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"The Owls Are Not What They Seem" A Twin Peaks Rewatch with the Theory in Mind: Twin Peaks: Part 3 "Call for Help"
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.
- We pick up on Cooper right where we left him: falling through space.
We touched on this previously. Dale Cooper is in infact living what Donna questioned Laura about in FWWM: "Do you think that if you were falling in space, that you would slow down after a while or go faster and faster?" And he is suffering what Laura answered, "Faster and faster." We might not see him burst into flames but we think it will be inferred by what Dale will soon discover/see.
Billy obviously lived what he projected onto Laura. Her words were how he felt about his own abuse by his mother and potentially grandfather/father. It makes logical sense that we now see his avatar suffering it, revealing how that situation belonged to him and not Laura.
- Suddenly see see what looks like a purple water with something bubbling up in it. Cooper falls through it, only to land on a concrete like structure which appears to be on another purple sea. Cooper goes up to the tall wall like edge and looks at the sea which surrounds him.
So this place is covered by this purple water all throughout then, because as he's breaking through the atmosphere, or whatever, it looks like Dale's going through water, only to end up dry again and in air before he hits the concrete building, with its solitary opening.
Can't help but think of the start of Mr. Bean everytime Dale falls/lands.
The structure looks similar to the skyscraper in NYC that Dale just visited. We can see a parallel being formed then. We're about to theorize that this structure hides the images of Billy's true victims and not the substitutions, like Laura, he created for them inside of his dream world. We previously theorized that the NYC building houses the glass box, which represented Billy's psyche. Thinking of the box now, it seemed empty, just like Billy's soul. What one would see when looking at the box is a reflection of themselves, very much like the two sided mirror in the police station where Billy was questioned. That reflected quality will be discussed deeper later on, how it helped Billy, whom was empty, not willing to face his past and self inside, and aided his survival without detection for so long. Now we're interested in how the Arm's doppleganger, after his revelation that the Red Room and everything was non-exist-ent, has seemed to send Dale first to the glass box and now here to the mansion room. Was it making a point by trying to show Cooper things inside of the dream which are closer to reality? Hastings psyche and now where he's hidden away the memory of his victims?
This will be the same area/land where the Fireman lives, as we will see in Part 8. We've theorized that the Fireman's is a version of the Palmers' place, or rather Billy's first victim's house. It makes sense he would then keep his victims close to the area and yet separate, all of his murders done to partly relive that first one and yet not wanting the family to know the truth about their daughter.
The purple sea is possibly related to the idea of the mauve zone, a subject which interested Mark Frost. This allows us to broach a very interesting concept within this theory and the idea that Billy is our dreamer, whom masks himself as Cooper inside of the dream. Coop is often linked to David Lynch. In The Return, we see some definite links between William Hastings, with his love of alternate realities/aliens/sci-fi with Mark Frost. Together, we believe, they create the true answer to the question "Who Killed Laura Palmer?" and that works on a meta level just as well, Lynch and Frost having killed Laura in the first place by creating her together to solely be a murdered girl.
- The only way in to the building is a large window which acts as a door. Cooper enters through the window and then closes it behind him.
Through a window was how BOB would visit Laura. She said that to Harold even in FWWM, "He comes in through my window at night." Now Cooper is seen entering through one. We have a clear connection then to BOB and Coop, without the doppleganger even. We theorize that this was how Billy got in to American Girl's bedroom and possibly his other victims as well. That is why Billy now creates a place where he stores the memories of those victims and they can only be gotten to through a window.
Inside of the room, the sound that sounded from Hastings' head, as he stroked it in the cell can be heard, once again indicating that all of this is happening inside of there.
- Cooper finds a dark haired woman, dressed in red, and staring in the direction of a fire burning inside of a fireplace, as she sits on a large couch before it. Her eyes are sewn shut. She tries to communicate with Dale but her words aren't anything we can understand and the screen keeps glitching and jutting as Cooper and she try to communicate. Dale wants to know where they are. When she feels Cooper's face it gets less glitchy but then it returns to it. A banging happens and the woman, Naido, motions Dale to be quiet.
So first off we are going to mention that fire because this is the bursting into fire part of Laura's speech and how it relates to having seen Coop falling faster and faster through space. It isn't a literal sort of bursting into fire, as we'll see Mr. C do, but it effectively shows one always burning inside of Billy's thoughts and how he condemns his victims to stay there staring at it, almost their only source of entertainment.
The room itself will be seen later, with Phillip Jeffries inside of room #8 at the Dutchman's. That raises an interesting possibility that, while Billy keeps the memory of his victims here, the Dutchman's is used to trap the FBI Agents whom were different avatars for himself too. The Dutchman's is close/identical to Billy's old home, while the victims are trapped in something like his first one's home.
And now we finally meet Betty. Only here she is presented to us as Naido, whose name is almost an anagram for Diane, if you were to spell it backwards, subtract the e and place an o at the start again. But we're believing that Betty is whom this character really is, Billy having harmed her and her being relegated to the mansion room because of it. Naido's actress, Nae Yuuki previously acted with Laura Dern, Diane's actress, in Lynch's own Inland Empire. That keeps with how we believe that Lynch was adamant that Pamela Gidley, a former costar of Sherilyn Fenn's, was to play Teresa Banks, whom we suspect is Audrey's substitute. Phoebe Augustine and Sheryl Lee were also both up to play Laura and we believe that Laura substituted American Girl.
Naido/Betty's eyes are supposedly sewn shut. This could definitely deal with her not knowing what Billy truly was and how he wishes she had never found out. She doesn't know who Dale is here, relying on her hands in a way which will be conjured later when Diane, her dreamworld substitute, feels Cooper's face as they have sex. Here, it is indicated that Naido may not recognize Dale as the dreamer/Billy because of her blindness.
Cooper asks where they are but not who Naido is. Does he know her? Or is this another indication that his thoughts are preoccupied on himself and getting "out."
The glitching links to several other cases of glitching in the series. Does that indicate time loops or the dream factor or something else entirely?
The banging sound at the door will be revealed to be American Girl's mother. We suspect that it indicates how she will soon go after Billy for the murder of her daughter and how the threat looms heavily inside of Billy's mind. Since two of Betty's avatars wrote letters, it is possible Betty even wrote American Girl's mother a letter about her daughter's death and Billy's responsibility. But why then is Naido, whom we argue is really Betty, protecting the man we believe hurt her? Well, we've just speculated that Betty might not know this is Billy's avatar she is with. We've also previously speculated that she might have partially helped her boss in some of his less than legal actions. She might still be performing that action here. Since this is all being filtered through Billy's mind, it's also important to realize that even his victims are warped by how Billy sees them, illustrated by how we theorize Laura went from sacred to profane, a source of light to dark, inside of his mind. Billy might perceive all of his victims as "loving" him, just as he might imagine they enjoy being kept prisoners inside of the mansion room, the complete opposite of the truth. Only if they retain their autonomy, as Laura did by not following the instruction to not take the ring, can they rebel against him.
- Dale gets distracted by an electrical socket box, bearing the number 15, that is emanating an electrical noise. He walks towards it, feeling disoriented, but Naido stops him, placing herself between Cooper and the socket. She makes a motion, slicing her neck and then pulls him away, although he still seems hypnotized by the socket. Naido takes him to a ladder and they climb up and out of the room through a hatch door.
The electrical noise that emerges sounds like the Arm's and Waiter's whooping sound.
The plug box has the number 15 on it. We theorize that Betty is Billy's 15th kill or attempted one. Further theorizing leads us to believe that, if Cooper had gone through this plug, he might have somehow wound up in the part of Billy's dream that dealt with his relationship to Betty's dreamworld substitute, Ruth...whom lost her head. That explains the motion that Betty gives of the head being cut off/death. At the same time, Hastings will soon lose part of his own head, the top of it, so it could also align with that.
Naido/Betty leads Cooper to a ladder, taking him away from the 15 socket he's still attracted to and the still present pounding on the door. She takes him up a ladder. Dougie/Cooper will scribble ladders on the insurance homework he's left in charge of. Billy likely used a ladder to gain entrance to his victims' rooms through the windows.
- The hatch leads to the top of what looks like an opaque (steel?) box floating in space. There is a dome shaped item on top of it and Naido tries to communicate with Cooper again, whom fails to understand. She pulls a lever on the dome and appears to be electrocuted, falling from off the box and into space. Cooper watches, alone, until the giant head of Major Briggs goes floating by, saying "Blue rose." Cooper then climbs back down the ladder into the mansion room.
This box is as closed off and impenetrable as the box in NYC is transparent and empty, maybe indicating that Billy has protected his relationship to his victims very well.
When Naido seemingly gets electrocuted, the glitches stop and the coloring/lighting appears more normal than before and less purple. The glitches also stop. Was Naido or the machine responsible for them?
Her electrocution can imitate and compliment Richard Horne's own electrocution in Part 16, watched over by Mr. C, quite nicely which only makes sense in a complicated manner: Betty is Naido whom will become Diane whom will become Linda, whom is just still Betty. Meanwhile, Dale here, whom also watches her electrocution, will become a Richard whom receives that farewell letter from Linda. Dale is Richard whom is still just Richard Horne, whom is really just Billy. Both Billy and Betty were represented in the doomed Sam and Tracey, whom both had their heads brutally mutilated by the Experiment Model. Richard and Betty then also suffer similar electrocutions. While it is often argued that Richard doesn't survive, there's a small chance he was sent somewhere else, ala Phillip Jeffries. Maybe he was waiting in Odessa for Dale Cooper to finally become him, another purpose of those tricky coordinates. Betty/Naido meanwhile falls off here and ends up in Twin Peaks, to the other coordinates.
Major Briggs just happening to float by is another thread/reminder of the headless Ruth Davenport and William Hastings storyline. His saying Blue Rose indicates his involvement in the cases, and Project Blue Book, but also seems pertinent given the fact that we believe this giant black box houses Hastings' memories of his victims, whom are blue roses to him, what he believes to be unnatural replicas of his mother, the original (red) rose. The last thing that Hastings remembers Major Briggs saying, before he lost his head, was Cooper's name. This moment now connects to that one.
- Back in the mansion room, Dale discovers that the socket now has a 3 on it. A blue rose sits on a table as another woman wearing red sits and stairs at the fire in the fireplace. She turns around and we see she looks exactly like Ronette Pulaski. She looks at her watch and the 3 socket starts making that electrical sound like the Arm. Cooper becomes transfixed by the socket.
The plug now bearing a 3, we speculate indicates we are now in the presence of William "Billy" Hastings' third victim. #1 and #2 we suspect were his father/grandfather and mother, when he burned the motel down. Although there is the possibility his mother killed their father and the other number here belongs to Billy's grandmother or someone else he might have unintentionally killed. American Girl was his first intentional murder, however.
The blue rose present indicates that this is a murder Billy committed in some way honoring his mother. Naido/Betty might not have been deemed worthy of one because her death was viewed as an unwanted necessity when she threatened him. David Lynch referred to Audrey Horne as the "flower of Twin Peaks."
Lynch seems to be directing this moment as a big reveal. Infact, it would even seem probable we were led to think this might be Audrey Horne sitting here, wearing red and having short dark hair. Cooper seems to sense it is important that this is Ronette he has found.
The character is credited as American Girl, not Ronette Pulaski, though, and that is odd because she is a woman and not a girl. However, Billy murdered her when she was a girl, perpetually placing her in that stage inside of his mind, even if he ages them within it. Which leads to the possibility that Billy misguidedly believes he is protecting/saving his victims and allows them the chance to age within his mind. Richard/Dale will likewise call the middle aged Carrie Page/Laura a girl. Audrey referred to herself as a girl in her own story, even though she too was no longer a teenager.
So we have American Girl in one room and we theorize that Betty/Naido, the American Woman, was kept in the other.
