. This could be indicating that Billy is still distancing himself from the truth.
Lots of pee breaks this season too, now we can add Ray to Bobby, Cooper and Hawk.
Still more evidence of how badly Mr. C wants those coordinates from Betty in particular. We mean, he's not going after Ruth's body, infact if they want us to believe he or the woodsmen killed her, wouldn't he already have them? They were written on her arm! And why would Jeffries have them either, or why would Mr. C trust them? It's Betty's whose he has become obsessed with. Probably because Betty is real and not a substitute or creation inside of Billy's mind, anyway not until Cooper sees her and recognizes her finally at the Sheriff Station and then quickly swaps her with Diane.
Dale Cooper was shot three times at the very end of Season 1, something Ben reminded us specifically of in Part 7, as if it was of great importance. It might have been, but not in any way often discussed. We've gone on to theorize that directly dealt with Audrey being propositioned at One-Eyed Jack's by her own father. Since that directly involved the dreamer's own conception, his being Audrey and Ben's child, something Billy was trying to deny inside of the dream, the ramification was that Dale Cooper was shot, his being Billy's main avatar and escape from what he truly was. Now, believing that Billy is represented in the mirrors inside of his dream, from his habit of mirroring others, we can find deeper meaning within the fact that Josie Packard, the first woman shown not only in Twin Peaks but the first reflected inside of the first mirror, was the one whom shot Dale. She did it while wearing a mask, which hid her own identity; Josie was stated to also show others what they wanted instead of what was real. Idyllopus Press' own dissection of Part 8 helped us to realize and connect Cooper's having visited One-Eyed Jack's, and what he learned about Laura, with another aspect that concerns this theory. In Laura's autopsy, Albert found a piece of plastic inside of Laura's stomach. It's the J from off of the Jack (the name we believe Billy associates with a make believe version of his father) of a One-Eyed Jack's poker chip, a 1000 one at that. Cooper learns from Jacques - as Audrey has infiltrated her father's brothel without his knowledge - that Leo placed the chip in Laura's mouth and she took a bite from it, swallowing the bit of chip, specifically with the J. This in effect resembled a fake "pregnancy", Laura being an imposter of Billy's mom, the stomach being the belly but not the womb, and the money that Billy feels his mother sold them both out for being not real money inside of Laura but rather a fake poker chip instead. Audrey, on the other hand's own conception was connected to an explosion at a bank, where she heard a guard declare "It's a boy!". Banks contain real money and we even saw some of it falling down after the blast which resulted in Audrey's coma and her eventual violation by Mr. C, which led to the conception of her son. But, like Mr. C being shot in the stomach here, we believe that Dale Cooper being shot in "The Last Evening" in effect conveys Billy's conception/birth, irrevocably tied to Ben walking in to the "little flower" room to be the first to take the "new girl" whom is really his daughter. Ben entering the room, to his daughter's horror, was reflected in a mirror, which is, as mentioned before, a form Billy takes inside of his dream. The Log Lady, for her intro to "The Last Evening" stated that "Life, like music, has a rhythm. This particular song will end with three sharp sounds, like deathly drumbeats." She is comparing Cooper being shot to deathly drumbeats and yet beforehand she stated that this was about life. That is the key: this is all about life, Billy's life, a life he feels should never have been created, and only led to death and destruction, and so those deathly drumbeats aren't necessarily drumbeats at all...they are the first beats of Billy's heart. And what we see next, and what this whole episode revolves around, are abstractions of Billy's pained creation.
- Ray is stopped, as lightning flashes and woodsmen emerge from out of the blue, running to Mr. C's body. Several begin dancing around the body, while three seem to be moving the dirt beneath it until they begin to rub blood all over Mr. C's corpse instead. Ray watches on in horror, falling to the ground. Eventually, a woodsman lifts Mr. C's limp head as an orb with BOB's smiling face is seen coming out of Mr. C's stomach. Ray gets up and drives away as the woodsman continue their dance/healing and we see smoke. A crescent moon hangs over the sky.
We have the flashing blue light most often associated with BOB again. We previously made a link between "Dougie" and Sonny Jim making the light flash on and off in his bedroom, likening it to maybe some illustration of the father's effect on the son.
The song that plays as the woodsmen emerge is Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" and after this sequence is over Lynch will even show the crescent moon hanging in the sky. The song is playing so slow and dirge like that it is almost unrecognizable. Now what's interesting about the song choice, and what might strike the viewer more if it was instantly known, is how it links us back again to the Hornes and specifically Audrey's loss of virginity in "The Path to the Black Lodge". For it was directly after giving herself to Jack Wheeler (a wheel being a cycle in effect) Pete Martel offered to take the young woman fishing: "Audrey, there are many cures for a broken heart, but nothing quite like a trout's leap in the moonlight." Moonlight. And where does he supposedly take her? Presumably the same place Audrey referenced Jack said he would take her to too: Pearl Lakes. The same place where Leland Palmer stated he first met BOB! And presumably, while the now deflowered Audrey was off fishing in the moonlight on Pearl Lakes, we saw BOB reach a hand out from the curtains in Glastonbury Grove and then be free completely, as if born somehow. The name "Moonlight Sonata" wasn't given to the musical piece by Beethoven but by Ludwig Rellstab, whom compared the music to being like moonlight on a lake. Now, in Part 7 we were reminded not only of Cooper being shot in Room 315 but of the humming sound that began after Audrey rushed off to have sex with Jack, all as her father called out for her and almost fell to his knees on the steps in his office. The sound began and Ben looked in shock behind him, in the direction of his fireplace. We theorized Cooper being shot in "The Last Evening" and Audrey's loss of virginity and the hum in "The Path to the Black Lodge" both related to Audrey, Billy's mother, being abused by her father and conceiving his child. And in the previous episode both events were referenced, either directly or indirectly. Now we believe we have another illustration of Billy's birth all as "Moonlight Sonata" plays. To further this, the moon is most often associated with mothers and motherhood. To add specific connection between it and Audrey, we have Lynch showing Mr. C's rebirth as occurring during a crescent moon. The pointed ends of the illuminated part of the moon are called horns.
