September 7, 2017 / DAVID AUERBACH
I thought Twin Peaks: Back to the Top was much deeper than the original. I wrote this prediction before the premiere of how Twin Peaks: Homecoming would work:
I expect the new season will be about "Twin Peaks," not the town, but the show itself. The new season will revolve around the old show rather than continue the plot.
Still, I'm expecting The Homecoming to close more than it looks. Even if I'm sure the end result will be closer to the Inland Empire than the original exhibit, I think Frost's presence and the daunting task of shaping 18 hours of material will just require some sort of narrative arc as an organizing principle. Until the final episode of The Oval and Incredibly Desolate, I definitely found that look, and in Lynch's work, I found the inner unease like anything else. (Even the three movies I love, Eraser Head, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire, don't move me as much as the last episode; they are more emotional than emotional experiences. shrouded in aesthetic experience.)
Generating an all-encompassing sense of fear without any clear rationale or narrative is a remarkable achievement. It's so powerful, especially the "love" scene between Cooper and Diana, that some explanation is needed. This is the best guess at the submerged material that Lynch has built on top of Episode 18. My narrative was inspired by the poster's gist that the alternate world of Episode 18 was not created by the negative entity Judy, but by White Lodge itself as Judy's trap. This is the first explanation that begins to hint at the reason for the special, overwhelmingly sad finale, including the bizarre and disturbing sex scene between Cooper and Diane.
Remember the following points:
Neither Doppelganger nor BOB are the main opponents this season. Judy is.
Judy is the experimental monster, mother, hornworm symbol (Jeffreys says so too), jumping man, Chalfonts/Tremonds and Sarah Palmer, or represented by it.
Gordon Cole, Garland Briggs and Cooper, in collaboration with Phillip Jeffries and Mike (MIKE), have developed some kind of Long-term plan for dealing with Judy.
Bimodal: The backhaul has a symmetric structure. Cooper, for example, entered a cationic Dougie state within 2.5 hours and woke up 2.5 hours later.
Black Lodge's creatures, including Judy, are drawn to and consume pain and sorrow (aka garmonbozia).
Electricity is a basic energy source, just like fire.
This is my best guess at my plan to deal with Judy, and pay a huge price for it. None of these are definitive, just approximations that I find convincing, perhaps to what Frost had in mind before Lynch started improvising.
"It's in our house now," Fireman tells Cooper in the first scene. "It" is Jodie and her dark room dwellers. Firefighters have never been more serious. This is a very, very bad thing that requires desperate measures. He then sends Cooper three reminders: 430 [miles across borders into alternate reality], Richard and Linda [Cooper and Diane's alternate selves], and "two birds, one stone" [Library Pere's plan]. The timing of this scene is unclear. This may have happened after Cooper electrocuted himself back into the episode in episode 15, but it's more important that Cooper remembers this after this and knows what he's supposed to do.
The trap contains three key elements:
1. The Cage: A small fantasy world created by White Lodge, containing Odessa, Texas, and Twin Peaks
2. Temptation: Cooper and Diane
3. The Bomb: Laura Palmer
Cooper, with Phillip Jeffries as travel agent, went back in time to rescue Laura Palmer on the night of her death. "We're going home," he told her in a funny but not too reassuring tone. If "home" was her parents' home, it was the last place Laura wanted to go. In fact, "home" is Laura's origins in episode 8's White Lodge. Cooper takes Laura to the woods at Palace White Lodge in Jackrabbit. When Laura Palmer disappeared, she heard firefighters playing for Cooper. This shows that White Lodge has picked her up. Cooper wasn't particularly surprised by her disappearance. He looked up because she had been pulled up like she was walking from the Red Room in the second episode (with the same quivering sound). Above is the direction to the White House.
Sarah, acting under the influence of Judy, is angry at Laura's disappearance and tries to smash her photo, but the scene keeps flipping and the photo is impeccable. This reality is being turned into an "unofficial version" while Laura is "saved".
