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"The Owls Are Not What They Seem" A Twin Peaks Rewatch with the Theory in Mind: Episode 29 "Beyond Life and Death"
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.
- For her last intro, the Log Lady specifically acknowledges that this is the end:
"And now, an ending. Where there was once one, there are now two. Or were there always two? What is a reflection? A chance to see two? When there are chances for reflections, there can always be two--or more. Only when we are everywhere will there be just one. It has been a pleasure speaking to you."
Is she referring to the first season finale or the ending to FWWM when she mentions there are now two endings? Laura's ending and now Dale's? That she says there might have always been two seems to indicate that it already happened, or was destined to.
Her mentioning there being a chance of there always being two seems to be about what we've been discussing here that there were always two sides to Dale/Billy, as shown by the split of Cooper in this episode. That's also hinted through the reflection line, which invokes BOB also and how this episode ends.
She then indicates that there might be even more than just two, given how many reflections there are. But reflections can also involve thinking about something. Whatever the case, we suspect the insinuation is that Billy has been everywhere throughout what we've seen, for these are his "reflections" about what has happened to him and the people in his life. So the whole world inside Billy's mind is made up of himself. He is everywhere inside of it and everyone.
The intro ends with her saying it has been a pleasure speaking to us. The camera zooms in on her eye, as she looks about, until she looks at us and we see white and hear static/hiss electricity, which kind of actually reminds us of the white that surrounds Audrey when she is transported away from the Roadhouse in Part 15 and is seen looking into a mirror at her own reflection. The kind of feedback is similar, if not exact too. The light is also the same behind Laura's face when she pulls it off in the Red Room. We can almost connect the electricity to the dreamer then, and how Cooper basically explained that that was all dreams were: electricity.
- Lucy and Andy are cheek to cheek at the sheriff station. Lucy keeps talking about the lights going on, and now knowing the end of Part 18, it's hard not to associate it with that.
- The part about hand signals not working in the dark was funny and true. And since it dealt with hands, it has to be pointed out.
- Andy declares to Lucy that if she had gone into labor in a dark elevator he would have helped deliver the baby "infront of God and everybody." This declaration melts Lucy's heart, leading to them mutually confessing their love.
Billy would have appreciated a father like Andy, whom, even if he isn't the baby's father, wants it and would do anything to keep it safe and let people know it was his. His grandfather not having wanted him, added to the abuse and the concealed fact that he was also his father, made Billy's life a hell where he probably wished he hadn't been born.
- Cooper is busy studying the petroglyph, while Harry has deputies in three counties looking for Earle...but not a lot of the regular Twin Peaks force it seems.
- Dale believes that the only chance they have of finding Windom lies in the Owl Cave map. He starts looking at it and says, "Giant, little man, fire, fire walk with me. Fire walk with me."
He's obviously connecting the picture of a tall figure beside a shorter one with the Giant and the Arm. The fire he connects with the words written at Laura's murder site...but it's the way that he says it the first time, almost wistfully, longingly which is strange. It's so creepy infact that Harry turns around to look at him, like he's more than a little disturbed too. And why shouldn't he be? Those words were sad by a psychotic madman or demon, depending on what you believe, and written in blood at a horrifying murder site. Why would Cooper say them?
Why? We believe it's because he is Billy, as well as the real murderer, and that that will also be hinted to him when he finally does find, Earle. Now though, a part of him might be nostalgically remembering the event on some subconscious level and wanting it more than to even locate Annie. We are reasoning, afterall, that this is Billy truly surrendering to his dark urges and that Cooper, the good Dale, partly aided that with his repression, weakness and probably even curiosity.
- When Pete comes in, claiming the Log Lady stole his truck and drove it into the woods, Cooper informs him that she didn't and she will be there in a minute. How did he know that precise time? He has inside information, being so closely connected to the dreamer afterall.
- Pete's comment does seem to spark something in Cooper's mind, though, and he realizes the woods must be what the map shows...in particular Ghostwood forest. Harry repeats Ghostwood.
Now those are the same woods that have been talked about throughout the series, particularly how Ben Horne began the process of threatening them for his own benefit. It's been a constant plot since the very same episode where Laura's body washed up on shore. It is Ghostwood we believe that symbolized Billy/Cooper's mother (Audrey) and whose desecration was equal to the abuse she suffered at her father's hands, an abuse that brought about Billy himself. So that Cooper, and even Harry, whom have really kept their distance from that whole Ghostwood Development plot are now singling it out and naming it by name seems incredibly important.
- Pete next bemoans the 12 rainbow trout he had in the bed, which reminds Harry of the 12 Sycamores in Glastonbury Grove.
We have to wonder, were any of these trout caught when Pete took Audrey fishing in the moonlight, up at Pearl Lakes, following her intimacy with Jack?
- Hawk recalls that that was where he found the bloody towel and diary pages.
We still point out that that is a long distance for Leland to have walked with a severed aorta. Just saying.
- Coop snaps his fingers and recognizes the name as the same place where King Arthur was buried.
Now, as an interesting fact here, when Mr. C pays Audrey Horne a visit, it outright echoes the original Sleeping Beauty which involved the characters Zellandine and Troylus. Instead of a kiss, the hero had sex with the sleeping heroine and that resulted in her pregnancy, which she slept during. She gave birth while she was still asleep and it was only her son, whom sucked on her finger, that led to her awakening. The son's name was BENuic. Yeah, that's not the same as Richard, but that might have been too repetitive. Ben Horne is played by a Richard, however. Kind of like how Jack was played by a Billy. But getting back to King Arthur, the son of the original sleeping beauty grew up to be an ancestor of Sir Lancelot, King Arthur's illustrious knight. And besides that, you want to know whom urged Troylus to sleep with the sleeping Zellandine? Venus. The same statue which haunts the Red Room.
- The Log Lady soon appears with a jar of oil her husband brought back, shortly before he died, and said, "This oil is an opening to a gateway." Cooper looks excited as he opens it, saying "Intriguing, isn't it?" Annie still seems somewhat of an after thought to him. Harry and he smell the oil and recognize the scorched engine oil smell from what Jacoby told them.
- Poor Ronette, whom was forgotten until now, enters the conference room and Dale asks her if she recognizes the smell, scaring her terribly in the process. She whimpers that she smelled it the night Laura died.
We theorized that Ronette here is actually the real Laura, and that Cooper masks her real killer, so this moment is secretly very interesting, just like how Cooper purposely frightens her, just as Windom enjoys doing to people.
We've also theorized that when BOB was particularly angry/murderous and was wearing out his host, it created this same smell. What's interesting though is that both Dougie and Mr. C seem to flat out barf this oil up at the threat of returning to the Red Room. The Red Room is technically home for them. So going home has the same effect of them, even though Dougie isn't even possessed by BOB!
- Windom takes Annie to Glastonbury Grove. He seems even more off of his rocker than usual and Lynch's portrayal of him is different than the script. He seems to indicate that Cooper won't be coming for Annie. In the script, it's outright stated that it's because Windom lies and says he killed Dale, in an attempt to frighten Annie. Here, Lynch leaves it more vague, leaving it possible that Windom believes that, should Dale come, it will be for another reason, not Annie herself. Actually, Windom doesn't seem to want to scare Annie. She just sort of becomes scared and goes into a trance when he pulls her into the circle of sycamores, which are either very young or very sick or both (just like Billy's inner perpetually juvenile self).
Windom even states, "You'll not run from me now, not in this circle of trees. You'll come with me," but why, how? What about that has made her under his control? Is it because she's a woman? Is that why Diane doesn't go near it in Part 18? Is it linked to Audrey's fear of her father and child?
- Windom also quotes to her from an old religious song, "I tell you, they have not died. Their hands clasp, yours and mine."
We argue that to Billy his dead have not died either. He keeps them locked away or disguised safely inside of his dream.
- The Red Room curtains appear and Windom leads Annie into the Red Room.
- Norma, Ed, Nadine, Mike and Will Hayward are gathered at The Hurley House. Nadine seems zoned out and hurt from the sandbag. Mike looks also injured, and will claim a tree hurt him. That sounds more like what happened to Bobby with the log...and Bobby looks fine. Was there a mixup? Another odd thing is that Norma doesn't look concerned at all that her baby sister has been abducted by a homicidal maniac. Probably because that really wasn't her sister at all, but something Billy wedged in to suit the dreamer's need.
- Mike is saying how much he realized Nadine meant to him when she was wounded and that now he knows he loves her and would do anything for her.
This could echo Billy's own feelings for his mother. He suffered doubts about that, because of what she had done to him, but when the Dutchman's caught on fire, and he lost her, probably even hearing her screams, he understood that he did love her, even if it is something he is still running away from facing.
- Nadine snaps out of it then. She remembers her age, reacts to Mike with disgust and horror, Norma with sadness, confusion over where her drape runners are and desperation with Ed, wanting him to help explain it all.
This can work on different levels. It could be what Billy's mother would have felt, if she'd been in her own right frame of mind. That she would have looked at her son as only her son, a much younger boy, and been horrified at any thought of sexualizing him. It can also foreshadow, what Cooper is going to experience in the Lodge as well, a sort of awakening to the truth.
Nadine pointing out her drape runners could instantly recall the drapes in the Red Room. We've already wondered if they were partly symbolic of a certain part of a woman's anatomy and how it relates to motherhood, something that will echo in the Cooper sequences too.
- Mike stands up and apologizes, saying, "I'm sorry, Ed. I think I let things get a little out of hand."
We have hands being referenced again and a man named Mike seeming to take accountability for his mistakes. This kind of reminds us of the other MIKE. In The Return, Mike will seem to have become responsible as well, owning a car dealership and chastising Steven when he comes in for what he sees as his own irresponsibility. That that deals with cars is interesting with the already established theme of vehicles. However, Mike in The Return, also comes across as unnecessarily harsh with Steven and has a cluttered office, indicating some faults of his own. We still see MIKE as being representative of Billy's uncle, whom could probably be viewed as the born again and helpful MIKE or the harsh and demanding Mike, depending on however Billy was feeling that day.
- At the Haywards, a fire burns in the fireplace - remember, besides the Great Northern and One-Eyed Jack's the Hayward place hosted the most fires - and Donna is preparing to leave, as Eileen and Ben try to make her stay. Ben says it wasn't her parents fault, it was his. Donna counters that she's unsure who her parents are anymore.
Shades of Billy.
- Ben says "I only wanted to do good. I wanted to be good. And it felt so good to tell the truth after all these years."
Okay, so apparently Ben placed his own needs before the welfare of the Haywards, calling it good when it was just another form of being self centered, just like when he pushed Audrey into the Miss Twin Peaks contest. It's just like Will said, goodness in Ben Horne was a time bomb. Which brings us to how, when a secret has been revealed, they often say that the person dropped a bomb or bombshell. That is what Ben has done in a way, and it involves his having fathered a child with a woman he shouldn't have been with. Now isn't that what we almost see in direct relation with Trinity? A bomb goes off and there is a birth?
The real bomb that was dropped was that Billy was fathered by his grandfather. This truth was destructive when it happened (Billy's creation) and the ramifications of it long reaching, like the effect of a nuclear bomb. In fact, it hurt others in the future even, because the badly damaged Billy refused to accept or acknowledge certain truths stemming from that and instead forced others to feel his pain.
- Will walks in now, and angrily demands that Ben get out of his house, something the man he is named for, William Hastings, wishes he could have done with the man whom both began and wrecked his life too.
- Coincidentally, Ben asks, "Will, can you forgive me for what I have done to you?"
Billy will not forgive his father.
- Now Sylvia Horne seemingly pops out of nowhere. We haven't seen her since the first season. She asks Ben, "What are you trying to do to this family?"
And just when we're thinking, maybe she went to see Audrey at Miss Twin Peaks, and was waiting in the car for Ben, her husband says, "Sylvia, I told you to stay home," indicating that none of those theories are true.
Why is she here? She isn't in the script...but Lynch wanted her for some reason and then purposely has dialogue that proves she in fact came out of nowhere. We mean, Ben could have easily said, "Sylvia, I told you to wait in the car." Instead, he invokes the word home and says that is where she should be.
We theorize that, for Lynch, with this whole thing having secretly revolved around the horrible secret that Ben and Audrey are Billy's parents he wanted/needed Audrey's mother to be present somehow to have both of her parents present as well. Her own words here can even be about their own family, not the Haywards "What are you trying to do to this family?"
- Donna desperately cries that Will is her daddy, leading to a violent confrontation between Will and Ben, the former of whom seems to grab the latter and push him into the fireplace, where he cracks his head and falls to the floor as cries of horror ring out through the house.
Now, in the script, Ben was supposed to hit his head on the coffee table. Lynch changed it to a fireplace, one with a fire burning inside of it.
This directly correlates to the belief that this is all related to BOB and Billy. We just had the only Bill in the OG push Ben violently towards the fire, endangering his life. BOB, we have reasoned is really a version of Billy's father, Ben, a creation that haunts and takes over him sometime.
