spoiler
warning:
please note that if you haven't seen fire walk with me &
the twin peaks tv series in it's entirety, it's recommend that you return
to the last page. this page discusses some of the intricaciesof twin peaks
mysteries, which may be ruined for you if you read further. for the rest of
you that have seen the twin peaks series and it's prequel, you may like to peruse
some theories i've formulated in the time since i first saw twin peaks in it's
first run. welcome to the trees, and please feel free to come & discuss
any of these theories yourself at the film-optimist
discussion list
the rules of the black lodge:
While
there's little doubt that all the scenes in the red room in Twin Peaks are surreal
and a little inexplicable, there do seem to be a couple of general rules as
to who is allowed into the Black Lodge. Namely: Bob, those that know his true
face & the dead.
Thus in the final episode, Laura, Maddie, Annie & Coop's wife are all dead,
and thus have entry to the Lodge. The late Leland Palmer is also present - but
is now seen with brown hair - perhaps as he was before BOB had such stong powers
over him. The LMFAP & BOB are in the Lodge as usual. It's only Agent Cooper
& Wyndham Earle that break these basic rules by entering the Lodge alive in
the final episode.
And so when Wyndham Earle attempts to start asserting authority in the Lodge,
BOB crushes him as it is his territory. As for Coop, Hawk told him earlier that
only those of pure heart could safely enter the Lodge, or else it would crush
them. Coop shows himself to have a good heart throughout the Twin Peaks series,
but his love for Annie and feelings of guilt over the death of his wife presumably
let him feel fear for the first time - and fear is something that BOB feeds
off. While Coop is in this compromised state, BOB creates a doppelganger of
him and sends him out into the world while the real Coop rushes around dazed
and confused, now trapped in the Lodge.
With Leland and Laura now long dead, BOB needed a respectable face to put out
into the world, and Coop becomes it in the final episode. Also as you would
have seen in her Diary, Laura wrote of how she knew that BOB wanted her because
she was good hearted. That's one reason, amongst many other theories out there,
that BOB may have wanted Coop also. Thus the switch.
the arm:
The nature of the one armed man is, in my opinion, one
of the most interesting mysteries of Twin Peaks.
How the one armed man lost his arm is something that's mentioned in the European
pilot to the Twin Peaks series, which is the version that's out on video. In
it, the one armed man explained that his name is Mike and that at one time he
and Bob lived above a convenience store together and wreak havok. But one day,
Mike turned away from Bob and his evil and cut off his arm to mark that psychic
split.
Later, the Little Man From Another Place in the red room/black lodge describes
himself to Agent Cooper as "the arm". The LMFAP himself is something of an enigmatic
figure. We never quite know whose side he is on, although his constant presence
in the Black Lodge would suggest that he is a kindred spirit of Bob's. He certainly
assists in trying to trick Agent Cooper in the Black Lodge at various times.
That he describes himself as the arm - an arm that Mike cut off because of it's
ties to Bob - would also have to further the theory that he is a kindred spirit
of Bob's.
Back to the one armed man - through the course of the series we learn that he
has a kind of multiple personality disorder. By day he is unassuming shoe salesman,
Philip Gerard. But at other times, "without chemicals" he transforms into Mike,
now an armless, angry force railing against Bob. In Fire Walk With Me we see
Mike in this role attempting to reveal to Laura the day time face of Bob by
screaming his name in traffic as Leland slams his hand on his car horn.
One of the most interesting visuals from the series that demonstrates that relationship
between Philip Gerard/Mike and the Little Man From Another Place can be found
in Fire Walk With Me. After the death of Laura Palmer, a number of characters
return to the waiting room in the black lodge. At one stage, the Little Man
From Another Place sits himself down beside Mike, & on the side of his severed
arm; the two of them speak as one and glaringly demonstrate the psychic link
between them.
coffee:
In
the final double episode of Twin Peaks, one of the great elixirs of the townspeople
of Twin Peaks - coffee- suddenly appears inexplicably thick.
It's my belief that the idea behind the thick coffee in the final episodes was
that it was supposed to take on the consistency of scorched engine oil. Dr Jacoby,
the Log Lady and Major Briggs all previously associated the smell of scorched
engine oil with BOB and the Black Lodge.
I also remember hearing somewhere (maybe in the series, or maybe in an article
somewhere) that there were two drugs that sustained the day time face of the
town of Twin Peaks - coffee & the intoxicating smell of Douglas Fir Trees. Before
Laura Palmer's death and the arrival of the FBI in town, the respectable townspeople
of Twin Peaks could drink their coffee, eat their cherry pie, smell the trees
and be lulled into never facing the prostitution, violence, incest & drug running
that was taking place in their homes and in their woods. That coffee doesn't
do quite the same job that it did outside the Lodge makes a kind of sense in
this light.
the blue ring & the placement of the letters rbt:
During the autopsy of Laura Palmer, Agent Cooper found a small letter buried deep under her finger. Later in the hospital, Ronette Polaski wakes screaming from her coma and Agent Cooper finds her with blue dye in her drip and a letter buried deep under her finger. That she was still alive and yet already planted with a letter suggested (at least to me) that Teresa Banks may also have been planted with a letter from Bob's name before her death - thus the dead arm and the letter found under her finger during her FWWM autopsy. There does seem to be more evidence throughout the series and FWWM itself to suggest this.
In
FWWM, Stanley and Chet Desmond conducted an autopsy on Teresa and found the
letter T underneath the ring finger on her left hand. Right after that, they
go to Hap's Diner where Irene tells them that in the days just before she died
Teresa's left arm was completely numb to the point that she couldn't use it.
Irene insinuates that that was due to drugs, but Stanley believes it's nerve
damage. I always took it that that was due to that bit of paper being rammed
right down Teresa's fingernail by Bob in the days before she died; much like
the piece of paper Agent Cooper found implanted in Ronette's fingernail while
she was still alive and in the hospital during the TP series proper.
Later in Fire Walk With Me we see a sequence between Laura and Leland where
Leland dotes over Laura's wedding finger during a family meal. The sequence
takes place as follows, from The Fire Walk With Me Screenplay:
From
across the table Leland looks at her fingernails.
He stands to come for a closer look.
LELAND
Let me see.
LAURA
Dad...
CLOSEUP: LAURA'S RING FINGERNAIL
LELAND
Your hands are filthy... look, there is
dirt way under this fingernail.
Sarah, cigarette draped from her lips, is delivering some mashed
potatoes to the table.
SARAH
Leland, what are you doing?
LELAND
Look at this finger here.
He is looking at THE FINGER
SARAH
Leland...
It's
s interesting to note that the finger that Leland takes when he does this is
the wedding ring finger on Laura's left hand. This is also the finger that Bob
implanted with a letter on Teresa Banks, and the finger that she was wearing
the blue ring on before her death.
Early in FWWM, the LMFAP says of the blue ring "with this ring, I thee wed".
During a dream, Cooper warns Laura not to take the ring, but she wakes from
the dream with it in her left hand.
Later in the train car, an escaping Ronette is thrown out onto the tracks by
Bob. As she falls, a ring slips into the spotlight, and Laura places it on her
wedding ring finger to the sound of Mike's screams. This is the finger that
Cooper later finds the letter under during her autopsy. This scene from FWWM
also ties Ronette to the blue ring, although we don't actually see her wearing
it.
Back in the train car, once Bob has killed Laura, he wraps her in plastic straight
away. If he places the letter from his name under her finger at some point in
the train car before that, that's something we don't see. Although there's no
definite proof, there seems to be more evidence that Bob's victims were implanted
with the letters that make up his name (minus the vowels) before their deaths,
rather than after.
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