S03E18: Part 18 (What is your name?)

[The Bookhouse Bot]

Twin Peaks

Part 18
Season: 3
Episode: 18
Air date: 2017-09-03

Guest stars: Ray Wise, Laura Dern, Sheryl Lee, Al Strobel, Pierce Gagnon, Naomi Watts, Mary Reber, Francesca Eastwood, Heath Hensley, Rob Mars, Matt Battaglia, Grace Zabriskie

Cooper and Diane drive 430 miles. Cooper attempts to help a troubled woman he believes to be Laura Palmer.

 

[4815162342]

Yes, as interesting as the end of Season 3 is, it does kind of ruin the end of FWWM.

 

[Dom]

Yes, as interesting as the end of Season 3 is, it does kind of ruin the end of FWWM.

That was an issue I had with season three as well. I was actually happy with where FWWM left things with Laura. I wanted a sequel to be all about Cooper. I'd hoped to have as deep a character study of him as we got with Laura. David Lynch and Mark Frost had other ideas, which is fair enough. It just wasn't what I'd hoped for, but I respect that they got to make more or less exactly what they wanted. I've found in many cases of latter day revivals that sometimes you just have to say 'I'll sit tight with what I've got', stay behind and let the filmmakers carry on down a different road. At least season three was made by the originators, not someone chosen by a corporation who had bought the rights, even if I was a bit let down.

 

[LateReg]

That was an issue I had with season three as well. I was actually happy with where FWWM left things with Laura. I wanted a sequel to be all about Cooper. I'd hoped to have as deep a character study of him as we got with Laura. David Lynch and Mark Frost had other ideas, which is fair enough. It just wasn't what I'd hoped for, but I respect that they got to make more or less exactly what they wanted. I've found in many cases of latter day revivals that sometimes you just have to say 'I'll sit tight with what I've got', stay behind and let the filmmakers carry on down a different road. At least season three was made by the originators, not someone chosen by a corporation who had bought the rights, even if I was a bit let down.

Isn't The Return the deepest possible character study of Cooper? The whole thing is his psyche, and I'm not even saying that to imply that it all takes place in his head. The split Coopers, the world as he sees it, the series appears to map his consciousness, etc.

 

[Dom]

Isn't The Return the deepest possible character study of Cooper? The whole thing is his psyche, and I'm not even saying that to imply that it all takes place in his head. The split Coopers, the world as he sees it, etc.

Not to me. Season three is basically Kyle Maclachlan's proper Cooper - the guy I watched in seasons one, two and FWWM - walking around like a zombie for 14 hours while his evil double wreaks havoc and David Lynch's Gordon Cole essentially performs the real Cooper's former role in the plot. YMMV, of course.

 

[LateReg]

Not to me. Season three is basically Kyle Maclachlan's proper Cooper - the guy I watched in seasons one, two and FWWM - walking around like a zombie for 14 hours while his evil double wreaks havoc and David Lynch's Gordon Cole essentially performs the real Cooper's former role in the plot. YMMV, of course.

It's funny, because the more and more I watch the original series along with The Return, the more and more Dougie seems to clearly fill the same function and operate in almost the same exact way as the original Cooper. It strikes me as a combination of parody of the writing of the original series and vivisection of the character that results in something equally real and even more warm and truthful.

 

[Mordeen]

Yes, as interesting as the end of Season 3 is, it does kind of ruin the end of FWWM.

It absolutely does. I like most of S 3 but if it wasn't a dream of Cooper in the Lodge then it wrecks so much. That's why I cling to the dream theory.

- Mordeen

 

[Cappy]

Yes, as interesting as the end of Season 3 is, it does kind of ruin the end of FWWM.

I had a similar reaction upon initial viewing. Now I kind of look at it like… okay, Laura’s story has this ending, and then Cooper has this other ending.

I can’t really reconcile them with each other, but perhaps the contrast between the two endings tells us something.

 

[MasterMastermnd]

Probably been commented on before, but I love how the last episode of season three mirrors the last episode of season two. Cooper goes on a bizarre trek somewhere deeper and darker than the Lodge, his identity comes into question, and we're left with an iconic line centered around the idea of time. "I'll see you again in 25 years" vs "what year is this?"

I agree The Return is an excellent examination of Cooper and what makes him tick. His calculating shrewdness, his grace, his humor, his hubris, all shattered into pieces for us to examine in detail.