We also have Ben's last scene now, until The Return, involve him having received a head injury while his face is covered in blood, that directly mirrors, excuse the pun, Mr. C's own last scene, where he sustained the same sort of injury, his face covered in blood, while he has the reflection of BOB. Cooper/Mr. C being Billy's favored avatar, we say, like father like son once again.
- Seeing what he has done, Will falls to his knees on the floor, letting out a violent scream of pain/rage, that isn't too far off from BOB's. He then sits in front of the fire, holding his head in his hands. We will often see William "Billy" Hayward doing exactly the same thing in his few scenes in The Return, drawing a link between both characters, besides from just their names. Ben Horne will also be seen holding his head in similar fashion following a phone call from Sylvia, regarding Richard, one that leads him to betray his better impulses and ask Beverly out.
- Andrew sneaks to the cake saver and discovers that the key is just like one he has from the Twin Peaks Savings and Loan. He switches the key, and Pete catches him, expressing disappointment.
Here we have the key that will help lead to Audrey's conception of Richard. We also have Andrew substituting it to prevent Catherine from finding out. Billy does this several times in his dream, substituting something with another, like his brunette victims for blondes. However, we suspect Billy is doing it more or less to keep himself from finding out.
- Harry and Cooper go to Ghostwood. Shortly before reaching Glastonbury Grove, on foot, Cooper stops by a group of trees, seems to meditate, and then tells Harry he has to go alone, much to Harry's confusion and dismay. What's odd is how, when Cooper tells him this, he sounds more like Mr. C than the Coop we know. Why was he stopping? Gathering strength, insight? Inviting BOB in?
What's also fascinating is how Lynch amplifies the sound of frogs on the soundtrack at this point. That easily recalls the frogmoth to mind. That we're also in Ghostwood at this time, is great, since we're suggesting that Ghostwood symbolizes Audrey and the sequence of the frogmoth entering the New Mexico Girl is directly related to Audrey's conception of Richard. Shortly, we will also see Audrey inside of a Bank, leading up to her pregnancy, as in Teresa Banks. The grandson (Billy) was seen hanging around her homes, and to have once been jumping around with the frogmoth mask on while she was in the vicinity. The frogs now amplified and croaking in Ghostwood seems highly connected to a depiction of Audrey being pregant with the grandson/Billy.
- A little while later, Coop hears an owl hooting to go along with the frogs croaking, and finds one looking down at him.
Owls were linked to Lodge spirits, and we see these as both being representations of the Hornes/Billy's family.
- Cooper soon finds the sycamores and the oil pool, which is once again called, "An opening to a gateway." Following the footprints, the curtains appear and Dale enters, without any of the trance business Annie faced. Hmmm...The rational Harry, whom has been watching is shocked.
Okay...we're still suggesting that the circle of trees is highly symbolic of female anatomy - the red curtains, the hole like gateway, the trees - and we still suggest this all secretly has to do with Billy's birth. Remember too, the story of Adonis' birth, how his mother gave birth to him, as a tree, following the incestuous relationship she had with their mutual father. That Cooper is entering it and will find himself again, or that darker part of himself that he's been denying, plus the hints he killed Laura, only strengthens the belief that this is all about one man's conception and birth and the monster he became partly because of it.
- Cooper enters the gateway and BAM! we discover it's the place of his dream from the end of the second episode. We see another Venus at the end of this hall, one without her arms.
We believe that the Venus statues are highly symbolic of Audrey Horne as well. As already mentioned, in the script, she was referred to a Botticelli-like beauty. In the halls of One-Eyed Jack's, as seen when Dale went to rescue Audrey, Titian's "Venus with a Mirror" was seen which was inspired by the Venus statue seen in the main room of the Red Room. Audrey was seen holding a mirror in her last scene, just as her first echoed the color scheme of the Red Room's floor. Venus also directly cursed Adonis' mother to fall in love with her own father, making her somewhat the creator of the love of her life: Adonis. She also had Troylus sleep with the sleeping Zellandine, which led to her pregnancy, which is what occurs between Audrey and Mr. C.
So we also find a deeper meaning to the exact position of Venus' arms in the Red Room, especially in regard to its connection to MIKE having cut his own off. We suggest the Venus statue not having arms either betrays her vulnerability (that Billy's mother was defenseless against her father's abuse) or that he envisions her this way to deny/prevent his own abuse by her. These statues appear in the hallways leading into the Red Room. Likewise, the Venus in the main room possesses arms she uses to shield and cover herself, which might show Billy's desire to protect his mother.
- As Cooper enters the main room, the room goes dark and the light flashing associated with BOB begins, which is unsettling.
Jimmy Scott appears singing The Sycamore Trees song, the lyrics of which are:
"Under the sycamore tree
And I'll see you
And you'll see me
And I'll see you in the branches
That blew in the breeze
I'll see you in the trees
I'll see you in the trees
Under the sycamore tree"
An instrumental of this plays when BOB takes Leland to Red Room in FWWM.
Now, can the lyrics specifically involve Cooper meeting his doppleganger, or, in a way, his true self?
Suddenly the Arm appears, dancing across the floor to the chair where Dale dreamt he was sitting. He turns and looks at Cooper as Jimmy continues to sing, and Cooper stands there with a strange look on his face, the lights still flashing. Eventually Jimmy disappears but Dale still stands there, BOB's light flashing all around and lighting up his face, still wearing the odd expression.
We believe that this is strongly hinting that Cooper is BOB.
- Outside, as the frogs are still heard croaking, Andy approaches the grove and Harry calls him over.
- Next, it's daylight and we see some shots of the forest, but even stranger, we see the bridge that Ronette was crossing over, the same event that led to Agent Cooper coming to Twin Peaks.
Why is that being centered on now? Because it is extremely important, this all dealing with Dale and his coming to Twin Peaks, just as it is dealing with Billy having been conceived and born. Remember too, that we theorize that Ronette was the true Laura, the girl that Billy really killed. That was the event that led to his creating Laura and Twin Peaks. It is all entwined inside of his mind.
- Outside of the Lodge, at Glastonbury Grove, Harry and Andy sit on a fallen tree. Harry comments it's been 10 hours since Coop went in. Andy proceeds to ask Harry if he'd like several items: a thermos of coffee, a plate special, dessert.
Harry replies yes to all of them.
Except for when Andy asks if he wants pie. Then Harry stares at the oil pool as Andy repeats his name a few times.
Okay, a few episodes back, Margaret went on about pies and we drew the connection between them and, once again, their connection to a certain part of the female anatomy. We're going to draw that again here, and how we believe much of this has all been circling around the subject of Billy's birth. Pies are circular, a constant theme throughout Twin Peaks. The pool of oil that Harry is staring at is circular too. And now, as he stares at it, we see a tree reflected in its darkness. Trees have been connected to people in the series. They are also phallic symbols. So we have either an image of birth or conception being seen, but one linked with a darkness, the oil of BOB generally not connected with anything good. So that links back to Billy...and it links to Cooper and his association with pies, Harry now rethinking if he wants any. It falls back to when Harry was unnerved back at the station when Dale uttered "Fire Walk With Me."
Something about Cooper, that oil pool and pies is disturbing Harry. And this is at Glastonbury Grove, after he saw the red curtains, which are often reflected in the oil pool too, and can also link to birthing imagery. We theorize that Harry senses this deals with conception and birth, but not in any good way.
- Maybe to go along with this all, we now go to the Twin Peaks Savings and Loans, specifically an older woman lying asleep at the New Accounts desk, with a file cabinet behind her showing the date 1985.
New Accounts could certainly go along with the idea of birthing and creation. We've also already speculated that the old woman sleeping, and the date 1985, might indicate that Billy lost his grandmother in 1985, when he was 12. That corresponds with the age Laura was when she says BOB started "having" her. It also goes with the year of Cooper/Caroline/Windom in Pittsburgh, when Caroline died, something BOB intimately was acquainted with. We theorize that this was around when Billy began to maybe flirt with the idea of BOB. Perhaps creating him to deal with the horrors of his existence. After having lived in the room above the Convenience Store, with his grandmother, the place where his father was raised, we speculate he might have learned a bit more about his father and used that to inform the concept/idea of BOB. It's a theory but one which goes along nicely with what we see here and the belief that it was preceded by Harry's own discomfort at birth related imagery.
- Soon Audrey walks in, talking to an employee of the bank, called Dell Mibbler, a man whom is very elderly and slow, just like the waiter. She chains herself to the vault doors, in protest of Ghostwood development, and demands that the paper be informed.
Now, the bank vault doors, like most vault doors, are circular, due to them offering better security that way. Audrey framing herself in the middle of one, returns to the imagery of the previous sequence at Glastonbury Grove, and yet adds the direct presentation that she has been chained. Speaking of Greek mythology, here Audrey even looks like Perseus' (the man who killed his father and whose conception was also depicted on the walls of One-Eyed Jack's) love Adromeda chained to the rocks as a sacrifice to the sea monster (more phallic imagery there).
The rape of Billy's mother and his birth is thus presented as a sacrifice involving money, still hearkening to the thread woven through that the son holds some sort of belief and resentment over the perception that he believes his mother was chained to the wealth and comfort her father provided for them. This can even link to the picture, Danae, seen at One-Eyed Jack's, wherein Perseus is conceived in the depiction of gold raining down on Danae and her maid.
Before her conception with the frogmoth, the New Mexico girl found a penny, as well, linking back to this general theme.
- Inexplicably, Audrey asks Dell for a glass of water, after having chained herself. Why didn't she bring water? Why not take some before? Why is she asking for water now? Does it betray her lack of foresight?
What it does do is link this sequence once again to the New Mexico Girl and her being impregnated by the frogmoth. For wasn't it during a Broadcast where the woodsman repeated, "This is the water and this is the well, drink full and descend," that the girl became unconscious and easy prey for the frogmoth, just as Audrey becomes easy prey for Mr. C?
Mibbler is seen giving her the water, which Audrey drinks.
- Soon Andrew and Pete show up, and Dell expresses shock, having been to the funeral. "But the funeral. And all of the flowers, and the choir boys," he exclaims.
Billy similarly brings people back from the dead.
- Dell informs them that there is going to be a problem, meaning Audrey. Pete and she greet one another warmly and she tells Andrew that she's performing an act of civil disobedience. Andrew sees no problem and Audrey let's them into the vault.
Isn't that not what Audrey's supposed to do? She's trying to disrupt the business from going on as usual, instead she's turned herself into an unwanted decoration.
- Anyway, Audrey reminds Dell to phone the Gazette and then says to contact the sheriff...and to ask for Agent Cooper. So Cooper's been included to this scene, which we believe once again is swirling around his/Billy's conception/birth.
- While Pete and Andrew are led to the box and about to open it, a phone rings in the bank and Audrey looks on as a guard answers it and cries happily, "A boy? It's a boy! It's a boy, it's a boy."
This bit is not scripted. This bit involves a phone ringing in a bank and the announcement that a boy is about to be born...right before a bomb goes off, leading to Audrey giving birth to a boy, which is in perfect balance with the Trinity bomb going off and leading to the birth of BOB and the frogmoth!
Can you get a better piece of the puzzle for this theory? Equal, yes, but better is debatable. Lynch appears to know exactly what he was doing.
- And so the safety deposit box that fits Eckhardt's key is 14761 which equals to 19 on the numerology path and then to 10...1. The number of completion.
And as if echoing that sentiment, as they open it Andrew says, "We've come to the end of a long road, Pete. And here we are."
That is very fitting. This has all been about Billy, and how he has worked down his own long road towards the telling of the tale of his creation, and now this is leading to it again, as well as his rebirth into a monster.
There are lines from T.S. Eliot's Little Gidding which help sum it up perfectly.
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
That can be found in Eliot's Four Quartets, a book which is seen in Audrey and Charlie's house, resting on the fireplace, a fire blazing inside it, during Audrey's first scene in The Return.
Interesting to note here another poem found in the book, one called Burnt Norton, which contains the lines, "Time present and time past, Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past."
Perhaps everything exists all at once inside of Billy's dream then, his beginning and down fall happening all at once.
- The deposit door opens and there Andrew and Pete find the bomb left for them by Thomas, the bank explodes and Lynch gets a shot of poor Dell's glasses falling on a tree as money rains down...which once again echoes the painting by Titian of Perseus' conception.
- We go to the Double R next and find Garland and Betty sitting all lovey and dovey in a booth. Did Briggs ever save Shelly? He didn't need to, of course, but he should have saved Leo, at least instead of making out with his wife in a restaurant.
- In the same place, Bobby proposes to Shelly, whom reminds him she's still wearing Leo's ring, which actually gives weight to the theory that one of the meanings for the Owl Cave ring, within the dream narrative Billy had worked out, is that it "marries" the wearer to MIKE, thus preventing them from being possessed by BOB.