Very large possibility that American Girl is Judy. We've argued that is Audrey's real name but perhaps Billy's first victim shared his mother's name or the names sharing several letters confused him: aUDreY jUDY. It seems evident that, inside of his dream, Billy masked his first victim behind "Laura" which was strongly informed by the old movie of the same name. But her true name very well might have been Judy, and why it haunts the narrative. Judy was also the name of Lynch's girlfriend during the Kennedy assassination and Twin Peaks began as an exploration of Marilyn Monroe and her involvement with the Kennedy brothers. If Lynch saw Cooper as similar to himself, and Billy is really Cooper, Lynch might have cleverly given the name for Billy's first "girlfriend" as that of his own in relation to the Kennedys: Judy. Her name now being lost illustrates how serial killers fail to see their victims as real people, often forgetting their names. Laura Palmer said in her Between 2 Worlds interview she met many people with no names. If Billy killed as many as 9 people in between 3 - 15 that would account for the nameless people she encounters.
Now might be a good time to mention Cooper's name is inspired by infamous hijacker and ransomer D.B. Cooper, which in itself was an alias. The perfect inspiration for the dreamer to hide himself behind: we aren't meant to discover his true identity.
American Girl is aware of the importance of 2:53.
Cooper is still drawn to the plug and how it will take him away from the room. Electricity accompanies it. Dale Cooper described dreams basically in electrical terms to Harry and Lucy.
- Mr. C drives down the South Dakota highway in the scene Dale previously saw through the Red Room curtains. His clock reads 2:53 and he is visibly not feeling well. His cigarette lighter etc...is giving off the electrical sound.
The prospect of returning to the Lodge apparently physically makes Mr. C sick, something Dale, whom never discusses his home, does not experience. We theorize once again that the dopplegangers are infact more honest in a way. Mr. C is aware of the negative feelings his "home" invokes and it sickens and frightens him.
The lighter giving off the electricity connects to BOB being synonymous with fire as well as the woodsmen asking "Got a light?"
- Back in the Mansion Room, American Girl rises to her feet almost weakly. Dale is still focused on the socket, which attempts to suck him in. "When you get there, you will already be there," American Girl informs. The socket still wants to zap Dale in. Mr. C is speeding down the highway still suffering.
American Girl's words indicate that he will already be there when he exchanges places with his doppleganger, or Mr. C's tulpa in this case. However, on another level, it implies that the other Coops are still just Cooper.
- Back in the mansion room, the pounding back on the door, American Girl warns, "You'd better hurry, my mother is coming." As she watches, Dale is pulled in through the socket, his body giving off smoke. His shoes drop off.
The knocking sound demanding entrance is revealed to be American Girl's mother. This clearly involves Billy aware he is about to be hounded by his first intentional victim's mother, when she begins to suspect him in some way relating to Betty. With Sarah's bloodthirsty/odd behavior, mothers come to adorn a sinister air in The Return, revealing how the dreamer harbours a fear of them.
American Girl warning Dale of her mother, frankly sounds like a teenage girl telling her secret lover to beat it if he had sneaked into her bedroom. That's what we theorize Billy did, but it wasn't something the real American Girl probably encouraged or wanted. But, then again, this is Billy's fantasy so everything is corrupted by his delusional thinking, except for the instances of truth that always try to intercede...like the mother banging on the door.
Smoke is linked to fire and Dale is giving off smoke now.
Dale's shoes falling off are significant since Audrey's shoes were focused on when we first met her. MIKE/Phillip also makes a living selling shoes, circle brand to be exact. Why does Dale lose his shoes? Because of the rubber that doesn't carry electricity? Because he's going in sole-less? To help invoke Audrey? So MIKE/Phillip can try to sell him a new pair?
- A very ill Mr. C speeds down the road until he turns the car over, coming finally to a stop. Close to vomiting, Mr. C holds a hand over his mouth, looking at the time and the lighter in fear. He looks through the windshield and sees the red curtains of the Red Room.
The fear and horror, the pure physical revulsion that Mr. C feels over the prospect of going home is clearly conveyed. Home is not a pleasant place to him, and his being closer to the true character of Billy, and with what we've already discussed about Billy's home life, we can understand why.
- At Rancho Rosa, in a deserted house for sale, the tulpa Dougie Jones, just finished up with his rented lover Jade. Dougie's left arm is going numb and he's wearing the Owl Cave ring. Jade goes off to wash up.
And now we have a home that belongs to no one but where Dougie has escaped his own homelife to carry on a paid for affair...only he's soon going to be pulled back to his real home too and be just as sick of it as Mr.C, even if he's blocked what home exactly is from his mind.
Jade is a shade of green, like the ring.
Dougie's arm going numb with the Owl Cave Ring still links it to MIKE/Phillp whom has no left arm.
Important to note about Dougie, he's a bad husband and obviously indulges in several vices...and yet he doesn't seem all that horrible, not on the level of Mr. C. His sins are more like what's presented with the addict mother squatting in the house across the street. But Dougie doesn't seem like a rapist or a killer...and yet he came from Mr. C, not supposedly Cooper. But...if he isn't a complete monster, then why would Richard Horne be? Sure the doppleganger was his father, but if Dougie can be a copy of Mr. C and not wholly unholy...shouldn't we examine Richard a little more closely and wonder if something else is responsible for his horrible behavior and that maybe Billy has shielded that from himself once again inside of his dream? We never see Richard interact with either his grandfather or mother afterall.
- Dougie starts becoming sick, just as Mr. C is. He crawls to the bathroom but finding the door locked returns to the other room. The sockets make an electrical noise. The Red curtains of the Red Room appear and Dougie brings up on the carpet, a mixture of blood, corn and black oil. A zap and he's gone startling Jade.
The light on the floor look like prison bars. The Red Room can become a prison. Hastings is currently inside of a prison and we argue, as the dreamer, this whole Return to Twin Peaks revolves around the threat of his real identity going there.
Going home, without even realizing what is happening, causes the tulpa to become so sick he vomits up garmonbozia (pain and sorrow) plus the oil that symbolizes the Lodge and BOB, as well as blood.
- Mr. C sees the curtains and Dougie sitting in the Red Room chair behind them. He looks at the watch in his Lincoln. Suddenly he begins to violently vomit up creamed corn, black oil and blood. Afterwards he passes out.
Once again, this is how horrible and painful going "home" is to Mr. C. It actually makes him become so sick he vomits up a substance so foul it can make others whom smell it sick too. Billy's trauma becomes evident, inside of his dream, by having the worst of himself shown to be vulnerable by the threat/memory of home. This makes perfect logical sense when we realize what home is to Billy. First off, he is his mother's pain and sorrow incarnate, the proof and reminder of her constant abuse by her father. He became the embodiment of the torment of the person he loved most in the world, as well as his own grandfather's son. Then, on top of that, he was most likely abused by that mother too. She carried on the cycle with him, creating a torturous conflict created inside of him between love and fear/hate. Billy might have also been abused by his own father/grandfather as well and had to live with the realization that his mother chose their material comfort over their emotional wellbeing.
- Inside of the Red Room, Dougie, in the chair, finds MIKE/Phillip stating at him. "I feel funny," he tells him, then asks what's happening. "Someone manufactured you...for a purpose but I thinks that's been fulfilled," MIKE/Phillip answers. Dougie's left hand begins to shrink and the ring falls off. Then his head disappears and we see black smoke. A little golden ball comes out of the smoke and his clothes collapse. A thing like a rock/egg is seen with black smoke. It turns into something alive and barfing and MIKE/Phillip shields his eyes. Suddenly the black thing shrinks and is seen with the gold ball. Zap, smoke and all that remains is a tiny gold ball/bead/seed on the chair. Mike picks up the ring and the bead and places the ring back on the gold/black pedestal.
Dougie was infact manufactured for a purpose: to save Mr. C from having to go back to the Lodge. Similarly, Billy manufacturered his own "tulpa" false image, to keep himself out of his own prison and from similarly facing his past. If others believed that the respectable William Hastings was just your average sort of man, battling the commonplace vices, they need never suspect he was actually committing the worst sins imaginable.
Dougie contains both good (gold) and bad (black), complimenting the pools outside of the White and Black Lodges. It also echoes the pedestal where the ring sits. This is probably the essence of things: that each soul contains the chance for great good or horrible evil and we must find balance and acceptance of the fact. It also goes along with how we believe Billy once saw Laura as good but then transformed her into something evil.
MIKE/Phillip shields himself from seeing Dougie's darkness, that seems to be barfing. We view MIKE/Phillip as a representation of Billy's uncle/Jerry. Does this mean that the uncle had forsaken evil when he was redeemed or does it betray how he wasn't willing/able to see the sickness inside of his own family? The sick girl that is being taken to see her uncle is also vomiting, as did the Experiment when it birthed BOB.
Does MIKE/Phillip pick up the dark stone/thing when he picks up the ring or did it disappear?
- Back at the Rancho Rosa, Cooper is expelled from the socket in black smoke. He lies on his back by Dougie's barf. Jade walks in shocked, thinking he's Dougie. She asks where he got the haircut and suit. She then smells the barf and asks if he's sick, saying they need to get out of the house. Outside she becomes impatient with Coop/Dougie when he's unresponsive and without his shoes. She goes back inside to get them and even has to put them on for him. Asking if he has his keys, she finds the key to Dale's room at the Great Northern inside of his pocket instead. She expresses displeasure that she needs to give him 2 rides.
Once again, the light shining on the socket and ground looks like prison bars, linking this to William Hastings and the theme of imprisonment.
Cooper has a hole in his sock, which betrays that the perfect Cooper isn't so perfect afterall.
The barf makes her disgusted, but it doesn't have the same effect on Jade that Mr. C's does on the State Trooper. Of course, his name is Billy so...
This house doesn't belong to Dougie. That's interesting to note in a series that becomes preoccupied with the notion of home. Dougie just got sent home while at a place which wasn't his home at all.
Jade becomes like Dougie's mother, and Dougie becomes very much like a child, when she is forced to dress him. This whole version of Dougie, Billy's idealized self (Dale Cooper), going to this state could be implying that Billy is so far gone 25 years after American Girl's murder, he'd have to revert to a child-at-the-learning-stage to change who he is.
And back to the subject of homes, we find that Dale Cooper carried his key to his room at the Great Northern with him all of those years inside of the Red Room. It was presumably even inside of his pocket during FWWM and when the Arm told him there was nowhere left to go but home. The Great Northern IS in fact his home. Just as he exists as the idealized version of Billy, it existed as the idealized version of the motel where he lived with his father/grandfather and mother. Inside of his dream, and masked efficiently, Billy had reimagined his childhood living situation.
Lynch shows that Cooper stayed inside room 315, which we can now easily tie to the 3 and 15 we saw on the sockets in the mansion room, incase it was forgotten .
Jade mentioning two rides points out the sexual euphemism. That can easily connect to Billy Hastings saying he gave Betty a ride home.
- Pulling out, they pass one of the hitmen hired to kill Cooper. He contacts his accomplice, a few roads away and states how, seeing Dougie's car, their target may or may not be with Jade, whom just left.
We assume these are the precautions Mr. C took for when Coop left the Lodge, unless Phillip Jeffries is responsible for a few of them, seeing as though he wanted Ray to kill Mr. C. Mr. C probably would kill Dale himself, but he knows that would kill himself, just as Lois Duffy killing Lois Duffy eventually led to her own downfall. Some other less personal assasination needs to take place.
- Jade explains to Coop/Dougie how he should contact AAA. Coop/Dougie meanwhile stays more focused on the road sign which says Sycamore. He repeats Jade's statement about giving two rides.
Sycamores encircle the gateway at Glastonbury Grove. Hastings and Ruth similarly encountered Major Briggs at 2240 Sycamore.
Back to the Jade giving Dougie two rides bit. We theorized the entrance at Glastonbury Grove resembled the anatomy of a woman giving birth, which all started with a "ride". Did the sycamore make Dale's mind realize a sexual connection to the place? His words will also help remind us of Hastings and Betty and allow us to form another connection between them and Dale with what happens in the next sequence.
- Coop/Dougie reaches into his pocket and gets the Great Northern key only to drop it at a speed bump. This causes the 2nd hitman to think Jade is driving alone and Dougie is still inside of the house. Gene, the other hitman, states he will load up the car. See you at Mikey's the 2nd hitman says.
Coop/Dougie now is getting out the key but drops it. This serves as a fortunate event since it prevents his death.
Was he getting out the keys to the Great Northern in part because of the sycamore/Glastonbury connection and the previously discussed sexual connection? Does he recall his mother initiating him into that world?