 

[Jordan Cole]

Probably been commented on before, but I love how the last episode of season three mirrors the last episode of season two. Cooper goes on a bizarre trek somewhere deeper and darker than the Lodge

A friend of mine theorized that the world in the finale of season 3 is the first time we are actually seeing the Black Lodge, and that's kind of how I think of it. I think we're finally seeing it, for real.

 

[MasterMastermnd]

That's a fair way to look at it. I'd always adhered to the old interpretation we see the Black Lodge in the season two finale when LMfAP says the chant, but season three gives us so much more to think about retroactively. We seem to see so much more than just a White and Black Lodge in season three. It's like reality as the Deep Web or something, with an unbelievable amount of stuff not indexed in our everyday world.

 

[eyeboogers]

I had a similar reaction upon initial viewing. Now I kind of look at it like… okay, Laura’s story has this ending, and then Cooper has this other ending.

I can’t really reconcile them with each other, but perhaps the contrast between the two endings tells us something.

To me they are perfectly complementary. In FWWM Laura gets her happy end. We see her again in The Return and behind her face is nothing but light - she has in fact because an angel of sorts, her sins forgiven and her soul at peace.

Then white male hero archetype #1 shows up to "rescue" her, and she is forcefully ejected from heaven and ends up in hell/Odessa.

 

[Dom]

To me they are perfectly complementary. In FWWM Laura gets her happy end. We see her again in The Return and behind her face is nothing but light - she has in fact because an angel of sorts, her sins forgiven and her soul at peace.

Then white male hero archetype #1 shows up to "rescue" her, and she is forcefully ejected from heaven and ends up in hell/Odessa.

Hypothetically, the being we'll call Coop (aka Richard) has always been on a mission to save the being we'll call 'Laura', because she's needed to fight the entity invading the Lodges. He travels many worlds. He works for the Fireman, assumes an identity and history when he gets to a particular world.

In the Twin Peaks pilot, by the time he reaches the Laura entity, it's too late and she's already dead. He doesn't recall his Lodge identity fully, forgetting important details from his dreams. He later gets stuck in the Red Room while a rogue version of him runs riot in the Twin Peaks world.

Another entity - his partner, generally known as 'Diane' in the Twin Peaks reality - has also been replaced by an evil double and has to be located. For that matter, briefly diverging, was Maddie Ferguson a tulpa of Laura, similar to fat Dougie? Everyone forgets her when Leland dies. She's never really mentioned again in Twin Peaks and she isn't referred to at Leland's funeral, which is odd. We only see an evil version of her in the final episode of season two.

Laura 'ascended' at the end of FWWM, but she returned to speak to Coop at the start of season three, 25 years after season two. She's ripped away in front of Coop, possibly destroyed, because something evil invades the Lodge. So I don't think 'white man bad' applies, because that wasn't Coop ripping her away.

The point of season three is that Cooper has to assemble a team to battle the invader. He has to rescue Laura, meaning he has to get back into the Twin Peaks world, in spite of his evil double replacing him. Ultimately, Coop time travels to the night Laura died to rescue her at that point, because she's doomed after that by the thing that invaded the Lodges. In doing so, Coop takes the... ahem... nuclear option and erases the events of the original two seasons of Twin Peaks and the end of FWWM. Laura is still ripped away from him in the woods, thrown into another reality, but that's not Cooper's fault either. When Coop/Richard and Diane/Linda get to the Odessa reality, Carrie is still alive (having killed a man who looks a bit like BOB, possibly becaise that universe's version is more vulnerable), which I think is important to whatever happens next. Like I say, I think the beings now known as 'Richard', 'Linda' and 'Carrie' have a job to do either in the Odessa reality or in yet another one. They also need to recruit that reality's Gordon. So the Coop entity has rescued Laura entity and they're working together at last. The series finishes with both of them remembering who they are: agents of the Lodges.

I still want to know what Coop was up to for 25 years. He's much older in season three (the Arm has also 'evolved') and Coop has a different hairstyle. I doubt there's a barber's in the Lodges! So has Cooper been operating elsewhere in the meantime? His meeting with the Fireman implies that this isn't the first meeting of this kind they've had. When the Fireman says 'Richard and Linda. Two birds with one stone' at the beginning of the season, Cooper knows exactly what he's talking about.