- They both mimic dogs barking, which is reminiscent of what Bobby and Mike did to James while they were all imprisoned.
- Next moment, Heidi comes in and we practically repeat her scene from the Pilot, where a joke is made about jumpstarting her old man. Once again, we have the theme of time loops, repeats and simultaneous time playing out.
- Bobby tells Shelly that Leo's probably up in the woods having the time of his life, which he is doing nothing of the sort, still keeping the string in his mouth to hold the spiders up.
- Now Jacoby comes in with Sarah Palmer, whom had been about as forgotten as Ronette until this episode. Jacoby wears a cape and has a tie with a key pattern. Capes are often worn by magicians, the Magician in Mulholland Drive gave the key, presumably, to Betty and Rita. The Magician holds the key.
- Sarah apparently knew that the Major would be there and has a message for him. In a distorted voice she says, "I'm in the Black Lodge with Dale Cooper."
There's been much speculation about this one for years. Is it Windom, Judy? Who is talking through Sarah? We're not actually sure. Here's a possibility though, that isn't discussed much. In one possible path, we will reason for The Return that Sarah isn't possessed by the big bad spirit Experiment/Judy(Billy's mom) but by the little bad (at least to Billy) spirit of Experiment Model/Judy, as in her daughter Laura. Billy/Cooper's opinion of Laura tainted by her whisper, he exiled her from the Red Room, we theorize, turning her into the dark and vengeful Laura whom is out for blood and possessing her mother, Sarah. The real world equivalent of this would be the victim of Billy's first victim/American Girl becoming aware that Billy really murdered her daughter and coming after him for justice. However, here, at this time, Sarah would be a vulnerable host for the good Laura. This could be why Billy is imagining her possessed by this Laura and believing that she would be trying to enlist Brigg's help in saving Cooper.
In any case, Briggs seems to get the message, even if we don't.
- We then get a shot of the Red Room hallway, minus any Venus statue, and hear a distorted voice saying "I'm waiting for you." Is that the same voice as before? It might be...it might not be. We don't know for sure. It would make logical sense if it was though, this being part of the message for Briggs. Otherwise we're not sure who is waiting for whom.
- As we return to the Red Room, now is as good a time as any to mention some significant differences between what was scripted and what ended up being filmed. Foremost, we have to comment that when Cooper first entered the Black Lodge in the original script he found himself in a shabby motel with a handicapped clerk whom called it "Home". Cooper was supposed to turn into a 10 year old boy, which he flips in and out of. Soon the clerk transforms into an old man Cooper recognizes as his father, although the man doesn't seem to recognize him, listing off the motel amenities instead. When Cooper practically begs for his help, then his father gives him a key.
Okay so this is very telling in its own omitted way. Cooper turns into a small boy...ahem the grandson. His home appears to be a shabby motel...double ahem the Dutchman/Red City Motel. His father works there...triple ahem, Ben Horne. We doubt that Frost intended this, but we believe that Lynch knew what it meant to him and...it meant he couldn't show any of it. Not with raising too many questions and harming his mystery. Especially to show Cooper's father. Although, Mark Frost probably wouldn't have realized it, David would have known it would be Benjamin Horne. He couldn't get around that. So it was easier to show a place he already knew partly represented "Home" to Billy/The Dreamer: The Red Room. Later, for FWWM, Lynch then did include Frost's ideas, but in a way that still preserved the mystery. Afterall, to David Lynch, if the real mystery to Twin Peaks was answered, the dream would literally be over. But he did respect his partner's ideas, and eventually got around to them when he introduced the Red Diamond City Motel and had the grandson haunting it, which, in a way IS Cooper's childhood self. It just happens to be Billy's too.
The bit with Cooper's father giving him the key also resurfaced for The Return, when Ben Horne give Frank Truman the key to give to Harry, but Cooper intercepts it along the way in Part 17. This helped maintain the theme of Harry, and extension Frank, being an imagined father figure to Billy. However, the key really came from Ben, his real father.
The next interesting fact about the original script for the finale is how Cooper was to find himself then suddenly at the Great Northern, a dark ominous version done in black and white with a checkerboard floor.
That was to be where Dale encountered his doppleganger.
Finally after some discussion with Windom over their respective quests for enlightenment, Cooper found himself in the Red Room.
Which is a good place to get back to now in the filmed version.
- Cooper and the Arm sit in the chairs they did during Cooper's dream.
The Arm appears to be glaring at Dale. He tells him, "When you see me again, it won't be me," then he stands up and kicks himself. Suddenly he seems all happy.
A thought we always have here is that the Arm knows that this present Coop is going to tell Laura in the dream from the past to not take the ring he is offering her, and is upset over that...at the same time, it also hasn't happened yet. So, this is why we can't help but feel that he stands up and kicks himself, and says when Dale sees him again it won't be him: It was his blissfully ignorant self he was referring to, not his doppleganger.
- We should mention now how everyone speaks Lodgespeak, even Windom and Annie, other than Dale Cooper, possibly because he is the dreamer/Billy.
- Now the Arm tells Dale this is the waiting room and offers him coffee. Interesting to note hospitals and maternity wards have waiting rooms for when mothers are about to give birth.
- The Arm tells him too that some of his friends are here.
- Laura appears and greets him, giving him a wink.
Now a wink is similar to the touching of the nose, as she did in the Red Room sequence in season one: they both indicate that the person knows some secret about the other. In this case, we suspect it is Laura indicating that she knows Cooper killed her and that he is really Billy.
- Laura snaps her fingers, as the grandson did, but in a completely different way, it being more of a flick. Does this indicate that she is different from him?
- She says she'll see him again in 25 years, and then gives a symbol with her hands after the declaration "Meanwhile."
This will be used at the start of The Return, and seems to indicate that Cooper will be trapped in the Red Room for 25 years. The symbol she gives appears similar to the sign language for tree, and given the circles of trees around the entrance to the Red Room, as well as the theme of trees and people in Twin Peaks, this seems likely. Generally, Red Room Laura seems to know all of Cooper's secrets. Did the ring he didn't want her to take help her become knowledgeable about them?
- Laura vanishes and the elderly waiter soon takes her place, making a whooping sound followed by a "Hallelujah" one the Arm repeats.
The Arm will make the same sound in FWWM. Is it supposed to sound like a Native American war cry, an owl, a fan, wings? We're still not sure. But any of them would fit.
- The waiter stands and moves towards Cooper to offer him coffee, repeating the word over and over again. Suddenly, he's the Giant, whom goes and sits down in the same spot as the waiter, informing Dale that he and the waiter are, "One and the same."
- The Giant disappears now, as Dale turns his coffee cup around and the Arm runs his hands together in the same way he did in Dale's dream, the ringing sound heard again.
The hand rubbing gives the appearance that the arm is checking something or waiting in anticipation.
- Cooper goes to drink the coffee, which frankly resembles the oil pool outside the Lodge now, what with the white rin of the glass. only to find it solid, which seems to please the arm. However, it immediately becomes weak and spills out in the next moment and the Arm looks somewhat shocked and disappointed as he turns to where BOB is seen standing at the end of FWWM. As the Arm says "Wow BOB wow," almost in congratulations, the coffee suddenly becomes the oil that represents a gateway.
We theorize the coffee symbolizes the character of Cooper/Billy, what the Giant ultimately discovered while helping him try to solve Laura's murder and prevent Maddie's death. He seemed strong, unopened to evil, but soon proved to be weak when he arrested Ben and not Leland. Now he proves vulnerable to being BOB's next vehicle, a gateway for BOB to exit from.
Looked at through another lens, Cooper arrested Ben, which we theorized showed a weakness in his character. It also might betray how Billy is quick to blame his father for his actions instead of taking accountability for them himself. For whatever reason, it betrayed the fact that when the time came Billy was destined to be overpowered by his darkness, and his goodness too weak to overpower it, illustrated by Dale falling to his own shadow self.
- With the oil and the Arms words "Fire Walk With Me," which we believe is either an invitation to BOB or represents the act of being possessed/controlled by him, we see a flash of fire and hear a scream, before the room goes dark again, the flashing BOB light returns and Dale is sitting there alone.
We believe this indicates that Dale is soon to fall, his darkness being set free with BOB as his partner. This also represents how Billy is going to give in to the evil within him and turn fully into a serial killer. The flash of fire, and the woman screaming is most likely Laura, and the fact that he killed her, but could also be the fire that Billy started at the Red Diamond City Motel that killed his mother, the scream secretly being hers instead, but this buried even deeper in his subconscious.
- Cooper leaves the room and enters a room that looks exactly the same. When he backtracks, it's to find the Arm back and sitting in the chair again, pointing at him and saying, almost like an accusation, "Wrong way."
This we theorize is the Arm (Billy's uncle?) basically telling him that he's going about this (navigating his path) the wrong way, making the wrong choices and making poor decisions, like not facing himself or acknowledging his mistakes or darkness. He's destined to fail because he's depending on himself without acknowledging himself, meaning he is at war with himself rather than at peace. In truth, just as the coffee revealed, Dale Cooper failed before he took one step into the Red Room, just as the Giant probably found out while trying to help him.
- Going to another room, Cooper encounters an almost hysterical doppleganger of the Arm, whom announces "Another friend," before going behind the chairs and hiding behind them. The friend in question is Maddie's doppleganger, whom warns "Watch out for my cousin." Cooper turns, looks back and leaves and Maddie's dopple vanishes.
Is the Dopple frightened of Maddie's dopple? Or is the Arm's dopple more scared of Cooper? Does it fall in line with the version of it in The Return also seemingly being angry at him? And does Maddie's dopple seem to know that Laura's dopple won't like Dale? Why would she think he should watch out for her cousin? Are all of the dopplegangers aware of what Cooper is, being familiar with his own doppleganger?
- Cooper goes to the next room and finds it completely empty, except when he moves forward, the Arm's dopple is dancing oddly by his legs. "Doppleganger," it says.
- Cooper looks up to find Laura's doppleganger, giving the symbol that Laura was last seen giving. Maddie was right to warn Dale, for Laura is looking at him in pure, angry hatred. "Meanwhile," she says before screaming bloody murder at him, as the room darkens and flashes again. The shot goes farther back, and we see that she is on a red chair that consists of two joined together, one facing Coop, the other not. Laura's dopple, still screaming, climbs over to the one not facing Dale and then makes a frantic run at the frightened Cooper, taking hold of her skirt, and looking like she's in attack/defense mode. An inverted shot of Windom is shown as Dale turns around in fear and runs away, right out of the room and down the hall and into the next. Meanwhile, Laura's dopple keeps screaming.
Okay. So this is what Laura Palmer has repressed/hidden. This is indicated by the chair she climbs backwards over, one side facing, the other one not. And what has been hidden you ask? That she is terrified and hates Dale Cooper himself! Meanwhile, Coop, warned not to show fear inside of the Lodge, directly gives in to his terror. Why? Yes, Laura Dopple was screaming, but she was not touching him at all, she seemed more worried he would hurt her. Why was Dale frightened? He supposedly understood and pitied Laura, why the sudden about face? Because, we argue, it was the first sign that he had something horrible that he was hiding and it involved Laura herself! Remember too, that we found out in FWWM that Laura was screaming at Cooper in the woods. Why is Dopple Laura terrified of Dale? Because he killed her.
Why does Windom pop up laughing then? Because he is pleased at the indication that Cooper isn't as pure as he's been portrayed and that the truth is coming out. The shot of Windom itself is inverted. Remember how he was the one to discover that the Owl Cave symbol needed to be inverted to reveal the map. Remember too how a mirror reflection is flipped. It's along the same lines of the speculation that Billy substitutes his brunette victims in his dream with blondes to help hide the truth from himself. In an inverted photograph, dark becomes light. This is helped shown during the inverted Windom too. This inverted Windom is quite happy that the Good Dale is the one whom is secretly evil.
- Cooper enters another room only to find that he is badly bleeding. This will soon be revealed as the wound he received in Pittsburgh, and yet it is also the same place Leland has his wound at the end of FWWM. The fact that Dale also is shown having it directly AFTER encountering Laura's doppleganger leaves us wondering if his fear over her wounded him in any way. We reason, afterall, that he killed her and is trying to deny that fact, creating a subsequent terror. If that wound was shown on Leland, at the end of FWWM, as a sign of his guilt in having written "Fire Walk With Me" at the murder site, and remember how trying to identify and match the blood type to it was always important, than why is Cooper shown having the wound? We believe it's to indicate that Dale was the one whom actually wrote the note, the same reason why he might have said it back at the station. With this in mind, the end of FWWM, when BOB heals Leland's wound, might in fact be a way of showing BOB ERASING the wound instead and how it never truly belonged to the man. Why else show Cooper receiving the wound directly following his terror at seeing the vengeful Laura Dopple?
- A wounded Coop goes back to the hallway, still bleeding, only to go into a room and see himself lying, wounded, on the floor next to the similarly bloody and dead Caroline. Caroline switches to Annie, wearing the same dress and having the same wound. She tries to sit up, and looks around in an unnerving way, as Cooper calls out her name. Soon the flashing lights return and the figures on the floor are gone.