Have to wonder if he consciously dropped the keys or not, he gives up on retrieving them pretty fast. However, without them he'll spend the next episode sadly repeating home.
So Dougie's car is about to be wired with a bomb as Jade, his mercenary mistress, gives him a ride somewhere. That flat out parallels Billy giving Betty a ride, because there was a problem with her car, and then her car being wired to explode several days later.
In the Return, it appears that you can trace everything to Betty in the same fashion you can tie most of the series events to the Hornes. They are the keys not dissimilar to the one that Coop/Dougie dropped.
- Across the street from Jade and Dougie's love nest, a little boy watches as Gene goes to wire the bomb to Dougie's car. The boy's mother shouts 1-1-9 repeatedly. She then takes some prescription medicine with some bourbon as her son eats some crackers on the couch. The mother then sits and smokes.
We see the neglected boy through the blinds; it gives the effect of bars again. He's interested in what Gene is doing, but his addict mother is more concerned. She's calling out the emergency number but in reverse, just as the Lodge spirits are apt to and as Audrey's Dance will play in reverse in Part 16. The mother is surrounded by different vices, none of which are illegal. Of interest is the Pavillion playing cards we discussed earlier, a Toys R Us brand, this kind the red counterpart of Mr. C's. She also has a diaper/safety pin open which might have been used to create the scratches on Mr. C's own card. She has a bottle of Evan WILLIAMS bourbon she pours and then seems to intentionally place it so we can see the brand. This is once again pushing the name William in our faces. A red balloon lies on the floor behind her. There will be red balloons at Sonny Jim's Birthday party as well as red balloons as Coop/Dougie looks at a cowboy statue. A red deflated/burst balloon was seen at the Johnson family household in the OG series, when Leo had turned into Shelly's husband/son. Perhaps that last one is closest to what we see here, the balloon not up as in the other examples.
Is the mother calling for help for Dougie's car, Cooper being in danger or Mr. C, whom help will soon arrive for? Or is it all 3? We can easily see this as an abstraction for Billy's mom, a single mother with problems herself. To go with our previous discussion about Dougie's vices, the addict mother apparently shares the fact that they are harmful but not as destructive as Mr. C's sins.
And here we have her son, whom seems as neglected as the boy Richard hits and kills seems adored. The boy has a red 1 on his shirt that stands out. This seems to be suggesting, despite Margaret's words being construed that Laura is the One (as in the most central), that this boy somehow is instead. And yet, we've theorized that red can mean deception inside of Twin Peaks (when it isn't trying to remind us of Audrey Horne, associated with the color). But there is a greater clue to be had with that red #1. It isn't the last time we'll see it. In Part 9, Chantal will be seen wearing the First Marine Division, an insignia given to the Marines of WWII and which is a blue diamond, with white stars in it and a red number 1 at the center, just like the addict mother's son. She wears this patch on her left arm, the side we saw as possibly being connected to the truth, and which connects to MIKE/Phillip. The Red Diamond was where Teresa Banks, Audrey's substitute worked and lived, but it was called the Blue Diamond in the script. Either Lynch had a problem with the Almond company, or, associating blue more with the truth, he knew Teresa's motel would need to be associated with Red. But in Part 9 we will see a red 1, like this boy is wearing, inside of a blue diamond, diamonds associated with Audrey Horne. Chantal was in room #7 at the Buckhorn motel, that number matching the one where Dale has sex with Diane, most probably seeing her as his mother. So in this admittedly complicated way, we can link this boy to Chantal, another mother figure for Billy. The boy here, a representation of Billy once again, was inside of the blue diamond, just like Billy was inside of his mother. Stars are occassionally mentioned in Twin Peaks too. "No Stars", a song linking a lover and dream to stars and then the desolation of them being gone - no stars - springs to mind. The song is often taken to mean Laura and Cooper, since it follows Margaret's talk about Laura being the one, and yet the song itself could easily go for Billy and his mother.
The lamp, an item which offers illumination, is missing the top half of its head. That can be linked to the corpses of Sam and Tracey we'll see in this episode and it can strongly be linked to William Hastings, whom dies similarly.
The boy eats crackers. Right before we see Mr. C's arrest report with Hastings info mixed in, Albert makes a crack about "Cooper" not having cheese and CRACKERS with him when he was arrested. It is Albert also whom will enjoy making euphemisms about Hastings lack of sanity. Crackers is slang for an insane individual.
- Highway Patrol Officers find Mr. C's crashed car. One of them, named Billy, becomes sick when he gets too close to Mr. C. The other officer helps him draw back and calls for assistance.
A BILLY approaches the passed out Mr. C, makes contact with him, smells the vomit and then similarly becomes sick. The other patrolman doesn't and neither did Jade. This Billy was also driving the car, just like Billy drove Betty home.
- At the Twin Peaks Sheriff Station Hawk becomes exasperated as Andy and Lucy try to figure out what is missing about the Laura Palmer case and Lucy eventually becomes convinced it's the chocolate bunny she ate because she had gas.
This is primarily played for laughs but there are interesting things to be gleaned from it. Hawk denying and then wondering if it is about the bunny echoes Bobby shouting at Laura that the man he killed in FWWM wasn't Mike, only to ask if it was Mike.
Despite Hawk's belief and Lucy's relief it isn't about the bunnies, they do play a curious role in Twin Peaks, at least in regards to this theory.
Cooper saw a rabbit when he first came to Twin Peaks, telling Harry about it and labeling it a cottontail. He was mistaken and Harry told him it was a snowshoe.
A few episodes later, on Ben Horne's desk, we saw a photograph of Laura and Audrey dressed as the proverbial snow bunnies, with Audrey even making bunny ears behind Laura's head. Only it was Audrey herself whom was dressed in the colors of the Red Room. She was the real bunny in question.
In FWWM, Will Hayward had a statue of a rabbit by his fireplace. BOB and abuse were synonymous with fire and we are theorizing that Billy, any Billy, was synonymous with the dreamer Billy Hastings.
In The Return, the Twin Peaks sheriff crew will find Naido/Betty at a place Major Briggs leads them too, his son, Bobby, saying,“I know exactly where Jack Rabbit’s Palace is. My dad, when I was a little kid, he took me to this place, near where his station used to be. It was our make-believe world, you know, where we made up stories. I was the one who named it ‘Jack Rabbit’s Palace.’"
And, at the end of The Return, Dale will find himself in Odessa, which just happens to be, although it's never mentioned, the home of the largest Jack Rabbit statue called Jack BEN Rabbit, after it's founder John BEN Shepherd.
So you can say...it might have been about the bunnies afterall.
Should note too that Lucy was pregnant with her son when she had gas and ate the bunny, another thread of mothers and sons.
- Out in the woods, Dr. Amp/Jacoby spray paints shovels gold with the help of a self constructed device.
This is just another wonderful moment for this theory. Here we have Amp/Jacoby involved in making shovels all nice and shiny and he's rigged a contraption made out of what appears to be bicycle tires to do it. In "Masked Ball" we saw Ben's father passing a super shiny shovel on to him during the groundbreaking ceremony of the Great Northern. And in Part 12 he reminisces about the second hand cycle his father gave to him too. Now, in this scene, we have Amp incorporating both objects which we believe the passing/giving of represented the father passing the cycle of abuse on to his son. Later on, Amp will also have a flashlight, shaped like a Great Horned Owl. Not only do we believe that the owls are the Hornes, Ben and Jerry once happily recalled their first bedroom where a girl named Louise Dombrowski (same initials as Lois Duffy) danced for them with a flashlight. Amp will also go on about a hammer and Jack Wheeler once remarked, while wearing the Red Room color scheme, how Audrey's grandfather once told him, "If you're gonna bring a hammer, you better bring nails." He was referencing it in a way that dealt with sex, making us wonder what grandpa Horne's relationship with the young Wheeler was. Later on in this episode, it's stated that a congressman planted clues in his garden to implicate the guilty. Frankly it's looking like Amp, who lives in the woods, is laying his own clues to show where the true cycle of abuse lay, and it wasn't the Palmers. Honestly, his having been both Johnny and Ben's therapist, this makes perfect sense.
- Jade drives Coop/Dougie to the Silver Mustang Casino. She gives him some money to call for help and tells him to go out now, which reminds Dale of Laura/Carrie's same words. He goes out and Jade drives off. Coop/Dougie gets trapped momentarily in the casino doors.
Ah...the Silver Mustang Casino. There's that horse theme again. We've gone through before how we suspect that Billy stole something of American Girl's after he killed her and it might have had something to do with a horse, the reason Lynch had Laura inexplicably state she used to love horses in her interview. This casino fits in perfectly with that idea...for if Billy took a trophy it was essentially a gamble. He was risking someone realizing it was gone and then finding it on him and connecting him to her murder...like American Girl's mother. Or Betty. So now we have a casino named after a horse, reminding Billy of the gamble he made and which is now troubling him.
The building (really the Commerce Casino) looks horseshoe shaped and has a horseshoe logo. Carrie Page wears a horseshoe necklace but it is inverted from the Silver Mustang logo. An upward pointing horseshoe symbolizes the collection of good luck. A downward pointing one shows the bestowing of it.
We have that this is a casino and a hotel. The only casino we knew in the original Twin Peaks was One-Eyed Jack's, owned by Ben Horne and frequented by both him and his brother, Jerry. We also have the fact that they also ran a hotel. The owners of the Silver Mustang are the Mitchum Brothers whom echo Ben and Jerry (Billy's father and uncle). Later on this whole scenario leads to Coop/Dougie clearing the Mitchums of arson which we suspect really is just Billy's way of clearing himself of having set his father's motel on fire and killing the man and his own mother too.
Cooper going out and immediately getting trapped in the doors is comedic but can connect to him remembering Laura/Carrie having told him to go out and how Laura is the door to Twin Peaks Billy has virtually become stuck in.
- Cooper shows a guard his $5 and says "Call for help" to which the guard replies, "In the back, Jack." He also points him to where he can change the bill. The money changer gives Coop/Dougie a cup of change for his $5 bill.
We got the name Jack occurring again. We theorized that Billy, who Cooper truly is, created John "Jack" Justice Wheeler after Dale became too "good" to even flirt with his attraction to Audrey Horne. In the guise of Jack, a name Billy had imagined perhaps for the father he imagined, Billy romanced his mother, Audrey, until the threat of Windom Earle had passed. Now Cooper's being called Jack, even if in passing, is important.
The concept of Cooper being made to change a bill is interesting since we theorize he's Bill-y, whom has changed himself into others, particularly Cooper, inside of his dreamworld.
The bars on the money changing place look like a prison again. Cooper looks like he's behind bars as he stands in the casino. The threat of going to prison haunts Billy in The Return, one of its main hidden motivators. A stolen horse trophy might land him there. Likewise, Billy associates his mother having cared more about the material comforts their father's motel offered, so she chose it over freedom, making it feel like a prison to him.
The fact that it is emphasized that a bill is being changed to play a game fits in nicely with this theory. Twin Peaks is a game for Billy, one created to deal with how he escaped being identified at American Girl's murderer. Inside of his game he changed into Cooper. Likewise, Billy changed himself, his public behavior, in order to not be discovered. Another interesting aspect is how at One-Eyed Jack's, Ben Horne, after unsuccessfully propositioning his daughter, states, "Next time, we will play a different game. I'll make the rules. You'll like it. Fun game. Everybody wins." Most abusers trick their child victims into believing it's only a game they are playing and this is how the abuse starts. In Part 6, we'll see a little boy playing a game with his mother that proves to be dangerous when the boy stops in the road and is hit and killed by Richard Horne. This we suspect is simply analogous to how Billy views his dark side killing what remained of his innocence. We believe that Billy's mother played "games" with him too, leading to the darkness inside of him, one Billy fostered to grow. This further deepens how Coop/Dougie answers that the game necessary for the change of bill is "Call for help." Billy was calling for help but nobody heard or listened. The game the young boy playing then, which leads to his spiritual death, can be considered a call for help. As evidenced by Annie Blackburn, another fragment of Billy, we are made aware that he was, at some point, highly suicidal. Infact, Laura Palmer's death wish was most likely Billy's own, just another aspect he projected on to her. Laura becomes a version of his victim created by Billy and so hopelessly as much a portrait in ways of Billy himself.