White Lodge did "save" Laura from her father, but that wasn't Cooper's purpose, which is why Cooper seems to be getting more and more annoying after leaving the Sheriff's Station. Laura is being used in traps for the greater good, but not for her own sake. She still suffered from a horrific childhood and adolescence, full of abuse. Cooper tells Laura not to take the owl hole ring in "Walk With Me" because Cooper's plan requires Laura to be alive. When Leland/BOB kills Laura, it messes up the plan.
If Cooper's main concern was actually saving Laura, why didn't he save her from the past few years before she died, lest she suffer such horrific abuse? The irony of Laura Palmer's tragedy is that no one wanted her to die, but everyone made her suffer—the revelation of episode 18 is that her tormentors now include Cooper. In The Return, "Who Killed Laura Palmer?" ends up being what MacGuffin Lynch and Frost originally intended. The question "Who killed Laura Palmer?" leads characters and audiences astray, distracting from the more important and compassionate question, "Who is Laura Palmer? or what?"
The White Lodge Hotel puts the 1989 Laura in a pocket-sized dream world that I call a "cage." We've seen White Lodge briefly contain Mr. C in a cage; this hints at the nature of this fantasy world. It shapes itself around her. Laura then lived in Cage for 25 years, living a prosaic life in Carrie Page's life in Odessa, Texas.
From what we know of her, Laura's later life as Carrie Page seems better than her childhood, but when Cooper shows up, she still has a body in her living room . Cage is perhaps Laura's dream to escape from her childhood. By entering the cage, she forgets a lot of what happened before entering the cage.
Cages are not Judy's domain. It's a White Lodge idea shaped by Laura's own dreams. jackrabbit is a symbol of odessa, fireman knows about the cage when Andy travels into White Lodge: he shows Andy the outside of Carrie Page's house #6 Photo of Pylon. Firefighters are aware of the scheme and its accomplices.
"Laura is the one," why? When the fireman, in response to the Trinity nuclear test, dropped the golden Lara Ball to Earth, I and others feared that it would undercut the show by transforming Lara from a total survivor of human abuse to some sort of magical elect. Human element. I think Laura is special now, but she's special because of her pain. Laura lives in a terrifying dark youth. Her abuse at the hands of her father and the BOB left a huge spiritual residue, and Judy made Palmer the base of her business where she lived or owned Sarah Palmer. BOB is garmonbozia's glutton, and Laura is garmonbozia's stubborn resistance until she dies (BOB/Leland doesn't want that ending). Black Lodge consumes Garmonbozia, but cannot spawn independently.
Why would a firefighter portrayed as a positive figure create this image of a martyr? I suggest that Laura Palmer's role is to act as a capacitor: to store a large charge of accumulated misery, which can then be released at the exact moment. Laura's great ordeal doesn't make her superhuman, but it gives her the ability to function in traps. With the right settings, this discharge can overload the Lodge entity's circuitry and completely destroy it. To use another apt analogy, this is like an atomic bomb reaching critical mass. But for fissionable matter as important as Judy, you don't want to detonate it in our universe, or it would take up most of our world.
In the language of Hawke's map:
Laura is a high concentration of pure corn (fertile) that has become black corn (smut) due to suffering.
Residents of black hotels consume Garmonbozia to produce black fire/electricity (smells like charred motor oil).
Judy is a powerful mother with impaired fertility, and she is able to feed her huge black flame by eating an abundance of vines.
With enough black corn (i.e. fuel), the black fire will grow, consume everything and burn, like pouring gasoline on the fire. or circuit overload. Or the atomic bomb reaches critical mass.
Gold is the color of garmonbozia and Laura balls. She is full of corn, as produced by firefighters, and she is an efficient fuel. But Judy doesn't eat good, healthy corn. Only black corn can. Leland and the BBC must take care of this corruption. When the fireman freezes footage of Judy's appearance of the BOB ball, it's not because he sees the BOB as the primary threat (though at this point in the series, viewers should think so). This is because BOB unknowingly becomes part of the plan to defeat Judy.