This is obviously a flashback to Pittsburgh, but one melding with current events and revealing that Cooper is mixing up Caroline and Annie. This is a big clue that Billy is guilty of the same thing, unable to differentiate women from the love of his life: his mother. And similarly to how she died, the other women he targets die too.
- Back in another room, Cooper finds Annie in her Miss Twin Peaks dress and normal eyes, indicating she's not a doppleganger. She speaks Lodgespeak, as she walks towards him, telling him that she saw the face of the man who killed her and that it was her husband. Dale is confused and calls her Annie, only for the woman to ask, "Who's Annie?" Suddenly it's Caroline's Dopple saying "It's me." Suddenly it's back to normal Annie, in Caroline's dress, telling Dale that he must be mistaken and that she's alive, as she touches his face.
Hammering home again, Dale's confusion between the love of his life and his latest romance, and clearly betraying the same confusion that Billy faces when he becomes attracted to a woman, believing she is his mother, brought back to life.
- Now the Laura Dopple is back, once again screaming bloody murder at Dale Cooper.
This is bonechilling when we realize that the last topic of discussion had just been Caroline seeing the face of the man who killer her and it was her husband. It goes straight back to Harold Smith words that the ultimate secret was knowing who killed you. Loudly, but vaguely, Laura's hidden self is trying to convey to us, and to Dale, that she also saw the face of the man who killed her...and it was him. Just as her true self, American Girl, saw his true self, Billy, before he murdered her. This also implies that Laura/American Girl were killed because Coop/Billy can't separate the women he is attracted to from the woman he first loved, just as Caroline and Annie are interchangeable inside of his mind.
- Notice the weird gold and black pedestal the ring usually rests on in the background throughout this scene, and how it changes positions. What does this mean?
- Suddenly Windom is standing there instead. With the strange gold and black pedestal in the background, more off to his side, he shows Dale an unharmed Annie. When she disappears, another pedestal is in her place, beside the other. Are the pedestals representations of individuals? Is this when she received the ring?
- Windom says if Cooper gives him his soul he'll let Annie live and Cooper agrees, just the one pedestal seen between them now. Cooper falls to the floor, only for a burst of fire to be seen and the action immediacy reversed, screaming heard.
Hmmm...does the pedestal represent Billy? A mix of gold and black like the gateways to the respective Lodges? And why does Coop give his soul so fast? How can he trust Windom? And what would that mean for the rest of the world if he theorized Earle would use the power of the Lodge for bad? Is Dale, like Ben, putting his own desires first?
- Cooper watches in the now dark room, the lights flashing again, as BOB squats by a kneeling, screaming Windom Earle. BOB laughs at the other villain. BOB tells Earle to be quiet, which silences him, but doesn't stop the actual action. He then informs Cooper that Windom was wrong because he couldn't ask for his soul. He then takes his, which looks like fire shooting out from Earle, whom soon becomes dead. There is one of those pedestals behind them (does the fire go to it?) and it might be connected to Earle this time.
Now why did BOB save Cooper? And what does it mean that he couldn't ask for his soul? Was it Cooper's in particular he couldn't for or is asking for one wrong? In any case, BOB came to Dale's rescue. We reason, it is because Billy always had wanted or planned this in a way, and it basically represents a switch he is making: The Windom (daddy figure) and Good Dale for the BOB (daddy figure) and evil Dale. Billy's gone full out bad and he's discarding what no longer suits him, which includes anything he sees as weakness.
-Now this is where the filmed version differs from the scripted one. BOB was supposed to turn face then and suddenly try to take Coop's soul for himself. That was until the blinding light of Laura came and saved him. Now Lynch deviated from that idea drastically. In his finished finale Laura doesn't save Dale at all, nor try to. Instead we get Laura's doppleganger screaming at Dale.
What we do have is Dale calmly walking out of the room...and everything that follows.
- As soon as Dale leaves, while BOB remains by the dead Windom, we see a hunched over shadow of Dale's Dopple moving past the curtains. He comes through those curtains in the most violent, angry way possible and then goes and shares a hearty laugh with BOB before pursuing his good self.
Okay. This is the birth of the bad Dale...and it is the birth of Billy too, or the rebirth of him as pure evil. It could go both ways if future past is future present and this is all Billy ever was. We've theorized that the curtains represent the female body in a representation of their relationship to motherhood and the way that Mr. C exits them now pretty well proves that. It's clear that he's in full league with BOB too, which is disastrous and not a good indication for Dale himself, if this was what he was always hiding. This is the part of Billy that doesn't even exactly condemn his father for the evil he did. This part of Billy might envy it and wish to be a part of it.
- Cooper's just casually strolling down the hallway, when whom should he happen to meet? Why it's Leland's doppleganger, whom laughs at him before turning serious and outright denying what Dale claimed Laura had whispered to him. If you recall, Coop heard it as being, in non Lodgespeak mind you, "My father killed me." Well, now Leland says, "I did not kill anybody." He then moves forward, giving the impression that he's leaning towards Dale's left ear, the same one Laura whispered into. But Dale backs away, seeming intimidated.
That marks 3 times that Dale has been approached by voices from the grave, all of whom give a partial indication regarding Cooper and Laura.
This is Leland's hidden side...so why is he claiming he didn't kill anybody? That contradicts the fact that Leland always admitted to killing Jacques, at least...and, as he was dying, Leland said that he had killed Laura and Teresa...so what's this all about? Let's think about dopplegangers for a second, their nature...if a shadow self is what we repress, it is likely connected to a truth. People parade lies around to conceal truths they don't want known. So why is Leland's hidden self claiming not to have killed, after he had confessed to murder? It doesn't go with the claim by some that he wasn't taking responsibility either...what's being denied about Leland is that he was innocent of murder, it appears. And he seems to resent Dale for what he had stated earlier. Why? Because he knows that Cooper/Billy was the real murder and simply "imagined" the whole thing to deflect blame. If Leland had managed to whisper to Dale it probably would have been the same thing, more or less, that his daughter had whispered to him, something that indicated Dale Cooper's guilt. That is why, just like with Laura's Dopple, Dale's instinct is to get out of there. However, he makes the mistake of looking back, only to see the truth further hinted to him.
- When Dale looks back, he sees standing in Leland's dopple's shadow, so to speak, his own doppleganger. And this...this just like Laura's screaming doppleganger is enough to make Dale Cooper run. That is because it fully hints to Dale that it was him, not Leland, that murdered Laura.
- After Dale has left, Leland's dopple looks upset, until Cooper's comes to him and they share a laugh. Then, after Mr. C has left, Leland stands there as if patiently waiting.
We believe that Leland's doppleganger is looking forward to the downfall of the man whom framed him for his own daughter's murder. This glee would be the perfect thing that someone would most likely hide from themselves, the desire for revenge against the person whom hurt them...even if that involves gloating with the hidden aspect of that same guilty person.
- So now we see Dale full on running to get out of the Red Room, with his dark self in hot pursuit, going through several rooms in the process. It seems the thing besides Laura that terrifies him is himself...and he doesn't want to face it. Not at all. In a way, it is something you can even see happening in The Return. The big battle doesn't really include Dale defeating or even facing himself...not even Mr. C facing the good Dale. It would most likely mean his death, but a reconciliation, an understanding cannot even be reached. They do not truly face each other, other than Dale looking over his shoulder nervously. Even when the bad Dale catches the good one, it is from behind, the two never facing one another.
- As the bad Dale captures the good, falling into the curtains, the room darkens and the flashing light begins again. Now BOB's face (or his doppleganger, can't tell) smiles up close into the camera at us, or is he smiling at the dreamer?
- The curtains appear in Glastonbury Grove again and now Harry sees the forms of Annie and Cooper (really Mr. C) on the ground, Annie unresponsive and bloody and Mr. C opening his eyes a few times.
Now the last time we saw Annie she was fine. It has to be Mr. C/BOB whom hurt her. This could be further symbolism for Billy destroying or paralyzing the good in himself. We've previously argued that Annie was merely a reflection of Cooper: Billy's light side. It also serves as the imagery that he has killed again, just like he did with American Girl/Laura.
- Suddenly we see White Tail Falls, in that same clip that looked like they were actually splitting in two after Cooper gave Audrey the kiss off.
- Mr. C is lying in bed and starts to open his eyes. Will says "There he is," and we'll point out for the last time, for the original series, how he is our only major derivative of Bill here present and saying something important, because The Return will be filled with no shortage of Bills.
While we're here, and on that note, we'll once again say that (Teresa) Banks are filled with Bills too.
- Mr. C says he wasn't sleeping. What was he doing? Resting? Living outside of the dream, inside of another? Trying to act like he was meditating? Talking to BOB?
- He asks how Annie is, and Harry says she's gonna be just fine and at the hospital, but he and Will share a look like it's a lie.
- Mr. C then states that he needs to brush his teeth, and the men seem to humor him, even after he's repeated it, before going into the bathroom.
- Once inside of the bathroom, Mr. C seems to be going through with really brushing his teeth until he starts pouring the toothpaste, from the middle of the tube, into the sink, having no intention of really brushing his teeth. He seems to be getting great joy out of being messy, rebelling against Cooper's usual adherence to hygiene. He looks into his reflection and smashes his head into the mirror, and we see BOB's reflection at last. The sound alarms Harry and Will, whom start calling out to him. Meanwhile, Mr. C repeats his question of "How's Annie?" over and over again, it obviously having been an act or even a joke, just like we theorized Annie's character was. That was what she was. Honestly, this dark side of Dale set free gives that away, just as he does his secret loathing of doing such "perfect" things as brushing his teeth, something Sonny Jim, another representation of Billy, also does. Billy never cared about Annie and neither did Cooper, she was an ends to a means: a way to give Dale Cooper an excuse to go to the Lodge and finally let Billy become what all of his caged in rage and anger over what was done and happened to him, all of the repression and secrets, weakness and fear had made him into: a monster.
For that was what this series was all about. See, the question had always been WHO killed Laura Palmer but what nobody realized was the series was truly about exploring whom had killed her even more than Laura herself. For her killer had projected much of himself and his family on to her and then disguised himself as the detective helping to "solve" the case with his rare insight and gifts. But it was never meant to be solved...for Dale Cooper was the killer and for that to be revealed, even to himself, outside of insinuation and vague hints anyway, would end the story altogether. Twin Peaks existed to help him escape...to face what it was risked destroying it...just as surely as changing the act that started it would.
To answer the question of who killed Laura Palmer directly was to force the dreamer to end his dreaming.
But for now this would do. The clues had all been planted and in a way it is wonderful symmetry to have Ben, Audrey and even Cooper's fate all hanging in the balance, in one way or another, when that was the secret trinity at the heart of the story, the killer's parents and himself. It might not be the one everyone realized, or even accept if they did, but it was these three whom secretly threaded through the original series a disturbing hint about the true family whose house had become a tree of sores.
And it will be that family whom equally haunt The Return...
But first, in the middle, we get to see what happens when the dreamer tries to force the narrative onto his victim, and perhaps even regrets killing her, long before his 25 years are up...
Now we move on to the dream that is Laura's story. The dream called "Fire Walk With Me".
- With this, it is fitting that the Original Series' credits end with Laura's face in the Red Room coffee cup. The dream is set to return to her, and her own test, plus Laura was our gateway to Twin Peaks. Margaret told us that in her first intro: "The one leading to the many is Laura Palmer. Laura is the one."
People like to take her words as meaning that Laura is the dreamer or the main character of Twin Peaks, but what she is basically saying is that Laura is a door. Her reflection in the cup even hints at this very thing, since it resembles the pool of oil outside of the Lodge, which was called a gateway.
She was the door that took Billy and us to his dream of Twin Peaks.
But it was a door Billy went through split, divided, as this episode showed us. Maybe it wasn't even the moment Cooper turned down Audrey that he split, maybe from the moment he drove into town he wasn't whole. Probably, we suspect, this was because after killing American Girl, Billy tried to be too good to help shield himself and possibly fix things. It is the natural urge we all have after making a mistake or committing a sin, we try to be good to help balance it out and make amends. Only, over time, the urge weakens until we fall again, in Billy's case the fall being devastating to himself and to everyone around him. It is essentially what Jesus said about being purified of one demon, only to let several more in. So, for Twin Peaks, Billy's avatar came to us too perfect, as Audrey said.
And that is why, when Dale finally manages to "save" Laura and Billy's dream is reimagined, we find Coop/Richard as someone closer to Chet Desmond, able to be both kind and cruel at once. Like we all are.
Maybe this holds the key for David Lynch's reluctance to have Cooper be possessed by BOB and making it be only a part of him, his evil side. BOB was always Dale Cooper, or what belonged to him, but the good Dale should never be aware of that fact fully. For to face that would be to wake up again.