When Coop/Dougie leaves, the woman whom changed the bill for him looks concerned, holding her hand over her heart, as Laura did at the end of FWWM, even if it is the right one not left.
- Coop/Dougie stumbles into the casino slot machine area and watches a man win and shout "Hello". He sees an image of the Red Room with what appears to be fire above a slot machine and goes to it. "Hello," Coop/Dougie cries and he wins the jackpot. When a man says he broke it, Coop/Dougie moves on to the next machine he sees with the fiery Red Room above it.
This is how Coop/Dougie survives in this state of confusion/powerlessness: by noting then imitating the behavior of those he sees around him. It is essentially how Billy survived too, enabling him to continue his killings and avoid detection. If he acted like normal people, or repeated what they did, they would assume he was like them, even projecting themselves on to him at times, letting him get by.
That fire with the Red Room inside of it creates a nice image: The Red Room represents in part Billy's home and we believe he set fire to it, intentionally or not. Now he's seeing it at the Mitchums, whom are accused of setting fire to their own hotel, and whom we compared to Billy's father and uncle.
The first machine Billy plays has a diamond on it. Audrey was the Queen of Diamonds, her substitute Teresa worked at the Red Diamond motel and Ben was once compared to ice by his daughter, ice is slang for diamonds. Audrey and Teresa were seen holding ice.
Besides the ice, it also has the word bill all over it, just like Billy Hastings. We can see how Billy associates the dream of wealth and comfort at a cost, just as his mother was willing to pay/risk: their sanity for their material welfare. It also asks the question, if this machine accepts bills, why did Coop/Dougie then need to get his own bill changed? Possibly for the illustration/clue provided of a bill being changed?
The game is called Five & Sparklers. Sparkle is the name of the drug running rampant in Twin Peaks.
- At another machine, a frazzled old woman notices Dale/Dougie in annoyance. He caresses the coin and puts it in and wins again. A staff member comes up to him and says he's won 2 mega jackpots for a total of 24800. She goes to get him a bigger cup. Coop/Dougie points to a machine beside the old woman and she gets angry at him. He then walks away. The old woman gives a finger to the security camera. The woman returns with a bucket and the old woman tells her that the nutcake left and the staff member rushes off to find him.
The old woman, we'll much later learn, is a mother whom is able to get her life on track and reunite with her son, thanks to "Mr. Jackpots" as she calls him. Here we find her as being as neglectful and selfish as the addict mother we saw earlier. A theme of mothers and their children, particularly mothers/sons is woven throughout The Return. In some cases the mother placing her interest in self/materialism is clearly emphasized. Obviously, Billy associates this with his own mother and so it recurs. In this case, with this woman, his avatar is able to save/redeem this wayward mother just as he tried to redeem his father, in the guise of Jack Wheeler helping Ben Horne.
Jackpot is used in connection to Coop/Dougie, the name Jack specifically referenced within it. We discussed earlier Jack Wheeler's role in the original series and Billy's dream. We also have talked about how the name Jack seems to be associated in Billy's mind with some idealized idea of his daddy which masked the truth: Jack Wheeler whom slept with Audrey and was a candidate for being the father of her son before we found out the truth, Jack Rabbit's Palace being where Bobby played make-believe with his own father, One-Eyed Jack's being the place where Ben tried to sleep with Audrey.
Interestingly the term jackpot "was originally used in a form of poker, where the pool or pot accumulated until a player could open the bidding with two jacks or better." Two Jacks. Twin Jacks.
- Coop/Dougie sees several more fiery Red Rooms and wins again, causing the old woman to play the one he pointed out to her. She wins and is ecstatically thankful.
The game the old woman plays and wins is called American Slots. More ties to American Woman, this one offering the possibility that it references Billy's mother whom was the American WOMAN just as his high school interest was the American GIRL.
- In Philadelphia, at FBI headquarters, Albert Rosenfield explains to Gordon Cole a case where a congressman accused of murdering his wife claims he is innocent but can't reveal the real killer because it would breach National security. He's placed several items in his garden to help lead them to the killer. "The congressman's dilemma" Cole remarks.
This could very well apply to the dilemma David Lynch worked himself into when developing Twin Peaks. He wanted it to be about Who Killed Laura Palmer. It wasn't just a question. The show was about her actual killer. However, to reveal who that was, Dale Cooper/Billy Hastings, would destroy the series itself because it would solve the mystery and end Coop/Billy's story! The fanbase would also probably be unwilling to accept it. So Lynch found a way to secretly reveal the killer and the different reasons for it without outright revealing it. For example, in Dr Amp's scenes, you can find items hinting at Ben Horne's childhood and relationship with his father, hinting at the fact that he was abused by his dad. Or, in a scene, soon coming up, you can find a throwback to Billy Hastings that coincides/leads to his connection with Cooper.
The items left in the garden include a blonde lying breasts down among jewels as she wear little more than heels, a pair of pliers, a photo of a redhead and blonde in bikinis, a weird photo of a boy in a sailor uniform, a machine gun and beans. The photos don't have evidence tags. The evidence tags, meanwhile, states that the items, at least the pliers, were found in a car...is it the pictures then that were in the garden? The photo of the boy looks unreal/altered, just like the Brennan family photo at Lucy's workstation. Are the beans Great Northern?
- Cole instructs a young female agent, named Tammy Preston, to stay and show what she found in New York. It's the building with Sam and Tracey. She shows photos of it and the mutilated corpses of the lovers. NYPD doesn't have a clue what went on here nor do they know the owner of the building. There were 24/7 guards which they can no longer find, only Sam Colby and Tracey Barberato's bodies. 100s of digital files recording the glass box were confiscated but only a few blurred images moving were found until a shot of the Experiment Model, on the night they were killed. It disappeared as soon as it moved. No DNA etc... was found on the bodies, they were clean.
A fact of great significance here. We theorize that Billy creates a Blue Rose FBI Agent to accompany the deaths he had a hand in or otherwise played some traumatic role in his formation as a monster. Phillip Jeffries deals with how his childhood/innocent self died at the hands of his mother when she began abusing him. Albert Rosenfield involved the death of his father/grandfather, but since Billy didn't care about that particular loss, Albert was the only Blue Rose Agent not to disappear until Tammy's introduction. Chet dealt with the death of Billy's mother, camouflaged as Teresa Banks, while Dale Cooper was involved in how Billy processed American Girl's death. It led to his evolution into a serial killer, where he no longer was traumatized/affected by death and so the good Dale was locked away and the bad one set free. Now, when Betty has been potentially and messily killed, taking the form of Ruth, Billy is concerned with his freedom again. The good Dale is set free and Tammy Preston invented. But notice how Tammy is the first female agent to be inducted into the Blue Rose task force. That is because this death directly involves Billy's possible downfall at the hands of three women: Betty, Anerican Girl's mom and the "ghost" of American Girl herself. The created FBI reflects this fact, needing to be a woman to counter/reflect/deal with it.
The building in NYC seems to have more windows, though still darkened, near ground level.
Sam and Tracey are bloody (digital) messes that are missing the tops of their heads. This will link to William Hastings' own supposed death and the lamp which appeared by the addict mother's son. It also easily recalls what Red will warn Richard in Part 6, after he's questioned if Richard had dealing drugs for him under control: "Just remember this, kid...I will saw your head open and eat your brains if you f*ck me over." Billy obviously was not in control of his own situation with Betty, we reckon, when she found out about Billy's real work which began with American Girl. This also perfectly unites Billy/Betty, Sam/Tracey and Richard and Miriam. During Red's conversation with Richard he mentions to Richard Horne that he can pick up the rest of the sparkle (drugs) at someone called Mary Ann's, to which Richard seems shocked that Red knows that name and the area. Mary Ann is awful close to Miriam and that would help explain how Miriam Flynn is making extra money. Her witnessing the death of the little boy because of Richard sours their relationship, however, which could have led to Red sawing off their heads and eating both of their brains. Only Miriam gets beaten close to death by Richard first and Richard dies/disappears at the manipulation of his father. But this links Miriam/Richard to Tracey/Sam, both couples involved with having seen something they shouldn't have and being destroyed because of it, just as we speculate happened with Betty/Billy.
Tammy describes, "The bodies were violently mutilated, but no prints, no DNA, no fibers. Completely clean. Nothing." This goes along with our theory that Billy usually was very methodical in his "work". However, when Billy killed American Girl it was sloppy because it was his first intentional kill and he's aware that could lead to trouble if someone looks closer. The word clean and the whole situation can be summed up in Carrie Page's words in Part 18. "Odessa. I tried to keep a clean house...keep everything organized. It's a long way. In those days...I was too young
to know any better." Leo Johnson also had an obsession with cleaness, like in FWWM when he is showing Shelly how to keep a clean house.
- Cole's assistant notifies him that Cooper's on the phone. Gordon and Albert are shocked. They and Tammy rush into Cole's office to pick up the call. Cole asks if whomever he is speaking to is sure it's Cooper and then hears that he's in trouble. He informs them they're heading out there immediately to question Cooper at 9. Cole announces they are all heading to the Black Hills of South Dakota. The absurd mystery of the strange forces of existence. Albert says to Tammy, adding how about a truckload of valium.
The camera stays on the door as Cole, Albert and Preston enter.
There is a photograph of an atomic blast on Cole's office wall. In Cole's Portland, Oregon office he had a contrastingly peaceful photo of a lake in the woods. Now, with the increasingly dark and disturbing theme of The Return, we have a photo of destruction. A bomb is also euphemism for a devastating truth, which may be fuelling this whole tale: Billy finding out that he is his own grandfather's son, the incestuous abuse in his family, Betty discovering who/what Billy really was. American Girl's mother finding out who really killed her daughter. Abuse is also repeatedly linked to the destruction of nature: Ben's groundbreaking of the Great Northern symbolic for the abuse he suffered by his father, Ghostwood representative of his abuse of Audrey.
And here is one of the hidden clues we were discussing earlier that it is up to us to discover. As Gordon learns that Cooper is being held in a prison in South Dakota, Tammy listens with a photograph of Franz Kafka seen behind her. That should immediately remind us of Billy Hastings, also in a prison in South Dakota. And this thread will directly be followed up when the three FBI agents go see "Coop" in his South Dakota prison and Hastings info is seen in the arrest report, although nobody comments on it.
"The absurd mystery of the strange forces of existence." Well, Albert, the sad fact is that your creator is an insane, psychotic man named Billy and you are all his form of escape and entertainment. You might really need that valium.
- At the Roadhouse, the Cactus Blossoms perform "Mississippi".
Now this is a confusing but amusing song to end off on. A song called Mississippi would seem to have little bearing on the series...except for this theory where we already discussed something which could prove relevant. In the OG episode "Slaves and Masters" we were outright confused why Windom Earle was sending Caroline's wedding items to circle the state of Arkansas. That was until we discovered that the state had a few interesting things, like a Gum Woods, Caroline, Pulaski and Williams townships. It also has Little Rock. The state below it is also Louisiana, where Phillip Jeffries supposedly came from. And another state beside it just happens to be Mississippi. Infact, there is a Mississippi County in Arkansas...and there is also an unincorporated community in Mississippi called Pulaski. An unincorporated community is one which has not been recognized. Um..we saw the woman we recognized as Ronette Pulaski here listed as American Girl...and we're theorizing she's failing to be recognized as the true "Laura Palmer". We've theorized she might be Judy. Pulaski is a Polish name and there was a famous Judith of Poland, whose grandmother was also a Judith.
Some of the lyrics to Mississippi also seem relevant to the plot:
"My angel sings down to me, She's somewhere on the shore waiting for me
With her wet hair and sandy gown"
Laura's corpse on the beach springs to mind, and the angels in FWWM. Interestingly, it was Pheobe Augustine whom had Lynch introduce the angels into the plot. The angels were hers.
"You look different from way down here
Like a circus mirror I see flashes, of you on the surface."
If Billy reimagined his first victim into Laura she sure would look different. Laura referenced the circus in her Between 2 Worlds interview: "Many things happened. Many things all at once, like a circus with dark creatures at night with flickering lights..."
Another relevant Mississippi fact: a famous wrestler born there, at a height of 8 feet 2 inches and whom went by the name Paul Bunyan, was a man named Max PALMER. We've already seen Leland as both Giant and Woodsman in this theory. Paul Bunyan was the name of a famous giant woodsman.
