Major spoilers for episode 8 of “Twin Peaks: The Return.”
Besides being one long, Lynchian visual experiment, this week’s episode of the “Twin Peaks” revival also may have just given us the origin of just about everything — specifically BOB.
And it starts with a nuclear bomb.
A large, black and white photo of a mushroom cloud has been prominently featured in Gordon Cole’s office since the start of the season, but in episode 8, it came to life. A title card shows us that the explosion took place on July 16, 1945 at 5:29 a.m. History buffs will recognize this date as the moment of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon.
“Trinity,” as it was called, was part of the Manhattan Project, in which the United States developed nuclear bombs. The test was conducted in what is now known as the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, around 35 miles away from Socorro. As can be expected from the world’s first nuclear test, it awed the scientists involved.
These were the trials that eventually led to the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Subsequently, the composition that plays over this sequence in the episode is called “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima” by Krzysztof Penderecki. A “threnody” is a song that’s composed to pay tribute to a dead person and when hearing the full arrangement performed for the first time, Penderecki, the only thing he could think of was Hiroshima.
The test site is now known as a historic landmark and is marked with an obelisk that looks similar to the tower that appears in the center of the endless purple ocean, which we see after panning into the cloud itself (although I might be looking too hard into things).
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Also inside the cloud we see a white, feminine figure which is named in the credits as the “experiment.” It’s been floating around “Twin Peaks” since Part 1, where it appeared in a glass box in New York City before tearing apart two young people.
The destruction of one thing leads to the creation of another. At the Trinity test site, scientists found trinitite, a green-tinted residue. In “Twin Peaks” we see the creation of BOB.
Something that looks like an umbilical cord snakes out of the experiment. While many things which look like eggs float out, a floating bubble with BOB’s (Frank Silva) head also appears.
This is touched upon later when we go to the aforementioned tower, which houses a woman in vintage garb named Señorita Dido (Joy Nash) and the man we’ve come to know as The Giant (Carel Struycken). He watches a movie screen of the explosion and sees the BOB bubble. He then floats up to the ceiling, where a sparkling yellow cloud emerges from his head. A yellow bubble floats downwards, where Dido catches it. We then see the face of Laura Palmer in the bubble before Dido releases it into a gramophone, which in turn sends it down to Earth.
We cut to Aug. 5, 1956 outside an unnamed New Mexico town where one of the eggs hatches. A creature that looks like part frog and part fly emerges and slowly walks away.
Meanwhile, smoke-covered men that have been appearing this season (and which we now know are called Woodsmen) come out of the darkness and slowly walk towards the town. One descends onto a radio station, kills the two people manning the post, and hypnotizes the town into a slumber with a creepy poem he repeats over and over: “This is the water. And this is the well. Drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes, and dark within.” What that means is anyone’s guess.
In another part of the town, a young girl listening to the radio falls asleep. Soon after, the creature jumps in through her window and crawls into her mouth.
So what does all this mean? Forgive yourself if you felt overwhelmed by this entire episode since there’s a lot to unpack. But from what we gather, David Lynch was depicting the birth of BOB and the central conflict of “Twin Peaks.”
There’s the symbolism behind the nuclear bomb, which can signal the end of one era and the beginning of another, or of death and birth. In this case, it looks like it was the birth of BOB, who sprung from the experiment. Those in the purple ocean tower were alerted to the situation, where they created a contingency plan — Laura Palmer.
We know from “Fire Walk With Me” that Laura was able to resist BOB’s advances to take over her body by putting on the ring. It’s unclear why BOB wanted to become Laura as well. In a familiar sounding scenario, BOB was seen climbing in through Laura’s window, just like the creature that spawned from the egg.
BOB is an entity of pure evil who feeds off the pain and fear of humans. Members of the Black Lodge, including MIKE, have been working to control BOB, signifying that he’s too dangerous for even the Black Lodge.
But when did Laura get released to Earth? The timeline is a bit off, although linear, straightforward time doesn’t exist in “Twin Peaks.” According to “The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer,” she wasn’t born until July 1971. And it’s unclear who the girl we see in the town is and what happened to her after the creature climbed into her mouth, so the incident might not be related to Laura at all. We also don’t explicitly know what the creature is. Given the apparent cooperation from a Woodsman, BOB would be the logical guess — but it’s also possible that it’s the Laura Palmer spirit sent down by Senorita Dido being implanted in Sara Palmer.
But there might be one connection. One Twin Peaks resident was stationed at White Sands during the time of the test: Douglas “Dougie” Milford, the publisher of the Twin Peaks Gazette. According to “The Secret History of Twin Peaks,” he was also at Roswell when the UFO crashed and later worked with the government — including Gordon Cole and Phillip Jeffries — on secret missions involving the sort of supernatural stuff that has always been at the center of “Twin Peaks.” Dougie was also involved with Project Blue Book (the U.S. government’s attempt to find the White Lodge), which you’ll recall Major Garland Briggs being a part of in the original series run. You can read more about Dougie Milford’s surprisingly complicated past here.