And it wasn't time to wake up.
There were still dreams to be had in the world of Twin Peaks.
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.
- For her last intro, the Log Lady specifically acknowledges that this is the end:
"And now, an ending. Where there was once one, there are now two. Or were there always two? What is a reflection? A chance to see two? When there are chances for reflections, there can always be two--or more. Only when we are everywhere will there be just one. It has been a pleasure speaking to you."
Is she referring to the first season finale or the ending to FWWM when she mentions there are now two endings? Laura's ending and now Dale's? That she says there might have always been two seems to indicate that it already happened, or was destined to.
Her mentioning there being a chance of there always being two seems to be about what we've been discussing here that there were always two sides to Dale/Billy, as shown by the split of Cooper in this episode. That's also hinted through the reflection line, which invokes BOB also and how this episode ends.
She then indicates that there might be even more than just two, given how many reflections there are. But reflections can also involve thinking about something. Whatever the case, we suspect the insinuation is that Billy has been everywhere throughout what we've seen, for these are his "reflections" about what has happened to him and the people in his life. So the whole world inside Billy's mind is made up of himself. He is everywhere inside of it and everyone.
The intro ends with her saying it has been a pleasure speaking to us. The camera zooms in on her eye, as she looks about, until she looks at us and we see white and hear static/hiss electricity, which kind of actually reminds us of the white that surrounds Audrey when she is transported away from the Roadhouse in Part 15 and is seen looking into a mirror at her own reflection. The kind of feedback is similar, if not exact too. The light is also the same behind Laura's face when she pulls it off in the Red Room. We can almost connect the electricity to the dreamer then, and how Cooper basically explained that that was all dreams were: electricity.
- Lucy and Andy are cheek to cheek at the sheriff station. Lucy keeps talking about the lights going on, and now knowing the end of Part 18, it's hard not to associate it with that.
- The part about hand signals not working in the dark was funny and true. And since it dealt with hands, it has to be pointed out.
- Andy declares to Lucy that if she had gone into labor in a dark elevator he would have helped deliver the baby "infront of God and everybody." This declaration melts Lucy's heart, leading to them mutually confessing their love.
Billy would have appreciated a father like Andy, whom, even if he isn't the baby's father, wants it and would do anything to keep it safe and let people know it was his. His grandfather not having wanted him, added to the abuse and the concealed fact that he was also his father, made Billy's life a hell where he probably wished he hadn't been born.
- Cooper is busy studying the petroglyph, while Harry has deputies in three counties looking for Earle...but not a lot of the regular Twin Peaks force it seems.
- Dale believes that the only chance they have of finding Windom lies in the Owl Cave map. He starts looking at it and says, "Giant, little man, fire, fire walk with me. Fire walk with me."
He's obviously connecting the picture of a tall figure beside a shorter one with the Giant and the Arm. The fire he connects with the words written at Laura's murder site...but it's the way that he says it the first time, almost wistfully, longingly which is strange. It's so creepy infact that Harry turns around to look at him, like he's more than a little disturbed too. And why shouldn't he be? Those words were sad by a psychotic madman or demon, depending on what you believe, and written in blood at a horrifying murder site. Why would Cooper say them?
Why? We believe it's because he is Billy, as well as the real murderer, and that that will also be hinted to him when he finally does find, Earle. Now though, a part of him might be nostalgically remembering the event on some subconscious level and wanting it more than to even locate Annie. We are reasoning, afterall, that this is Billy truly surrendering to his dark urges and that Cooper, the good Dale, partly aided that with his repression, weakness and probably even curiosity.
- When Pete comes in, claiming the Log Lady stole his truck and drove it into the woods, Cooper informs him that she didn't and she will be there in a minute. How did he know that precise time? He has inside information, being so closely connected to the dreamer afterall.
- Pete's comment does seem to spark something in Cooper's mind, though, and he realizes the woods must be what the map shows...in particular Ghostwood forest. Harry repeats Ghostwood.
Now those are the same woods that have been talked about throughout the series, particularly how Ben Horne began the process of threatening them for his own benefit. It's been a constant plot since the very same episode where Laura's body washed up on shore. It is Ghostwood we believe that symbolized Billy/Cooper's mother (Audrey) and whose desecration was equal to the abuse she suffered at her father's hands, an abuse that brought about Billy himself. So that Cooper, and even Harry, whom have really kept their distance from that whole Ghostwood Development plot are now singling it out and naming it by name seems incredibly important.
- Pete next bemoans the 12 rainbow trout he had in the bed, which reminds Harry of the 12 Sycamores in Glastonbury Grove.
We have to wonder, were any of these trout caught when Pete took Audrey fishing in the moonlight, up at Pearl Lakes, following her intimacy with Jack?
- Hawk recalls that that was where he found the bloody towel and diary pages.
We still point out that that is a long distance for Leland to have walked with a severed aorta. Just saying.
- Coop snaps his fingers and recognizes the name as the same place where King Arthur was buried.
Now, as an interesting fact here, when Mr. C pays Audrey Horne a visit, it outright echoes the original Sleeping Beauty which involved the characters Zellandine and Troylus. Instead of a kiss, the hero had sex with the sleeping heroine and that resulted in her pregnancy, which she slept during. She gave birth while she was still asleep and it was only her son, whom sucked on her finger, that led to her awakening. The son's name was BENuic. Yeah, that's not the same as Richard, but that might have been too repetitive. Ben Horne is played by a Richard, however. Kind of like how Jack was played by a Billy. But getting back to King Arthur, the son of the original sleeping beauty grew up to be an ancestor of Sir Lancelot, King Arthur's illustrious knight. And besides that, you want to know whom urged Troylus to sleep with the sleeping Zellandine? Venus. The same statue which haunts the Red Room.
- The Log Lady soon appears with a jar of oil her husband brought back, shortly before he died, and said, "This oil is an opening to a gateway." Cooper looks excited as he opens it, saying "Intriguing, isn't it?" Annie still seems somewhat of an after thought to him. Harry and he smell the oil and recognize the scorched engine oil smell from what Jacoby told them.
- Poor Ronette, whom was forgotten until now, enters the conference room and Dale asks her if she recognizes the smell, scaring her terribly in the process. She whimpers that she smelled it the night Laura died.
We theorized that Ronette here is actually the real Laura, and that Cooper masks her real killer, so this moment is secretly very interesting, just like how Cooper purposely frightens her, just as Windom enjoys doing to people.
We've also theorized that when BOB was particularly angry/murderous and was wearing out his host, it created this same smell. What's interesting though is that both Dougie and Mr. C seem to flat out barf this oil up at the threat of returning to the Red Room. The Red Room is technically home for them. So going home has the same effect of them, even though Dougie isn't even possessed by BOB!
- Windom takes Annie to Glastonbury Grove. He seems even more off of his rocker than usual and Lynch's portrayal of him is different than the script. He seems to indicate that Cooper won't be coming for Annie. In the script, it's outright stated that it's because Windom lies and says he killed Dale, in an attempt to frighten Annie. Here, Lynch leaves it more vague, leaving it possible that Windom believes that, should Dale come, it will be for another reason, not Annie herself. Actually, Windom doesn't seem to want to scare Annie. She just sort of becomes scared and goes into a trance when he pulls her into the circle of sycamores, which are either very young or very sick or both (just like Billy's inner perpetually juvenile self).
Windom even states, "You'll not run from me now, not in this circle of trees. You'll come with me," but why, how? What about that has made her under his control? Is it because she's a woman? Is that why Diane doesn't go near it in Part 18? Is it linked to Audrey's fear of her father and child?
- Windom also quotes to her from an old religious song, "I tell you, they have not died. Their hands clasp, yours and mine."
We argue that to Billy his dead have not died either. He keeps them locked away or disguised safely inside of his dream.
- The Red Room curtains appear and Windom leads Annie into the Red Room.
- Norma, Ed, Nadine, Mike and Will Hayward are gathered at The Hurley House. Nadine seems zoned out and hurt from the sandbag. Mike looks also injured, and will claim a tree hurt him. That sounds more like what happened to Bobby with the log...and Bobby looks fine. Was there a mixup? Another odd thing is that Norma doesn't look concerned at all that her baby sister has been abducted by a homicidal maniac. Probably because that really wasn't her sister at all, but something Billy wedged in to suit the dreamer's need.
- Mike is saying how much he realized Nadine meant to him when she was wounded and that now he knows he loves her and would do anything for her.
This could echo Billy's own feelings for his mother. He suffered doubts about that, because of what she had done to him, but when the Dutchman's caught on fire, and he lost her, probably even hearing her screams, he understood that he did love her, even if it is something he is still running away from facing.
- Nadine snaps out of it then. She remembers her age, reacts to Mike with disgust and horror, Norma with sadness, confusion over where her drape runners are and desperation with Ed, wanting him to help explain it all.
This can work on different levels. It could be what Billy's mother would have felt, if she'd been in her own right frame of mind. That she would have looked at her son as only her son, a much younger boy, and been horrified at any thought of sexualizing him. It can also foreshadow, what Cooper is going to experience in the Lodge as well, a sort of awakening to the truth.
Nadine pointing out her drape runners could instantly recall the drapes in the Red Room. We've already wondered if they were partly symbolic of a certain part of a woman's anatomy and how it relates to motherhood, something that will echo in the Cooper sequences too.
- Mike stands up and apologizes, saying, "I'm sorry, Ed. I think I let things get a little out of hand."
We have hands being referenced again and a man named Mike seeming to take accountability for his mistakes. This kind of reminds us of the other MIKE. In The Return, Mike will seem to have become responsible as well, owning a car dealership and chastising Steven when he comes in for what he sees as his own irresponsibility. That that deals with cars is interesting with the already established theme of vehicles. However, Mike in The Return, also comes across as unnecessarily harsh with Steven and has a cluttered office, indicating some faults of his own. We still see MIKE as being representative of Billy's uncle, whom could probably be viewed as the born again and helpful MIKE or the harsh and demanding Mike, depending on however Billy was feeling that day.
- At the Haywards, a fire burns in the fireplace - remember, besides the Great Northern and One-Eyed Jack's the Hayward place hosted the most fires - and Donna is preparing to leave, as Eileen and Ben try to make her stay. Ben says it wasn't her parents fault, it was his. Donna counters that she's unsure who her parents are anymore.
Shades of Billy.
- Ben says "I only wanted to do good. I wanted to be good. And it felt so good to tell the truth after all these years."
Okay, so apparently Ben placed his own needs before the welfare of the Haywards, calling it good when it was just another form of being self centered, just like when he pushed Audrey into the Miss Twin Peaks contest. It's just like Will said, goodness in Ben Horne was a time bomb. Which brings us to how, when a secret has been revealed, they often say that the person dropped a bomb or bombshell. That is what Ben has done in a way, and it involves his having fathered a child with a woman he shouldn't have been with. Now isn't that what we almost see in direct relation with Trinity? A bomb goes off and there is a birth?
The real bomb that was dropped was that Billy was fathered by his grandfather. This truth was destructive when it happened (Billy's creation) and the ramifications of it long reaching, like the effect of a nuclear bomb. In fact, it hurt others in the future even, because the badly damaged Billy refused to accept or acknowledge certain truths stemming from that and instead forced others to feel his pain.
- Will walks in now, and angrily demands that Ben get out of his house, something the man he is named for, William Hastings, wishes he could have done with the man whom both began and wrecked his life too.
- Coincidentally, Ben asks, "Will, can you forgive me for what I have done to you?"
Billy will not forgive his father.
- Now Sylvia Horne seemingly pops out of nowhere. We haven't seen her since the first season. She asks Ben, "What are you trying to do to this family?"
And just when we're thinking, maybe she went to see Audrey at Miss Twin Peaks, and was waiting in the car for Ben, her husband says, "Sylvia, I told you to stay home," indicating that none of those theories are true.
Why is she here? She isn't in the script...but Lynch wanted her for some reason and then purposely has dialogue that proves she in fact came out of nowhere. We mean, Ben could have easily said, "Sylvia, I told you to wait in the car." Instead, he invokes the word home and says that is where she should be.
We theorize that, for Lynch, with this whole thing having secretly revolved around the horrible secret that Ben and Audrey are Billy's parents he wanted/needed Audrey's mother to be present somehow to have both of her parents present as well. Her own words here can even be about their own family, not the Haywards "What are you trying to do to this family?"
- Donna desperately cries that Will is her daddy, leading to a violent confrontation between Will and Ben, the former of whom seems to grab the latter and push him into the fireplace, where he cracks his head and falls to the floor as cries of horror ring out through the house.
Now, in the script, Ben was supposed to hit his head on the coffee table. Lynch changed it to a fireplace, one with a fire burning inside of it.
This directly correlates to the belief that this is all related to BOB and Billy. We just had the only Bill in the OG push Ben violently towards the fire, endangering his life. BOB, we have reasoned is really a version of Billy's father, Ben, a creation that haunts and takes over him sometime.