The woodsmen come out of nowhere and it seems that when BOB's host is in trouble they are there to save him. And yet they never did this with Leland. We could argue that it was because he was going to be imprisoned and so there was no use in saving him, but in Part 17, the woodsmen will make a second attempt to perhaps heal Mr. C, whom is similarly condemned. So is the intervention of the woodsmen, in association to BOB, specific to Mr. C only? And is that primarily because he, unlike Leland, masks Billy?
The woodsmen prove themselves to be BOB's helpers here, just as we theorized that they represented enablers of Ben (Billy's dad/grandad). Furthermore, if this is an abstraction of how Billy views his creation/birth we can then believe they show how such people facilitated Ben (the father) abusing Audrey (the daughter) and creating the grandson. Without their enabling, Billy's grandfather/father would have been prevented/stopped in his abuse and Billy would never have been born. Their actions around Mr. C represent this, assisting in his rebirth (illustrating how they kept Ben's atrocious behavior going) and how they urged Billy into existence, as illustrated in his rebirth.
While three woodsmen seem to be dancing around the body, creating a circle, three assist in resurrecting Mr. C. They start off by appearing to dig beneath his body and then by smearing the blood from the bullet wounds all over his body and face. The woodsmen digging a hole echoes the hole left by the Trinity test. However, it can also replicate Billy's mother's vagina and how Billy was born into the world. Similarly, the woodsmen might be covering Mr. C in blood to mimic the image of a child born and covered in blood.
The woodsmen seem to remove an orb with BOB's grinning face from out of Mr. C's stomach while strangely lifting Mr. C's limp head up. Okay, so this shows that Mr. C is dead and BOB is alive inside of him but it also conveys several other things. We have just compared this sequence to Billy's mom giving birth to Billy, but in turn we can see in this moment how Billy, in return, gave birth to BOB: the idea of the abuse running inside of his family personified by some abstraction of his grandfather/father. So when the woodsman lifts Mr. C's head, he could also be showing Billy his own "child" in the very same way a doctor would. The head lifting could indicate how BOB was born mostly in the mind, it being all in his head, which is also how the woodsmen kill and how Billy Hastings will also supposedly die. However Hastings most likely receives his own resurrection like Mr. C, the two being ultimately the same. And BOB is also just another facet of Billy as well, which makes Mr. C giving birth to BOB a variation to how Billy envisions himself as impregnating his mother with himself when Cooper becomes Richard. The scene also illustrates how Billy most likely feels dead inside except for this piece of his father that lives inside of him, compelling him to carry on the suffering. In this way, it can also invoke Ben Horne's poker chip lost inside of Laura Palmer, another creation of Billy, and how Billy became a "chip off the old block."
The scene of the Woodsmen pulling BOB out of Mr. C actually also conjures up another interesting hint that BOB always belonged to Cooper and so that makes their relationship unique from the Leland situation. In the European ending, when MIKE/Phillip has requested a meeting, whilst discussing BOB, the man states what most take to mean: “I was watching, Mr Cooper, for over a year, waiting for BOB to come out again.” However, it could easily read that he had specifically been watching COOPER for a year and waiting for BOB to emerge from inside of him and kill somebody. He then states, afterall, “I’ve known of your interests in the results of his endeavours...I too have been touched by the devilish one," creepily indicating that Cooper holds interest in what BOB does because he has been tarnished by him in some way akin to MIKE. For this theory, that easily goes alongside Billy being Ben Horne's son and MIKE being a form of Jerry, Ben's younger brother, and how both had been influenced by Ben, whom became BOB inside of his son's mind. Quite literally in Part 8 we see BOB "come out" of Mr C(ooper).
Actually, the woodsmen circling Mr. C remind us of the circle of candles seen in the European ending to the Pilot and the candles MIKE/Phillip has lit in his motel in a Missing Piece. There are six woodsmen here, we think, 3 attending to Mr. C and three dancing, whereas the candles in the European ending and the MP were 12, like the sycamores at Glastonbury Grove. We wondered about the significance of 6 and the utility pole, as well as Teresa Banks room number. Could it be an age marking something significant? The 12 we previously proposed might have been the age when Billy lost his grandmother, which might have further pushed him into becoming BOB after he went to live with the uncle.
Smoke helps hide the "devil" and the woodsmen helped hide Billy's father's horrible sins.
And then we have the moon, with its horns, reminding us of the other horned items that haunt the story and how it all should lead us back to the HORNes of Twin Peaks.
- A driving Ray phones Phillip, telling him he thinks "Cooper" is dead, but he had help so he's not sure. He says he also saw something in him. "It may be the key to what this is all about," he claims. He told him where he's going, so he'll get him there.
BOB infact might be the key to everything if we think of him as representing Ben Horne and not Leland Palmer. Ben has just received Dale Cooper's old room key in the last episode and is set to send it on its way to Harry, before Cooper intercepts it and it leads him right to that basement closet in the furnace room of Ben's hotel, which will lead to the convenience store and then the Dutchman's.
- At the Roadhouse the MC announces the NIN and they perform "She's Gone Away."
The mic has a pine cone on it, usually found on trees. The last performance we will see at the Roadhouse is "Audrey's Dance". We see Audrey has being represented by Ghostwood forest, which is filled with trees.
The song the NIN originally submitted to Lynch was turned down because he wanted something more ugly, aggressive, menacing and unpleasant. That indicates that the general feel of this episode was to be extremely dark. Those adjectives also perfectly fit how we see this episode dealing with Billy's dark and horrible conception, one of pain and sorrow, and how his eventual birth is actually also the birth of a killer.
While the song wasn't supposedly influenced, from what we know, by any direct lyrical input from Lynch, we aren't always saying things were planned for this theory but that they proved to be providential accidents. "She's Gone Away" perfectly fits with this when we directly link it to what this theory suggests:
"You dig in places till your fingers bleed
Spread the infection, where you spill your seed,"
We mentioned how we view the scene of Ben's father passing the shovel to his eldest son illustrating the passing of the cycle of abuse from father to son. They are digging, just as Dr. Amp talks about and also what the Woodsmen appeared to be doing under Mr. C's body in this very episode. We likewise see Ben's father as spreading his infection when he fathered Ben and that Ben spread his infection into his daughter Audrey, whom carried that seed and brought forth Cooper/Richard/Billy out of it.
I can't remember what she came here for
I can't remember much of anything anymore,
Billy has difficulty in remembering his past, wilfully locking it away because it is too painful. If his mother came to him to continue the cycle (sex) he has blocked it, or rather placed it somewhere inside a fragment of himself where it leaks out inside of his fantasy.
