We will address the end of FWWM more directly in the final section of this essay. But first: let’s talk a little about Richard and Linda.

PART V: RICHARD AND LINDA

A message from ???????.

Part I of TP:TR begins — after some flashbacks — with ??????? (the Fireman? the Giant? some other White Lodge instantiation of that figure?) giving a seemingly whole Special Agent Dale Cooper a series of cryptic statements. This section will focus on one set of those statements: “Richard and… Linda. Two birds… with one stone.”

Before going on to discuss that, though, we’ll note just a couple other things about that scene: First, it seems likely that we are seeing, in sequence, both the 1 and 2 of Special Agent Dale Cooper here. At the beginning of the sequence, “Agent Cooper” (as ??????? calls him at the outset) blinks once during his shots. In the middle of the sequence, though, he briefly shifts to blinking twice during his shots — i.e., we’re seeing a 2 in these shots — and fittingly, it is while we are watching his 2 side (or at least, the whole Dale Cooper acting in a 2-mode) that “Agent Cooper” sounds more concerned, replying, “It is,” with a slightly troubled tinge in his voice after ??????? states that “It is in our house now.”

Second, the “sounds” that ??????? wants “Agent Cooper” to listen to repeat 6 times (possibly 7, depending on how one counts the initial stop-stuttering sound in the sequence) — which, combined with the pronoun “it” being used to describe what is in “our house,” suggests that BOB is in “our house.” (Is “our house” the Great Northern, Twin Peaks’ stand-in for the White Lodge? Is Albert staying at the Great Northern? Or does this more have to do with whatever James was onto in its basement in Part 14?) [Though, as I’ve noted earlier, both Dale Cooper and Laura Palmer are Lodge-linked entities now, and so conceivably might be referred to as an “it” or a “4” as well.]

Next, we’ll take a closer look at Richard and Linda. (Though we’ll leave a couple of questions, like the meaning of “two birds with one stone,” open for the epilogue to this essay.)

Richard’s trinity

We’ve discussed the 1/2/3 trinity of many characters in TP:TR; Richard, however, has so far not been among them. Let’s now take a look at what I believe to be his personal trinity, a trio that at first may seem quite surprising:

Richard’s personal 1/2/3 trio (in one of the realities, if not all — reality 1, at least) — or is Red, in this scenario, actually a 4?

This is a confusing trinity to wrap one’s head around, so bear with me in this section: I think there’s substantial evidence that the show intends to be forming some sort of trinity out of these characters. To start, when Richard meets Red in Part 6, the scene begins with Richard convulsing in place as he gets very high on a sample of Sparkle, the designer drug scourge of Twin Peaks: “Oh, tha-this stuff kicks” says Richard, cross-eyed. A short while later in the scene, Red — although we have not seen him take any drugs in this scene — suddenly starts convulsing, kicking his right leg (1) and clutching his right hand (1). Red explains this strange behavior away by saying: “I got a problem with my liver” — an organ that sits on the right side (1) of one’s body, and filters red (1) blood. All this seems to point to Richard being the 1 to Red’s 3.

Or is Red actually a 4? Upon reflection, this seems to be what the show is getting at. Recall that a 4 can represent some sort of extradimensional presence, and is often symbolized by the human head (think Major Briggs’ floating head saying “Blue Rose” in Part 3; overall in TP, it seems that the head = 4, the body = 3, the left-side limbs = 2, and the right-side limbs = 1). Red does very conspicuously put his hands on his head in this scene (see, e.g., the picture above). Red also seems to have quite 4-ish magical abilities — witness his trick with the dime. Notably, the dime trick ends with him stating that he is the “head” side of the dime: “Heads, I win,” he says. If Mr. C — a man inhabited by a 4, BOB — is the father of Richard, then it makes some sense that Richard might have a type of 4-presence as well. Red appears to be this 4-presence.

Top: Red’s right side convulses shortly after Richard takes drugs. Bottom: we get a metaphorical origin story for the killing of Richard’s inner 2.