Meanwhile, in the normal universe 25 years later: Firefighters move Mr. C from Sarah's house (the most unfavorable location in Twin Peaks) to the Sheriff's residence (the most positive location in Twin Peaks). Mr. C sought out Gamon and was drawn to Sarah Palmer, but he was always set up by Jeffries and Briggs. His plot doesn't matter to the trap, which is why his downfall is so easy with the help of a hastily recruited, super-gloved British kid. He did some damage, but Cooper-Dodge couldn't move due to White Lodge's management. Mr C has been feeding BOB with garmopotz bugs since Laura's death, but compared to the apocalyptic threat posed by Judy, the danger is miniscule, so Mr C did not appear in Gordon until 2016. On both Den and Albert's radars, Gordon was indifferent to Mr. C's escape from prison. (Given Ray's identity, and Gordon's relationship with Philip Jeffries, it's likely that Gordon was involved in the escape plan.) When it comes to the suffering of others, Gordon is rather Machiavellian and ruthless. He may have gone soft on Diana's hood, but he wasn't soft. Diana's anger at Gordon and the FBI is real and legitimate. She is being used by them.
When the clock is locked at 2:53, it marks the completion of this world story, which will soon become the "unofficial version." As "The Journal Lady" says: "The light is fading...the circle is almost complete." 2 + 5 + 3 = 10, "number of completions". Diane, who have all walked through the story, enters the final scene with Cooper and Gordon, who himself has some kind of special power.
Between Cooper, Gordon, and Diane leaving the Sheriff's Station to the basement of the Great Northern, a solution to the problem in the plan was developed. (Gordon also gave Cooper a replacement FBI pin.) Part of the plan, which involves rescuing Laura from the past, is still okay. The problem is that Laura made poor bait after being caged in 1989, because once in the cage she forgot her childhood, so Judy wasn't caged. That task fell between Cooper and Diane. Cooper has already used Laura in the trap, and will sacrifice himself and Diane for it as well.
Cooper again walks through the red room, a similar but different path to the one he took in the second episode. He has entered the new "official version". The messy ones are gone because they weren't created in this release. More subtly, Laura is missing the original "Is it the future or the past?" scene with MIKE. The camera focuses on the empty chair Laura was sitting on in the first iteration. When we see Laura, after Cooper talks to Arm, it's actually Cooper's memory of that first trip. We don't see Cooper sitting down or standing up, the whole scene is simplified. The Laura Red Room scene in Episode 18 is a flashback prompted by Arm to remind Cooper of his mission. Laura herself has been caged for many years.
Cooper exits via Glastonbury Grove and meets Diane in the official release. We didn't hear them talking about the plan, but we knew they weren't sure what they'd find in the cage, Diana was nervous, and Cooper was determined but unhappy. They drive a crumbling vintage 70s car because they really want to find a world stuck in 1989 or earlier because they're going into Laura's ideal world. They enter a mysterious, empty world to a motel with '80s fixtures: a rotary phone, a CRT TV, and vintage locks. They check in and have disturbingly relentless sex.
This is where Episode 1 has its symmetry. I set up the experiment as Judy or Judy's avatar. Sam and Tracey seem to have sex to lure them into the experiment (sex is almost always bad in Lynch movies), and the experiment brutally slaughtered them in their fear. Diane and Cooper have now reworked the summoning ritual to introduce Judy into the cage. They both knew it was the plan. Although they care for each other and love each other, this sexual act is by no means an act of love. Neither is happy. Cooper was ebullient throughout, but remained focused on Diane, expressing restrained concerns. Diane tried to be sentimental, but fell into fear and tears, covering Cooper's face and staring at the ceiling.
None of this was unexpected to them. This has always been the plan. The ordeal that Diane (and to a lesser extent Cooper) endured was a product of her sexual relationship with the man who raped her. She knew it was going to be a harrowing experience: She saw her twins outside the motel because she had been separated from the man she had to sleep with Cooper, even if he wasn't Cooper. Cooper told her to turn off the lights, hoping to ease some of the trauma, but it was an empty gesture. He was ridiculed by the sins of his own trove. Their trauma helps attract Judy, but it's what keeps them alive. Sam and Tracy were killed for not producing enough Garmonbozia, so the experiment killed them off to feast on terror. But like Laura, a good garmonbozia generator is worth living, so Judy won't kill Diana and Cooper. She entered the cage following the platter's "My Prayer," which also foreshadowed Judy's arrival through the Frogs in Episode 8, but she kept Diane and Cooper alive -- at least Cooper.