I begin to wonder if the Red Room is the 'real world' and everything else in places such as Twin Peaks alters according to what happens in the Lodges. Given there are evidently lots of parallel worlds existing, are Coop, Diane and Laura unique beings that move between them and 'Gordon' a 'constant' being that lives in all of them who psychically connects to all the different versions of himself?

I guess Richard and Carrie's next step will be to find Gordon (or whatever he's now called) in the Odessa-verse, who will remember the original Twin Peaks events, and presumably go and find Linda/Diane. If the nuke shattered reality, I guess these characters have to 'firefight' the demon it released in multiple realities. So a 'next season' won't be Twin Peaks. But at lwast the complete team will be together to battle the monster that is invading the Lodges. Different names, different world, different mission, same target.

 

[LateReg]

A friend of mine theorized that the world in the finale of season 3 is the first time we are actually seeing the Black Lodge, and that's kind of how I think of it. I think we're finally seeing it, for real.

I've always thought that the most compelling part of that theory is that, while everything seems a bit off in Part 18, the eerily dry, no frills aesthetic capped by the Mary Reber appearance really does make it seem as though we've entered into our "real" world. So, the chilling implication is that it's like the shared world we the viewers are inhabiting right here and now with all of its negativity and wrongness is and has been the Black Lodge all along.

 

[SayonaraRobocop]

A friend of mine theorized that the world in the finale of season 3 is the first time we are actually seeing the Black Lodge, and that's kind of how I think of it. I think we're finally seeing it, for real.

That actually makes a lot of sense to me now that I'm rewatching the whole thing after 6 years. Especially when in S2 they made it clear that the Lodges exist in a parallel state to our plane, and the Red Room was just the waiting room. It even goes back to the shooting script for Episode 29 where the Lodge scenes were initially an alternate version of the Great Northern.

 

[krishnanspace]

I would want it to be abstract like the original season and fire walk with me. Judy being like a monster from stranger things makes the show a little unbelievable

 

[Jordan Cole]

To me they are perfectly complementary. In FWWM Laura gets her happy end. We see her again in The Return and behind her face is nothing but light - she has in fact because an angel of sorts, her sins forgiven and her soul at peace.

Then white male hero archetype #1 shows up to "rescue" her, and she is forcefully ejected from heaven and ends up in hell/Odessa.

I have always really disliked this negative take on Cooper, though I don't have much of an argument against it, as that seems to be what the story is telling us.

 

[Cappy]

I would want it to be abstract like the original season and fire walk with me. Judy being like a monster from stranger things makes the show a little unbelievable

At least they didn’t give Laura the Eleven story arc: “Remember how mad you were when that thing happened, but direct it at this season’s villain!”

 

[Jordan Cole]

I've always thought that the most compelling part of that theory is that, while everything seems a bit off in Part 18, the eerily dry, no frills aesthetic capped by the Mary Reber appearance really does make it seem as though we've entered into our "real" world. So, the chilling implication is that it's like the shared world we the viewers are inhabiting right here and now with all of its negativity and wrongness is and has been the Black Lodge all along.

Precisely. That is the secret horror of the show. We're all in the Black Lodge. A place filled with enormous negativity, where you lose your very soul and become a sort of blank being with no higher purpose or motivation. The real world crushes you down. It's essentially the rantings of Dr. Amp were correct, really.

 

[Dom]

I have always really disliked this negative take on Cooper, though I don't have much of an argument against it, as that seems to be what the story is telling us.

Whereas I see season three as Coop successfully stopping Laura from being destroyed, as seen at the start of season three, and locating her alive in the Odessa-verse. She wouldn't be alive if he hadn't subsequently rescued her from the events of FWWM. We now know Laura isn't just a schoolgirl: she was some sort of mystical force sent to Earth by the Fireman and Mistress Dido. Cooper is clearly more than just an FBI agent: he's an agent of the Fireman and way more experienced than we previously knew. Presumably his psychic powers are related to who he really is.

Coop was always supposed to find Laura. He's evidently been searching for her for a long time, before Twin Peaks even existed. Finally, he succeeds in season three. Far from being a failed stereotype, Coop has succeeded at the end. Laura and Cooper are together, they've got their memories and can take the battle to Judy.