The Owls Are Not What They Seem

[armsholdair]

Everything throughout the series, the clues that hide beneath the surface, seem to indicate something other than the "Laura Palmer was abused by her father" storyline was the true secret behind Twin Peaks. After watching The Return, my heart is telling me that it was Audrey Horne whom was really abused by her father and not Laura, and that was only half of the actual tragedy.

I've looked for this theory online but only a few viewers pondered it or even came close. Are we so in love with the blonde-blue-eyed portrait of Laura Palmer's victimhood that we won't look at the possibility that this was projected onto her, but actually belonged to another character? Are some fans so desperate for Leland to be guilty, and their own theories/feelings validated, that they won't step outside of the box long enough to contemplate that, within the world of Twin Peaks, an illusion might have been cast?

There is a poem, afterall, that runs throughout Twin Peaks about a Magician. But what was its importance? We never were explicitly told. What was the role of this omnipresent but rarely focused on Magician? How did he influence the tale?

Magicians are different from wizards in the way that their magic remains mere illusion.

A trick.

What grand trick did the Magician of Twin Peaks manage to pull off for his intended audience?

One of the most important tricks a Magician learns to master is called "The Magician's Palm". In it, the Magician finds a way to hide a card inside of his palm so the audience cannot see it.

Palm.

Palmers.

The story of Ben & Audrey Horne was palmed off on the Palmers.

Infact the word Palmer is a 17th century word for a person whom used to keep hidden some important object, such as a card or coin, inside of their hand in the act of deception.

Not only does Audrey Horne make a reference of palms during her introduction to Dale Cooper, she is seen actually wearing a playing card at One-Eyed Jack's during an extremely uncomfortable moment with her father.

Another trick that Magicians commonly use is misdirection, diverting focus onto something less important so what is important goes undetected. It is, infact, considered one of the cornerstones of a good act of "magic".

Therein we find the trick that our Magician mastered and the truth that he was trying to hide from us all along: Audrey Horne was the true victim of incest at her father's hands.

The clue "The owls are not what they seem" was never explicitly solved. The only owls we see in Twin Peaks are Great Horned Owls. The Horne family lived and ran the Great Northern Hotel. The clue's answer is simply that the Horne family is not what they seem.

It would make far more sense that Audrey was the victim of abuse and not Laura. She was isolated at home, a woman-child whom would jump into Agent Cooper's bed anytime she was upset about the well respected father she both loved and hated. Audrey Horne, a girl whom was looked at oddly by the whole town. Laura, on the other hand, was allowed to interact with almost every citizen, behavior contrary to how most abusers control their victims. The more people a victim of abuse associates with, the more likely they can find help and eventually escape. While Laura was loved by Twin Peaks, Audrey was an outcast.

Given what we know of Ben Horne's personality, his complete lack of morals, could we expect him not to notice and take for himself the beauty of his daughter? If Leland's involvement with Teresa is used to condemn him, then why does Ben Horne's affair with Laura, a girl like his own daughter, not raise questions?

While many viewers feel that "Fire Walk With Me" somehow proved Leland Palmer's guilt something remains troubling about Laura's pure shock at, and previous obliviousness to, Leland's connection to BOB. She's genuinely surprised when she sees her father leaving the house and that is repeated at the dinner table when he harasses her. This behavior seems new to her, something difficult to believe if BOB had been inhabiting Leland for years. Infact, in a Missing Piece, Laura seems merely embarrassed by her dad, as most teenagers are. There seems to be no preexisting fear, resentment nor anger at all hinted at in their relationship, which most victims of incest would always feel somewhere present in their interactions with their abuser, no matter how deeply the truth is buried. Laura seems to possess no conflict whatsoever.

As opposed to Audrey's relationship with Ben.

In Audrey Horne we find a young woman battling with how she's supposed to feel for her father. There is anger, bitterness, resentment, hatred and fear, mixed in with love and even jealousy. She goes from laughing in joy when Catherine Martell slaps Ben, only for that laughter to turn hysterical and eventually into pained tears after witnessing her father's affair firsthand.

Audrey is both too young and too old for her age, sexually knowledgeable and yet sheltered. She, infact, represents the emotional turmoil of the victim of incestuous abuse. At one point, she even confesses to Cooper that emotional problems run in her family, the same unfortunate thing that can be said about incest.

When we compare Sarah Palmer (Laura's mother) to Audrey's (Sylvia) we also find a stronger argument that Sylvia would be more likely to turn a blind eye to her husband's actions concerning their daughter.

While we see Sarah being drugged before bed, to help keep her in the dark, it is doubtful that this would remain the proper incentive to keep her pliant for five years. In a Missing Piece, she also seemed very concerned over the fact that Laura had lied to her. Then she outright screams for Leland to stop what he'd doing at the dinner table.

A glaring fact also remains with most cases of incest: the mother unfortunately needn't have been so blatantly drugged to let it occur or continue to happen.

Usually they are more concerned with their own level of comfort.

We see this on full display with Sylvia Horne in the Return.

After she is assaulted by her grandson, Sylvia calls her estranged husband to essentially demand money, her mind focused mostly on wealth and comfort. We also see disturbingly how this makes Ben renege on his previous noble intent not to take advantage of his vulnerable secretary. Are we to seriously believe he would never have been in similar situations with his wife, while she was at the Great Northern, and that he might never have turned to someone equally at hand to help "comfort" him in his own severe selfishness.

That person devastatingly being his own daughter, Audrey.

Audrey bears all of the signs of abuse without any of the actual abuse. It has been "magically" transplanted onto Laura Palmer instead.

Why do so many aspects of the Palmers storyline, afterall, first take seed inside of the Hornes'?

Most fires we see in Twin Peaks burn inside of the Great Northern Hotel. The first time we see one, Ben Horne spits into it. Audrey covertly smokes at her locker, a vintage ashtray of Smokey the Bear warning against forest fires hidden inside. Both fire and woods became synonymous with abuse in the series.

The act of Audrey switching from black and white saddle shoes into a secret pair of red heels at school, also betrayed a duality before Laura's divided necklace was found. The colors of Audrey's shoes will match the Red Room color scheme. And in a photograph featuring both Laura and Audrey, it is Audrey whose outfit will once again echo the Red Room, not Laura's.

In the original Pilot script, Audrey was described as being a Botticelli beauty with haunted eyes. Botticelli did a famous painting called The Birth of Venus and the Red Room is frequented by statues of Venus.