She's gone, she's gone, she's gone away (x2)
Away (x2)
Billy's mother was gone, having left him when she died, which was due to his own actions. It is a pain that haunts him and he can't escape, partially why he searches for her in other women.
A little mouth opened up inside
Yeah, I was watching on the day she died
We keep licking while the skin turns black
Cut along the length, but you can't get the feeling back
A mouth opened up inside of Billy when his mother died. This could tie into how the Lodge spirits feed on pain and sorrow. Billy most likely saw the Red Diamond/Dutchman's burning when he set it on fire, burning with his mom in it. If she was disabled, as we think she might have been, her escape would have been doubly difficult. The skin turning black indicates that it has been burnt, the tongue licking could be either like a dog licking wounds or the act of feeding, just as Billy (sometimes presented as a dog) both wants to save and destroy his mother. He cannot make his mother alive again, nor can he make himself feel things as he previously did. He is dead inside now.
She's gone, she's gone, she's gone away (x4)
Away (x4)
(Are you still here?)
Once again, Billy's mother is gone, having left him by dying. We can't hear it past the noise, but the question of "Are you still here?" could indicate Billy seeing her alive in the woman he murders or his dream where she is the frightening spector of Judy or the more innocent one of Audrey.
- Out in the middle of nowhere, the woodsmen no longer seen, Mr. C sits up "reborn".
Okay, so we see Mr. C sitting up, which represents his and Billy's birth, which this whole episode deals with. And this is leading into yet more abstractions on that theme, none of them particularly pleasant as opposed to his version of Laura (American Girl's) creation.
- July 16th 1945, White Sands New Mexico, 5:29 AM (MWT), a voice counts down for the Trinity test, starting at 10 and going to 0. We see the bomb go off and then go into the explosion where there are a series of different patterns, some fire and lights.
And so we have a travel back into the past (is it future or is it past?), one where we witness the Trinity nuclear bomb test. White Sands is in Jornada del Muerto which translates to "Dead Man's Journey", "Route of the Dead Man" or "Journey of Death". It is an almost waterless 90 mile expanse of desert. Being waterless is akin to fire, while it is possible that the Dead Man in question reflects Billy himself, dead inside and possibly dead on the outside too if he is discovered to be a serial killer. Billy being a killer equates him with death as well, so this is all significant.
The countdown starts from 10, the number of completion. This number occurs within Twin Peaks several times, or, at least the numerology rounding of it. Here it is a common established use for a countdown, but two possibilities occurred to us, the first being that perhaps Billy lost his mother when he was 10, a fact that devastated him. We also have that it is going in reverse, just like the backwards occurrences in the series. That could, in fact, actually hint that the events we see playing out in this segment of the episode are happening in reverse order from how they happened to Billy. That would make this then the birth/abuse of Billy Hastings, both equally as destructive.
Okay, so, for us anyway, this can't be the birth of all evil, as is often stated, because honestly it's 1945 and there were atrocities committed long before that date! By extension then that dissuades us from seeing BOB as being the "evil that men do" as Albert said. No. This is something very personal to one person and that doesn't deal with the birth of evil so much as the creation of that same individual. We can easily connect this event with the explosion of the bank in the OG finale, further helped by the fact we were just reminded of it in the previous episode when Will Hayward brought up Audrey Horne and "That terrible business at the bank" that left her in a coma. A lot of the sequence in "Beyond Life and Death" echoes in this segment of Part 8 and that should stand out even more when we realize that we haven't actually seen Audrey since that scene. Here we see a bomb explosion, which ties in to how Andrew Packard set off the bomb Thomas had planted at the bank with another key. Before the bomb went off, Audrey had requested and drank a glass of water and then heard a Guard receive a phone call, wherein he exclaimed, "It's a boy!". We previously equated the destruction/defiling of nature with incestuous abuse throughout the series, most always associated with the Hornes. We believe Ben and his father's groundbreaking the bluff for the construction of the Great Northern actually dealt with the Elder Horne's abuse of his son. Likewise, we see the whole subplot of Benjamin trying to sell Ghostwood Forest for land development as being symbolic of his abuse of his daughter Audrey. So the Trinity bomb explosion could likely represent Billy's birth and also his abuse, both events the same to him. The word Trinity is interesting with this take on the bomb being used: three members of the same family all being children whom were abused. If anything could result in the creation of something so destructive as "BOB" it could very well be something like this.
A nuclear bomb is something with far reaching and devastating consequences. The abuse within Billy's family was the same, creating a man whom lashed out and destroyed those whom were not even in his family, spreading and eating upon pain and sorrow of people he didn't even know.
Benjamin Horne was born in 1940. He would have turned 5 in 1945 which coincides with the age we theorized Billy was when his mother, and possibly grandfather/father's, abuse of him began. Here Billy could be drawing a line, connecting both events since Ben's abuse also happened when he was only 5.
The Trinity test created a crater, hole, which is what we see Ben and his father digging. A hole also can represent the birthing place.
A bomb is also associated with some secret that was hidden finally being revealed. Thus a bomb fits in perfectly here, the dreamer being the child of a father and daughter. Likely the family didn't know this, like the uncle whom rarely saw the niece or whom misunderstood something he saw with the nephew. And the child himself probably was also lied to until he found out the truth, making his existence akin to a bomb, one that destroyed both his and his mother's life. This brings an interesting parallel to Billy dreaming Laura trying to discover the identity of the abuser she hates in FWWM. He suffered something similar, only, whereas she discovers BOB is possessing Leland, the father she loved, Billy was trying to find out the identity of his father, whom he potentially idealized, and discovered to his horror that it was really the grandfather he hated.
The part that is hard to put into words is how, when we seem to enter the bomb itself Lynch conveys it in both frightening and beautiful images. It is something he obviously still finds some beauty in. Could this be some indication that, despite the series of abuses taking place, that there were moments of genuine love there? That though Billy thinks his mother hated him, she did love him too, or that if he feels he was worthless, that he still had the chance of making something beautiful of his life despite the horror? The use of color strikes us in the face in light of all the black and white imagery seen. Could this further emphasize how Billy had difficulty in seeing colors or shades of gray within his world? That everything was either black or white, like the Red Room floor? Could this also be why he clings to Dale Cooper's essentially Black and White suit?