Together, the 1 of Richard and the 4 of Red seem to add up to make one full right hand (5). What about a left hand, a 2? This scene appears to simultaneously be a depiction of this right hand 1 duo existing without a left hand 2, and at the same time a metaphor showing us what happened to kill off Richard’s inner 2 in the first place. Red — a 4-presence like his dad, the BOB-infected Mr. C — talks down to Richard, pointing 2 fingers at him and stating: “I’m gonna be watching you, kid.” This creates something of a complex in Richard: “Don’t call me ‘kid,’” he replies testily. This confused anger spills into the next scene we see him in, driving down a road in a truck: “Fuck you, man! Kid.” he yells at Red / his father / life. (This scene should perhaps be read in concert with the sequence in Part 13 where Red watches his father coldly kill two men, itself a seeming achronological representation of the passing of violence from generation to generation.) Richard then repeats “Come on” 4 times. He continues seething: “I’ll show you fucking kid.” Drenched in this anger, confusion, and self-loathing, he ultimately destroys his 2, his inner child — symbolically represented by the young boy he kills with his speeding truck (here, speeding truck = his unhinged 1-ness).

Who is Linda?

In Richard, we find someone who has a hole in his 2; he’s just a 1 and (depending on how you look at it) a 3 or 4, with no 2. Given the show’s love of inversion and mirror images, it seems quite possible, if not likely, that Linda — whoever she is — would be the inverse of Richard, and thus a 2 with no 1 or 3. It also seems likely that, given Linda’s seeming importance, we would have already spent time with her by the end of TP:TR’s first 14 Parts. Can we think of any young woman in TP:TR with whom we’ve spent a fair amount of time, and who seemingly has a functioning 2, yet a largely vacant or void 1 and 3?

Candie. Candie seems to fit the bill to a T.

Now, several questions will likely jump to mind upon considering the possibility that Candie is Linda. I think many of these questions can perhaps be answered by considering this: if and when harmony is eventually restored to Twin Peaks (something we’ll consider in more depth in a bit), it seems likely that Richard and Linda will also themselves find some measure of harmony. It further seems likely that they might each achieve this harmony by symbolically filling the missing hole(s) in their 1/2/3 identity. How might each of them achieve this? One possibility is that Candie, a 2, would simply fill the missing 2 in Richard. This seems unlikely, though, as, among other things, it would seemingly imply that there were no “Richard and Linda,” but only a single person. Another possibility is that the “1–1–9” addict-mother and child in Las Vegas might somehow play a role in this — the child perhaps somehow filling the 2 role for Richard, and the mother… somehow?…factoring into Linda’s harmony. Just by trying to explain that scenario now, however, you can see how unlikely it seems.

The exact same chords of Angelo Badalamenti’s “Accident / Farewell” music plays over these two scenes.

Much more likely to me is this: Sonny-Jim, in a way, represents the 2 that will be filled in Richard. It makes thematic sense; Dale-in-Dougie, by having been a good father to Sonny-Jim, will have in a symbolic sense helped to have salved the gaping 2-wound in Richard, Dale Cooper’s “real” son via Mr. C’s actions. This also helps explain why Dougie is crying, overcome with emotion, when he sees Sonny-Jim sitting in a car in Part 5; notably, the exact same chords of Angelo Badalamenti’s “Accident / Farewell” music plays over this scene as does over the Part 6 scene where Richard kills the little boy with his truck. Dougie is mourning the spiritual malaise of Dale Cooper’s rageful, fatherless son.

Through the end of Part 14, the only scene directly discussing Linda.