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.
- We pick up on Cooper right where we left him: falling through space.
We touched on this previously. Dale Cooper is in infact living what Donna questioned Laura about in FWWM: "Do you think that if you were falling in space, that you would slow down after a while or go faster and faster?" And he is suffering what Laura answered, "Faster and faster." We might not see him burst into flames but we think it will be inferred by what Dale will soon discover/see.
Billy obviously lived what he projected onto Laura. Her words were how he felt about his own abuse by his mother and potentially grandfather/father. It makes logical sense that we now see his avatar suffering it, revealing how that situation belonged to him and not Laura.
- Suddenly see see what looks like a purple water with something bubbling up in it. Cooper falls through it, only to land on a concrete like structure which appears to be on another purple sea. Cooper goes up to the tall wall like edge and looks at the sea which surrounds him.
So this place is covered by this purple water all throughout then, because as he's breaking through the atmosphere, or whatever, it looks like Dale's going through water, only to end up dry again and in air before he hits the concrete building, with its solitary opening.
Can't help but think of the start of Mr. Bean everytime Dale falls/lands.
The structure looks similar to the skyscraper in NYC that Dale just visited. We can see a parallel being formed then. We're about to theorize that this structure hides the images of Billy's true victims and not the substitutions, like Laura, he created for them inside of his dream world. We previously theorized that the NYC building houses the glass box, which represented Billy's psyche. Thinking of the box now, it seemed empty, just like Billy's soul. What one would see when looking at the box is a reflection of themselves, very much like the two sided mirror in the police station where Billy was questioned. That reflected quality will be discussed deeper later on, how it helped Billy, whom was empty, not willing to face his past and self inside, and aided his survival without detection for so long. Now we're interested in how the Arm's doppleganger, after his revelation that the Red Room and everything was non-exist-ent, has seemed to send Dale first to the glass box and now here to the mansion room. Was it making a point by trying to show Cooper things inside of the dream which are closer to reality? Hastings psyche and now where he's hidden away the memory of his victims?
This will be the same area/land where the Fireman lives, as we will see in Part 8. We've theorized that the Fireman's is a version of the Palmers' place, or rather Billy's first victim's house. It makes sense he would then keep his victims close to the area and yet separate, all of his murders done to partly relive that first one and yet not wanting the family to know the truth about their daughter.
The purple sea is possibly related to the idea of the mauve zone, a subject which interested Mark Frost. This allows us to broach a very interesting concept within this theory and the idea that Billy is our dreamer, whom masks himself as Cooper inside of the dream. Coop is often linked to David Lynch. In The Return, we see some definite links between William Hastings, with his love of alternate realities/aliens/sci-fi with Mark Frost. Together, we believe, they create the true answer to the question "Who Killed Laura Palmer?" and that works on a meta level just as well, Lynch and Frost having killed Laura in the first place by creating her together to solely be a murdered girl.
- The only way in to the building is a large window which acts as a door. Cooper enters through the window and then closes it behind him.
Through a window was how BOB would visit Laura. She said that to Harold even in FWWM, "He comes in through my window at night." Now Cooper is seen entering through one. We have a clear connection then to BOB and Coop, without the doppleganger even. We theorize that this was how Billy got in to American Girl's bedroom and possibly his other victims as well. That is why Billy now creates a place where he stores the memories of those victims and they can only be gotten to through a window.
Inside of the room, the sound that sounded from Hastings' head, as he stroked it in the cell can be heard, once again indicating that all of this is happening inside of there.
- Cooper finds a dark haired woman, dressed in red, and staring in the direction of a fire burning inside of a fireplace, as she sits on a large couch before it. Her eyes are sewn shut. She tries to communicate with Dale but her words aren't anything we can understand and the screen keeps glitching and jutting as Cooper and she try to communicate. Dale wants to know where they are. When she feels Cooper's face it gets less glitchy but then it returns to it. A banging happens and the woman, Naido, motions Dale to be quiet.
So first off we are going to mention that fire because this is the bursting into fire part of Laura's speech and how it relates to having seen Coop falling faster and faster through space. It isn't a literal sort of bursting into fire, as we'll see Mr. C do, but it effectively shows one always burning inside of Billy's thoughts and how he condemns his victims to stay there staring at it, almost their only source of entertainment.
The room itself will be seen later, with Phillip Jeffries inside of room #8 at the Dutchman's. That raises an interesting possibility that, while Billy keeps the memory of his victims here, the Dutchman's is used to trap the FBI Agents whom were different avatars for himself too. The Dutchman's is close/identical to Billy's old home, while the victims are trapped in something like his first one's home.
And now we finally meet Betty. Only here she is presented to us as Naido, whose name is almost an anagram for Diane, if you were to spell it backwards, subtract the e and place an o at the start again. But we're believing that Betty is whom this character really is, Billy having harmed her and her being relegated to the mansion room because of it. Naido's actress, Nae Yuuki previously acted with Laura Dern, Diane's actress, in Lynch's own Inland Empire. That keeps with how we believe that Lynch was adamant that Pamela Gidley, a former costar of Sherilyn Fenn's, was to play Teresa Banks, whom we suspect is Audrey's substitute. Phoebe Augustine and Sheryl Lee were also both up to play Laura and we believe that Laura substituted American Girl.
Naido/Betty's eyes are supposedly sewn shut. This could definitely deal with her not knowing what Billy truly was and how he wishes she had never found out. She doesn't know who Dale is here, relying on her hands in a way which will be conjured later when Diane, her dreamworld substitute, feels Cooper's face as they have sex. Here, it is indicated that Naido may not recognize Dale as the dreamer/Billy because of her blindness.
Cooper asks where they are but not who Naido is. Does he know her? Or is this another indication that his thoughts are preoccupied on himself and getting "out."
The glitching links to several other cases of glitching in the series. Does that indicate time loops or the dream factor or something else entirely?
The banging sound at the door will be revealed to be American Girl's mother. We suspect that it indicates how she will soon go after Billy for the murder of her daughter and how the threat looms heavily inside of Billy's mind. Since two of Betty's avatars wrote letters, it is possible Betty even wrote American Girl's mother a letter about her daughter's death and Billy's responsibility. But why then is Naido, whom we argue is really Betty, protecting the man we believe hurt her? Well, we've just speculated that Betty might not know this is Billy's avatar she is with. We've also previously speculated that she might have partially helped her boss in some of his less than legal actions. She might still be performing that action here. Since this is all being filtered through Billy's mind, it's also important to realize that even his victims are warped by how Billy sees them, illustrated by how we theorize Laura went from sacred to profane, a source of light to dark, inside of his mind. Billy might perceive all of his victims as "loving" him, just as he might imagine they enjoy being kept prisoners inside of the mansion room, the complete opposite of the truth. Only if they retain their autonomy, as Laura did by not following the instruction to not take the ring, can they rebel against him.
- Dale gets distracted by an electrical socket box, bearing the number 15, that is emanating an electrical noise. He walks towards it, feeling disoriented, but Naido stops him, placing herself between Cooper and the socket. She makes a motion, slicing her neck and then pulls him away, although he still seems hypnotized by the socket. Naido takes him to a ladder and they climb up and out of the room through a hatch door.
The electrical noise that emerges sounds like the Arm's and Waiter's whooping sound.
The plug box has the number 15 on it. We theorize that Betty is Billy's 15th kill or attempted one. Further theorizing leads us to believe that, if Cooper had gone through this plug, he might have somehow wound up in the part of Billy's dream that dealt with his relationship to Betty's dreamworld substitute, Ruth...whom lost her head. That explains the motion that Betty gives of the head being cut off/death. At the same time, Hastings will soon lose part of his own head, the top of it, so it could also align with that.
Naido/Betty leads Cooper to a ladder, taking him away from the 15 socket he's still attracted to and the still present pounding on the door. She takes him up a ladder. Dougie/Cooper will scribble ladders on the insurance homework he's left in charge of. Billy likely used a ladder to gain entrance to his victims' rooms through the windows.
- The hatch leads to the top of what looks like an opaque (steel?) box floating in space. There is a dome shaped item on top of it and Naido tries to communicate with Cooper again, whom fails to understand. She pulls a lever on the dome and appears to be electrocuted, falling from off the box and into space. Cooper watches, alone, until the giant head of Major Briggs goes floating by, saying "Blue rose." Cooper then climbs back down the ladder into the mansion room.
This box is as closed off and impenetrable as the box in NYC is transparent and empty, maybe indicating that Billy has protected his relationship to his victims very well.
When Naido seemingly gets electrocuted, the glitches stop and the coloring/lighting appears more normal than before and less purple. The glitches also stop. Was Naido or the machine responsible for them?
Her electrocution can imitate and compliment Richard Horne's own electrocution in Part 16, watched over by Mr. C, quite nicely which only makes sense in a complicated manner: Betty is Naido whom will become Diane whom will become Linda, whom is just still Betty. Meanwhile, Dale here, whom also watches her electrocution, will become a Richard whom receives that farewell letter from Linda. Dale is Richard whom is still just Richard Horne, whom is really just Billy. Both Billy and Betty were represented in the doomed Sam and Tracey, whom both had their heads brutally mutilated by the Experiment Model. Richard and Betty then also suffer similar electrocutions. While it is often argued that Richard doesn't survive, there's a small chance he was sent somewhere else, ala Phillip Jeffries. Maybe he was waiting in Odessa for Dale Cooper to finally become him, another purpose of those tricky coordinates. Betty/Naido meanwhile falls off here and ends up in Twin Peaks, to the other coordinates.
Major Briggs just happening to float by is another thread/reminder of the headless Ruth Davenport and William Hastings storyline. His saying Blue Rose indicates his involvement in the cases, and Project Blue Book, but also seems pertinent given the fact that we believe this giant black box houses Hastings' memories of his victims, whom are blue roses to him, what he believes to be unnatural replicas of his mother, the original (red) rose. The last thing that Hastings remembers Major Briggs saying, before he lost his head, was Cooper's name. This moment now connects to that one.
- Back in the mansion room, Dale discovers that the socket now has a 3 on it. A blue rose sits on a table as another woman wearing red sits and stairs at the fire in the fireplace. She turns around and we see she looks exactly like Ronette Pulaski. She looks at her watch and the 3 socket starts making that electrical sound like the Arm. Cooper becomes transfixed by the socket.
The plug now bearing a 3, we speculate indicates we are now in the presence of William "Billy" Hastings' third victim. #1 and #2 we suspect were his father/grandfather and mother, when he burned the motel down. Although there is the possibility his mother killed their father and the other number here belongs to Billy's grandmother or someone else he might have unintentionally killed. American Girl was his first intentional murder, however.
The blue rose present indicates that this is a murder Billy committed in some way honoring his mother. Naido/Betty might not have been deemed worthy of one because her death was viewed as an unwanted necessity when she threatened him. David Lynch referred to Audrey Horne as the "flower of Twin Peaks."
Lynch seems to be directing this moment as a big reveal. Infact, it would even seem probable we were led to think this might be Audrey Horne sitting here, wearing red and having short dark hair. Cooper seems to sense it is important that this is Ronette he has found.
The character is credited as American Girl, not Ronette Pulaski, though, and that is odd because she is a woman and not a girl. However, Billy murdered her when she was a girl, perpetually placing her in that stage inside of his mind, even if he ages them within it. Which leads to the possibility that Billy misguidedly believes he is protecting/saving his victims and allows them the chance to age within his mind. Richard/Dale will likewise call the middle aged Carrie Page/Laura a girl. Audrey referred to herself as a girl in her own story, even though she too was no longer a teenager.
So we have American Girl in one room and we theorize that Betty/Naido, the American Woman, was kept in the other.
Very large possibility that American Girl is Judy. We've argued that is Audrey's real name but perhaps Billy's first victim shared his mother's name or the names sharing several letters confused him: aUDreY jUDY. It seems evident that, inside of his dream, Billy masked his first victim behind "Laura" which was strongly informed by the old movie of the same name. But her true name very well might have been Judy, and why it haunts the narrative. Judy was also the name of Lynch's girlfriend during the Kennedy assassination and Twin Peaks began as an exploration of Marilyn Monroe and her involvement with the Kennedy brothers. If Lynch saw Cooper as similar to himself, and Billy is really Cooper, Lynch might have cleverly given the name for Billy's first "girlfriend" as that of his own in relation to the Kennedys: Judy. Her name now being lost illustrates how serial killers fail to see their victims as real people, often forgetting their names. Laura Palmer said in her Between 2 Worlds interview she met many people with no names. If Billy killed as many as 9 people in between 3 - 15 that would account for the nameless people she encounters.