- At the darkened convenience store, lights start flashing and the woodsmen appear outside of it, jutting in and out, as the light does the same.
Woodsmen can be linked to the destruction of nature and so they make perfect enablers for BOB with the analogy between incestuous abuse and the desecration of nature. Outside of this dream symbolism, they merely stand for all of those people whom enable the abuse either voluntary or involuntary. They are paid or benefit somehow from the situation so they go along with something that is harmful. These are the people whom allowed Billy's father to be immoral in one way or another.
This is a convenience store, the one where BOB and MIKE operated from and also where the meeting scene in FWWM took place. It will be used to take people to the Dutchman's (the ghost of Teresa's hotel), which seems to have equal importance. These are direct counterparts to two HORNE family run businesses: Horne Department Store and the Great Northern Hotel. You could say they are their shadow selves, but they might be the true selves just as much as Coop's shadow self betrayed more of the truth. Now a hotel/motel is a home you make a profit from and a similarity is drawn to the Convenience Store, in a way, since it is stated/shown that people make it into a home too. We have clear instances of homes being tarnished with material capitalism. We theorize that Billy resents his mother for staying with their abusive father, believing it had to do with money. That is a constant theme, as associated with the woodsmen and Ben's being able to buy people off to do his dirty work, be they low lifes like Hank Jennings and Leo Johnson or working men like Emory Battis or Leland Palmer or even his wife Sylvia.
- The Experiment barfs out a stream of liquid/vomit filled with eggs and the BOB orb to earth. We go inside of the stream and then see fire.
This essentially represents how Billy views his birth. Vomit is usually a sign of illness, and he views himself as a sign of his mother's sickness, both wrought from her abuse by their father. We can easily tie this to the sick girl in Part 11, whom hasn't seen her uncle in a long time. The woman driving that girl is constantly honking the car horn, invoking the Hornes.
The Experiment has horns, invoking the Hornes once again.
When he reversed his intent, having sold Ghostwood to Catherine, Ben Horne began a campaign to save Ghostwood for the Pine Weasels. Old myth once held that weasels vomited out their offspring.
The BOB orb is mixed in with the vomit. Is this BOB's birth solely then or does it also imply that the Experiment was possessed by BOB too? That would make sense if we believe Billy views BOB as an imago of his father that possesses him. When his mother abused him, Billy could have equally seen her possessed by the same father. She could also be giving birth to all of Billy's selves, one of which is BOB. Another option could be that the BOB orb being present denotes his role as father to the Experiment's mother regarding all of the eggs.
- We see a glob of gold and go through it. After travelling a little bit, we see the purple sea and travel over it until we see a large mountain with a huge building on it, which turns out to be the Fireman's. It has no windows it seems, but does have a doorway with no actual door on it and we go through it. We see a room with a woman, Senorita Dido, sitting on a sofa and swaying as she listens to music on an old gramophone.
Is the purple sea inside of the gold the reason why a gold pool is found by its entrance close to Jack Rabbit's Palace?
The Fireman's is on one PEAK. Does the name Twin Peaks hint at things being doubled?
This massive building is the Fireman's Place and it seems likely that the mansion room, where Naido was and American Girl is are located inside of it. Now, it is our belief, just as the convenience store and the Dutchman's are versions of the Hornes' places, this is a variation on the Palmers' house...which is really just a dream equivalent of Billy's first victim's family home. So that makes sense why the mansion room is located here: it's the daughter's bedroom, a room Billy trespassed into through a window we are assuming.
There are no windows that we see from this angle. Actually there seems to be only a doorless door. That's wonderful for our belief that Laura, whom we'll see spiritually born soon, is the door to Twin Peaks.
That the Fireman's place is synonymous with the Palmers' will become more clear in Parts 17 and 18. When Cooper attempts to "save" Laura in Part 17, and she asks where he is taking her and he replies "We're going home." However, in Part 18, when he has become Richard, a seemingly less idealized/dreamy version of Cooper, he simply takes her to the Palmer household. We reason that it's because if Billy had not killed American Girl and imagined the world of Twin Peaks to escape his fantasies would have been, well, less fantastic. The fantasy like Fireman's returns to being just a commonplace ordinary house, one which might have been as equally a fantasy to Billy.
The room we enter through it to find has strong similarities to the Palmers'. We have a couch and a divider and we also have a gramophone, a variation on the record player we often saw at the Palmer household, one they often played, just like it is playing here. The first song we heard played on the Palmer's record player was Pennsylvania 6-5000, which we mentioned before was the number to a famous hotel. The Fireman's record player was first seen when the Fireman told Dale to listen to the sounds, which we believe were of an insect and also of what had infiltrated the Fireman's house.
Senorita Dido, we theorize, is a different version of Sarah/American Girl's mom.
- A machine structure begins to set off an alarm at the Fireman's. The Fireman steps out from behind it, shares a long look at Dido, looks back at the alarm and then stares for a while straight in front of him. He looks back at the machine. He turns off the alarm, shares another look with Dido and then leaves the room.
The machine looks like what Phillip Jeffries turned into or is hiding inside, as well as the thing on top of the mansion room that shocked Naido. A whole room of them can be seen inside of the Fireman's. So are they people? This one seems to be an alarm. Interestingly, Phillip Jeffries seemed to serve the same purpose when he pointed out Cooper at the FBI Headquarters in FWWM and then tried to warn Cole about the Lodge meeting. We also theorized, in Part 3, that Naido/Betty was turning it to go back in time to Billy's first intentional victim: American Girl. Which now, come to think of it, that episode title matches the socket number of the room that American Girl is in. Phillip Jeffries will also send Cooper back in time. So Jeffries, and these machines, act as alarms and time machines. And in both cases they alert about the dreamer, BOB and Dale both being Billy, and take them back to the first murdered girl, American Girl and Laura also being the same.