Diane and Cooper's unsettling sex life ultimately boils down to the two men violating every instinct of humanity, compassion, and love they possessed in pursuit of abstract beauty. In particular, this stems from the way Cooper used Diana (Coin), but with her consent, was a means to end himself brutally and inhumanly. Cooper had rarely had the opportunity to choose between duty and instinct. They always pointed him in the same direction. Now they are completely incompatible.
The disturbing, pervasive desolation of this caged dream world is a product of its formation, driven by (a) Laura's own traumatic history, (b) Judy's malevolent influence, and (c) ) Cooper and (to a lesser extent) Diane are shaped by their fear of their mission is doing. Nothing in Cage's dream will have a good outcome. Any beneficial effect will have an effect on the other world, and there is little emotional comfort for those now trapped in a cage. But the depressing desolation only adds to the flammability of the Laura-Judy garmonbozia blockbuster.
The Dreamworld was remade overnight thanks to (a) Judy's presence, (b) Cooper and Diane's presence, and (c) the closure of Cage. The outside world, including Cooper's car, is constantly being updated. Andreas Schou points out that Cooper's car became the same model Mr C drove in Episode 3 in the 2:53 crash, showing the dark side of Cooper's character and Judy's influence on the cage Strength continues to increase.
The lives of Cooper and Diane are rewritten as those of Richard and Linda. They're still the same soul, but their memories have been wiped and corrupted like Carrie Page's. Diane dissolves into Linda and leaves Richard, not knowing what the hell is wrong, but knowing she can't face Richard anymore. (On the other hand, since Diane's pain was far greater than Cooper's, Judy may have just devoured her.) Cooper's will is stronger than Diane's or Laura's, and he clings to his past self, but when he reads "He knew he had sacrificed the person he cared about most in the world, Diana's letter, for the plan. Diane may have been a willing accomplice, but he was shocked that the blame ultimately fell on him. None of them were to leave the cage alive, but Cooper was still devastated by Diane's trauma and disappearance. He's nearly shattered by it, unable to enjoy his coffee, and more prone to giving off his dark side than ever. Activities for the first two seasons are followed by children's games.
Once inside the cage, Judy lives in a familiar place of pain: the Palmer residence in Twin Peaks. This is unlikely to be the extent of her influence. She left white horse totems outside the dining room and in Carrie's house. Judy probably thought Carrie was Laura, or at least the rich vine. Maybe she harvested garmonbozia from dead boys like in episode 6, like leaving #6 electric pylon in place next to Carrie's house to harvest garmonbozia. . Carrie's last three days off work may have been the result of Judy's vicious influence making Cage miserable.
Cooper checked out of the other motel, and while he was starting to lose himself, he remembered his mission and was happy to get it done. He focuses his energy on one task: bringing Laura to Sarah Palmer (Judy). He knew that Carrie Page needed to remember the terrible life she lived through as Laura in order for her to be the bomb. She didn't. He still thinks the cage is unreal, so he ignores the life of the dead in her living room and is indifferent to the people in the restaurant. They drove down a very dark highway towards Twin Peaks. Who knows how many there are in the rest of the world? The world is not only lost, but empty: when they park at the Valero gas station, there is no traffic at all, and they can't drive until they restart the car. The world seemed to exist only around them.
There are also some familiar things in the cage. Double Summit exists because it still lives in Laura's memory. They passed the RR dinner, which no longer had the RR2GO logo because neither Laura nor Cooper knew it. Cooper thinks Sarah Palmer will live in Palmer's house and Sarah will keep her in her memory. When they got to Palmer's house, he was puzzled that there were no records of Palmer people living there. Who else could be living there if the world was shaped by Laura? The answer is Judy. The names Tremond and Chalfont evoke vague memories in him, but Cage also baffles him. By this point, he may have forgotten about Diane. Judy's influence might also break things. The cage has been closed to ensure that Judy cannot escape.