Now might be a good time to mention Cooper's name is inspired by infamous hijacker and ransomer D.B. Cooper, which in itself was an alias. The perfect inspiration for the dreamer to hide himself behind: we aren't meant to discover his true identity.
American Girl is aware of the importance of 2:53.
Cooper is still drawn to the plug and how it will take him away from the room. Electricity accompanies it. Dale Cooper described dreams basically in electrical terms to Harry and Lucy.
- Mr. C drives down the South Dakota highway in the scene Dale previously saw through the Red Room curtains. His clock reads 2:53 and he is visibly not feeling well. His cigarette lighter etc...is giving off the electrical sound.
The prospect of returning to the Lodge apparently physically makes Mr. C sick, something Dale, whom never discusses his home, does not experience. We theorize once again that the dopplegangers are infact more honest in a way. Mr. C is aware of the negative feelings his "home" invokes and it sickens and frightens him.
The lighter giving off the electricity connects to BOB being synonymous with fire as well as the woodsmen asking "Got a light?"
- Back in the Mansion Room, American Girl rises to her feet almost weakly. Dale is still focused on the socket, which attempts to suck him in. "When you get there, you will already be there," American Girl informs. The socket still wants to zap Dale in. Mr. C is speeding down the highway still suffering.
American Girl's words indicate that he will already be there when he exchanges places with his doppleganger, or Mr. C's tulpa in this case. However, on another level, it implies that the other Coops are still just Cooper.
- Back in the mansion room, the pounding back on the door, American Girl warns, "You'd better hurry, my mother is coming." As she watches, Dale is pulled in through the socket, his body giving off smoke. His shoes drop off.
The knocking sound demanding entrance is revealed to be American Girl's mother. This clearly involves Billy aware he is about to be hounded by his first intentional victim's mother, when she begins to suspect him in some way relating to Betty. With Sarah's bloodthirsty/odd behavior, mothers come to adorn a sinister air in The Return, revealing how the dreamer harbours a fear of them.
American Girl warning Dale of her mother, frankly sounds like a teenage girl telling her secret lover to beat it if he had sneaked into her bedroom. That's what we theorize Billy did, but it wasn't something the real American Girl probably encouraged or wanted. But, then again, this is Billy's fantasy so everything is corrupted by his delusional thinking, except for the instances of truth that always try to intercede...like the mother banging on the door.
Smoke is linked to fire and Dale is giving off smoke now.
Dale's shoes falling off are significant since Audrey's shoes were focused on when we first met her. MIKE/Phillip also makes a living selling shoes, circle brand to be exact. Why does Dale lose his shoes? Because of the rubber that doesn't carry electricity? Because he's going in sole-less? To help invoke Audrey? So MIKE/Phillip can try to sell him a new pair?
- A very ill Mr. C speeds down the road until he turns the car over, coming finally to a stop. Close to vomiting, Mr. C holds a hand over his mouth, looking at the time and the lighter in fear. He looks through the windshield and sees the red curtains of the Red Room.
The fear and horror, the pure physical revulsion that Mr. C feels over the prospect of going home is clearly conveyed. Home is not a pleasant place to him, and his being closer to the true character of Billy, and with what we've already discussed about Billy's home life, we can understand why.
- At Rancho Rosa, in a deserted house for sale, the tulpa Dougie Jones, just finished up with his rented lover Jade. Dougie's left arm is going numb and he's wearing the Owl Cave ring. Jade goes off to wash up.
And now we have a home that belongs to no one but where Dougie has escaped his own homelife to carry on a paid for affair...only he's soon going to be pulled back to his real home too and be just as sick of it as Mr.C, even if he's blocked what home exactly is from his mind.
Jade is a shade of green, like the ring.
Dougie's arm going numb with the Owl Cave Ring still links it to MIKE/Phillp whom has no left arm.
Important to note about Dougie, he's a bad husband and obviously indulges in several vices...and yet he doesn't seem all that horrible, not on the level of Mr. C. His sins are more like what's presented with the addict mother squatting in the house across the street. But Dougie doesn't seem like a rapist or a killer...and yet he came from Mr. C, not supposedly Cooper. But...if he isn't a complete monster, then why would Richard Horne be? Sure the doppleganger was his father, but if Dougie can be a copy of Mr. C and not wholly unholy...shouldn't we examine Richard a little more closely and wonder if something else is responsible for his horrible behavior and that maybe Billy has shielded that from himself once again inside of his dream? We never see Richard interact with either his grandfather or mother afterall.
- Dougie starts becoming sick, just as Mr. C is. He crawls to the bathroom but finding the door locked returns to the other room. The sockets make an electrical noise. The Red curtains of the Red Room appear and Dougie brings up on the carpet, a mixture of blood, corn and black oil. A zap and he's gone startling Jade.
The light on the floor look like prison bars. The Red Room can become a prison. Hastings is currently inside of a prison and we argue, as the dreamer, this whole Return to Twin Peaks revolves around the threat of his real identity going there.
Going home, without even realizing what is happening, causes the tulpa to become so sick he vomits up garmonbozia (pain and sorrow) plus the oil that symbolizes the Lodge and BOB, as well as blood.
- Mr. C sees the curtains and Dougie sitting in the Red Room chair behind them. He looks at the watch in his Lincoln. Suddenly he begins to violently vomit up creamed corn, black oil and blood. Afterwards he passes out.
Once again, this is how horrible and painful going "home" is to Mr. C. It actually makes him become so sick he vomits up a substance so foul it can make others whom smell it sick too. Billy's trauma becomes evident, inside of his dream, by having the worst of himself shown to be vulnerable by the threat/memory of home. This makes perfect logical sense when we realize what home is to Billy. First off, he is his mother's pain and sorrow incarnate, the proof and reminder of her constant abuse by her father. He became the embodiment of the torment of the person he loved most in the world, as well as his own grandfather's son. Then, on top of that, he was most likely abused by that mother too. She carried on the cycle with him, creating a torturous conflict created inside of him between love and fear/hate. Billy might have also been abused by his own father/grandfather as well and had to live with the realization that his mother chose their material comfort over their emotional wellbeing.
- Inside of the Red Room, Dougie, in the chair, finds MIKE/Phillip stating at him. "I feel funny," he tells him, then asks what's happening. "Someone manufactured you...for a purpose but I thinks that's been fulfilled," MIKE/Phillip answers. Dougie's left hand begins to shrink and the ring falls off. Then his head disappears and we see black smoke. A little golden ball comes out of the smoke and his clothes collapse. A thing like a rock/egg is seen with black smoke. It turns into something alive and barfing and MIKE/Phillip shields his eyes. Suddenly the black thing shrinks and is seen with the gold ball. Zap, smoke and all that remains is a tiny gold ball/bead/seed on the chair. Mike picks up the ring and the bead and places the ring back on the gold/black pedestal.
Dougie was infact manufactured for a purpose: to save Mr. C from having to go back to the Lodge. Similarly, Billy manufacturered his own "tulpa" false image, to keep himself out of his own prison and from similarly facing his past. If others believed that the respectable William Hastings was just your average sort of man, battling the commonplace vices, they need never suspect he was actually committing the worst sins imaginable.
Dougie contains both good (gold) and bad (black), complimenting the pools outside of the White and Black Lodges. It also echoes the pedestal where the ring sits. This is probably the essence of things: that each soul contains the chance for great good or horrible evil and we must find balance and acceptance of the fact. It also goes along with how we believe Billy once saw Laura as good but then transformed her into something evil.
MIKE/Phillip shields himself from seeing Dougie's darkness, that seems to be barfing. We view MIKE/Phillip as a representation of Billy's uncle/Jerry. Does this mean that the uncle had forsaken evil when he was redeemed or does it betray how he wasn't willing/able to see the sickness inside of his own family? The sick girl that is being taken to see her uncle is also vomiting, as did the Experiment when it birthed BOB.
Does MIKE/Phillip pick up the dark stone/thing when he picks up the ring or did it disappear?
- Back at the Rancho Rosa, Cooper is expelled from the socket in black smoke. He lies on his back by Dougie's barf. Jade walks in shocked, thinking he's Dougie. She asks where he got the haircut and suit. She then smells the barf and asks if he's sick, saying they need to get out of the house. Outside she becomes impatient with Coop/Dougie when he's unresponsive and without his shoes. She goes back inside to get them and even has to put them on for him. Asking if he has his keys, she finds the key to Dale's room at the Great Northern inside of his pocket instead. She expresses displeasure that she needs to give him 2 rides.
Once again, the light shining on the socket and ground looks like prison bars, linking this to William Hastings and the theme of imprisonment.
Cooper has a hole in his sock, which betrays that the perfect Cooper isn't so perfect afterall.
The barf makes her disgusted, but it doesn't have the same effect on Jade that Mr. C's does on the State Trooper. Of course, his name is Billy so...
This house doesn't belong to Dougie. That's interesting to note in a series that becomes preoccupied with the notion of home. Dougie just got sent home while at a place which wasn't his home at all.
Jade becomes like Dougie's mother, and Dougie becomes very much like a child, when she is forced to dress him. This whole version of Dougie, Billy's idealized self (Dale Cooper), going to this state could be implying that Billy is so far gone 25 years after American Girl's murder, he'd have to revert to a child-at-the-learning-stage to change who he is.
And back to the subject of homes, we find that Dale Cooper carried his key to his room at the Great Northern with him all of those years inside of the Red Room. It was presumably even inside of his pocket during FWWM and when the Arm told him there was nowhere left to go but home. The Great Northern IS in fact his home. Just as he exists as the idealized version of Billy, it existed as the idealized version of the motel where he lived with his father/grandfather and mother. Inside of his dream, and masked efficiently, Billy had reimagined his childhood living situation.
Lynch shows that Cooper stayed inside room 315, which we can now easily tie to the 3 and 15 we saw on the sockets in the mansion room, incase it was forgotten .
Jade mentioning two rides points out the sexual euphemism. That can easily connect to Billy Hastings saying he gave Betty a ride home.
- Pulling out, they pass one of the hitmen hired to kill Cooper. He contacts his accomplice, a few roads away and states how, seeing Dougie's car, their target may or may not be with Jade, whom just left.
We assume these are the precautions Mr. C took for when Coop left the Lodge, unless Phillip Jeffries is responsible for a few of them, seeing as though he wanted Ray to kill Mr. C. Mr. C probably would kill Dale himself, but he knows that would kill himself, just as Lois Duffy killing Lois Duffy eventually led to her own downfall. Some other less personal assasination needs to take place.
- Jade explains to Coop/Dougie how he should contact AAA. Coop/Dougie meanwhile stays more focused on the road sign which says Sycamore. He repeats Jade's statement about giving two rides.
Sycamores encircle the gateway at Glastonbury Grove. Hastings and Ruth similarly encountered Major Briggs at 2240 Sycamore.
Back to the Jade giving Dougie two rides bit. We theorized the entrance at Glastonbury Grove resembled the anatomy of a woman giving birth, which all started with a "ride". Did the sycamore make Dale's mind realize a sexual connection to the place? His words will also help remind us of Hastings and Betty and allow us to form another connection between them and Dale with what happens in the next sequence.
- Coop/Dougie reaches into his pocket and gets the Great Northern key only to drop it at a speed bump. This causes the 2nd hitman to think Jade is driving alone and Dougie is still inside of the house. Gene, the other hitman, states he will load up the car. See you at Mikey's the 2nd hitman says.
Coop/Dougie now is getting out the key but drops it. This serves as a fortunate event since it prevents his death.
Was he getting out the keys to the Great Northern in part because of the sycamore/Glastonbury connection and the previously discussed sexual connection? Does he recall his mother initiating him into that world?
Have to wonder if he consciously dropped the keys or not, he gives up on retrieving them pretty fast. However, without them he'll spend the next episode sadly repeating home.