What about Linda? Well, recall that — aside from ???????’s cryptic statement to Agent Cooper in Part 1 — the only scene in TP:TR to date in which we’ve heard an explicit reference to “Linda” is in Part 6. There, we see Mickey joining Carl on a trip into town so as to retrieve Linda’s mail at the P.O.. Mickey’s relationship to Linda is unclear — he doesn’t wear a wedding ring, but he appears to at a minimum be her friend, if not her caretaker. Thanks to the “fuckin’ war,” as Carl puts it, Linda is in “one of them electric wheelchairs.” It’s a little unclear, since TP seems to normally associate “chairs” with 2, but it appears that Linda is a traumatized 1 (so, a 1.2, we might say) — her one mobile wheelchair is electric, and she is apparently in it because she fought in a war (seemingly a very 1-mode activity). (As an aside: If Linda is a 1.2 then perhaps it makes more sense to think of Candie as a 2.1, rather than the 2.2 assignment I’d initially given her above. After all, of the trio of her, Mandie, and Sandie, she is the one who does all of the actions — and we never see her seated.) Mickey, a seeming mixture of 1 and 2 signals, appears to be acting as her 3 — he used to smoke (1), but he quit (2); he sits in the backseat (2) of a moving vehicle (1) with his left hand (2) perched atop his right leg (1).

Just as the combination of Sonny Jim (2) and Richard (1) might possibly yield us an eventual harmonious Richard in mode / reality 3, the combination of Candie (2) and Linda (1) might possibly yield us an eventual harmonious Linda in mode / reality 3. (Since we’ve never actually seen “Linda” on screen, it’s possible that she, like Candie, will be played by Amy Shiels.) Again, this might make thematic sense. Although Dougie has spent less time with Candie than he has with Sonny Jim, he has indeed spent some quality bonding time with her group. Moreover, as I intimated much earlier in discussing what the scene involving Candie swatting a fly might be portending, I believe there is a decent chance we might yet see Candie come face to face with some sort of serious trauma (of which that fly-swatting incident was both a chronological and situational inversion). Just as Dougie helped Sonny Jim by helping to be a real father for him, it’s possible we’ll see Dougie help Candie by helping her to avert the instigating trauma that caused her/Linda so much pain in the first place. (Once more, recall that we’d expect this instigating trauma to come at the end of the Las Vegas storyline because everything is inverted there — it’s in the “Version Layer.”)

PART VI: REVISITING FWWM AND SEASONS 1 & 2

As I developed the analytical framework to TP:TR laid out in this essay, I was not expecting much of that framework to be particularly useful in looking back at the earlier installments of Twin Peaks, the movie Fire Walk With Me and the first two seasons of the show. Those were made a very long time ago, under very different circumstances. Given the passage of more than 25 years, it would be understandable if in many ways the new installment of Twin Peaks fit somewhat incongruously with many of the concepts and plot points underlying the earlier installments. (Certainly, one would not expect David Lynch and Mark Frost to have been actually planning, in the early ’90s, a specific conclusion that they expected could play out when the show was revived 25 years later.)

BOB’s next murder?

My first moment of surprise on this note came one night when I tried to pull up David Bowie’s Agent Phillip Jeffries scene from FWWM, hoping to refamiliarize myself with it in light of the many references to Agent Jeffries in TP:TR. While quickly skipping around to try to locate the correct scene in FWWM, I accidentally landed on a conversation between Coop and Albert about 45 minutes into the film. Rewatching it in light of my recent TP:TR-informed knowledge of the 1/2/3 concept, Albert’s eventual turn as BOB, and TP’s penchant for using “it” as a stand-in for an extradimensional entity like BOB, the scene played out in an entirely new way:

Coop and Albert forecast a future murder by BOB.

“Lately I’ve been filled with the knowledge that the killer will strike again,” says Coop. “But because it is just a feeling, I am powerless to stop it.” Then, making a pointed 1 reference in addressing Albert, he adds: “One more thing, Albert. When the next murder happens, you will help me solve it.” Albert responds: “Let’s test it for the record.”

Standing, Albert proceeds to ask Coop a series of questions about the future murder at issue, like “Will the victim be a man or a woman?” And: “What color hair will she have?” Coop answers each question in turn, providing a somewhat detailed description of the future victim:

Coop describes BOB’s future victim, in which Albert will “help” him to “solve it.”