Audrey was even heard saying the name Bob in the Pilot, predating the villain's introduction. And long before the Owl Cave Ring was shown, Audrey showed off her own ring to Cooper (a ring the original script claims her father gave to her). She famously danced in Episode 2, and had a song called for it, preceding Leland or the Arm's dancing.

Infact, Audrey is first seen dancing in her father's office, leading up to their first witnessed interaction, all accompanied to an almost intrusive fire heard, but never once shown.

During the conversation that leads to Audrey's impromptu dance at the Double R, she confesses to Donna that her father used to sing to Laura. Leland starts compulsively singing, besides just dancing, in season 2. In the International pilot's ending, BOB even makes reference to singing with Mike.

The first hint of incest occurs at One-Eyed-Jacks when Ben attempts to sleep with his daughter, her identity hidden beneath a white mask of a cat. A white mask will later come significantly into play in the film Fire Walk With Me, while a porcelain statue of a cat can be seen before Leland/BOB murders Maddy, importantly hidden behind the partition that Leland first emerged from with his white hair in the second season opener, the same episode Audrey adorned the mask.

When Audrey is lost in a dreamlike state on heroin, her words are unsettling: "Daddy, can you see me? Can you see me, daddy? Can you catch me? Can you? His tongue is so heavy. The hand in my throat, it hurts me. Black cold. I can't breathe. Help me, please, help me. I'm sinking. I'm sinking." This will almost be regurgitated in Laura's speech to Donna about falling in space. And just like Laura's insinuation that she's been praying for the angels to help her, Audrey awakens to find Dale there, and exclaims, "I prayed. I prayed that you would come."

Part 8 shows us one of the strongest arguments that Audrey lies at the heart of the dream, and yet it goes mostly undetected.

Part 7 possessed the Return's first mention of Audrey. It hinted that Mr. C had taken advantage of her while she was in a coma, following the explosion at the bank.

The next episode shows the whole event done in abstraction.

Compare both:

Chained to the bank's vault, Audrey asked for and drank a glass of water, then requested that Agent Cooper be contacted. A phone rang, and a guard announced that it was a boy. A bomb detonated, money was lost, flying outside onto a tree and Audrey was sent to the hospital in a comatose state. While there, Mr. C sneaked into her room, impregnating her with her son Richard.

In Part 8, following an explosion, the Experiment births BOB. Later, a young New Mexican girl walks home with a boy and finds lost money. In her bedroom, she listens to the song "My Prayer". As a woodsman, one of the guards of BOB, interrupts the song and repeats about drinking water and descending, the girl falls into a comatose state and the frogmoth steals into her room, crawling into her mouth and impregnating her with itself.

Carrying through, in Part 18, Dale Cooper will have sex with Diane, inside a motel room, the song "My Prayer" heard again. Audrey, the daughter of a hotel owner, once said a prayer to Cooper, backscored by "Audrey's Prayer". After the act, the motel seemingly changes into a hotel, but more importantly, Dale will no longer be Dale.

Now he is Richard.

The name of his and Audrey's son.

Just as the frogmoth impregnated the girl with itself, it appears that Dale impregnated Audrey Horne with himself too.

His relationship with Audrey thus becomes incestuous, further carrying on the theme of abuse's cyclical nature.

This is aided by the insinuation that the dreamer is really William Hastings: meek high school pricipal accused of murder. Overall, The Return contains an overwhelming amount of Bills. Mr C's arrest report lists some of Hastings' information; The mug shot even shows his height as being 6"3. Audrey's missing lover, Billy, is said to have jumped over a 6" fence: Cooper's listed height. Fences, the topic of Hastings last conversation, offer privacy.

This sudden thread makes several events in the series stand out.

Only after Leland died, bearing the burden of murdering and raping his daughter, did Audrey's relationship with Ben suddenly heal, as all of Ben's other sins seemed to be inexplicably forgotten. Likewise, after the Palmer case was solved, Audrey and Dale's attraction faded. Ben Horne, the main instigator of the project to destroy Ghostwood Forest, also reversed his intent and tried to save the woods instead, with Audrey standing by his side.

Examining that last, a clearer tie can be formed between BOB and Ben than Leland Palmer.

BOB's cohorts were the woodsmen, one of them resembling Abraham Lincoln even, the face on the money the girl found before her impregnation. Woodsmen destroy forests and were visually linked with money, power and corruption. BOB and the woodsmen form an easy allegory to Ben and his plans for the Ghostwood National Forest. Initially, Ben was the one whom even arranged for Leo to set the mill on fire, so that the Ghostwood Project could move forward.

The Owl Cave Ring is linked to Owl Cave. Owl Cave, as well as Glastonbury Grove (a portal to the Red Room) are in the Ghostwood National Forest, which are on Horne land. While destroying Ghostwood was a central plot for season 1, saving it became a main purpose of season 2. The Miss Twin Peaks paegent revolved around that specfic theme.

The forest became humanized when Cooper and his love interest after Audrey, Annie Blackburne, discussed the woods, while plotting out her speech: "If the Ghostwood development cost thousands of lives, do you think it would have a chance of going forward?" "Well trees aren't the same as people. But they are alive."

In her finished speech, Annie will make a more startling connection: "For the Indians love the earth, as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat."

We have similar motifs connecting the trees to people when Laura makes the sign language for a tree inside of the Red Room, the Arm evolves into one and both Laura and Leland in FWWM are seen colored the same way as the sycamores at Glastonbury Grove. To further clarify this, Laura even says "The trees" following her transformation.

Audrey Horne's main purpose for entering Miss Twin Peaks was to save Ghostwood Forest. It was also the only reason she was chained to the bank when the bomb went off, an act of destruction which led to her pregnancy.

Seen in a different light, the Ghostwood plot is a veiled allusion to Ben's desecration of his daughter, and the act of his forcing her to rely on him and continue on with the abuse, particularly after the conception of her son. Audrey even inexplicably reminds us of the project/woods out of the blue in Part 13 when, after questioning her identity, story and the pained choice of either staying or going she declares, "I want to stay and I want to go. I want to do both," then she exclaims in desperation, "Charlie, help me. It's like Ghostwood here."

Once again, the abuse theme is entwined deeply in the Hornes not the Palmers.

Leland, as Ben's lawyer, becomes more credible as one of BOB's woodsmen: an enabler to his lawlessness. In a deleted scene for FWWM, he even brought an axe to the dinner table, while discussing the Norweigans, the first proposed partners in the Ghostwood project.