The Fireman, we believe, is a Lodge representation of Leland/American Girl's dad. He was also the waiter at the Great Northern, whom offered Leland the gum he used to chew as a child. Now Leland mentioned he first met BOB at his grandfather's place. This presents an interesting possibility...that the elderly waiter/Giant we saw in the series was actually Leland's grandfather in some form. Technically an employee of Ben Horne, with the waiter being elderly, it also seems likely that he worked for Ben's father as well. Hmm...and if the waiter/Giant was Leland's grandfather...that makes Leland his grandson...the very thing Billy was and haunts the series as in his younger form. That is why the Grandson seems to, at times, align with Leland also, both of them being grandsons. However, it seems likely that Leland's grandfather was benevolent and the relationship between Leland and his grandfather was good, as opposed to Billy's one with his own grandfather whom was also his father. But that could be another reason why he forces BOB onto Leland inside of his dream. Just like he partially hated women like American Girl because they had the ideal life he believed his mother was robbed of, Billy loathes men like her father, whom experienced idealistic boyhoods, not darkened by abusive fathers/grandfathers. So, inside of his dream, he punishes the figures of Laura and Leland to "atone" for the "grievance", making them walk a mile in his family's shoes, so to speak.
The Fireman's relationship with Senorita Dido seems somewhat estranged. This would actually go along perfectly with Leland's Between Two World's interview where he makes it seem that he truly loved Sarah in the beginning, but then things changed and they seemed to distance themselves from each other. However, they are still aware and acknowledging each other.
When the Fireman stops and turns towards the camera, what he would be looking at would be the doorless door of the mansion. Afterall, the camera zoomed into the building and then straight to the door and through it, finding this room, where Dido was listening to the music. So if he's looking in consternation at the door, this could fit with our seeing Laura as a door and the general importance of doors leading Billy to certain dreams. It could also fit in perfectly then with the Fireman scuttling off to create Laura, the door that leads to Twin Peaks. More eerily, his focus on the door could deal with his later words to Dale that "It is in our house now." He might be aware that something evil is coming to threaten his and Dido's sanctuary and so the doorless door is of great concern to him. On a far out extension of this possibility, he might be making Laura as a door to distract "it" from entering his house, essentially creating her as a door to lead "it" elsewhere. However, by in preventing Laura's death, Billy then had her become BOB instead which led to her becoming the very door to this doorless one that led him straight into the Fireman's/Palmer's house.
- The Fireman goes up a set of stairs, that look like they belong in a movie theater, and then turns right.
Hmm...very interesting that the Fireman's seems turned into a movie house all of a sudden. Those were what Billy grew up on, old movies/tv and books, anything with a story he could escape into. Now the Fireman's/Palmers' is turned into a place dedicated for such things. That works in two ways, the first that Billy projected all of his family's horrors onto the Palmers (American Girl's family) instead. It also helps to illustrate that what Billy resented about American Girl's family may not have been true. While not as horrific as his own family situation was, usually what we see as any "perfect" family is in itself an illusion. Each family has their own problems and sorrows, no matter how they hide them. In the Palmers/American Girl's it was probably that the mother and father had drifted apart to where the father was seeing prostitutes and the mother might have had her own affairs, as perhaps illustrated by Shelly's distraction from her daughter. The daughter might have felt ignored/forgotten about and so she was prey to someone mentally unwell like Billy to obsess over without her parents realizing it.
We have previously wondered if the left side offered the truth and the right fell more in with illusion.
- The Fireman walks across a floor and then up some steps to a movie screen. He makes a motion and clips of the Trinity bomb going off, the woodsmen at the Convenience Store and the Experiment barfing out BOB suddenly appear on the screen. It freezes on the BOB orb and the Fireman stops, turns and levitates.
So, while the Fireman is watching the bomb and the Woodsmen, it is still BOB he focuses on, pausing his image...and so Laura becomes a result of BOB in particular. The Fireman has a direct idea to combat him it seems, or maybe to balance it out, setting out almost to enact his own more positive version of what he just saw.
Once again, this seems to be about "projection" which is what we believe Billy often does with his victims and their families.
- Senorita Dido is shown walking across the floor, as lights flash. She walks to the movie screen where BOB is still paused. A spotlight shows her shadow and then her walking the steps as she nears BOB's image. When she gets near to the screen it switches to stars in space.
Hmm...this is interesting. When the Fireman was walking there were no flashing lights but when Senorita Dido is coming across the floor there are. So, since we associate the flashing light with BOB (and the relationship between a father/son or father/child) is this a result of BOB being paused on the screen or the Fireman creating the Laura orb in the air?
If the flashing lights were because of BOB, it could foreshadow - with our viewing Senorita Dido as a representation of Sarah/American Girl's mom - that BOB (Billy) is coming for the woman. This could essentially be strengthened by the fact that we see Senorita Dido's SHADOW first moving towards the image of BOB. It could also indicate how American Girl's mom was essentially fooled by Billy, the real killer of her daughter, into believing a lie: that the father had killed their daughter. At this stage, the Fireman is ascended and at a distance from Dido and we won't see the two together again.
- She looks up happily to see the Fireman spewing/singing out what looks like a golden galaxy as he hovers in the air above her. Suddenly a golden orb appears out of the mini galaxy and drifts down to Dido whom holds it. We see Laura's homecoming Queen portrait in the orb. Dido kisses the orb then seems to send it on its way, floating up to a pipe type thing that then shoots it to the projected image of earth on the movie screen. Dido smiles at its journey as the Fireman continues to spew out the gold galaxy.
Now we have Laura's birth to go along with BOB's. However, while BOB's was associated with sickness, this is a more beautifully portrayed affair, with Laura almost sung into existence, her coming from out of what looks like a galaxy and not vomit. Therein lies the difference between Billy and his victim: Billy was not wanted, equated with a sickness more than anything, whereas American Girl was wanted and was infact the whole world to her parents.
If we view the Experiment as Audrey (Billy's mom) and the Fireman as Leland (American Girl's dad) this whole scene, paired with BOB's birth, bears a wonderful connection to the scene in "Cooper's Dream" where Leland breaks down over his daughter's death and Audrey, watching him from behind a totem pole, cries as she deals with complicated feelings for the father she seems to hate and love. Both characters reappear now, in this episode, in different forms and yet dealing with riffs on the same subjects that brought them to mutual tears in that episode: Audrey/Experiment having born her father's child and Leland/Fireman fathering the daughter he is set to lose to her child. Shared sorrows, shared births.
Dido obviously loves the Laura orb. In this, we have another difference between BOB/Billy and Laura/American Girl, that the latter was the creation of a union that did share love between them, natural, while Billy was the result of a daughter being used by her own father for his selfish gratification, as well as the spreading of the abuse that had also been forced upon him.