According to Coop, the future victim will be a sexually active blonde woman in high school, who uses drugs and is crying out for help. In the context of FWWM, Coop is clearly describing Laura Palmer. However, given the fact that the scene arguably appears to to demonstrate some self-awareness (in 1992!) of Albert’s future turn as BOB, I wondered if it might not also be describing a future victim of Albert’s (or even of Albert and Mr. C, helping one another). So far, Coop’s description didn’t particularly remind me of any characters in TP:TR. The very last descriptive detail that Coop gives, however, set an alarm bell off for me, immediately calling to mind a Roadhouse scene at the end of Part 9:

Sky Ferreira’s character there, credited only as “Ella” (appearing with her friend “Chloe,” played by Karolina Wydra) is definitely blonde, and she’s seemingly a troubled drug user as well. It also seems not unlikely that she’s sexually active (regardless of whether or not her statement “I did the fucking work” is intended to have a double meaning), and she appears as if she could be of high school age. (Before you complain that Sky Ferreira is definitely older than 18: recall that Sheryl Lee turned 25 the year that FWWM opened, just as Sky Ferreira turned 25 this year.) The disgusting red rash under her left armpit (which she lustily scratches with her right hand) certainly could be a symbol of a creeping slide towards darkness. The discussion of a newly “out” zebra, as well as of an apparently missing “penguin,” is somewhat more of a head-scratcher, but could conceivably symbolize the return of BOB to Twin Peaks (a zebra — something like a white horse being slowly enveloped by darkness? — is a four-legged creature, suggesting a 4-entity) as well as the departure of Ella’s 2-ness (the penguin, conceivably, as it walks on two legs?). It’s the repeated discussion of Ella serving burgers, however, that truly seems to echo Coop’s comment about the future victim “preparing a great abundance of food.”

Now, I may be wrong. Ella’s character may well never be seen again in TP:TR; the Roadhouse scenes certainly play as one-offs. The echo may just be that, a slight little callback intended, in its moderate echo of Laura’s situation, as another in the long-line of accruing symbols of Twin Peak’s descent into disharmonious darkness. It’ll be interesting to see if and how Ella reappears.

Gordon’s Monica Bellucci dream, and Agent Jeffries in FWWM

Let’s now take a look at the scene I’d originally been trying to find in FWWM, the Agent Jeffries scene. Since Gordon just dreamed of this scene in Part 14, that seems like a good place to start.

Immediately before the dream-retelling scene starts, Agent Headley of the Las Vegas FBI office yells at his subordinate, “Wilson, how many times have I told you, this is what we do in the FBI?” As he says this, he emphatically bangs on his desk three times, perhaps indicating that what we’re about to watch takes place in reality 3. Gordon then immediately precedes his dream-retelling by noting that Sheriff Truman has told him there are “two Coopers” — perhaps indicating to us that the dreamspace we’re about to watch is, or at least is a similar concept to, reality 2. This is perhaps underscored by the fact that, in the dream, only the left side — i.e., the 2 side — of Cooper is visible. Similarly, in the dream Monica Bellucci has “brought friends” — in context, pretty clearly her own personal 1 and 2. She is shown gesturing only to the friend on her left (2), using her left hand (2). And when Gordon sits down with her at the cafe (a 2-ish type activity), only Monica’s 2 is shown with her.

Does this mean that the dream takes place in reality 2, as we’ve come to understand that reality? I don’t think so. Rather, I think the point this sequence is intended to illustrate is that reality 2 (and as we’ll see, also reality 1) are to reality 3 — the base reality — as dreams are to it. That is, realities 1 and 2 are representations of the subconscious; an interpretation of the three-realities we’d briefly touched on above in Part III.

Monica then cries a single tear as she looks at her fingers arranged in the formation of two overlapping triangles — Twin Peaks. As she looks up, at Gordon, she moves some of her fingers in a way that destroys the previously harmonious arrangement of the overlapping triangles: a symbol, I believe, that the two sides of the subconscious, or soul, are no longer in harmony.

Monica then says the ancient phrase: “We’re like the dreamer, who dreams and then lives inside the dream.” Between the first half of the sentence and the second, the camera cuts between Gordon’s face in the dream, and Gordon’s face in the Buckhorn hotel room. She adds: “But who is the dreamer?” We will address this very important question momentarily.