Cooper faltered, trying to hold his own. "Which year is this year?" he asked, like one asks himself in a dream. This caused some buzz in Laura, and some insight into Cage's inauthenticity was enough for Judy to call her in Sarah's voice. At this point, Laura did remember, and she knew what she needed to do. She probably fully understands her role in the trap. The collective power of the past reappeared, and she let out a loud scream of violence, releasing all the pain within the confines of the cage. The bomb went off.
The lights in Palmer's house overloaded and went out. power failure. The screen goes black, the scream breaks into echoes and disappears. Judy was destroyed along with everything else in the cage. The plan worked. "It" entered our house at the beginning of episode 1 and exited at the end of episode 18. The trauma caused by the daughter's father destroyed her mother.
Not coincidentally, Laura, Cooper and Sarah Palmer are the three characters who have seen White Horse. "The man in awe of the white horse," said Mrs. Log. All three explosives were destroyed in the explosion.
Meanwhile: Leland, owned by BOB, goes on about her own business after Laura disappears on the planet's surface the night she should have died. Go registered the "unofficial version" of Laura's death, but he knew it was the right choice and wouldn't be too much trouble. Most Twin Peaks: Walk with Fire happens. Most of the other stuff doesn't, which has implications for a lot of what happens in The Return. Mr. C and Richard Horne were never in the "official release"...but neither Douglas Jones (his three incarnations) nor Sonny Jim, who needed a sunny gym, were there. Not only did Cooper sacrifice himself and his true confidante Diana, but also his two children. The Wizard of Oz in Las Vegas and Buckhorn's Black Dream became the unofficial "dreams" of their respective Coopers.
Fairytale "beats" film noir in episode 17 (the formerly unshakable Hatch and Chantal could easily die as soon as they enter Dougie's sphere of influence), but the resulting world "lose to the "remastered" Official version" nothing happens. This hauntingly evokes Franz Kafka's fable "On Fables":
A man once said: If you follow only fables, you will become fables yourself, freeing you from all your daily chores.
Another said: "I bet it's a fable too.
The first said: you won.
The second sentence says: But unfortunately there are only fables.
The first said: no, actually: you have lost in the fable.
A man once said: If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid yourself of all your daily cares.
Another said: I bet that is also a parable.
The first said: You have won.
The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.
The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost.
In reality, Cooper was the winner, but he was no longer part of reality. He became an allegory. He joins Philip Jeffries and Chet Desmond in a legend that is far from reality.
(However, such a rewrite of history might establish a Mobius-strip time loop in which both versions oscillate, but I find this to be less of a horrific compromise than Cooper has to make in order for the Trap to work. Much more interesting, and what it does is what we think of his character, especially his impossibility.)
This leaves two speculations. First, the stone is Laura Palmer and the two birds are Judy and Bob. (Cooper only hits a bird because BOB is only eliminated in the "unofficial version.") Second, Laura's spirit (not necessarily Laura herself) whispers to Cooper in episode 2: "You'll lure Judy into a trap with Diane and me, and we'll all die." Or, "We're dreamers, and they'll die in our dreams." Or simply: "You'll kill me. In keeping with The Return's symmetrical shape, Laura whispered to Cooper for 80 minutes, and Cooper "saved" Laura with 80 minutes remaining.
One final thought: Anyone who comes up with such a brutal plan, no matter how beneficial, must have a very serious dark side. When Cooper created his acrobat in "Black Lodge," he lost this dark side. His soul, if not destroyed, at least disintegrated. Cooper's shadow self re-integrated with Dopel Ganger the moment he was burned. Cooper needs the shadow self due to the darkness of the mission. Dougie-level goodness alone isn't enough to beat Judy. I believe, in fact, the possession of control over his shadow self was necessary for him to open the curtain of the black cabin from which he was prevented from exiting in episode 2.