We also have Ben's last scene now, until The Return, involve him having received a head injury while his face is covered in blood, that directly mirrors, excuse the pun, Mr. C's own last scene, where he sustained the same sort of injury, his face covered in blood, while he has the reflection of BOB. Cooper/Mr. C being Billy's favored avatar, we say, like father like son once again.
- Seeing what he has done, Will falls to his knees on the floor, letting out a violent scream of pain/rage, that isn't too far off from BOB's. He then sits in front of the fire, holding his head in his hands. We will often see William "Billy" Hayward doing exactly the same thing in his few scenes in The Return, drawing a link between both characters, besides from just their names. Ben Horne will also be seen holding his head in similar fashion following a phone call from Sylvia, regarding Richard, one that leads him to betray his better impulses and ask Beverly out.
- Andrew sneaks to the cake saver and discovers that the key is just like one he has from the Twin Peaks Savings and Loan. He switches the key, and Pete catches him, expressing disappointment.
Here we have the key that will help lead to Audrey's conception of Richard. We also have Andrew substituting it to prevent Catherine from finding out. Billy does this several times in his dream, substituting something with another, like his brunette victims for blondes. However, we suspect Billy is doing it more or less to keep himself from finding out.
- Harry and Cooper go to Ghostwood. Shortly before reaching Glastonbury Grove, on foot, Cooper stops by a group of trees, seems to meditate, and then tells Harry he has to go alone, much to Harry's confusion and dismay. What's odd is how, when Cooper tells him this, he sounds more like Mr. C than the Coop we know. Why was he stopping? Gathering strength, insight? Inviting BOB in?
What's also fascinating is how Lynch amplifies the sound of frogs on the soundtrack at this point. That easily recalls the frogmoth to mind. That we're also in Ghostwood at this time, is great, since we're suggesting that Ghostwood symbolizes Audrey and the sequence of the frogmoth entering the New Mexico Girl is directly related to Audrey's conception of Richard. Shortly, we will also see Audrey inside of a Bank, leading up to her pregnancy, as in Teresa Banks. The grandson (Billy) was seen hanging around her homes, and to have once been jumping around with the frogmoth mask on while she was in the vicinity. The frogs now amplified and croaking in Ghostwood seems highly connected to a depiction of Audrey being pregant with the grandson/Billy.
- A little while later, Coop hears an owl hooting to go along with the frogs croaking, and finds one looking down at him.
Owls were linked to Lodge spirits, and we see these as both being representations of the Hornes/Billy's family.
- Cooper soon finds the sycamores and the oil pool, which is once again called, "An opening to a gateway." Following the footprints, the curtains appear and Dale enters, without any of the trance business Annie faced. Hmmm...The rational Harry, whom has been watching is shocked.
Okay...we're still suggesting that the circle of trees is highly symbolic of female anatomy - the red curtains, the hole like gateway, the trees - and we still suggest this all secretly has to do with Billy's birth. Remember too, the story of Adonis' birth, how his mother gave birth to him, as a tree, following the incestuous relationship she had with their mutual father. That Cooper is entering it and will find himself again, or that darker part of himself that he's been denying, plus the hints he killed Laura, only strengthens the belief that this is all about one man's conception and birth and the monster he became partly because of it.
- Cooper enters the gateway and BAM! we discover it's the place of his dream from the end of the second episode. We see another Venus at the end of this hall, one without her arms.
We believe that the Venus statues are highly symbolic of Audrey Horne as well. As already mentioned, in the script, she was referred to a Botticelli-like beauty. In the halls of One-Eyed Jack's, as seen when Dale went to rescue Audrey, Titian's "Venus with a Mirror" was seen which was inspired by the Venus statue seen in the main room of the Red Room. Audrey was seen holding a mirror in her last scene, just as her first echoed the color scheme of the Red Room's floor. Venus also directly cursed Adonis' mother to fall in love with her own father, making her somewhat the creator of the love of her life: Adonis. She also had Troylus sleep with the sleeping Zellandine, which led to her pregnancy, which is what occurs between Audrey and Mr. C.
So we also find a deeper meaning to the exact position of Venus' arms in the Red Room, especially in regard to its connection to MIKE having cut his own off. We suggest the Venus statue not having arms either betrays her vulnerability (that Billy's mother was defenseless against her father's abuse) or that he envisions her this way to deny/prevent his own abuse by her. These statues appear in the hallways leading into the Red Room. Likewise, the Venus in the main room possesses arms she uses to shield and cover herself, which might show Billy's desire to protect his mother.
- As Cooper enters the main room, the room goes dark and the light flashing associated with BOB begins, which is unsettling.
Jimmy Scott appears singing The Sycamore Trees song, the lyrics of which are:
"Under the sycamore tree
And I'll see you
And you'll see me
And I'll see you in the branches
That blew in the breeze
I'll see you in the trees
I'll see you in the trees
Under the sycamore tree"
An instrumental of this plays when BOB takes Leland to Red Room in FWWM.
Now, can the lyrics specifically involve Cooper meeting his doppleganger, or, in a way, his true self?
Suddenly the Arm appears, dancing across the floor to the chair where Dale dreamt he was sitting. He turns and looks at Cooper as Jimmy continues to sing, and Cooper stands there with a strange look on his face, the lights still flashing. Eventually Jimmy disappears but Dale still stands there, BOB's light flashing all around and lighting up his face, still wearing the odd expression.
We believe that this is strongly hinting that Cooper is BOB.
- Outside, as the frogs are still heard croaking, Andy approaches the grove and Harry calls him over.
- Next, it's daylight and we see some shots of the forest, but even stranger, we see the bridge that Ronette was crossing over, the same event that led to Agent Cooper coming to Twin Peaks.
Why is that being centered on now? Because it is extremely important, this all dealing with Dale and his coming to Twin Peaks, just as it is dealing with Billy having been conceived and born. Remember too, that we theorize that Ronette was the true Laura, the girl that Billy really killed. That was the event that led to his creating Laura and Twin Peaks. It is all entwined inside of his mind.
- Outside of the Lodge, at Glastonbury Grove, Harry and Andy sit on a fallen tree. Harry comments it's been 10 hours since Coop went in. Andy proceeds to ask Harry if he'd like several items: a thermos of coffee, a plate special, dessert.
Harry replies yes to all of them.
Except for when Andy asks if he wants pie. Then Harry stares at the oil pool as Andy repeats his name a few times.
Okay, a few episodes back, Margaret went on about pies and we drew the connection between them and, once again, their connection to a certain part of the female anatomy. We're going to draw that again here, and how we believe much of this has all been circling around the subject of Billy's birth. Pies are circular, a constant theme throughout Twin Peaks. The pool of oil that Harry is staring at is circular too. And now, as he stares at it, we see a tree reflected in its darkness. Trees have been connected to people in the series. They are also phallic symbols. So we have either an image of birth or conception being seen, but one linked with a darkness, the oil of BOB generally not connected with anything good. So that links back to Billy...and it links to Cooper and his association with pies, Harry now rethinking if he wants any. It falls back to when Harry was unnerved back at the station when Dale uttered "Fire Walk With Me."
Something about Cooper, that oil pool and pies is disturbing Harry. And this is at Glastonbury Grove, after he saw the red curtains, which are often reflected in the oil pool too, and can also link to birthing imagery. We theorize that Harry senses this deals with conception and birth, but not in any good way.
- Maybe to go along with this all, we now go to the Twin Peaks Savings and Loans, specifically an older woman lying asleep at the New Accounts desk, with a file cabinet behind her showing the date 1985.
New Accounts could certainly go along with the idea of birthing and creation. We've also already speculated that the old woman sleeping, and the date 1985, might indicate that Billy lost his grandmother in 1985, when he was 12. That corresponds with the age Laura was when she says BOB started "having" her. It also goes with the year of Cooper/Caroline/Windom in Pittsburgh, when Caroline died, something BOB intimately was acquainted with. We theorize that this was around when Billy began to maybe flirt with the idea of BOB. Perhaps creating him to deal with the horrors of his existence. After having lived in the room above the Convenience Store, with his grandmother, the place where his father was raised, we speculate he might have learned a bit more about his father and used that to inform the concept/idea of BOB. It's a theory but one which goes along nicely with what we see here and the belief that it was preceded by Harry's own discomfort at birth related imagery.
- Soon Audrey walks in, talking to an employee of the bank, called Dell Mibbler, a man whom is very elderly and slow, just like the waiter. She chains herself to the vault doors, in protest of Ghostwood development, and demands that the paper be informed.
Now, the bank vault doors, like most vault doors, are circular, due to them offering better security that way. Audrey framing herself in the middle of one, returns to the imagery of the previous sequence at Glastonbury Grove, and yet adds the direct presentation that she has been chained. Speaking of Greek mythology, here Audrey even looks like Perseus' (the man who killed his father and whose conception was also depicted on the walls of One-Eyed Jack's) love Adromeda chained to the rocks as a sacrifice to the sea monster (more phallic imagery there).
The rape of Billy's mother and his birth is thus presented as a sacrifice involving money, still hearkening to the thread woven through that the son holds some sort of belief and resentment over the perception that he believes his mother was chained to the wealth and comfort her father provided for them. This can even link to the picture, Danae, seen at One-Eyed Jack's, wherein Perseus is conceived in the depiction of gold raining down on Danae and her maid.
Before her conception with the frogmoth, the New Mexico girl found a penny, as well, linking back to this general theme.
- Inexplicably, Audrey asks Dell for a glass of water, after having chained herself. Why didn't she bring water? Why not take some before? Why is she asking for water now? Does it betray her lack of foresight?
What it does do is link this sequence once again to the New Mexico Girl and her being impregnated by the frogmoth. For wasn't it during a Broadcast where the woodsman repeated, "This is the water and this is the well, drink full and descend," that the girl became unconscious and easy prey for the frogmoth, just as Audrey becomes easy prey for Mr. C?
Mibbler is seen giving her the water, which Audrey drinks.
- Soon Andrew and Pete show up, and Dell expresses shock, having been to the funeral. "But the funeral. And all of the flowers, and the choir boys," he exclaims.
Billy similarly brings people back from the dead.
- Dell informs them that there is going to be a problem, meaning Audrey. Pete and she greet one another warmly and she tells Andrew that she's performing an act of civil disobedience. Andrew sees no problem and Audrey let's them into the vault.
Isn't that not what Audrey's supposed to do? She's trying to disrupt the business from going on as usual, instead she's turned herself into an unwanted decoration.
- Anyway, Audrey reminds Dell to phone the Gazette and then says to contact the sheriff...and to ask for Agent Cooper. So Cooper's been included to this scene, which we believe once again is swirling around his/Billy's conception/birth.
- While Pete and Andrew are led to the box and about to open it, a phone rings in the bank and Audrey looks on as a guard answers it and cries happily, "A boy? It's a boy! It's a boy, it's a boy."
This bit is not scripted. This bit involves a phone ringing in a bank and the announcement that a boy is about to be born...right before a bomb goes off, leading to Audrey giving birth to a boy, which is in perfect balance with the Trinity bomb going off and leading to the birth of BOB and the frogmoth!
Can you get a better piece of the puzzle for this theory? Equal, yes, but better is debatable. Lynch appears to know exactly what he was doing.
- And so the safety deposit box that fits Eckhardt's key is 14761 which equals to 19 on the numerology path and then to 10...1. The number of completion.
And as if echoing that sentiment, as they open it Andrew says, "We've come to the end of a long road, Pete. And here we are."
That is very fitting. This has all been about Billy, and how he has worked down his own long road towards the telling of the tale of his creation, and now this is leading to it again, as well as his rebirth into a monster.
There are lines from T.S. Eliot's Little Gidding which help sum it up perfectly.
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
That can be found in Eliot's Four Quartets, a book which is seen in Audrey and Charlie's house, resting on the fireplace, a fire blazing inside it, during Audrey's first scene in The Return.
Interesting to note here another poem found in the book, one called Burnt Norton, which contains the lines, "Time present and time past, Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past."
Perhaps everything exists all at once inside of Billy's dream then, his beginning and down fall happening all at once.
- The deposit door opens and there Andrew and Pete find the bomb left for them by Thomas, the bank explodes and Lynch gets a shot of poor Dell's glasses falling on a tree as money rains down...which once again echoes the painting by Titian of Perseus' conception.
- We go to the Double R next and find Garland and Betty sitting all lovey and dovey in a booth. Did Briggs ever save Shelly? He didn't need to, of course, but he should have saved Leo, at least instead of making out with his wife in a restaurant.
- In the same place, Bobby proposes to Shelly, whom reminds him she's still wearing Leo's ring, which actually gives weight to the theory that one of the meanings for the Owl Cave ring, within the dream narrative Billy had worked out, is that it "marries" the wearer to MIKE, thus preventing them from being possessed by BOB.
- They both mimic dogs barking, which is reminiscent of what Bobby and Mike did to James while they were all imprisoned.