Monica’s question makes Gordon feel “powerful[ly] uneasy.” As he tells it, Monica next “looked past [him] and indicated to [him] to look back at something that was happening there.” (The camera cuts back to Gordon in the hotel room for the last several words of that sentence.) We then see Gordon look back over his right shoulder — indicating, I believe, that he is now looking back into the 1 reality / 1 side of the subconscious, where this version of the Agent Jeffries scene took place. (As if these two selves of Gordon are looking at each other, the Gordon we see in the flashback is looking to his left in the first shot of him — as if he is looking back at Gordon in reality 2.)

In the flashback (as I’m calling it here, for lack of a more precise term), Agent Cooper is telling Gordon that he is worried about a dream that he had. Cooper notes that “it’s 10:10am on February 16th,” and then says that he’s worried about today “because of the dream I told you about.” It’s definitely ambiguous, but I believe that in this context, the time and date are intended to signify the 1-reality — the time is only 1s and absences where we might some other number like a 2 or a 3. The date, 16, is also a 1-signifier — aside from the “1” in it, the “6” is, as we’ve seen a signifier of evil and destruction, which are more of 1-mode type concepts. (Yes, February is the 2nd month, but for reasons I don’t have the time to go into in this essay I think we should not read “February” as a 2-signifier in this context.) The fact that Cooper is talking about a dream he had is, in addition to potentially tipping us off about other things happening in the first chunk of FWWM, possibly meant as another clue about the multiple levels of reality / dreams / subconscious at play in TP, something this sequence — particularly as employed in the Monica Bellucci dream of Part 14 — is all about.

Jeffries walks in and points his arm at Cooper, asking: “Who do you think that is there?” Very curiously, there are two things about this Jeffries’ statement here that are different from the scene in FWWM that supposedly depicts the very same moment:

Top left: Part 14 of TP:TR. Top right: FWWM. Bottom: the voice of Jeffries in TP:TR.

(1). The language is slightly altered. In FWWM, Jeffries says: “Who do you think this is there?” In Part 14 of TP:TR, by contrast, Jeffries says “Who do you think that is there?” (2). The voice. In FWWM, Jeffries is both acted and voiced by David Bowie. In Part 14 of TP:TR, by contrast, Jeffries is still acted by David Bowie, but now he is voiced by Nathan Frizzell. Notably, the show did not need to find someone (because of Bowie’s passing) to voice the word “that” in order to make the language in Part 14 different than that in FWWM; they already had extra footage of Bowie using that exact language, “that,” from the shooting of FWWM, as shown in the “Missing Pieces” scenes that were released several years ago (see here).

Why have these slight changes been made? It seems highly likely that the show is trying again to tip us off to the fact that we have more than one reality playing out here. Notably, the extended scene in FWWM is a jumble of different 1/2/3 signifiers (as is the extended scene released in the “Missing Pieces”), including Cooper memorably looking for his image on the security footage three different times, on three different cameras — something intended, I believe, to suggest (along with the dream reference by Cooper, the Cooper image on the TV not following his actions, and Jeffries’ confusion and teleportation — to the fourth (4) step of a Buenos Aires hotel stairway, notably, in the Missing Pieces) that TP consists of several different layers of realities that we’ve been watching. It is quite possible that the FWWM version of the scene we saw was, in a sense, intercutting from moment to moment between which reality it was showing us. If that sounds impossibly disorienting, well: it is arguably the most disorienting scene in all of TP, and it’s moreover seemingly intended to be disorienting, so as to tip us off to the strange conceit at the core of TP in a viscerally unsettling manner.

This also helps to explain why Gordon finishes the scene by saying, of Jeffries’ accusation at Cooper: “Damn! I hadn’t remembered that.” Albert, who was also present in the Jeffries scene, adds: “I’m beginning to remember that too.” As others have pointed out (I believe I first saw this in an exchange between John Thorne and Jeff Jensen here), it is as if Gordon and Albert are slowly remembering a dream they once had. Now, again — this is ambiguous — but I believe the explanation is something along the lines that Jeffries did not make this accusation at Cooper (or at least not in as memorable a way) in reality 3, the base reality in which we seem to be watching Gordon, Albert, and Tammy now talk in the Buckhorn hotel.