We have the interesting possibility here that Laura was not sent to destroy BOB so much as to balance him out. A pool of oil lies outside of the entrance to the Black Lodge while a pool of gold lies outside of the one to the Fireman's; those colors match the respective colors of BOB and Laura's orbs. It's also the colors of the pedestal where the Owl Cave Ring rests inside of the Red Room. This could even be hinting at the warring forces of good and evil inside of Billy himself, when viewed from a certain angle.
We also have the possibility that Billy could be under the warped delusion that American Girl was created for him and that the Fireman and Dido serve him by making her (Laura) for him. Afterall, Billy is a narcissist. He could believe that she was also created to help "save" him, something he punishes her for when she inevitably fails, him needing to dig his own self out of the shit and save himself rather than have someone else sort out his issues.
- We go from 1945 to 1956, August 5th, the New Mexico desert. In the desert one of the eggs that the Experiment barfed out hatches and a creature emerges which looks part frog, part moth. It crawls over the sand.
Okay, so this is actually happening a day after Ben Horne's 16th birthday party, if we're going by the supplemental information, his birthday being the 4th of August.
This is one of eggs that the Experiment barfed up and we believe that the emerging creature inspires the mask that the grandson wears, which is also like the Jumping Man's face. It is a frog and moth hybrid. Now, at his room at the Great Northern, Cooper could often hear the sound of insects and frogs. Dale/Dougie was also fascinated by a moth orchid in the previous episode. Frogs jump, like the grandson was doing outside of the Red Diamond. This one, however, being just born, seems to crawl, almost like a baby. We see this as being another representation of Billy. It came to earth with BOB, another aspect of Billy, that one being the imago of the father.
Earlier, we discussed how Mr. C being shot here was like his being shot at the end of the first season. In the second season opener, Will Hayward shows that one of the bullets got Dale as well as a wood tick. Not the same insect, mind you, but still an insect.
- A full moon is shown.
The moon's connection to motherhood again might be being established, as well as the symbol that lies beneath it, the one that Mr. C is searching for. Is he looking for his mommy? The scratches on the card were likely made from the safety/diaper pin on the addict mother's desk. Mr. C's search for Judy could also echo Laura's search for BOB in FWWM. What Billy is choosing to deny by forcing this on Laura and Leland, is the answer that Mr. C is really searching for: Judy is his mother.
- A girl and a boy walk together in the dark. "Do you like that song?" the boy asks, the girl says she did. She finds a penny. It's heads up, she exclaims, which means good luck. She looks at the Abe Lincoln on it. The boy hopes it brings her good luck.
We are seeing this girl as another representation of Audrey/Billy's mom. She's still young but on the edge of becoming a woman. This is most likely the age that Billy's mother was when she became pregnant with him...and this innocent walking with a boy could just as easily be twisted into the veil her father used to hide the fact that it was he whom had gotten her pregnant; He blamed it on someone else.
Very important here...the girl finds a penny before her soon to be impregnation by the frogmoth. This is the endlessly repeating theme within the series that Billy links his birth and childhood to money, believing his mother made them stay with their abusive father for the financial stability and material comforts he offered. It links to Audrey chaining herself to the bank vault door, where all of the money is kept, before her own conception of her son. And later on we will see the very same woodsmen, whom leads to the impregnation of the New Mexico girl, resembling Abe Lincoln, the same man on the penny the girl found. Billy's father/grandfather equally used money to help others facilitate and keep the abuse of his daughter secret, just like Ben Horne paying off several people for his own sins, like we often saw revolving around his plans for Ghostwood. Billy's mother than becomes a sacrifice to riches as well, giving a different meaning to Audrey chained to the bank.
The girl seems very happy to find the money, showing perhaps an interest in riches. However, it can also just be the luck it involves, although fortune is another word for luck. Dale/Dougie works at Lucky 7 Insurance and we theorized when he touched the 7 on the logo, after a maternal kiss from his "wife", he was recalling his mother (Audrey).
When Audrey went to the bank in the OG finale, Dell Mibbler said it was his fortunate day. When the bank exploded, we saw his glasses along with falling money.
We saw a coin play a pivotal role in the scene between Red and Richard, Audrey's son, and we believe what is about to happen echoes Audrey's conception of Richard.
- A woodsman is seen descending from pure air and soon he's on the road, approaching a car containing a middle aged couple driving towards him. "Got a light?" he asks the driver repeatedly as lights flash. Another woodsmen shows up as the driver seems somewhat entranced and his wife freaks out. The man finally drives away as more woodsmen are seen.
Hmm...the Woodsman first approaches a man inside of a vehicle for a light. We speculated that the woodsmen were representative of Billy's father/grandfather's enablers, whom were often associated with vehicles in the series.
Could this couple also be partly symbolic for the Log Lady and her husband? We suspected he had worked for Ben Horne and had been killed by Ben also, that being the devil and the fire he had met. The Log Lady we also theorized was the same as the woman honking the horn and trying to get the sick girl to see the uncle and the woman whom came to Teresa's trailer. We saw them as representations of the wife of one of Billy's grandfather/father's workers, someone whom suspected Billy's mom was being abused and tried to help but was ultimately thwarted.
"Got a light?" was what RICHARD Tremayne asked in "Arbitrary Law" right before he set off the sprinkler system that motivated BOB to vacate from Leland, killing his host in the process.
- The young couple continues to walk, the girl asking if the boy lives in town. He says he does. She says by the school and he asks how she knows, which she replies, "I just do." The girl states she thought he was going with Mary. He says that's over. She asks if he's sad about that and he answers no. She repeats that's good and they stop outside of her house. She says it was good of him to walk her home and he admits he wanted to. He asks if he can give her a kiss, she seems reluctant and he says just one. He kisses her and she says, "Just..." before running off to her house. "See you," they exchange. They wave, she enters the house, and he walks away.
That the girl knows where the boy lives is often used to further Mark Frost's depiction that she is really Sarah Palmer. We aren't really going to argue that because we believe that Billy confuses people inside and outside of his dream, not to mention his projecting his family directly on to the Palmers, and so his mother and American Girl's mom could also very likely be morphing. Or it simply could be that she's been paying secret attention to this boy, she does know he's been seeing Mary afterall.