Since his doppelganger is loose, he can't get out of the black hotel through Glastonbury Grove, only bypassing the mechanism through the weird white hotel operated by Naido. He bounced off the curtains. In episode 18, he waved it open with ease. With the doppelganger reintegrated into his self (and maybe a little bit of Dougie-ness lost), he is now the owner of the Black Lodge and White Lodge. (In the second trip through the red room, there is no mention of the Doppler gang.) But with his shadow self, a heavy sense of guilt and guilt swept through Cooper. He carries with him the crimes of the doppelganger, so they may also be brutally serving the greater good.
Update (9/8/2017): I appreciate all the valuable feedback below. I'm trying to limit my mind to what I think is the central puzzle around the end, but there are a few other issues here. I'm not too sure about all of them, but I also think their resolutions are less critical to The Return's coherence. For all the visceral shock, the ending didn't quite feel like I was in without some more explanation, so I drove off to find one. I hope there will continue to be other attempts to explain the whole story, including all the twists and turns.
Audrey: Many have pointed out the similarities between Audrey's situation and Cage's dream (which, according to Charlie and Eminem, is the "story" of Audrey and Laura/Carrie). The refurbished furniture is a differentiator: like the first edition of the motel, Audrey's house had a rotary phone, and even then, I couldn't see anything newer than the 1980s. This suggests that she's also in some kind of isolated dream, though probably not Cage. Maybe Mr. C hid Richard there sometime when he was growing up (Ben said Richard never had a father, but not that he never had a mother), or maybe raising the Black Lodge baby Chad was traumatized enough to send her there. Audrey and Laura have both become ordinary "little girls who walk the alleys,
But where was she when she woke up? As far as I know, Lynch's use of an all-white background is unprecedented for him, which makes me hesitant, but her outfit does make her look like she's in agency. There are limits to the "authenticity" of Roadhouse; the location seems to lie between all the worlds of the show, so Roadhouse allows her to transition into other worlds. (Electric sounds in the background match other cross-world travel situations.) Maybe she's waking up from catatonia? I haven't found enough clues to justify a specific explanation for her awakening. The uniqueness of the all-white background may indicate that her fate is unknown or open-ended. (Update: Mark Frost's final file states that she ended up in a private mental health care facility.)
Mr. C: Mr. C asks Jeffries who Judy is, but he does know what Judy is - the evil entity on the ace of spades. He wants Jeffreys to tell him who Judy is now and to ask if Judy wants something from him. At this point, he's suspicious of Jeffreys (who tried to kill him) and is probably still playing a fool. He might wonder if Judy wants BOB from him, since BOB is her child, which implies that Mr. C would rather not give up on him. Or maybe he's trying to give Bob back to his mother in exchange for something, and he's asking if Judy is interested. Mr. C's ultimate plan with Judy is still unclear to me - I suspect it involves knocking out Good Cooper so he can have a good time with the Woodsman entourage - but he does want to find her. But thanks to the combined efforts of Jeffreys and the firefighters, he was moved to Sarah Palmer's residence to Judy, and eventually to the Sheriff's Station, where the forces of good turned against him and defeated him easily he.
Jay Rubenstein raises the intriguing possibility that Mr. C was the one who worked with Briggs on Judy's original plan, which he brought to Gogo after killing Briggs. Deng. The timing of this seems reasonable, although it asks Gordon not to admit that there is anything wrong with Mr C. In this case, the plan was flawed from the start, as Mr. C must have malicious intent and the intervention of the firefighters. , Briggs, Diane and Cooper, to make the right plan, while Gordon and Jeffries remain in the dark. If so, Mr. C's call in episode 2 may indeed have come from Jeffries, but in the end Jeffries figured out that Mr. C was not Cooper, so Mr. C was surprised and tried to curry favor with Gordon at Yankton Prison Own. .
Mike: Even before The Return, Mike's motives were confused. A constant is that he is always against BOB, but in "I Got Fire" MIKE appears less selfless and fights BOB because he wants garmonbozia and not out of goodness in his heart. In The Return, he appears to be more moderate and takes orders from Cooper, but it could also be out of necessity, personal gain, or a desire to maintain the status quo. But why did MIKE put a ring on Laura? I think there is an answer that works in Fire Walk WIth Me, which is that the ring will take Laura (and her tarantula) away from BOB and take her to Black Lodge, where MIKE lives. . MIKE hadn't made any bigger plans at the time, and from his perspective, BOB was the biggest problem.