This interpretation — that realities 1 and 2 are, in essence, the subconscious realms for reality 3, the base reality — is further supported by Agent Jeffries’ unforgettable statement in the FWWM version of the scene: “We live inside a dream.”

One thing about this interpretion of reality 3 as the “base reality” to the two other subconscious realities may seem fishy: we’ve seemingly been watching people walk around with physical representations of the two sides of their subconscious not just in realities 1 and 2, but in reality 3 as well. Albert and Tammy, the physical manifestations of Gordon’s 1 and 2 sides, are shown to us as being apparently real, sitting right there with him in reality 3. If reality 3 is the base reality, then shouldn’t all the funky subconscious stuff like that not be directly happening there? (Not to forget the fact that supernatural-ish entities like BOB seem to directly interact with reality 3 as well.)

Part of the answer, though not all, is perhaps provided several minutes earlier in Part 14, when Albert describes the very first “Blue Rose” case, one where a woman shot another woman who was, by all appearances, herself. Before dying and vanishing, the apparent doppelganger says: “I’m like the blue rose.” As Tammy then notes, blue roses do not occur in nature. “The dying woman was not natural. Conjured. What’s the word? A tulpa.” A tulpa, a concept from more than one religious / spiritual persuasion, is a “thoughtform,” a “being or object which is created through spiritual or mental powers.” (See, e.g., here and here, as well as here, where tulpas are described as “extra bodies that were created from one person’s mind in order to travel to spiritual realms” — full disclosure: I am decidedly not an expert on tulpas.)

Albert, hearing Tammy say the word “tulpa,” raises an eyebrow, then looks at Tammy — the physical embodiment of the “light” side of Gordon — and says: “Good.” It’s as if he is describing her: yes, you are the Good tulpa.

Who is the dreamer?

Are Tammy, Albert, and all the other 1/2 characters of TP that we’ve been identifying actually tulpas? On the one hand, the answer might be no: perhaps the word “tulpa” is only meant to describe Mr. C’s creation of the original Dougie Jones, and/or the existence of literal doppelgangers in Lodge-space (from which Mr. C has escaped). But I think the answer is actually yes — everyone in TP is, in fact, a tulpa. If that’s the case, then who, exactly, is the thinker who’s creating these thoughtforms, these tulpas? Or, as Monica Bellucci puts it: Who is the dreamer?

I think there are three possible answers to this with at least some level of substantial support. In increasing order of how well I think they fit what we’re seeing in TP, these are the answers I have in mind:

One, Laura Palmer is the dreamer. This will make more sense by the end of the essay — it is supportable, in some significant ways — but I still think the next two answers make more interpretive sense.

Two, the dreamer is Gordon Cole / David Lynch (and possibly Mark Frost, if one wants to read Gordon’s character, although played by Lynch, as representative of both of TP’s co-creators and co-writers; though for the purposes of simplicity here I’ll simply refer to Lynch). As we’ve already noted, the most important characters in TP:TR form two overlapping triangles — Twin Peaks — with Gordon/David at their very center. It’s conceivable that one could draw a single massive super-triangle containing every character in TP as hubs of the subtriangles within it, with Gordon/David at the very top. (Lest you think this is too trippy or too complicated a thing to contemplate, consider the large super-triangle on the cover of Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier, coming out this Fall.) In a way, this makes perfect sense: “Twin Peaks,” as with any art, is in some quite literal sense the thoughtform of the artists who made it. Given all the discussion of TP:TR as a potential capstone to Lynch’s career, containing references to and actors from all/many of Lynch’s prior works, this interpretation might seem fitting. (One could also interpret this answer more broadly: the dreamer is not just Lynch, or Lynch and Frost, but everyone whose life touches “Twin Peaks” and creates its overall imprint on our world — the cast, the crew, the network, the fans, the critics, the broader culture that’s semi-aware of it — everyone.)

Three, space-time itself is the dreamer. (Space-time, as in: time and space — i.e., the entirety of existence.) As confusing as this may at first sound, I believe this is what the show intends to be the answer, as, indeed, it has already directly provided it to us as the answer at the end of Part 10:

The Log Lady tells Hawk: “Watch and listen to the dream of time and space. It all comes out now, flowing like a river. That which is and is not.” But what does this mean?