In such a light, we might even link the BOB and Mike (BOB's partner and then enemy) dynamic specifically to the relationship between Ben and Jerry. Before their dissolution, Mike and BOB's partnership seemed to center around their mutual ravenous appetite. In parallel, many of Ben and Jerry's scenes feature their shared love of food and gorging. In episode 2, Cooper's dream of Mike and BOB was to follow his formal introduction to the Horne brothers. Jerry Horne even sees his foot as being separate from himself at one point, just as Mike severed his own arm and it then took on a life of its own.

The Return often featured odd references to uncles, one being the seemingly desperate importance of getting a sick girl to see the uncle she hadn't seen in a long time. In another, a niece couldn't remember if her uncle was present during a disturbing occurrence or not. Jerry was often sent away from the Great Northern on business, could it have been Ben's way of keeping his brother unaware of what he was doing to Audrey? Is this perhaps the reason behind Jerry's foot speaking to him: while Mike's offense was murder, requiring the severing of an arm, Jerry's was letting his brother control his movement, allowing him to send him away instead of staying where he was needed.

Another scene of Jerry featured him watching, from an obscured distance, the death of his grand nephew Richard. He blamed the destruction on his binoculars but could this have been his own veiled reference to his guilt for not seeing what was happening inside of his own family?

Jerry's plot in the Return can also be seen as being indicative of Ghostwood having been an allegory for Ben Horne's abuse of his own daughter and the voluntary or involuntary complicity of others.

It is obvious that Lynch sees Dr. Amp's broadcasts as both on target and healing, yet he shows only two people listening to them: Nadine Hurley and Jerry Horne. While Nadine's path to self awareness is straightforward, Jerry's has been overlooked because of it's vagueness. And yet it is there for us to see in his metaphorical journey out of the woods.

After listening to Amp, and while on the phone with his brother, Jerry realizes he is lost in Ghostwood, essentially Ben's deception and dominance having trapped him deeply within the woods. He soon envisions that his foot is keeping him stuck in the woods and it doesn't even belong to him anymore, which is basically that Ben is the one controlling his movement not himself. Jerry finally asserts himself, regaining his autonomy. Without phone service, Jerry navigates the woods by himself, eventually reaching freedom on his own. Jerry triumphantly exits the woods, meaning he has found the pathway to enlightenment. By witnessing Richard's filicidal destruction, this enables Jerry to witness, albeit from a distance, the darkness that has tainted his family. While Jerry's journey through the woods began with his contacting Ben, now it ends with the police contacting him because of Jerry, whom told them, after they found him naked, that his binoculars killed someone. This can be construed that Jerry now accepts responsibility for what has happened, relating it to improperly seeing things for what they were before. His naked state could mean a rebirth, or a spiritual baptism has occurred, just as it did with Mike.

To add perhaps even more weight to this, we can return our thoughts to the sick girl that the woman was desperately trying to bring to her uncle. The girl vomits like the Experiment had in Part 8, perhaps signalling a pregnancy, but her sickness cannot be attributed to the uncle, whom apparently was absent during this time, but is now supposedly at their home, waiting. The guardian of the girl states desperately, "We've got miles to go!" invoking Robert Frost's famous poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening".

There is a hidden reference to the woods again.

Perhaps Jerry could have saved Audrey from the abuse if he had only been present and paying attention. Unfortunately, he was not.

And so it was left to someone else that loved her to try to imagine a world where she was safe instead.

I suspect the dreamer forced Laura (the type of girl his mother envied, one with the perfect life and family that he envied too) and Leland (the type of man whom enabled through his profession men like Ben Horne to survive) to enact what had really happened to Audrey and Ben, then tried to purge it from his family in their sacrifice. It was his ultimate act of "magic".

Consider that Cooper himself said he was a strong sender or how BOB did not seem so present until his arrival in Twin Peaks. Or how the term "Fire Walk With Me" is directly connected to that poem of the Magician and how it is threaded throughout the narrative, from the original series straight to the Return.

However, it being like all magic acts, a trick, the illusion does not hold.

Though in the dream, the Hornes seemed "healed", the truth still calls out.

It was after Audrey rushed off to give her virginity to "the man of her dreams", the protege of her father and a man whom shared her brother's name, that Ben having called out her name, to no success, fell to the stairs and first heard the ringing sound in the Great Northern, a sound directly linked to Cooper, as we saw in the 3rd season. Ben looked behind him, in the direction of his fireplace, and he seemed almost frightened.

For the Lynch penned intro to this episode, the Log Lady speaks of clues being everwhere, "but the puzzle maker is clever" and they are mistaken for something else.

The key to Cooper's room at the hotel figures prominently in the Return, bearing words Dale even said near the end of his introduction, regarding the lodgings he desired: "clean place, reasonably priced". The key now opens a closet in the hotel's basement, one where the ringing sound emanates and where Mike waits to recite the poem about the Magician one last time.

We previously saw the key when Ben Horne gave it to Frank Truman. In the scene, Ben tried to explain away his grandson's behavior as "he was never right" but then seemed worried when the sherrif said they were looking into one of Cooper's old cases. We buy Ben's claim about Richard only because we know that his father was a Lodge spirit. In reality that answer would be too pat. We would suspect that he was hiding something or deflecting blame.

He was.

Outside of the dream of Twin Peaks, the secret Ben was hiding was that his grandson was also his son. From the repeated rapes of his daughter, Audrey had given birth to her own brother and Cooper/Richard/Billy was the child of that incest.

That was the truth hidden away in the basement closet, both places associated with dark, horrible family secrets.

After Ben's discussion with Frank, while contemplating Richard's supposed lack of a father, Horne recalls a childhood memory where his own father bought him a secondhand Schwinn that he loved to ride with his friends. While seemingly a pleasant memory, two facts seem strange about the revelation. Ben Horne's father was an incredibly wealthy man whom needn't have bought a second hand anything. The other is that Ben is essentially referencing a cycle here and yet he never once uses that term or the longer word bicycle. If he had, would the audience have too quickly linked it to the theme of abuse's cyclical nature?

Was Benjamin Horne abused by his father? Or did his father permit another family member to abuse him, one who had abused him first (mother), accounting for the second hand cycle? This lead to his abuse of Audrey and the conception of his grandson/son?

The latter half of the second season featured a storyline where Donna Hayward discovered that her father was really Ben Horne and not Doc Hayward. It culminated in a scene where, Ben begs Hayward's forgiveness, Sylvia (Ben's wife) appears out of nowhere and demands to know what her husband is doing to the family and Doc angrily declares "Leave my family alone!" before hitting Ben, causing him to hit his head on the fireplace, where a fire blazes away. As Ben falls to the floor, bearing the same head wound Cooper will be seen bleeding from at the end, the Doctor falls to the floor, screaming in agony and clutching at his own head.