So Dougie's car is about to be wired with a bomb as Jade, his mercenary mistress, gives him a ride somewhere. That flat out parallels Billy giving Betty a ride, because there was a problem with her car, and then her car being wired to explode several days later.
In the Return, it appears that you can trace everything to Betty in the same fashion you can tie most of the series events to the Hornes. They are the keys not dissimilar to the one that Coop/Dougie dropped.
- Across the street from Jade and Dougie's love nest, a little boy watches as Gene goes to wire the bomb to Dougie's car. The boy's mother shouts 1-1-9 repeatedly. She then takes some prescription medicine with some bourbon as her son eats some crackers on the couch. The mother then sits and smokes.
We see the neglected boy through the blinds; it gives the effect of bars again. He's interested in what Gene is doing, but his addict mother is more concerned. She's calling out the emergency number but in reverse, just as the Lodge spirits are apt to and as Audrey's Dance will play in reverse in Part 16. The mother is surrounded by different vices, none of which are illegal. Of interest is the Pavillion playing cards we discussed earlier, a Toys R Us brand, this kind the red counterpart of Mr. C's. She also has a diaper/safety pin open which might have been used to create the scratches on Mr. C's own card. She has a bottle of Evan WILLIAMS bourbon she pours and then seems to intentionally place it so we can see the brand. This is once again pushing the name William in our faces. A red balloon lies on the floor behind her. There will be red balloons at Sonny Jim's Birthday party as well as red balloons as Coop/Dougie looks at a cowboy statue. A red deflated/burst balloon was seen at the Johnson family household in the OG series, when Leo had turned into Shelly's husband/son. Perhaps that last one is closest to what we see here, the balloon not up as in the other examples.
Is the mother calling for help for Dougie's car, Cooper being in danger or Mr. C, whom help will soon arrive for? Or is it all 3? We can easily see this as an abstraction for Billy's mom, a single mother with problems herself. To go with our previous discussion about Dougie's vices, the addict mother apparently shares the fact that they are harmful but not as destructive as Mr. C's sins.
And here we have her son, whom seems as neglected as the boy Richard hits and kills seems adored. The boy has a red 1 on his shirt that stands out. This seems to be suggesting, despite Margaret's words being construed that Laura is the One (as in the most central), that this boy somehow is instead. And yet, we've theorized that red can mean deception inside of Twin Peaks (when it isn't trying to remind us of Audrey Horne, associated with the color). But there is a greater clue to be had with that red #1. It isn't the last time we'll see it. In Part 9, Chantal will be seen wearing the First Marine Division, an insignia given to the Marines of WWII and which is a blue diamond, with white stars in it and a red number 1 at the center, just like the addict mother's son. She wears this patch on her left arm, the side we saw as possibly being connected to the truth, and which connects to MIKE/Phillip. The Red Diamond was where Teresa Banks, Audrey's substitute worked and lived, but it was called the Blue Diamond in the script. Either Lynch had a problem with the Almond company, or, associating blue more with the truth, he knew Teresa's motel would need to be associated with Red. But in Part 9 we will see a red 1, like this boy is wearing, inside of a blue diamond, diamonds associated with Audrey Horne. Chantal was in room #7 at the Buckhorn motel, that number matching the one where Dale has sex with Diane, most probably seeing her as his mother. So in this admittedly complicated way, we can link this boy to Chantal, another mother figure for Billy. The boy here, a representation of Billy once again, was inside of the blue diamond, just like Billy was inside of his mother. Stars are occassionally mentioned in Twin Peaks too. "No Stars", a song linking a lover and dream to stars and then the desolation of them being gone - no stars - springs to mind. The song is often taken to mean Laura and Cooper, since it follows Margaret's talk about Laura being the one, and yet the song itself could easily go for Billy and his mother.
The lamp, an item which offers illumination, is missing the top half of its head. That can be linked to the corpses of Sam and Tracey we'll see in this episode and it can strongly be linked to William Hastings, whom dies similarly.
The boy eats crackers. Right before we see Mr. C's arrest report with Hastings info mixed in, Albert makes a crack about "Cooper" not having cheese and CRACKERS with him when he was arrested. It is Albert also whom will enjoy making euphemisms about Hastings lack of sanity. Crackers is slang for an insane individual.
- Highway Patrol Officers find Mr. C's crashed car. One of them, named Billy, becomes sick when he gets too close to Mr. C. The other officer helps him draw back and calls for assistance.
A BILLY approaches the passed out Mr. C, makes contact with him, smells the vomit and then similarly becomes sick. The other patrolman doesn't and neither did Jade. This Billy was also driving the car, just like Billy drove Betty home.
- At the Twin Peaks Sheriff Station Hawk becomes exasperated as Andy and Lucy try to figure out what is missing about the Laura Palmer case and Lucy eventually becomes convinced it's the chocolate bunny she ate because she had gas.
This is primarily played for laughs but there are interesting things to be gleaned from it. Hawk denying and then wondering if it is about the bunny echoes Bobby shouting at Laura that the man he killed in FWWM wasn't Mike, only to ask if it was Mike.
Despite Hawk's belief and Lucy's relief it isn't about the bunnies, they do play a curious role in Twin Peaks, at least in regards to this theory.
Cooper saw a rabbit when he first came to Twin Peaks, telling Harry about it and labeling it a cottontail. He was mistaken and Harry told him it was a snowshoe.
A few episodes later, on Ben Horne's desk, we saw a photograph of Laura and Audrey dressed as the proverbial snow bunnies, with Audrey even making bunny ears behind Laura's head. Only it was Audrey herself whom was dressed in the colors of the Red Room. She was the real bunny in question.
In FWWM, Will Hayward had a statue of a rabbit by his fireplace. BOB and abuse were synonymous with fire and we are theorizing that Billy, any Billy, was synonymous with the dreamer Billy Hastings.
In The Return, the Twin Peaks sheriff crew will find Naido/Betty at a place Major Briggs leads them too, his son, Bobby, saying,“I know exactly where Jack Rabbit’s Palace is. My dad, when I was a little kid, he took me to this place, near where his station used to be. It was our make-believe world, you know, where we made up stories. I was the one who named it ‘Jack Rabbit’s Palace.’"
And, at the end of The Return, Dale will find himself in Odessa, which just happens to be, although it's never mentioned, the home of the largest Jack Rabbit statue called Jack BEN Rabbit, after it's founder John BEN Shepherd.
So you can say...it might have been about the bunnies afterall.
Should note too that Lucy was pregnant with her son when she had gas and ate the bunny, another thread of mothers and sons.
- Out in the woods, Dr. Amp/Jacoby spray paints shovels gold with the help of a self constructed device.
This is just another wonderful moment for this theory. Here we have Amp/Jacoby involved in making shovels all nice and shiny and he's rigged a contraption made out of what appears to be bicycle tires to do it. In "Masked Ball" we saw Ben's father passing a super shiny shovel on to him during the groundbreaking ceremony of the Great Northern. And in Part 12 he reminisces about the second hand cycle his father gave to him too. Now, in this scene, we have Amp incorporating both objects which we believe the passing/giving of represented the father passing the cycle of abuse on to his son. Later on, Amp will also have a flashlight, shaped like a Great Horned Owl. Not only do we believe that the owls are the Hornes, Ben and Jerry once happily recalled their first bedroom where a girl named Louise Dombrowski (same initials as Lois Duffy) danced for them with a flashlight. Amp will also go on about a hammer and Jack Wheeler once remarked, while wearing the Red Room color scheme, how Audrey's grandfather once told him, "If you're gonna bring a hammer, you better bring nails." He was referencing it in a way that dealt with sex, making us wonder what grandpa Horne's relationship with the young Wheeler was. Later on in this episode, it's stated that a congressman planted clues in his garden to implicate the guilty. Frankly it's looking like Amp, who lives in the woods, is laying his own clues to show where the true cycle of abuse lay, and it wasn't the Palmers. Honestly, his having been both Johnny and Ben's therapist, this makes perfect sense.
- Jade drives Coop/Dougie to the Silver Mustang Casino. She gives him some money to call for help and tells him to go out now, which reminds Dale of Laura/Carrie's same words. He goes out and Jade drives off. Coop/Dougie gets trapped momentarily in the casino doors.
Ah...the Silver Mustang Casino. There's that horse theme again. We've gone through before how we suspect that Billy stole something of American Girl's after he killed her and it might have had something to do with a horse, the reason Lynch had Laura inexplicably state she used to love horses in her interview. This casino fits in perfectly with that idea...for if Billy took a trophy it was essentially a gamble. He was risking someone realizing it was gone and then finding it on him and connecting him to her murder...like American Girl's mother. Or Betty. So now we have a casino named after a horse, reminding Billy of the gamble he made and which is now troubling him.
The building (really the Commerce Casino) looks horseshoe shaped and has a horseshoe logo. Carrie Page wears a horseshoe necklace but it is inverted from the Silver Mustang logo. An upward pointing horseshoe symbolizes the collection of good luck. A downward pointing one shows the bestowing of it.
We have that this is a casino and a hotel. The only casino we knew in the original Twin Peaks was One-Eyed Jack's, owned by Ben Horne and frequented by both him and his brother, Jerry. We also have the fact that they also ran a hotel. The owners of the Silver Mustang are the Mitchum Brothers whom echo Ben and Jerry (Billy's father and uncle). Later on this whole scenario leads to Coop/Dougie clearing the Mitchums of arson which we suspect really is just Billy's way of clearing himself of having set his father's motel on fire and killing the man and his own mother too.
Cooper going out and immediately getting trapped in the doors is comedic but can connect to him remembering Laura/Carrie having told him to go out and how Laura is the door to Twin Peaks Billy has virtually become stuck in.
- Cooper shows a guard his $5 and says "Call for help" to which the guard replies, "In the back, Jack." He also points him to where he can change the bill. The money changer gives Coop/Dougie a cup of change for his $5 bill.
We got the name Jack occurring again. We theorized that Billy, who Cooper truly is, created John "Jack" Justice Wheeler after Dale became too "good" to even flirt with his attraction to Audrey Horne. In the guise of Jack, a name Billy had imagined perhaps for the father he imagined, Billy romanced his mother, Audrey, until the threat of Windom Earle had passed. Now Cooper's being called Jack, even if in passing, is important.
The concept of Cooper being made to change a bill is interesting since we theorize he's Bill-y, whom has changed himself into others, particularly Cooper, inside of his dreamworld.
The bars on the money changing place look like a prison again. Cooper looks like he's behind bars as he stands in the casino. The threat of going to prison haunts Billy in The Return, one of its main hidden motivators. A stolen horse trophy might land him there. Likewise, Billy associates his mother having cared more about the material comforts their father's motel offered, so she chose it over freedom, making it feel like a prison to him.
The fact that it is emphasized that a bill is being changed to play a game fits in nicely with this theory. Twin Peaks is a game for Billy, one created to deal with how he escaped being identified at American Girl's murderer. Inside of his game he changed into Cooper. Likewise, Billy changed himself, his public behavior, in order to not be discovered. Another interesting aspect is how at One-Eyed Jack's, Ben Horne, after unsuccessfully propositioning his daughter, states, "Next time, we will play a different game. I'll make the rules. You'll like it. Fun game. Everybody wins." Most abusers trick their child victims into believing it's only a game they are playing and this is how the abuse starts. In Part 6, we'll see a little boy playing a game with his mother that proves to be dangerous when the boy stops in the road and is hit and killed by Richard Horne. This we suspect is simply analogous to how Billy views his dark side killing what remained of his innocence. We believe that Billy's mother played "games" with him too, leading to the darkness inside of him, one Billy fostered to grow. This further deepens how Coop/Dougie answers that the game necessary for the change of bill is "Call for help." Billy was calling for help but nobody heard or listened. The game the young boy playing then, which leads to his spiritual death, can be considered a call for help. As evidenced by Annie Blackburn, another fragment of Billy, we are made aware that he was, at some point, highly suicidal. Infact, Laura Palmer's death wish was most likely Billy's own, just another aspect he projected on to her. Laura becomes a version of his victim created by Billy and so hopelessly as much a portrait in ways of Billy himself.
When Coop/Dougie leaves, the woman whom changed the bill for him looks concerned, holding her hand over her heart, as Laura did at the end of FWWM, even if it is the right one not left.