- Next moment, Heidi comes in and we practically repeat her scene from the Pilot, where a joke is made about jumpstarting her old man. Once again, we have the theme of time loops, repeats and simultaneous time playing out.
- Bobby tells Shelly that Leo's probably up in the woods having the time of his life, which he is doing nothing of the sort, still keeping the string in his mouth to hold the spiders up.
- Now Jacoby comes in with Sarah Palmer, whom had been about as forgotten as Ronette until this episode. Jacoby wears a cape and has a tie with a key pattern. Capes are often worn by magicians, the Magician in Mulholland Drive gave the key, presumably, to Betty and Rita. The Magician holds the key.
- Sarah apparently knew that the Major would be there and has a message for him. In a distorted voice she says, "I'm in the Black Lodge with Dale Cooper."
There's been much speculation about this one for years. Is it Windom, Judy? Who is talking through Sarah? We're not actually sure. Here's a possibility though, that isn't discussed much. In one possible path, we will reason for The Return that Sarah isn't possessed by the big bad spirit Experiment/Judy(Billy's mom) but by the little bad (at least to Billy) spirit of Experiment Model/Judy, as in her daughter Laura. Billy/Cooper's opinion of Laura tainted by her whisper, he exiled her from the Red Room, we theorize, turning her into the dark and vengeful Laura whom is out for blood and possessing her mother, Sarah. The real world equivalent of this would be the victim of Billy's first victim/American Girl becoming aware that Billy really murdered her daughter and coming after him for justice. However, here, at this time, Sarah would be a vulnerable host for the good Laura. This could be why Billy is imagining her possessed by this Laura and believing that she would be trying to enlist Brigg's help in saving Cooper.
In any case, Briggs seems to get the message, even if we don't.
- We then get a shot of the Red Room hallway, minus any Venus statue, and hear a distorted voice saying "I'm waiting for you." Is that the same voice as before? It might be...it might not be. We don't know for sure. It would make logical sense if it was though, this being part of the message for Briggs. Otherwise we're not sure who is waiting for whom.
- As we return to the Red Room, now is as good a time as any to mention some significant differences between what was scripted and what ended up being filmed. Foremost, we have to comment that when Cooper first entered the Black Lodge in the original script he found himself in a shabby motel with a handicapped clerk whom called it "Home". Cooper was supposed to turn into a 10 year old boy, which he flips in and out of. Soon the clerk transforms into an old man Cooper recognizes as his father, although the man doesn't seem to recognize him, listing off the motel amenities instead. When Cooper practically begs for his help, then his father gives him a key.
Okay so this is very telling in its own omitted way. Cooper turns into a small boy...ahem the grandson. His home appears to be a shabby motel...double ahem the Dutchman/Red City Motel. His father works there...triple ahem, Ben Horne. We doubt that Frost intended this, but we believe that Lynch knew what it meant to him and...it meant he couldn't show any of it. Not with raising too many questions and harming his mystery. Especially to show Cooper's father. Although, Mark Frost probably wouldn't have realized it, David would have known it would be Benjamin Horne. He couldn't get around that. So it was easier to show a place he already knew partly represented "Home" to Billy/The Dreamer: The Red Room. Later, for FWWM, Lynch then did include Frost's ideas, but in a way that still preserved the mystery. Afterall, to David Lynch, if the real mystery to Twin Peaks was answered, the dream would literally be over. But he did respect his partner's ideas, and eventually got around to them when he introduced the Red Diamond City Motel and had the grandson haunting it, which, in a way IS Cooper's childhood self. It just happens to be Billy's too.
The bit with Cooper's father giving him the key also resurfaced for The Return, when Ben Horne give Frank Truman the key to give to Harry, but Cooper intercepts it along the way in Part 17. This helped maintain the theme of Harry, and extension Frank, being an imagined father figure to Billy. However, the key really came from Ben, his real father.
The next interesting fact about the original script for the finale is how Cooper was to find himself then suddenly at the Great Northern, a dark ominous version done in black and white with a checkerboard floor.
That was to be where Dale encountered his doppleganger.
Finally after some discussion with Windom over their respective quests for enlightenment, Cooper found himself in the Red Room.
Which is a good place to get back to now in the filmed version.
- Cooper and the Arm sit in the chairs they did during Cooper's dream.
The Arm appears to be glaring at Dale. He tells him, "When you see me again, it won't be me," then he stands up and kicks himself. Suddenly he seems all happy.
A thought we always have here is that the Arm knows that this present Coop is going to tell Laura in the dream from the past to not take the ring he is offering her, and is upset over that...at the same time, it also hasn't happened yet. So, this is why we can't help but feel that he stands up and kicks himself, and says when Dale sees him again it won't be him: It was his blissfully ignorant self he was referring to, not his doppleganger.
- We should mention now how everyone speaks Lodgespeak, even Windom and Annie, other than Dale Cooper, possibly because he is the dreamer/Billy.
- Now the Arm tells Dale this is the waiting room and offers him coffee. Interesting to note hospitals and maternity wards have waiting rooms for when mothers are about to give birth.
- The Arm tells him too that some of his friends are here.
- Laura appears and greets him, giving him a wink.
Now a wink is similar to the touching of the nose, as she did in the Red Room sequence in season one: they both indicate that the person knows some secret about the other. In this case, we suspect it is Laura indicating that she knows Cooper killed her and that he is really Billy.
- Laura snaps her fingers, as the grandson did, but in a completely different way, it being more of a flick. Does this indicate that she is different from him?
- She says she'll see him again in 25 years, and then gives a symbol with her hands after the declaration "Meanwhile."
This will be used at the start of The Return, and seems to indicate that Cooper will be trapped in the Red Room for 25 years. The symbol she gives appears similar to the sign language for tree, and given the circles of trees around the entrance to the Red Room, as well as the theme of trees and people in Twin Peaks, this seems likely. Generally, Red Room Laura seems to know all of Cooper's secrets. Did the ring he didn't want her to take help her become knowledgeable about them?
- Laura vanishes and the elderly waiter soon takes her place, making a whooping sound followed by a "Hallelujah" one the Arm repeats.
The Arm will make the same sound in FWWM. Is it supposed to sound like a Native American war cry, an owl, a fan, wings? We're still not sure. But any of them would fit.
- The waiter stands and moves towards Cooper to offer him coffee, repeating the word over and over again. Suddenly, he's the Giant, whom goes and sits down in the same spot as the waiter, informing Dale that he and the waiter are, "One and the same."
- The Giant disappears now, as Dale turns his coffee cup around and the Arm runs his hands together in the same way he did in Dale's dream, the ringing sound heard again.
The hand rubbing gives the appearance that the arm is checking something or waiting in anticipation.
- Cooper goes to drink the coffee, which frankly resembles the oil pool outside the Lodge now, what with the white rin of the glass. only to find it solid, which seems to please the arm. However, it immediately becomes weak and spills out in the next moment and the Arm looks somewhat shocked and disappointed as he turns to where BOB is seen standing at the end of FWWM. As the Arm says "Wow BOB wow," almost in congratulations, the coffee suddenly becomes the oil that represents a gateway.
We theorize the coffee symbolizes the character of Cooper/Billy, what the Giant ultimately discovered while helping him try to solve Laura's murder and prevent Maddie's death. He seemed strong, unopened to evil, but soon proved to be weak when he arrested Ben and not Leland. Now he proves vulnerable to being BOB's next vehicle, a gateway for BOB to exit from.
Looked at through another lens, Cooper arrested Ben, which we theorized showed a weakness in his character. It also might betray how Billy is quick to blame his father for his actions instead of taking accountability for them himself. For whatever reason, it betrayed the fact that when the time came Billy was destined to be overpowered by his darkness, and his goodness too weak to overpower it, illustrated by Dale falling to his own shadow self.
- With the oil and the Arms words "Fire Walk With Me," which we believe is either an invitation to BOB or represents the act of being possessed/controlled by him, we see a flash of fire and hear a scream, before the room goes dark again, the flashing BOB light returns and Dale is sitting there alone.
We believe this indicates that Dale is soon to fall, his darkness being set free with BOB as his partner. This also represents how Billy is going to give in to the evil within him and turn fully into a serial killer. The flash of fire, and the woman screaming is most likely Laura, and the fact that he killed her, but could also be the fire that Billy started at the Red Diamond City Motel that killed his mother, the scream secretly being hers instead, but this buried even deeper in his subconscious.
- Cooper leaves the room and enters a room that looks exactly the same. When he backtracks, it's to find the Arm back and sitting in the chair again, pointing at him and saying, almost like an accusation, "Wrong way."
This we theorize is the Arm (Billy's uncle?) basically telling him that he's going about this (navigating his path) the wrong way, making the wrong choices and making poor decisions, like not facing himself or acknowledging his mistakes or darkness. He's destined to fail because he's depending on himself without acknowledging himself, meaning he is at war with himself rather than at peace. In truth, just as the coffee revealed, Dale Cooper failed before he took one step into the Red Room, just as the Giant probably found out while trying to help him.
- Going to another room, Cooper encounters an almost hysterical doppleganger of the Arm, whom announces "Another friend," before going behind the chairs and hiding behind them. The friend in question is Maddie's doppleganger, whom warns "Watch out for my cousin." Cooper turns, looks back and leaves and Maddie's dopple vanishes.
Is the Dopple frightened of Maddie's dopple? Or is the Arm's dopple more scared of Cooper? Does it fall in line with the version of it in The Return also seemingly being angry at him? And does Maddie's dopple seem to know that Laura's dopple won't like Dale? Why would she think he should watch out for her cousin? Are all of the dopplegangers aware of what Cooper is, being familiar with his own doppleganger?
- Cooper goes to the next room and finds it completely empty, except when he moves forward, the Arm's dopple is dancing oddly by his legs. "Doppleganger," it says.
- Cooper looks up to find Laura's doppleganger, giving the symbol that Laura was last seen giving. Maddie was right to warn Dale, for Laura is looking at him in pure, angry hatred. "Meanwhile," she says before screaming bloody murder at him, as the room darkens and flashes again. The shot goes farther back, and we see that she is on a red chair that consists of two joined together, one facing Coop, the other not. Laura's dopple, still screaming, climbs over to the one not facing Dale and then makes a frantic run at the frightened Cooper, taking hold of her skirt, and looking like she's in attack/defense mode. An inverted shot of Windom is shown as Dale turns around in fear and runs away, right out of the room and down the hall and into the next. Meanwhile, Laura's dopple keeps screaming.
Okay. So this is what Laura Palmer has repressed/hidden. This is indicated by the chair she climbs backwards over, one side facing, the other one not. And what has been hidden you ask? That she is terrified and hates Dale Cooper himself! Meanwhile, Coop, warned not to show fear inside of the Lodge, directly gives in to his terror. Why? Yes, Laura Dopple was screaming, but she was not touching him at all, she seemed more worried he would hurt her. Why was Dale frightened? He supposedly understood and pitied Laura, why the sudden about face? Because, we argue, it was the first sign that he had something horrible that he was hiding and it involved Laura herself! Remember too, that we found out in FWWM that Laura was screaming at Cooper in the woods. Why is Dopple Laura terrified of Dale? Because he killed her.
Why does Windom pop up laughing then? Because he is pleased at the indication that Cooper isn't as pure as he's been portrayed and that the truth is coming out. The shot of Windom itself is inverted. Remember how he was the one to discover that the Owl Cave symbol needed to be inverted to reveal the map. Remember too how a mirror reflection is flipped. It's along the same lines of the speculation that Billy substitutes his brunette victims in his dream with blondes to help hide the truth from himself. In an inverted photograph, dark becomes light. This is helped shown during the inverted Windom too. This inverted Windom is quite happy that the Good Dale is the one whom is secretly evil.
- Cooper enters another room only to find that he is badly bleeding. This will soon be revealed as the wound he received in Pittsburgh, and yet it is also the same place Leland has his wound at the end of FWWM. The fact that Dale also is shown having it directly AFTER encountering Laura's doppleganger leaves us wondering if his fear over her wounded him in any way. We reason, afterall, that he killed her and is trying to deny that fact, creating a subsequent terror. If that wound was shown on Leland, at the end of FWWM, as a sign of his guilt in having written "Fire Walk With Me" at the murder site, and remember how trying to identify and match the blood type to it was always important, than why is Cooper shown having the wound? We believe it's to indicate that Dale was the one whom actually wrote the note, the same reason why he might have said it back at the station. With this in mind, the end of FWWM, when BOB heals Leland's wound, might in fact be a way of showing BOB ERASING the wound instead and how it never truly belonged to the man. Why else show Cooper receiving the wound directly following his terror at seeing the vengeful Laura Dopple?
- A wounded Coop goes back to the hallway, still bleeding, only to go into a room and see himself lying, wounded, on the floor next to the similarly bloody and dead Caroline. Caroline switches to Annie, wearing the same dress and having the same wound. She tries to sit up, and looks around in an unnerving way, as Cooper calls out her name. Soon the flashing lights return and the figures on the floor are gone.