Doctor William Hayward is one of the only (and most certainly the first) instances of a form of the name Bill being seen in the original series, and besides the Great Northern, it is at his house where most other fires are shown. William Hastings will often be seen holding his head in a similar fashion to the man whom shares his initials.

It is important to note now too, after Sylvia had demanded money from him, and he then turned to his secretary for comfort, Ben Horne was clutching his head in the very same manner as well.

Inside of the dream, the Donna-Ben story was just another way the dreamer manifested the question of his own parentage and his hatred for a father whom was also his grandfather, the abuser of his mother.

Mike once made a rather enigmatic statement: "They are his children."

In the International ending to the Pilot, while Dale Cooper is sleeping, and obviously having a bad dream, his room at the Great Northern prominently has the sounds of the woods at night, including insects. The insects recall the sound that the Giant told Cooper to listen for as well as the image of the frogmoth that crawled inside of the sleeping girl.

The act of Mr. C/Dale impregnating Audrey with himself makes perfect sense now. Being the result of her abuse, he believed he was the one to have raped her by his conception. This brings deeper meaning to the feasting on garmonbozia. For a child of incest, creamed corn is a mixture of male and female symbolism, the father and mother, a representation of a pained creation. The dreamer feeds on it and forces others to feel it for the harvest, believing that that is all he is: the embodiment of his mother's pain and sorrow.

Lynch became angry when Sherilyn Fenn would not film, what is believed to be, a scene between Audrey and Richard. It was important to him, but Fenn claimed it upset her and she didn't understand it. What remains are its replacements: Audrey's identity crisis and search for Billy and Sylvia's assault at her grandson's hands, all while her son helplessly watches. For the latter, Lynch has a puzzle left unfinished on the table. A fire blazes away in the Sylvia scene, as well as Audrey's introduction.

Though Sylvia obviously smothers him, the love between mother and son is palpable, as is Johnny's distress at his mother's pain. The relationship between Audrey and her son was no different. Though the cycle of abuse continued between them, love existed. Infact, the intimation is that the dreamer was so in love with his mother, he dreamt a world where she was always protected and where he fashioned himself as her chivalrous hero.

This is hinted at when Cooper walks in as Audrey is giving her own speech at the Miss Twin Peaks contest. Her words echoing his belief as the dreamer:

"There is only one way to save a forest, an idea, or anything of value. And that is by refusing to stand by and let it die. There is a law of nature, which is more fundamental to life than the laws of man. And when something you care about is in danger you must fight to save it or lose it forever."

Pure and chaste, from a safe distance, Dale watches the woman he loves and has tried to save.

The Jones are an expansion of this. Janey-E Jones (the name equal in letters to that of Audrey Horne), is the perfection of Audrey as mother and wife, yet veiled safely beneath a blonde. She is played by Naomi Watts, whom portrayed Betty/Diane, a character which substituted Audrey in Lynch's Mullholland Drive. Betty was seen with the portrait of Beatrice Cenci looming behind her: Cenci a woman kept imprisoned and raped by her father.

We can even tie Sonny Jim Jones, the son, to Audrey, his retro room fitting perfectly alongside the outdated home where Audrey abides with her husband Charlie.

Within the Jones family, an owl flying over the house on occassion, the dreamer can exist in an idealized state as both his mother's son and her husband.

Lynch's works contain a common theme where someone whom has lost a lover, often finds them again, and a fleeting happiness, inside of a dream.

However, inside of the dream, the truth always intrudes.

Like Coop/Dougie, who lost his shoes when returning to "reality", becoming distracted by a pair of red high heels, similar to Audrey's, and it leading him to a socket, the same kind which will bring him back to "himself".

Or Janey-E sporting her own pair of red shoes before she seduces the man she sees as her husband.

His more lustful feelings are an urge the dreamer represses, emerging in those moments like the tormented and doomed Stephen's shy confession to a weeping Gersten (whom might as well be his own mother and is seen throughout her brief appearances with a key worn always around her neck, as if she holds some integral clue), as they embrace deep in the forest, that he likes being inside of her. A confession that makes her break down into tears and which he makes right before he kills himself.

Hearkening back to Annie's speech and its foreshadowing words, words Cooper supposedly helped her conceive:

"Maybe saving a forest starts with preserving some of the feelings that die inside of us every day. Those parts of ourselves that we deny."

Echoed too in Cooper's shadow self's rape of Audrey Horne and her eventual conception.

In the world of Twin Peaks, there are two Lodges: the White, which opens with love, and the Black, which opens to fear. If his love for his mother is enshrined in Twin Peaks, the dreamer's fear has formed him outside of his dream, and Mr. C is a tresspasser of one into the other, greatly unsettling the dream as it were with the truth.

While Cooper's transformation into Richard was seemingly achieved through some ominous intimacy inside of a motel room, much earlier we saw Mr. C's actions inside of another. In what was one of the Return's most disturbing moments, Mr. C tormented and then killed the frightened Darya, whom, though dressed provocatively, was reduced to the emotional state of a child. What seems important is the contrast between the positions of Mr. C and Dale for their respective motel scenes: While killing poor Darya, Mr. C is portrayed as being on top, the position of control and power. Meanwhile, for his scene with Diane, Cooper is on the bottom, the submissive position.

Consider now the duality of the sculptures of Venus inside of the Red Room. The goddess of love, alternately has hands used to cover herself or is armless. If we look at it one way, she has the power to protect herself or suddenly becomes vulnerable. Viewed another, she has hands to help wound or, like Mike, has had that power taken away from her.

In the Return, another duality is displayed in two specific instances of mothers and sons. In one, a happy pair play, until the boy (never given a name), uncarefully crossing the street, looks back at his mother and dies when Richard Horne hits him with his car. In the second, an addict mother neglects her son. This boy safely crosses the street and lives, only to become attracted to a death and fire, meant but avoided for Cooper. He watches it from a window, entranced. His mother awakes to call out 1-1-9, just as Audrey's Dance will similarly appear played backwards, several episodes later.

Both events are related, the first possibly illustrating how the dreamer killed the good inside of himself in an effort to survive like the second.

While in the dream, Billy dreamt himself as a man whom protects and heals; outside of it, he has chosen to make others feel his pain instead. Particularly those women whom remind him of his mother, women he eventually kills. The question is does he wish to punish or save his mother through the act? And does he foolishly see salvation for himself in it as well, believing his mother's death before his conception will free him from existence?