- Coop/Dougie stumbles into the casino slot machine area and watches a man win and shout "Hello". He sees an image of the Red Room with what appears to be fire above a slot machine and goes to it. "Hello," Coop/Dougie cries and he wins the jackpot. When a man says he broke it, Coop/Dougie moves on to the next machine he sees with the fiery Red Room above it.
This is how Coop/Dougie survives in this state of confusion/powerlessness: by noting then imitating the behavior of those he sees around him. It is essentially how Billy survived too, enabling him to continue his killings and avoid detection. If he acted like normal people, or repeated what they did, they would assume he was like them, even projecting themselves on to him at times, letting him get by.
That fire with the Red Room inside of it creates a nice image: The Red Room represents in part Billy's home and we believe he set fire to it, intentionally or not. Now he's seeing it at the Mitchums, whom are accused of setting fire to their own hotel, and whom we compared to Billy's father and uncle.
The first machine Billy plays has a diamond on it. Audrey was the Queen of Diamonds, her substitute Teresa worked at the Red Diamond motel and Ben was once compared to ice by his daughter, ice is slang for diamonds. Audrey and Teresa were seen holding ice.
Besides the ice, it also has the word bill all over it, just like Billy Hastings. We can see how Billy associates the dream of wealth and comfort at a cost, just as his mother was willing to pay/risk: their sanity for their material welfare. It also asks the question, if this machine accepts bills, why did Coop/Dougie then need to get his own bill changed? Possibly for the illustration/clue provided of a bill being changed?
The game is called Five & Sparklers. Sparkle is the name of the drug running rampant in Twin Peaks.
- At another machine, a frazzled old woman notices Dale/Dougie in annoyance. He caresses the coin and puts it in and wins again. A staff member comes up to him and says he's won 2 mega jackpots for a total of 24800. She goes to get him a bigger cup. Coop/Dougie points to a machine beside the old woman and she gets angry at him. He then walks away. The old woman gives a finger to the security camera. The woman returns with a bucket and the old woman tells her that the nutcake left and the staff member rushes off to find him.
The old woman, we'll much later learn, is a mother whom is able to get her life on track and reunite with her son, thanks to "Mr. Jackpots" as she calls him. Here we find her as being as neglectful and selfish as the addict mother we saw earlier. A theme of mothers and their children, particularly mothers/sons is woven throughout The Return. In some cases the mother placing her interest in self/materialism is clearly emphasized. Obviously, Billy associates this with his own mother and so it recurs. In this case, with this woman, his avatar is able to save/redeem this wayward mother just as he tried to redeem his father, in the guise of Jack Wheeler helping Ben Horne.
Jackpot is used in connection to Coop/Dougie, the name Jack specifically referenced within it. We discussed earlier Jack Wheeler's role in the original series and Billy's dream. We also have talked about how the name Jack seems to be associated in Billy's mind with some idealized idea of his daddy which masked the truth: Jack Wheeler whom slept with Audrey and was a candidate for being the father of her son before we found out the truth, Jack Rabbit's Palace being where Bobby played make-believe with his own father, One-Eyed Jack's being the place where Ben tried to sleep with Audrey.
Interestingly the term jackpot "was originally used in a form of poker, where the pool or pot accumulated until a player could open the bidding with two jacks or better." Two Jacks. Twin Jacks.
- Coop/Dougie sees several more fiery Red Rooms and wins again, causing the old woman to play the one he pointed out to her. She wins and is ecstatically thankful.
The game the old woman plays and wins is called American Slots. More ties to American Woman, this one offering the possibility that it references Billy's mother whom was the American WOMAN just as his high school interest was the American GIRL.
- In Philadelphia, at FBI headquarters, Albert Rosenfield explains to Gordon Cole a case where a congressman accused of murdering his wife claims he is innocent but can't reveal the real killer because it would breach National security. He's placed several items in his garden to help lead them to the killer. "The congressman's dilemma" Cole remarks.
This could very well apply to the dilemma David Lynch worked himself into when developing Twin Peaks. He wanted it to be about Who Killed Laura Palmer. It wasn't just a question. The show was about her actual killer. However, to reveal who that was, Dale Cooper/Billy Hastings, would destroy the series itself because it would solve the mystery and end Coop/Billy's story! The fanbase would also probably be unwilling to accept it. So Lynch found a way to secretly reveal the killer and the different reasons for it without outright revealing it. For example, in Dr Amp's scenes, you can find items hinting at Ben Horne's childhood and relationship with his father, hinting at the fact that he was abused by his dad. Or, in a scene, soon coming up, you can find a throwback to Billy Hastings that coincides/leads to his connection with Cooper.
The items left in the garden include a blonde lying breasts down among jewels as she wear little more than heels, a pair of pliers, a photo of a redhead and blonde in bikinis, a weird photo of a boy in a sailor uniform, a machine gun and beans. The photos don't have evidence tags. The evidence tags, meanwhile, states that the items, at least the pliers, were found in a car...is it the pictures then that were in the garden? The photo of the boy looks unreal/altered, just like the Brennan family photo at Lucy's workstation. Are the beans Great Northern?
- Cole instructs a young female agent, named Tammy Preston, to stay and show what she found in New York. It's the building with Sam and Tracey. She shows photos of it and the mutilated corpses of the lovers. NYPD doesn't have a clue what went on here nor do they know the owner of the building. There were 24/7 guards which they can no longer find, only Sam Colby and Tracey Barberato's bodies. 100s of digital files recording the glass box were confiscated but only a few blurred images moving were found until a shot of the Experiment Model, on the night they were killed. It disappeared as soon as it moved. No DNA etc... was found on the bodies, they were clean.
A fact of great significance here. We theorize that Billy creates a Blue Rose FBI Agent to accompany the deaths he had a hand in or otherwise played some traumatic role in his formation as a monster. Phillip Jeffries deals with how his childhood/innocent self died at the hands of his mother when she began abusing him. Albert Rosenfield involved the death of his father/grandfather, but since Billy didn't care about that particular loss, Albert was the only Blue Rose Agent not to disappear until Tammy's introduction. Chet dealt with the death of Billy's mother, camouflaged as Teresa Banks, while Dale Cooper was involved in how Billy processed American Girl's death. It led to his evolution into a serial killer, where he no longer was traumatized/affected by death and so the good Dale was locked away and the bad one set free. Now, when Betty has been potentially and messily killed, taking the form of Ruth, Billy is concerned with his freedom again. The good Dale is set free and Tammy Preston invented. But notice how Tammy is the first female agent to be inducted into the Blue Rose task force. That is because this death directly involves Billy's possible downfall at the hands of three women: Betty, Anerican Girl's mom and the "ghost" of American Girl herself. The created FBI reflects this fact, needing to be a woman to counter/reflect/deal with it.
The building in NYC seems to have more windows, though still darkened, near ground level.
Sam and Tracey are bloody (digital) messes that are missing the tops of their heads. This will link to William Hastings' own supposed death and the lamp which appeared by the addict mother's son. It also easily recalls what Red will warn Richard in Part 6, after he's questioned if Richard had dealing drugs for him under control: "Just remember this, kid...I will saw your head open and eat your brains if you f*ck me over." Billy obviously was not in control of his own situation with Betty, we reckon, when she found out about Billy's real work which began with American Girl. This also perfectly unites Billy/Betty, Sam/Tracey and Richard and Miriam. During Red's conversation with Richard he mentions to Richard Horne that he can pick up the rest of the sparkle (drugs) at someone called Mary Ann's, to which Richard seems shocked that Red knows that name and the area. Mary Ann is awful close to Miriam and that would help explain how Miriam Flynn is making extra money. Her witnessing the death of the little boy because of Richard sours their relationship, however, which could have led to Red sawing off their heads and eating both of their brains. Only Miriam gets beaten close to death by Richard first and Richard dies/disappears at the manipulation of his father. But this links Miriam/Richard to Tracey/Sam, both couples involved with having seen something they shouldn't have and being destroyed because of it, just as we speculate happened with Betty/Billy.
Tammy describes, "The bodies were violently mutilated, but no prints, no DNA, no fibers. Completely clean. Nothing." This goes along with our theory that Billy usually was very methodical in his "work". However, when Billy killed American Girl it was sloppy because it was his first intentional kill and he's aware that could lead to trouble if someone looks closer. The word clean and the whole situation can be summed up in Carrie Page's words in Part 18. "Odessa. I tried to keep a clean house...keep everything organized. It's a long way. In those days...I was too young
to know any better." Leo Johnson also had an obsession with cleaness, like in FWWM when he is showing Shelly how to keep a clean house.
- Cole's assistant notifies him that Cooper's on the phone. Gordon and Albert are shocked. They and Tammy rush into Cole's office to pick up the call. Cole asks if whomever he is speaking to is sure it's Cooper and then hears that he's in trouble. He informs them they're heading out there immediately to question Cooper at 9. Cole announces they are all heading to the Black Hills of South Dakota. The absurd mystery of the strange forces of existence. Albert says to Tammy, adding how about a truckload of valium.
The camera stays on the door as Cole, Albert and Preston enter.
There is a photograph of an atomic blast on Cole's office wall. In Cole's Portland, Oregon office he had a contrastingly peaceful photo of a lake in the woods. Now, with the increasingly dark and disturbing theme of The Return, we have a photo of destruction. A bomb is also euphemism for a devastating truth, which may be fuelling this whole tale: Billy finding out that he is his own grandfather's son, the incestuous abuse in his family, Betty discovering who/what Billy really was. American Girl's mother finding out who really killed her daughter. Abuse is also repeatedly linked to the destruction of nature: Ben's groundbreaking of the Great Northern symbolic for the abuse he suffered by his father, Ghostwood representative of his abuse of Audrey.
And here is one of the hidden clues we were discussing earlier that it is up to us to discover. As Gordon learns that Cooper is being held in a prison in South Dakota, Tammy listens with a photograph of Franz Kafka seen behind her. That should immediately remind us of Billy Hastings, also in a prison in South Dakota. And this thread will directly be followed up when the three FBI agents go see "Coop" in his South Dakota prison and Hastings info is seen in the arrest report, although nobody comments on it.
"The absurd mystery of the strange forces of existence." Well, Albert, the sad fact is that your creator is an insane, psychotic man named Billy and you are all his form of escape and entertainment. You might really need that valium.
- At the Roadhouse, the Cactus Blossoms perform "Mississippi".
Now this is a confusing but amusing song to end off on. A song called Mississippi would seem to have little bearing on the series...except for this theory where we already discussed something which could prove relevant. In the OG episode "Slaves and Masters" we were outright confused why Windom Earle was sending Caroline's wedding items to circle the state of Arkansas. That was until we discovered that the state had a few interesting things, like a Gum Woods, Caroline, Pulaski and Williams townships. It also has Little Rock. The state below it is also Louisiana, where Phillip Jeffries supposedly came from. And another state beside it just happens to be Mississippi. Infact, there is a Mississippi County in Arkansas...and there is also an unincorporated community in Mississippi called Pulaski. An unincorporated community is one which has not been recognized. Um..we saw the woman we recognized as Ronette Pulaski here listed as American Girl...and we're theorizing she's failing to be recognized as the true "Laura Palmer". We've theorized she might be Judy. Pulaski is a Polish name and there was a famous Judith of Poland, whose grandmother was also a Judith.
Some of the lyrics to Mississippi also seem relevant to the plot:
"My angel sings down to me, She's somewhere on the shore waiting for me
With her wet hair and sandy gown"
Laura's corpse on the beach springs to mind, and the angels in FWWM. Interestingly, it was Pheobe Augustine whom had Lynch introduce the angels into the plot. The angels were hers.
"You look different from way down here
Like a circus mirror I see flashes, of you on the surface."
If Billy reimagined his first victim into Laura she sure would look different. Laura referenced the circus in her Between 2 Worlds interview: "Many things happened. Many things all at once, like a circus with dark creatures at night with flickering lights..."
Another relevant Mississippi fact: a famous wrestler born there, at a height of 8 feet 2 inches and whom went by the name Paul Bunyan, was a man named Max PALMER. We've already seen Leland as both Giant and Woodsman in this theory. Paul Bunyan was the name of a famous giant woodsman.