This is obviously a flashback to Pittsburgh, but one melding with current events and revealing that Cooper is mixing up Caroline and Annie. This is a big clue that Billy is guilty of the same thing, unable to differentiate women from the love of his life: his mother. And similarly to how she died, the other women he targets die too.
- Back in another room, Cooper finds Annie in her Miss Twin Peaks dress and normal eyes, indicating she's not a doppleganger. She speaks Lodgespeak, as she walks towards him, telling him that she saw the face of the man who killed her and that it was her husband. Dale is confused and calls her Annie, only for the woman to ask, "Who's Annie?" Suddenly it's Caroline's Dopple saying "It's me." Suddenly it's back to normal Annie, in Caroline's dress, telling Dale that he must be mistaken and that she's alive, as she touches his face.
Hammering home again, Dale's confusion between the love of his life and his latest romance, and clearly betraying the same confusion that Billy faces when he becomes attracted to a woman, believing she is his mother, brought back to life.
- Now the Laura Dopple is back, once again screaming bloody murder at Dale Cooper.
This is bonechilling when we realize that the last topic of discussion had just been Caroline seeing the face of the man who killer her and it was her husband. It goes straight back to Harold Smith words that the ultimate secret was knowing who killed you. Loudly, but vaguely, Laura's hidden self is trying to convey to us, and to Dale, that she also saw the face of the man who killed her...and it was him. Just as her true self, American Girl, saw his true self, Billy, before he murdered her. This also implies that Laura/American Girl were killed because Coop/Billy can't separate the women he is attracted to from the woman he first loved, just as Caroline and Annie are interchangeable inside of his mind.
- Notice the weird gold and black pedestal the ring usually rests on in the background throughout this scene, and how it changes positions. What does this mean?
- Suddenly Windom is standing there instead. With the strange gold and black pedestal in the background, more off to his side, he shows Dale an unharmed Annie. When she disappears, another pedestal is in her place, beside the other. Are the pedestals representations of individuals? Is this when she received the ring?
- Windom says if Cooper gives him his soul he'll let Annie live and Cooper agrees, just the one pedestal seen between them now. Cooper falls to the floor, only for a burst of fire to be seen and the action immediacy reversed, screaming heard.
Hmmm...does the pedestal represent Billy? A mix of gold and black like the gateways to the respective Lodges? And why does Coop give his soul so fast? How can he trust Windom? And what would that mean for the rest of the world if he theorized Earle would use the power of the Lodge for bad? Is Dale, like Ben, putting his own desires first?
- Cooper watches in the now dark room, the lights flashing again, as BOB squats by a kneeling, screaming Windom Earle. BOB laughs at the other villain. BOB tells Earle to be quiet, which silences him, but doesn't stop the actual action. He then informs Cooper that Windom was wrong because he couldn't ask for his soul. He then takes his, which looks like fire shooting out from Earle, whom soon becomes dead. There is one of those pedestals behind them (does the fire go to it?) and it might be connected to Earle this time.
Now why did BOB save Cooper? And what does it mean that he couldn't ask for his soul? Was it Cooper's in particular he couldn't for or is asking for one wrong? In any case, BOB came to Dale's rescue. We reason, it is because Billy always had wanted or planned this in a way, and it basically represents a switch he is making: The Windom (daddy figure) and Good Dale for the BOB (daddy figure) and evil Dale. Billy's gone full out bad and he's discarding what no longer suits him, which includes anything he sees as weakness.
-Now this is where the filmed version differs from the scripted one. BOB was supposed to turn face then and suddenly try to take Coop's soul for himself. That was until the blinding light of Laura came and saved him. Now Lynch deviated from that idea drastically. In his finished finale Laura doesn't save Dale at all, nor try to. Instead we get Laura's doppleganger screaming at Dale.
What we do have is Dale calmly walking out of the room...and everything that follows.
- As soon as Dale leaves, while BOB remains by the dead Windom, we see a hunched over shadow of Dale's Dopple moving past the curtains. He comes through those curtains in the most violent, angry way possible and then goes and shares a hearty laugh with BOB before pursuing his good self.
Okay. This is the birth of the bad Dale...and it is the birth of Billy too, or the rebirth of him as pure evil. It could go both ways if future past is future present and this is all Billy ever was. We've theorized that the curtains represent the female body in a representation of their relationship to motherhood and the way that Mr. C exits them now pretty well proves that. It's clear that he's in full league with BOB too, which is disastrous and not a good indication for Dale himself, if this was what he was always hiding. This is the part of Billy that doesn't even exactly condemn his father for the evil he did. This part of Billy might envy it and wish to be a part of it.
- Cooper's just casually strolling down the hallway, when whom should he happen to meet? Why it's Leland's doppleganger, whom laughs at him before turning serious and outright denying what Dale claimed Laura had whispered to him. If you recall, Coop heard it as being, in non Lodgespeak mind you, "My father killed me." Well, now Leland says, "I did not kill anybody." He then moves forward, giving the impression that he's leaning towards Dale's left ear, the same one Laura whispered into. But Dale backs away, seeming intimidated.
That marks 3 times that Dale has been approached by voices from the grave, all of whom give a partial indication regarding Cooper and Laura.
This is Leland's hidden side...so why is he claiming he didn't kill anybody? That contradicts the fact that Leland always admitted to killing Jacques, at least...and, as he was dying, Leland said that he had killed Laura and Teresa...so what's this all about? Let's think about dopplegangers for a second, their nature...if a shadow self is what we repress, it is likely connected to a truth. People parade lies around to conceal truths they don't want known. So why is Leland's hidden self claiming not to have killed, after he had confessed to murder? It doesn't go with the claim by some that he wasn't taking responsibility either...what's being denied about Leland is that he was innocent of murder, it appears. And he seems to resent Dale for what he had stated earlier. Why? Because he knows that Cooper/Billy was the real murder and simply "imagined" the whole thing to deflect blame. If Leland had managed to whisper to Dale it probably would have been the same thing, more or less, that his daughter had whispered to him, something that indicated Dale Cooper's guilt. That is why, just like with Laura's Dopple, Dale's instinct is to get out of there. However, he makes the mistake of looking back, only to see the truth further hinted to him.
- When Dale looks back, he sees standing in Leland's dopple's shadow, so to speak, his own doppleganger. And this...this just like Laura's screaming doppleganger is enough to make Dale Cooper run. That is because it fully hints to Dale that it was him, not Leland, that murdered Laura.
- After Dale has left, Leland's dopple looks upset, until Cooper's comes to him and they share a laugh. Then, after Mr. C has left, Leland stands there as if patiently waiting.
We believe that Leland's doppleganger is looking forward to the downfall of the man whom framed him for his own daughter's murder. This glee would be the perfect thing that someone would most likely hide from themselves, the desire for revenge against the person whom hurt them...even if that involves gloating with the hidden aspect of that same guilty person.
- So now we see Dale full on running to get out of the Red Room, with his dark self in hot pursuit, going through several rooms in the process. It seems the thing besides Laura that terrifies him is himself...and he doesn't want to face it. Not at all. In a way, it is something you can even see happening in The Return. The big battle doesn't really include Dale defeating or even facing himself...not even Mr. C facing the good Dale. It would most likely mean his death, but a reconciliation, an understanding cannot even be reached. They do not truly face each other, other than Dale looking over his shoulder nervously. Even when the bad Dale catches the good one, it is from behind, the two never facing one another.
- As the bad Dale captures the good, falling into the curtains, the room darkens and the flashing light begins again. Now BOB's face (or his doppleganger, can't tell) smiles up close into the camera at us, or is he smiling at the dreamer?
- The curtains appear in Glastonbury Grove again and now Harry sees the forms of Annie and Cooper (really Mr. C) on the ground, Annie unresponsive and bloody and Mr. C opening his eyes a few times.
Now the last time we saw Annie she was fine. It has to be Mr. C/BOB whom hurt her. This could be further symbolism for Billy destroying or paralyzing the good in himself. We've previously argued that Annie was merely a reflection of Cooper: Billy's light side. It also serves as the imagery that he has killed again, just like he did with American Girl/Laura.
- Suddenly we see White Tail Falls, in that same clip that looked like they were actually splitting in two after Cooper gave Audrey the kiss off.
- Mr. C is lying in bed and starts to open his eyes. Will says "There he is," and we'll point out for the last time, for the original series, how he is our only major derivative of Bill here present and saying something important, because The Return will be filled with no shortage of Bills.
While we're here, and on that note, we'll once again say that (Teresa) Banks are filled with Bills too.
- Mr. C says he wasn't sleeping. What was he doing? Resting? Living outside of the dream, inside of another? Trying to act like he was meditating? Talking to BOB?
- He asks how Annie is, and Harry says she's gonna be just fine and at the hospital, but he and Will share a look like it's a lie.
- Mr. C then states that he needs to brush his teeth, and the men seem to humor him, even after he's repeated it, before going into the bathroom.
- Once inside of the bathroom, Mr. C seems to be going through with really brushing his teeth until he starts pouring the toothpaste, from the middle of the tube, into the sink, having no intention of really brushing his teeth. He seems to be getting great joy out of being messy, rebelling against Cooper's usual adherence to hygiene. He looks into his reflection and smashes his head into the mirror, and we see BOB's reflection at last. The sound alarms Harry and Will, whom start calling out to him. Meanwhile, Mr. C repeats his question of "How's Annie?" over and over again, it obviously having been an act or even a joke, just like we theorized Annie's character was. That was what she was. Honestly, this dark side of Dale set free gives that away, just as he does his secret loathing of doing such "perfect" things as brushing his teeth, something Sonny Jim, another representation of Billy, also does. Billy never cared about Annie and neither did Cooper, she was an ends to a means: a way to give Dale Cooper an excuse to go to the Lodge and finally let Billy become what all of his caged in rage and anger over what was done and happened to him, all of the repression and secrets, weakness and fear had made him into: a monster.
For that was what this series was all about. See, the question had always been WHO killed Laura Palmer but what nobody realized was the series was truly about exploring whom had killed her even more than Laura herself. For her killer had projected much of himself and his family on to her and then disguised himself as the detective helping to "solve" the case with his rare insight and gifts. But it was never meant to be solved...for Dale Cooper was the killer and for that to be revealed, even to himself, outside of insinuation and vague hints anyway, would end the story altogether. Twin Peaks existed to help him escape...to face what it was risked destroying it...just as surely as changing the act that started it would.
To answer the question of who killed Laura Palmer directly was to force the dreamer to end his dreaming.
But for now this would do. The clues had all been planted and in a way it is wonderful symmetry to have Ben, Audrey and even Cooper's fate all hanging in the balance, in one way or another, when that was the secret trinity at the heart of the story, the killer's parents and himself. It might not be the one everyone realized, or even accept if they did, but it was these three whom secretly threaded through the original series a disturbing hint about the true family whose house had become a tree of sores.
And it will be that family whom equally haunt The Return...
But first, in the middle, we get to see what happens when the dreamer tries to force the narrative onto his victim, and perhaps even regrets killing her, long before his 25 years are up...
Now we move on to the dream that is Laura's story. The dream called "Fire Walk With Me".
- With this, it is fitting that the Original Series' credits end with Laura's face in the Red Room coffee cup. The dream is set to return to her, and her own test, plus Laura was our gateway to Twin Peaks. Margaret told us that in her first intro: "The one leading to the many is Laura Palmer. Laura is the one."
People like to take her words as meaning that Laura is the dreamer or the main character of Twin Peaks, but what she is basically saying is that Laura is a door. Her reflection in the cup even hints at this very thing, since it resembles the pool of oil outside of the Lodge, which was called a gateway.
She was the door that took Billy and us to his dream of Twin Peaks.
But it was a door Billy went through split, divided, as this episode showed us. Maybe it wasn't even the moment Cooper turned down Audrey that he split, maybe from the moment he drove into town he wasn't whole. Probably, we suspect, this was because after killing American Girl, Billy tried to be too good to help shield himself and possibly fix things. It is the natural urge we all have after making a mistake or committing a sin, we try to be good to help balance it out and make amends. Only, over time, the urge weakens until we fall again, in Billy's case the fall being devastating to himself and to everyone around him. It is essentially what Jesus said about being purified of one demon, only to let several more in. So, for Twin Peaks, Billy's avatar came to us too perfect, as Audrey said.
And that is why, when Dale finally manages to "save" Laura and Billy's dream is reimagined, we find Coop/Richard as someone closer to Chet Desmond, able to be both kind and cruel at once. Like we all are.
Maybe this holds the key for David Lynch's reluctance to have Cooper be possessed by BOB and making it be only a part of him, his evil side. BOB was always Dale Cooper, or what belonged to him, but the good Dale should never be aware of that fact fully. For to face that would be to wake up again.
And it wasn't time to wake up.
There were still dreams to be had in the world of Twin Peaks.