Regardless of the answer, each victim is a Judy (his mother's real name?) because that is how the dreamer views the women he is attracted to: as a diminuitive of his mother. That is why there is both an Experiment and Experiment Model, a model being a replica of a more grand original. It also explains the fact that a plausible case can be made for several characters, (Experiment, Laura, Naido) being Judy instead of just one.

[I'm not sure if this is relevant, or just coincidence, but I checked various names for anagrams featuring "Judy" and Audrey Jones led me to "Judys are one" "Judy are ones" "Are Judys one" or "Are Judy ones".]

Each of Billy's brunette victims is masked/doubled within Twin Peaks behind a blonde (the same coloring as the wife, Hastings doesn't really care for) to hide his real attraction, the embodiment of which actually became Annie, whom, after wearing the Owl Cave ring, became a blank husk, existing only to give a warning for Cooper's welfare, whom, in contrast, forgot about her entirely.

For this act of masking another clue can be found within the very first Blue Rose case, wherein a woman named Lois Duffy, living at a motel and suspected of murder, shot and killed her double. The clue is found in the woman's name itself: Lois meaning better, superior or most beautiful, while Duffy means dark one or black.

For Hastings, his attraction lies in dark haired girls, not their fair haired opposites, but he is compelled to hide this fact, within the fantasy, for it is too close to the truth.

Laura was really the American Girl (a derivative of American Woman, the song which drives Mr. C and is more invocative of his mother) Naido was truly Betty, Hastings secretary, the woman he became more agitated over discussing than Ruth.

Madeline Ferguson was yet another intrusion of reality: the mask appearing with dark hair. Perhaps, her personality was truly more closer to "Laura" as well

If we look to the names Madeline and Judy specifically, we can find a telling hint in the film Vertigo, wherein the guilt ridden, love struck Scotty Ferguson tries to turn Judy into the embodiment of his "dead" love Madeleine. The names are somewhat reversed in Twin Peaks.

Billy keeps the true memory of his victims safely trapped inside of a box within the Mauve Zone, assessible through a window, as BOB himself would enter through.

This is why Cooper becomes distraught when he sees Naido/Betty out of the box. On a subconscious level, it reminds him of who he really is and that they all "live inside of a dream". He quickly masks her with the fictional, previously unseen secretary Diane, to help keep his illusion alive.

[This can interestingly tie in with two films, one Lynch's own Mulholland Drive, where it becomes, in effect, the reversal of Diane dreaming herself as Betty, and "Laura" where it is learned by the detective, whom has fallen for the dead victim, that she did not die afterall but that a girl called Diane, whom resembled her, was killed instead.]

However, it's too late. Hastings' dream world has been compromised, both inside and out. While American Girl was the first (Laura is the one) intentional victim (3), Betty will be his last (15). Letting his guard down, the secretary saw something she shouldn't have, illustrated by Tracey/Sam with the box and Miriam/Richard and the child (both women holding 2 coffee cups). Billy murdered her to keep her silent. Since it was impulsive, however, they can link it to his first murder, the killings inbetween having been more clean. This mirrors Carrie Page's confession: "Odessa. I tried to keep a clean house...keep everything organized...It's a long way. In those days...I was too young to know any better." It also harkens back to the fact that the hit and run boy did not look both ways before crossing the street and died, while the boy whom became enchanted by the fire lived after carefully checking for traffic.

This was encapsulated also with Sam Colby's work with the glass box. Hastings had kept methodical watch of himself. Like Coop/Dougie, he survived by imitating behavior, but his whole image was "manufactured for a purpose": to help keep him undetected and free. The box was Hastings' psyche. In Part 2, his head emanates the same electrical buzz coming from the box "hosting" the women in the Mauve Zone, the same noise the Fireman's grammophone played at the end of Part 1, after the lump of flesh was found in the car he drove Betty home in. In Part 1, Lynch even frames a scene of the authorities watching Hastings through a glass window, a camera aimed at him, like the box in New York.

Hastings fears they will now link him to Laura/American Girl's death, a murder he successfully framed her father for. As witnessed by Det. Macklay having noted his mundane priors, one crime causes people to look into the past. Billy specifically fears the mother remembering something, the cause of American Girl's own angrily knocking on the door. The dream goes spiralling out of control with Cooper's eventual attempt to fix the past, really just his regret over a mistake, as Walter White would label all time travel being on "Better Call Saul".

Before, the dreamer allows Dale to go into the past, however, both Mr. C and BOB must be destroyed. It was important for Hastings that Dale Cooper play no role in the destruction of either, them being fragments of himself. Instead he had the only mother in the building, Lucy Moran (wearing an owl necklace that resembled a pocket watch), defeat Mr. C while the youngest boy there, the British Freddie, took care of BOB. He needed a mother and he needed a boy, specifically, to destroy the evil in himself.

After this defeat, Dale's travel to the past takes him first to the basement closet of the Great Northern and then to the Dutchman's, the infamous convenience store lying some place in between. The Great Northern appears, in effect, to be a mask for the Dutchman's, which is really just the motel where Teresa Banks lived and worked.

Teresa, a character who never really gets the scrutiny she warrents.

If Diane was a mask for Betty, and the American Girl was Laura, then Teresa, BOB's first victim, is really a mask for another character.

She is really just another mask for Audrey Horne.

One perhaps made to shield Audrey's less admirable traits and a sadder truth lying behind her.

Like Janey-E, Teresa Banks' name as letters equal to Audrey's.

The explosion that led to Audrey's pregnancy happened at a Bank, one letter off from Teresa's last name.

Banks' interest in Leland/BOB was purely monetary, seeing a better life for herself in blackmailing the man. Audrey relied on Ben for her own material welfare/comfort, perhaps a reason why she could not easily escape and why she chose to stay even after the birth of her son. The New Mexico girl found a penny on her way home.

There was a Dutch coat of arms on the cigarette pack Richard Horne stuffed full of money to help keep Chad, the Deputy, silent.

At One-Eyed-Jacks, her father's brothel, Audrey chose to be the Queen of Diamonds instead of Hearts. The motel where Teresa lived and worked as a prostitute is called "The Red Diamond".

Red the drug dealer whom once acted the role of Magician, importantly showing Richard Horne that his magic trick was only just deception. For all magicians are just masters of illusions and misdirection, as mentioned before.

There was a little boy studying magic, usually in the company of his grandmother.

The boy often wore a white mask, like we first saw Audrey wearing, but his own resembled that of the frogmoth.

The same boy was seen wearing it as he hopped around in a circle in the Red Diamond's parking lot.