As Mat Cult notes here, TP appears to be at least in part inspired by the Upanishads, “a collection of Indian texts that contain the seeds of both Hinduism and Buddhism.” The key passage Cult quotes, as translated by Thomas Egenes, is worth repeating here in its entirety:

“Look Balaki,” the king said. “Do you see that spider?”

“Yes,” said Balaki, “I see the spider moving along its web.”

“We are like the spider,” said the king. “We weave our life, and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream.

“This is true for the entire universe. That is why it is said, ‘Having created the creation, the Creator entered into it’.

“This is true for us. We create our world, and then enter into that world. We live in the world that we have created. When our hearts are pure, then we create the beautiful, enlightened life we have wished for.”

In the context of the show’s themes, I believe it all translates down roughly to this: We each of us contain multitudes, parts of ourselves that we create on an ongoing basis just by living. Often we don’t know how to make sense of these conflicting forces, thoughts, and feelings fluttering and bouncing inside of us. That is the everpresent, recurring task of life: as with watching an episode of Twin Peaks, on a daily basis we must try to watch and listen closely to what’s being created inside of us — the real essence of our life — to try to reach a deeper understanding and find a measure of self-harmony. And as with the task of understanding the subconscious realms and forces represented in Twin Peaks, this is often quite challenging —though if we pay close attention to what our heart is trying to tell us in a given situation, we can at least begin to move towards self-understanding.

This same process is repeated by the universe itself — it, too, contains multitudes, a jumble of conflicting forces, things, and beings inside of it, and the sum total of existence (“that which is and is not”) is an eternally recurrent process of the forces of harmony, of order, engaging the forces of disharmony, of chaos. (As for why the universe contains something rather than nothing in the first place: well, that is a wee tad difficult to answer.) We each of us are components of the universe trying to order itself, jostling against each other as part of this Great Ordering. This total, universal engagement between order and chaos is what we ultimately see represented in Twin Peaks. (Lest you think the concepts in this paragraph are solely the domain of religion and spirituality, note that, e.g., one of the most distinguished living analytical philosophers recently wrote a book supporting what we might think of as a version of these concepts. As the New Yorker review of the book describes it, his is “a theory of teleology — a preprogrammed or built-in tendency in the universe toward the particular goal of fulfilling the possibilities of mentality. In a splendid image, Nagel writes, ‘Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.’”)

Thus, on this way of understanding things, there is no “base reality” where the overarching dreams, the thoughts, the consciousness, stop. Reality in TP, as in life, is in a very real sense a universal dream. So let’s not get too hung up on having tulpas in reality 3.

It’s dreams all the way down.

The ending of Fire Walk With Me

It’s time, at long last, to take a look at the very final scene of FWWM.

After the previous sequence ends with a shot of Laura’s dead, waterlogged body being unwrapped from plastic (i.e., the very first moment of Season 1 of Twin Peaks), the scene begins with a scroll into what appears to be the Red Room. We see a close-up of the right side of Laura’s face as she sits there; you can see that someone has their right hand on her shoulder. She is looking up, and we then get a shot of who it is that’s looking at her: it’s Dale, with the left side of his face shown looking down at her, smiling. He blinks once. Laura does not appear to understand why Dale is smiling. She looks down dejectedly.

She blinks once. There’s a pause. She blinks twice. There’s another pause. *Immediately upon her third blink,* a light flashes and an angel appears floating above them. Laura looks at the angel with bright-eyed wonder. Her mouth drops open. She begins to heave with sobs of uncontrollable exhiliration and joy; a wide smile breaks out on her face as she watches the white, floating angel slowly join its left hand and its right hand together in a praying motion. Laura throws her head back and laughs in disbelieving amazement, as the tears of unfuttered joy continue to pour from her. The camera pulls back, and the final image we’re left with is of these 3 figures in the Red Room: Laura; Dale standing next to her, with his right hand on her shoulder; and the floating white angel, its right and left hands clasped together in prayer.