Mary happens to be the name of the nurse (?) Sylvia has looking after Johnny. She might, or might not, be the same Mary that Natalie and Angela despise, but whom has been going out with the Clark Angela fancies. So, um, is there any chance, given the confusion over time and everything, that this boy is Clark and the girl is Angela? The whole Mary/Clark/Angela situation mirrors the Tina/Billy/Audrey triangle, with Audrey dreaming about Billy, just like Angela was dreaming of Clark. That could link Audrey to this girl. It was also stated that Angela had lost her mother. A while back, with the introduction of Blackie "Black Rose" we wondered if Billy's mother's mother had died, which might or might not have been from the grandfather/father's doing. BLACK Rose was the dead maternal grandmother, the RED Rose was the mother and the BLUE roses were the women Billy killed because they reminded him of his mother. The maternal grandmother's death certainly would have allowed the father to abuse the daughter more freely however, and we don't know what the New Mexico girl's family situation is; her mother might be dead.
The girl seems highly reluctant about that kiss, trying to explain something and then stopping. If she was being abused by her father and was afraid he was watching and she'd be "punished" it could explain why. Billy had a similar situation play out in his dream of FWWM when James comes to speak to Laura and she's nervous because Leland is watching. This girl tries to confess/explain something again after the kiss but goes to her house instead. If she was being abused, she wouldn't know what to say or how to tell him that.
- The Abe Lincoln woodsman goes to a radio station, KPJK, which is broadcasting the Platters song "My Prayer". A mechanic working on a vehicle is listening to the channel, as is a waitress at a diner (Pop's). So is the girl who was walking with the boy. She sits on her bed, the bedroom window open and the curtains blowing in the night breeze, dreamily listening to it.
The Woodsmen seem to enjoy broadcasting/radios. Above the convenience store they seem to use radios for different purposes, we just see them most often from the back.
Audrey Horne once said her own "prayer" to Dale Cooper, in the 2nd season opener, and it has its own accompanying piece of music, one that then was often featured during the romantic scenes, one being when she went to Cooper's room to talk about her father and then crawled into Cooper's bed, which, it being her family's hotel was really her own bed, so Cooper was sleeping in her bed too.
Hmmm...we have a mechanic, which deals with cars again, which we discussed were connected to helping Billy's grandfather/father, plus a waitress. This goes with Big Ed and Norma actually. It also can go with the mechanic "Jack" whom we discussed was connected to Billy's father in certain ways and that Teresa (a substitute for Billy's mom) once worked as a waitress. A mechanic keeps certain "drives" running smoothly while a waitress services hunger. Is this about how Billy's grandfather/father used Billy's mom to satisfy his appetite and his various drives? The waitress works at a place called Pop's afterall.
The girl sits listening dreamily to the song on her bed. Is this the song she was talking about with the boy earlier? As said before, Audrey said her own prayer to Cooper. This song will replay when Diane and Dale have sex in Part 18, when we theorize he is imagining Diane is his mother (Audrey). The words of the song are as follow:
"When the twilight is gone
And no songbirds are singing
When the twilight is gone
You come into my heart
And here in my heart you will stay while I pray
My prayer is to linger with you
At the end of the day in a dream that's divine
My prayer is a rapture in blue
With the world far away
And your lips close to mine
Tonight while our hearts are aglow
Oh, tell me the words that I'm longing to know
My prayer and the answer you give
May they still be the same for as long as we live
That you'll always be there at the end of my prayer"
They are a nice compliment to "Questions in a World of Blue" where the dream that should have been divine has ended. We suspect that Twin Peaks is partly Billy's dream and that inside of it he has placed his mother inside of her own dreamworld where they can be together. That is another function of the dream.
The girl is holding a teddy bear, like Johnny Horne will have. Her wallpaper is of roses, like the Blue Roses. She has two windows joined at the corner of the room. One of the windows is open. We suspect that Billy enters his victims' room through the window. The curtains are blowing and we are reminded of the curtains in the Red Room. There is a glass of water close to the window. Audrey asked for a glass of water before the bank exploded and she soon after became pregant, Billy Hastings had a glass of water at the police station and soon the Woodsman will repeat a weird monologue about water too.
- The Woodsman enters the radio station and kills the receptionist working there by crushing her skull in. He then goes into the main Broadcast room and grabs the DJ's head in a similar fashion. The mechanic, the waitress and the girl all look as the song is stopped.
Hmmm...well this receptionist doesn't seem too different than a secretary, so that theme comes out again. Considering that she gets killed and so does the DJ, we can form a parallel between these two poor doomed coworkers and Sam and Tracey, and by extension Billy and Betty, especially since their heads get crushed like all of the above, minus Betty.
So the receptionist seems to be entranced against her will to go to the woodsman and then forced onto her knees. This is uncomfortably like a coerced rape of some sort.
- The Woodsman begins to repeat a very strange message over the airwaves, "This is the water. And this is the well. Drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within."
So the Abe Lincoln Woodsman, just connected to money by the penny and whom also is a servant of BOB, is giving a broadcast that influences the listeners and will lead to people becoming unconcious and the girl impregnated by the frogmoth.
The Woodsman mentions water, "This is the water. And this is the well. Drink full and descend." We went into the water previously but let's do another analysis. Well, when Audrey chained herself to the bank, in the original finale, she asked the bank worker to get her a glass of water. Frankly, that was a little odd. Why wouldn't she have made sure she had some before she chained herself if she knew she might be there for a while? For that matter, why would she ask for water when it would lead to her having to pee? But for some reason it was included. And then what we see is Mibbler, the bank employee linked to the handling of the money, is the one whom holds it up for her to drink...She drinks full and soon descends into a coma when the bank explodes. In another money focused theme, we can look at money as the "water" that some people live for. A bank would then become the well that holds the money. We can then view the act of the girl's impregnation, and how the chant about water enables it, as an analogy of how Billy's father/grandfather used his wealth to ensure that people looked the other way when he abused his daughter and eventually got her pregnant. There is a glass of water on the girl's window sill when the frogmoth comes to her as well, strengthening the connection between the girl and Audrey. Then, in Part 1, what would directly follow the OG finale besides the intermission of FWWM, Lynch clearly shows a glass of water on the table before Billy Hastings, as he sits behind the two way mirror, his head in his hands. We likened this scene to the glass box in NYC, stated how we believed Twin Peaks etc...was all going on inside the man's head and likened him also to a mirror. That he is shown with a glass of water, connecting him to Audrey and the Woodsman's chant, is significant. The water is even pointed out when Macklay offers him coffee and Billy replies, "I'm good with the water."