He was also present when Laura received the picture which lead her to dream of the Red Room and infact seemed to transport her there, with the snap of his fingers, while he was in the room above the fabled convenience store.

Viewers tend to see that last as Laura entering a dream inside of the picture, but what if it was the other way around? What if she was the dream that the boy was having?

Let's arrive at this conclusion in a round about but logical way.

Remember Cooper's journey once he went through the closet hidden in the Great Northern's basement? It took him to that same room above the convenience store and then the Dutchman's, both places the young boy had haunted.

Perhaps we can further view the Dutchman's, and its previous iteration (The Red Diamond) as Lynch revisiting something he initially bypassed during the original series finale. It's well known that David heavily altered Mark Frost's original script, but what gets less discussed is what Cooper's original journey through the Lodge was to entail.

When he entered it, Dale initially wound up at a shabby motel where, when asked where he was, the clerk told him home. Cooper momentarily turned into his 10 year old self, while the clerk transformed into his father, whom eventually gave him a key. The key took him to a black and white version of the Great Northern.

When David Lynch filmed the original finale, he was far more preoccupied with hinting at Dale Cooper's guilt than his history, for this was to be the last episode of a series which famously asked, "Who killed Laura Palmer?" Lynch had offered us a decoy in Leland, but for the series end, he intended to provide us with the truth. This is why the secret self of Leland reaffirms his complete innocence and Laura's hidden self betrays her absolute fear and loathing of Dale Cooper.

The man who really killed her.

We can view him as her killer in two respects actually: Dale's real self, Hastings, murdered Laura's real self, American Girl. But besides this, Dale, the avatar for Hastings, our dreamer, created the story of Laura Palmer's death to escape his reality. As the essential writer of the fantasy, he is responsible for her death, having scripted it himself.

With either view, Lynch helped satisfy his need to implicate Dale in Episode 29.

With this fulfilled, he used both FWWM and The Return (Frost once again co-scripting) to help explore what Frost had conceived in his original script for the finale, but on a level Frost had never even realized. That Dale Cooper essentially belonged at the Great Northern for it was his home.

And he had never really left it.

Lynch knew that he could not show Dale Cooper's father either without having raised more questions than he was willing to answer for both the audience or his creative partner.

Because Cooper's real father was Benjamin Horne.

And yet, in his own time, the director/writer began to explore this fact, working off of Frost's own ideas.

He started directly with his follow up movie, infact, a film both a sequel and a prequel. The fact that it is a sequel casts Laura's role within it subjectively, without most viewers ever realizing it.

Laura Palmer, a supposedly ALIVE Laura Palmer, was supposed to be introduced simultaneously with Phillip Jeffries' own introduction (importantly first shown receiving his own key at a hotel). Jeffries is the character whom first questions Dale's identity and whom reveals that they all live inside of a dream. Because of editing and time constraints, Lynch was forced to transplant Phillip Jeffries introduction to directly after Chet Desmond's disappearance.

However, in The Return, he fixed this, by having Mr. C establish that Jeffries did infact make his mysterious appearance at the FBI Headquarters shortly before Laura's murder. This was the director's intent all along, proven by this.

Jeffries was meant to align with Laura's first appearance because he conveyed to us further that she is the dream, the portion of the film set in Twin Peaks a deeper descent into a dream, or rather, what is not real.

For it is this segment of the film, as opposed to its beginning, that is tainted by the aspect of the "future". Cooper and Annie both appear to the dreaming Laura, both suffering the ramifications of the final episode of the original series.

With Dale's presence here, his connection to/as the dreamer made implicit, we cannot trust what we see. It is corrupted by his influence.

It is another hint that he is the one dreaming Laura and not the other way around.

The Teresa scenes, connected to the start of the film, while still being manipulated by the dreamer, may hold more truth.

It is in her storyline where Lynch finally creates the shabby motel that Frost indicated was Dale Cooper's home. And it is within it too that he depicts a small boy haunting it, the grandson in this case.

These seem to have found their seed within Mark Frost's original script, but they don't simply end here. Fragments of Frost's script can then be found within The Return, altered but still present. Frost contributing to the Return's writing can greatly have also had to do with this, but this time Lynch willingly went with it.

They found a way to incorporate Dale's father giving him a key to The Great Northern, but in such a way to as to preserve the mystery not hamper it: Ben Horne receives the old room 315 key and gives it to Frank to give to Harry, but Cooper asks for it himself. That key eventually leads to the convenience store and then the Dutchman's.

So, likewise, Dale Cooper winds up at the motel of his childhood (in a reversed order from Frost's teleplay), but also in the separated halves of himself. Both Mr. C and Dale seek audience with Phillip Jeffries inside of the Dutchman's with different results.

While the evil side of Cooper is jettisoned after a phone call (Audrey Horne once awakened Dale from a dream with her own phone call), Phillip Jeffries, the man whom once flat out told us this was all a dream, agreed to send Dale Cooper into the past to find Judy, in this case JudyLaura.

But how Cooper gets there, inside of the shabby little motel room, seems just as important as the act he committed at the Pearblossom that turned him into a Richard and sent him to another JudyLand.

It is only as Cooper shuts his eyes, as if falling asleep, that he goes into the past to find Laura.

The indication is subtle but evident, a callback to Laura's entering the painting the Tremonds gave to her.

Laura Palmer was the dream.

Cooper, or rather the boy, was the one whom dreamt her.

William Hastings is that boy.

It is invaluable to note this "grandson" was obviously influenced by David Lynch's short "The Grandmother". In that piece, a boy, abused physically by a jealous father and sexually by a troubled mother, plants a seed and grows a grandmother to help escape his pain. At one point, standing on a flight of stairs, similar to the one in the convenience store, the boy imagines his parents' death. At the end, following the demise of his grandmother, the boy appears to die too, only for something malignant to begin growing from within him. Both the boy in Twin Peaks and the boy in "The Grandmother" wear tuxedos/suits.

While the Grandmother represents escape to the abused child in Lynch's "The Grandmother" the opposite might hold true in Twin Peaks. It is quite possible that the Grandmother here was the first abused/abuser within the Horne family. She abused her son, starting the cycle. It will end only with her "grandson", Hastings seemingly having no children of his own to carry on the family trauma. This is why the two characters travel in each other's company. They are bookends, the first and the last

Also of interest, in regards to "The Grandmother" is how the actor playing the boy in the short is called Richard, while the actor playing his father is a Robert: Richard the man that Dale becomes and Robert the full name of the Evil force which possesses the damned.