Without Laura, she would have been owned by BOB and maybe she would have ended up being Judy's host (so much better than Sarah since Laura's corn is fertile). Perhaps this was the original plan: after Judy had Laura, she could easily be recalled to White Lodge, contained and safely detonated. Laura's death solves Black Lodge's BOB problem, but Judy is a bigger problem for everyone by the time Return - from Black Lodge (Black Lodge) she is a garmonbozia robber baron. However, this is highly speculative, and I'm too skeptical about trying to reconcile Fire Walk With Me and The Return because MIKE's appearance features have changed dramatically.
Girl (1956): I agree with the common belief that if any character we see is a girl in 1956, it's Sarah Palmer. The timing matches, but some other hard evidence would be nice. (Update: Mark Frost's The Final File confirms it's Sarah Palmer.) But it's interesting why Judy's Frogs singled out this girl. My feeling is that she was chosen because of the sexual excitement and shame she felt and the connection those feelings had with garmonbozia. Shame stems not only from having the boy kiss her, but also from the fact that the boy is not white: both factors that caused anxiety among many fair-skinned teenage girls in the 1950s.
Red: I don't know what happened to Red. Sara Tomko and Filippo Malatesti hint that he may be Mrs Charlfang/Traymond's magician grandson. Maybe his problem with the one hand (not the hand) was the way he told Richard to check the spiritual fingers of the left hand? Richard was a terrible man, but he was destined to come all the way from conception. (Update: Based on the following comments on the diary, I now think he's Tremond's grandson for good reason.)
Addendum: The Cage and the (Carrie) Page
After much reflection, I'm now convinced that Laura Palmer's diary had a far more important influence on The Return than it first seemed. I believe diaries are cages.
Consider the following:
1. The journal lady herself is equally focused on the missing parts of the journal.
2. Hawke's conspicuous statement is that only three-quarters of the missing pages were found and that Li Lan did hide them.
3. The diary was circulated in the hands of Mrs. Tremond and her grandson, who both identify with Judy very much.
4. The time sequence in the diary is intricate.
5. The Tremond/Chalfont connection at the Palmer house in the final scene.
6. Carrie Page's last name.
There are no hints about missing page content. But I think we've got it. Here's the page Donna got from the "fake" Mrs. Tremond in the original series (page 2.9):
February 22. I had the strangest dream last night. I was in a red room with a little man in red and an old man sitting on a chair. I tried to talk to him. I want to tell him who BOB is because I think he can help me. But my words are slow and strange. Trying to talk is frustrating. I got up and walked towards the old man. Then I leaned over and whispered in his ear. Someone has to stop BOB. Bob only told me one time that the only person he was afraid of. A man named Mike. I didn't know this was the Mike of my dreams. Even if it's just a dream, I hope he can hear me. No one in the real world would believe me.
February 23. Tonight is the night of my death. I knew I had to because it was the only way to keep Bob away from me. The only way to rip him off from the inside. I know he wants me. I can feel his fire. But if I die, he can't hurt me anymore.
This is the last page of the diary. Leland did not accept. Harold Smith tore off the last page and sealed it in the envelope while destroying the rest of the diary. How it got into Mrs Tremond's mailbox is a mystery as Harold was once a homophobe. Ms Tremond sent Donna to Harold in the first place, so we can speculate that she played a major role in the whole course of events, including Harold's suicide, which I suspect was partly drawn to Black Lodge. As for why the page is being passed to Donna, I'm not sure: maybe it's Cooper's trap (which works in this case).
The chronological order in Fire Walk With Me is as follows:
A. February 16: Laura finds at least two pages missing (two screeching rips) and writes a journal to Harold saying that BOB took them. "You asked me to write it down. He doesn't know you."
B. 2/17: Tremond/Chalfont provides Laura with a red wallpaper painting that acts as a gateway to the red room. (Note: The same wallpaper as the Dutchman's stairwell in Homecoming.)
C. February 17: Tremond/Chalfont's grandson (playing Jumping Man) tells Laura that "the man behind the mask" is looking for "books with torn pages."