"The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within" is usually used for the belief that Sarah looked away from Leland abusing their daughter. Well, we believe that Billy projected that whole scenario onto the Palmers so this could be true, to a certain extent. When BOB/Leland drugs Sarah's drink, she hesitates, knowing something is wrong, but he coaxes her into finishing it. So that shows someone suspecting something but easily being persuaded to turn a blind eye. However, this scene takes place in front of a mirror which we argue Billy is. Billy reflects what people want him to be and he can also reflect them as what he wants to see them as instead, and in the Palmers case he wanted them to bear what truly belonged to his family. So the turning of a blind eye can then fit the Hornes instead, as also indicated by the owl light (a source of enlightenment) appearing during this scene. We also have the fact that Sarah is drinking milk and not water in that scene. The looking away of Ben's abuse of Audrey led to darkness. It created Billy (the Magician) whom longed to see through that darkness, and chose playing with fire to do it. It also led to death, irrevocably linked to the horse, when Billy killed his father and mother and a string of women whom similarly reminded him of his mom. One of the women he killed might infact be Sarah/American Girl's mother, to prevent her from remembering something that connected him to her daughter's death.
Okay, and so Billy might be mixing up/projecting people, this girl could still represent Sarah/American Girl's mother partially as well. She effectively went to sleep, forgetting something which could incriminate Billy of American Girl's death. The frogmoth effectively blinds her to it and restricts her from telling on him, which could lead to her death when she sees again and tries to regain her voice.
The white horse seems linked to death, so this all ties back to death and how the Trinity test happened in the Jornada del Muerto.
- The waitress and the mechanic fall unconscious as they listen to the broadcast and the frogmoth crawls slowly towards the girl's house. The girl meanwhile looks at her radio and lies down on her bed and falls asleep or into unconsciousness. The frogmoth flies up to her window and enters it. As the girl lies unconscious, the frogmoth goes up to her. Suddenly she opens her mouth and it crawls inside of it, disappearing into her. She swallows.
The girl falling into unconsciousness is portrayed differently than the mechanic and waitress. She appears to be almost falling asleep more than passing out. Billy dreams a more gentler violation of his mother, saving the harsh reality for other figures like Laura and Diane.
The frogmoth, which had been crawling still like a baby towards her house, suddenly uses its wings and flies up to her window. Now the window is how BOB used to pay Laura a visit. We also saw Dale gain access to the mansion room through a window. Now we have the frogmoth visiting this girl through a window. Of course, as stated before, we suspect Billy killed American Girl by climbing in through her bedroom window and that might be his repeated routine while killing.
The frogmoth coming to the unconscious girl perfectly reflects how Mr. C went to see Audrey, while she was in a coma, and impregnated her with their son Richard. It echoes it to the very fact that the frogmoth seems to impregnate this girl with itself and Dale Cooper, whom really is just Mr. C, will become Richard in Part 18. Essentially Cooper impregnated Audrey with himself, just like the frogmoth does here. We've said before that this represents how Billy believes he in essence violated his mother with his conception. He raped her as much as their father.
Actually, this scene reminds us in a way of what we took to be Dale's doppleganger being born into the world on the series finale too. We saw the Red Room curtains as being representative of his mother's birthing area and his violent struggle out of them being the shadow self's violent birth. As the frogmoth enters the girl, we see the shadow of the girl's bedroom curtains billow behind the sleeping girl, which echoes that scene, the frogmoth still symbolic of Mr. C/Billy. Only, whereas the Twin Peaks original finale depicted a birth this was a depiction of the conception.
This being an illustration of Billy's painful conception, we return back to the Experiment barfing up the eggs and BOB and how now we have witnessed the conception that led to that birth and the destruction that followed.
This scene could also hint that, when Mr. C visited Audrey at the hospital, he also placed her safely inside of her own dream where he could be with her while at the same time causing pain and sorrow outside of her dreams, but without her knowing about it.
The frogmoth entering the girl brings back the Fireman's statement that, "It is in our house now," the frogmoth potentially being the insect sounds on the gramophone as well as a representation of the grandson/Billy, and how the two names the grandson went by - Chalfont and Tremond - will be invoked when Richard/Cooper brings Carrie/Laura to what should be the Palmers' (Fireman's) house.
- The Woodsman finishes the broadcast and crushes the DJ's head. He then walks out of the station into a night that begins flashing and then into darkness as a horse neighing is heard.
The violent disposal of the receptionist and the DJ contrast with the almost peaceful invasion of the girl, which we believe is Billy's mom. Perhaps this could also be his punishing those whom facilitated his mother's abuse and his conception, while gently protecting his mother's memory, although it still can't help but come off as creepy.
We see the flashing light synonymous with BOB but then the woodsman goes into darkness as a horse neighs. This could once again go with the journey of death, the horse going hand and hand with death. It also is a throwback to Dale seeing the Red Room curtains lift and a white horse standing in the darkness, which we theorized represented the death of Billy's dream or self. Come to think of it, that could also fall back to the whole, "the horse is the white of the eyes and dark within" line.
- The credits roll over a scene of the girl still lying unconscious on her bed. She seems to be having a pleasant dream which eventually sours.
This goes along with the belief that the frogmoth entering the sleeping girl also indicated how Mr. C (Billy) placed Audrey (his mother) inside of her own little dreamworld when he visited her in the hospital. The girl looks like the dream she is having is pleasant and then her face contorts and it looks as if it has suddenly turned bad. This happens to Audrey as well when she can't find Billy and starts to question who she and Charlie are. This leads to her running to Charlie and pleading with him to get her out of there when the Roadhouse falls into violence. We believe the equally frightened Charlie grants his wife's request, showing Audrey the truth...that he really is Billy too, the mirror, and she is still in her coma and dreaming inside of his own dream, hence why she is in the hospital gown and the white light and the sound of electricity permeates around them. A faint sound of electricity/static can also be heard as the New Mexico girl sleeps, electricity potentially linked to dreaming.