Is BOB a variant of Billy's father within him, a possessing imago? Was he ever punished by the words "You're just like your father?" Is the name of that father now being placed beneath the fingernails of women he sees as his mother?

Another detail links Audrey to Teresa and the boy: Teresa would be called "that little girl who got murdered" though, inexplicably Teresa's coworker would label Teresa's death as an accident. Audrey would reference her own story, in a whisper, as being that of "the little girl who lived down the lane."

The line from the nursery rhyme "Baa Baa Black Sheep" isn't the little girl though.

It is "the little boy".

The fact that Audrey is mirrored in Teresa, a victim of BOB, indicates that she is dead and that this isn't her story. It being labelled an accident suggests that her death wasn't intended, as does the subplot where Coop/Dougie clears the Mitchum's from having intentionally set their hotel on fire. Through this seemingly unimportant plot point, there exists the possibility that the Dutchman's was the Red Diamond, and it accidentally burned down with Billy's mother inside of it. This would explain why Ray, wearing the Owl Cave ring, insists that the Dutchman's isn't a real place and why Mr. C immediately shoots him.

He resents his illusion being challenged.

Especially when it exists to help protect himself, as well.

For Twin Peaks, in part, exists to keep his mother alive and him safe from the truth of what really happened to her.

Billy would rather it be his mother's story.

She mattered more to him than any other soul, including his own.

When the grandson lifted his mask, we saw a monkey peeking out from underneath it. We saw a monkey after Laura's death, too, shaded blue like her corpse and whispering "Judy" preceding the shot of Will Hayward pulling back the plastic to reveal Laura's face, reminding us of the fact that a "Bill" was the first character to identify and name Laura Palmer.

Naido/Betty also made monkey like sounds.

This all can potentially be traced back to Audrey Horne too.

"Audrey, the most intelligent face that I've seen all day," Ben Horne once declared. "You make the rest of us look like primates."

For once, Hastings would agree with his father.

We must take a closer look at the blue roses and their deeper meaning now to Hastings. It started with Lois Duffy, the "most beautiful dark one", if her name holds significance, and which can thus be associated with the dark blot on the Ace of Spades card and Hawk's map. It is integral that we take note too of the fact that she, like Audrey and Teresa was a motel/hotel girl, linking all three. Lois was labelled case number 1. She was the first blue rose, but she was not the last.

The blue roses are all of Hastings victims.

Inside of Billy's dream, both the blue roses and the black corn are labelled as unnatural, that same word being often used in regards to incest. And yet the roses, associated with the female victims, were things of beauty. The black corn was more ugly, diseased. We can think back on Annie comparing the Native Americans loving the land "like a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat," when we think of the symbolism used here.

At the start of the series, Lynch once drew a picture for Sherilyn Fenn of a red flower and wrote around it: Hey Audrey Horne?! The FLower of Twin Peaks. Audrey is the flower of Twin Peaks, the murdered girls are blue roses, images of the flower in its death. Thus, to Billy, those connected to his mother, though still bearing the brunt of his fear/anger/hatred, are still viewed in high regard as things of beauty.

He is far harsher in his self appraisal.

Aware of his birth, unnatural, diseased, death bringing, Billy does not wish to be himself, and so he repeatedly places the focus on others instead.

But this is ultimately destructive.

As misguided as the quest to "Find Laura" is.

This is why, when Dale/Richard finds Carrie Page she first asks "Did you find him?" then "You didn't find him," to his questions if she is Laura. She then ouright states, "You got the wrong house, mister."

He does.

Like Audrey tried and failed, Cooper needs to find Billy.

His true self.

He is there lurking beneath all of the characters, urging the dreamer in small ways to remember him. Like the Bosomy woman (a possible merging of Lois/Teresa/Audrey a closer to reality incarnation of Judy?) at the Dutchman's, whom says they will unlock the door for Mr. C: It has the guise of a woman, but is male underneath. This being his dream, everything is ultimately Billy,or his perception of the person/object, beneath the surface.

In Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" the Magician at the Club Silencio seems to wish to betray the illusion of the dream to the dreaming Diane Selwyn, pointing out to her fragmented form of Rita/Betty that everything is a recording and thus not real.

Here the Magician is also hinting at the truth he, himself, helped to hide beneath the lie.

Even when Dale/Richard tries to take "Laura" home, it is to the invocation of the Chalfonts/Tremonds living in her house, both names closely associated with the grandson, whom always took the name of those whom came before. It conjures the Giant's (whom being the father of the Laura orb, might just be another representation of Leland) words that, "It is in our house now".

Unfortunately, Cooper/Richard will ignore the clue, still focusing hopelessly on Laura Palmer.

And yet again, he has projected his own story on to her.

This time involving her mother, not father.

I have two mindsets on Sarah's "possession" in The Return.

The first is that JudyLaura, is what has possessed her. The Experiment Model appears after Laura's whisper to Cooper, the whisper being "Don't assume that nobody can spot your dark suit off but me." This again ties Cooper to William Hastings. Cooper's suit was closely associated with his work as an FBI agent, even referenced once by Richard Horne. In the mug shot accompanying the report with Hastings information, Mr. C was seemingly naked.

I believe it was Cooper/Billy and not JudyMother whom exiled Laura from the Red Room. With that whisper, his perception of her changed from glowing angel to bloodthirsty monster. JudyLaura possessed her mother, the other person he feared could eventually see him "exposed" and whom was out to destroy him.

In reality, this merely equates to the memory of the daughter driving the grieving mother towards justice.

When Dale attempts to save Laura on the night of her murder, JudyLaura tries to vainly destroy her own portrait, aware of what will happen.

Inside of the dream, she is about to become BOB.

The second theory expands on Dale's need to project his family's tragedy on the Palmers. Dale further dreamt that, while Leland was possessed by BOB, Sarah was possessed by BOB's mother. Laura essentially becomes what he is: the child of incest. JudyMother is ultimately obssessed with her son "I will be with BOB again", echoing Billy's mother's love for him. However, father BOB is obsessed with his daughter, mirroring Ben's obsession for Audrey.

JudyMother vainly stabs the portrait of Laura in jealousy.

BOB has chosen Laura and, thanks to Cooper, he will get her.

Perhaps just as Billy's mother becoming pregnant with him, forced her to stay under her own father's control.

Both of these theories revolve around the belief that Dale disappeared the night he went into the past and not Laura. He simply returned to his own time and never realized it. That is the explanation for his infamous question, "What year is this?" His disappearance left Laura alone in the woods that night, vulnerable to BOB, whom was watching her every move.