D. February 17: Laura and Annie get a dream and write a page about Good Cooper being trapped in the cabin.
E. February 21: Laura makes the Red Room dream come true (ep 2.9)
F. February 22: Laura wrote the last page on Cooper's Red Room Dream (ep 2.9).
G. February 23: Laura writes the rest of how she will die on the last page (page 2.9).
H. February 23: Leland kills Laura with torn pages in her hands. (Harold has leftover journals.)
Even in Fire Walk With Me, the timing is so disjointed as to be incoherent, requiring Leland to tear up the pages that Laura had written after the diary was delivered, because she found they were also torn. Tremond's remarks are self-contradictory: the man in the mask (BOB) is looking for the book he himself has found, and tearing it up. I don't think there is a solution to this mess in and of itself. Instead, I just want to use it to point out that the diary is special and anomalous in time, especially after falling into the hands of the Black Lodge. This does not mean that there are multiple realities. There is only one official reality, there is only one Laura Palmer. It just means that the diary is closer to the red room and black cabin than "reality".
But it's the most important final page (especially the February 22 entry) because it contains the central scene of Twin Peaks: Laura "Dense" Palmer whispering to an older Cooper in the Red Room a secret. Not only is this the first and only interaction Cooper and Laura have before The Return ends, but it also describes The Return's final look: the rendition is about whispering old Laura to old Cooper.
The Red Room takes center stage throughout the show, so the diary page describes it as serious business. And it's anachronistic and stretched in time: the future or the past? When Mike asked the question, he was saying, "Is this dream now or in the future?" Even after Cooper had changed the past, that dream remained, it's just that Laura (and the polygrapher) was no longer in the dream.
(I'm drawn to the theory that the mysterious sound the firefighters play for Cooper, the one Laura hears shortly after Cooper "rescues" her before Laura disappears, is the one that Laura hears in Fire The voice of unlocking the diary in Walk With. Me. Unfortunately, it's not a secret diary, there's no lock; it's where the cocaine is kept in her diary.)
After Cooper changed the past by "saving" Laura, Black Lodge had the diary. Leland has three pages, but Judy can probably restore those pages fairly easily. That diary, a chronicle of Laura's trauma and abuse, is the most important indicator of Laura's pain. It probably shines with garmonbozia. Laura, however, is gone.
As for the fourth page, it was never deleted, but remember, the dream has changed. Causal or not, Laura is no longer in the Red Room Dream in new, future or past versions. She didn't have any time to write about it. Leland said "find Laura" because Laura was not part of the entire Red Room experience.
We saw that she was fired. After Laura's reenactment of kissing and whispering with Cooper, her first appearance in The Return is when she is pulled up and swerved to the right as she screams. Next up is the Vision of Judy's White Horse, previously exclusive to Sarah Palmer. Laura and White Horse don't finally unite in Odessa until the finale. Now, here's my interpretation, but the jagged direction of Laura's movement is not unlike a page torn from a book.
Again, her screams are the same ones she made when she was "rescued" by Dale and then disappeared with the sound of the fireman's gramophone. So what I suggest Cooper, with MIKE and the firemen, is to do in The Return is to take inspiration from the story of Rara Palmer, especially in The Red Room . Through an unspecified White Lodge ruse, Laura then becomes Carrie Page, the missing "page" in the chronological diary. Disconnected from the traditional world in time and cause and effect, the diary becomes isolated enough (and "secret," if you will) to serve as a cage. (Perhaps the diary was also pulled from "reality" with Laura.) All that's left is to draw Judy in.
Like the diary, the final episode is unlimited in time. Cooper and Diane act as catalysts, summoning Judy and detonating a huge bomb in the pocket of the diary. As Carrie Page, Laura is a dreamer who lives the dreams she writes in her diary. There are many dreamers throughout the series, often sharing each other's dreams: Dale Cooper, Phillip Jeffries, Gordon Cole, Audrey Horne, William Hastings, Bradley Mitchum, and more. But in the end, the most important dreamer is Laura, whose dreams and diaries are of the same nature. Laura is one of them.
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