Laura Palmer ended up, not murdered, but possessed.

Carrie is the final missing Page of Laura's diary.

On the one before she had written, "NOW I KNOW IT ISN'T BOB. I KNOW WHO IT IS."

Carrie Page holds the answer.

It is her.

In an overlooked possibility, her new name might not even be Carrie. That depends solely on if she is telling a stranger the truth. The name of the diner where she works is called Judy's afterall. Laura might infact still be a Judy.

Lynch was never subtle in his association with fast/frozen food with evil in The Return. At Carrie's place, we see empty trays everywhere. She also had a dead guy in her living room. BOB had two desires for when he possessed Laura: he would use her to kill and taste through her mouth. Carrie now asks Dale if they have food for their journey.

A second hint comes with the shot of the two at a gas station/convenience store, presumably where they ate.

On this whole journey, it is incredibly significant that, had Laura not died, Dale Cooper was significantly changed. Inside Billy's subconsious, he knows that if he had not become a killer, and therefore evil, "Dale Cooper" would not be so contrarily "perfect".

As a result, his dream self becomes a more balanced individual.

On the other hand, Laura, his poor victim, always bore an unfair choice inside of his mind: die to save her soul or live to become a demon.

We already experienced her death.

Now we have a tiny taste of what her life is like.

And during it, Cooper basically turns back the hands of time once more, this time in the metaphorical sense only, by taking Laura home.

Now we can discern vaguely what BOB's first act inside of his new host was.

He brought her home too, just as Cooper/Richard does.

Perhaps with the same idea.

To kill two birds with one stone.

Sarah's name was what always affected Carrie. Not Leland's, not even her own. It was her mother's name.

Now, having heard that a woman named Sarah Palmer does not live there, nor had she lived there before the current residents either, Carrie stands at the bottom of the stairs leading to the house of white and hears her own name being called by the ghost of her mother.

That is what the voice is.

A ghost's.

Now the woman knows who she really is and why her mother is not home.

She really is Laura Palmer and her mother is not there for one tragic, devastating reason.

She killed her.

Like he did with Leland, BOB has pulled the cord and Laura Palmer remembers.

There is no other good explanation why hearing Sarah or JudyMother would elicit such fear and horror inside of Laura Palmer. Even if Sarah chose to turn and look away from the abuse, it was BOB in Leland whom tormented her. Neither did Judy play any role in the abuse, none Laura was aware of anyway. There has to be another cause for her terror.

And that can only be that she is frightened by what she has done to Sarah more than what was done to her.

She has killed her own mother.

If Sarah was possessed by JudyMother that inevitably means that by murdering Sarah, BOB has murdered his mother also.

And buried beneath that realization lies another secret the dreamer has longed to forget.

He killed his own mother too.

We can remember Irene's statement then about Teresa's death being an accident. We can recall the Dutchman's, which isn't a real place. We can make note of the Dutch coat of arms on the cigarette pack that Richard Horne owns. We can remember the use of fire throughout the series and BOB's invitation, "Do you want to play with fire, little boy? Do you want to play with BOB?"

Being a child, and one in great pain, witnessing his mother's abuse and surviving his own, it is easy to picture William Hastings choosing to play with fire, both literally and figuartively.

Just as it would be easy to imagine the outcome of both.

American Girl was in room #3 inside Hastings mind dedicated to his victims' memory. That means that there were two rooms before it. Two other victims: His father (or potentially his grandmother) and his mother. One he couldn't have cared less for, while the other's death destroyed him inside.

He has spent his life trying to deny it, another reason for his division and the dream.

But now he no longer can.

Maybe, deep down, he never really could.

As Mr C said himself, "I've never really left home, Gordon." It invoked a Missing Piece of FWWM where the Arm, degenerating into a fit of wild laughter, told Dale Cooper that there was no place left for him to go but home.

In another haunting scene, a girl named Ruby (as in the famous slippers that took Dorothy Gale home) crawled on the Roadhouse floor to a song named after an Axolotl: an amphibian species, often highly inbred, whom remains frozen in a juvenile state. Axolotls are usually extremely harmful to their own kind.

The scene ended with her horrified screams.

Hastings/Cooper might have brought Laura Palmer home, to the site of all her pain, but he was always there, always screaming.

In either case, Laura coming to the realization of killing her mother is William "Billy" Hastings awakening to it too.

Now he knows it was never BOB.

Now he knows it was always him.

And so will the rest of the world outside of Twin Peaks.

William Hastings' past will be put on display for the whole world to know and judge, what happened within his family, what he had done, and this is the true nightmare for the dreamer.

Inside of his own mind, he had even shielded the memory of his mother from what he had become.

In the Return, Charlie kept Audrey isolated, yet his control seemed more about shielding her from certain information, particularly at the end, something Tina had told Charlie about Billy. The secret was the truth about her son. For we know that a Chuck, the same name as Charlie, never stole the truck. That was Richard, whom killed a boy, whom might as well have been all the good left inside of himself, a virtual flame of fire being set free from the boy as he lay dead in his mother's arms.

As Audrey Horne walked into the Roadhouse, futilely searching for her lost Billy, a musician named Edward Louis Severson III was in the midst of a song entitled "Out of Sand". He was not introduced under the name he is better known as "Eddie Vedder" but the name he was born with instead: One man with two identities.

And the words he had been singing were the very feelings of the woman's "lost" son.


"I stare at my reflection to the bone

Blurred eyes look back at me

Full of blame and sympathy

So, so close

Right roads not taken, the future's forsaken

Dropped like a fossil or stone

Now it's gone, gone

And I am who I am

Who I was will never come again

Running out of sand..."

Episodes before, Coop/Dougie had become emotional to the song he had heard playing too, a song entitled "Heartbreaking".

While he had listened intensely, a woman he had only just recently helped, approached him. She weaved the tale of how he had helped save her life and reunite her with her estranged son. She impressed upon the Mitchum brothers, two men whom were basically strangers to her, how special Dale Cooper was.

A fact they already knew.

Then she walked away with the son whom had returned to her.

William Hastings can never be the man he might have been.

He is truly out of sand.

And that is heartbreaking for the child he was and whom still haunts him, the mother whom loved him, despite what he represented to her, and the many people he destroyed along the way trying to forget that.

For a while, though, he was the person that he should have been.

A man that people respected and whom they missed. A man whom could be forgiven and whom forgave, whom gave peace and received it. A man whom was good and who was loved. A man whom helped heal the broken and troubled relationship between a mother and her son.

Unfortunately it, like the rest of Twin Peaks, was only a dream.