Let’s also not forget the convenience store that was shown in the middle of all this in an extremely trippy shot in which a number of Woodsmen could be seen milling around inside and outside it. Presumably this is the same convenience store that MIKE and BOB lived in, before MIKE “saw the face of god,” chopped off his own arm and dedicated his existence to stopping BOB. We also saw the store later, briefly, when the New Mexico girl found a penny in front of it before she and her friend walked to her house. What the store has to do with anything else that happens in the episode is unclear, however, because we don’t even know where it is — the title card for the part with the girl just designates the place as just the desert of New Mexico.
So this could all be connected and could actually make sense. We could also be reading too much into it. This is also only part 8, after all. We still have 10 hours to go before we see the series’ conclusion and hopefully learn the secrets behind “Twin Peaks.”
'Twin Peaks': All the Big Questions We Have Through Part 13 (Photos)
At just under 18 hours long, the "Twin Peaks" revival is the longest David Lynch movie ever, so it's only natural that we're gonna have a whole lot of questions nine hours in. There are, of course, lingering questions from the original series -- but for now let's focus on the many new questions we have so far, through Part 13. (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD)
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We're worried about Audrey Horne. In Part 12 we find out she's married to this man named Charlie and she's freaking out over where somebody named Billy is. In Part 13 she seems to be a completely different person. “I’m not sure who I am,” she says. “But I’m not me." Then Charlie says that he might have to "end her story," which implies something isn't right with this whole situation, but what is it?
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We're not surprised that Laura Palmer's mother Sarah hasn't had a good time since the death of both her daughter and her husband, but what has she been up to? In Part 12 she has a freakout at a grocery store and in Part 13, she's seen sitting in front of a boxing match that continuously repeats herself. Is she just traumatically haunted or does she know something? Her history with visions says the latter, but we're not sure.
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Ray disappeared into the Black Lodge after Evil Coop shot him. It could've been just the ring that did it, but what if there's a connection between Ray and the Black Lodge? He said he was hired by Phillip Jeffries (or a man saying he was him) so there has to be something here. Was he another doppelganger, summoned like Dougie?
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So is it Phillip Jeffries that's been out for Doppelganger Coop? Or is it somebody using the name?
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What happened between Bobby and Shelly? We find out in Part 11 that Shelly's last name is "Briggs," meaning the two original series lovebirds married at some point. They even had a daughter, Becky. But we see Shelly making goo-goo eyes at a drug dealer named Red (Balthazar Getty), so they're clearly not together anymore.
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Speaking of which, what's going on with that magic drug dealer anyway? This character, credited as Red, showed up at the Roadhouse in Part 2, where he shot a finger gun at Shelly. In Part 11, we learn he and Shelly are an item, since she excuses herself from a family meeting to make out with him and tell him she'll meet up with him later. Then, in Part 6, he reveals himself as the person Richard is working for -- and he does a bizarre magic trick with a dime that freaks Richard out something fierce.
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Back to Part 11, we're treated to a strange scene where Bobby goes to investigate gun shots and comes across a woman screaming in her car about somebody being sick. Then we're introduced to a young girl (who's only credited as "sick girl") in the passenger's seat who's practically leaking green fluids as Bobby looks on. Just, what?
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In Part 10, the Log Lady once again calls Hawk to give him a message, which reads in part, "the Truman brothers are both true men, they are your brothers," "the glow is dying" and "Laura is the one." But what does it all mean?
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We get a few more clues from the Log Lady in Part 11. Hawk is showing Sheriff Truman a "living" map that will help them on their journey. He explains that the fire symbol is like "modern-day electricity." This was one of the things the Log Lady mentioned in her earlier prophecy, so could that all be connected?
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Speaking of Laura, a vision of the dead teenager appeared to Gordon Cole at the door of his hotel room, just before Albert entered. Is there a connection to Albert at all? What was the meaning behind the appearance and what does it mean to Gordon? Will he pick up the Blue Rose cases again?
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In Part 6, Albert (Miguel Ferrer) finally caught up with the woman Gordon Cole had wanted him to find to help with the mystery of the Coop doppelganger, and it's none other than the Diane that Coop had been sending his case notes to in the original series (portrayed by Laura Dern). In Part 7, Diane seems to hate Coop something fierce, and when she meets Bad Coop in prison she asks him about the last time they were together -- when something apparently bad happened. So what's that bad blood between Coop and Diane all about, and what happened the last time they were together?
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And then in Part 9 we discover that Bad Coop is texting cryptic messages to Diane. She also corresponds with him in Part 12 (or so we think). Is she working with him somehow, possibly against her will? Or is he just taunting her?
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We learn in Part 10 that Diane is working with Bad Coop in some capacity, since Albert intercepted her response to him, which read, "they have Hastings. He's going to take them to the site." But how much is she working with him and what's her end goal?
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Additionally, Albert reveals that Bad Coop knows about the box in New York revealed in Part 1. More than that, at one point he was there, along with a bald man in a lab coat. What is the connection?
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So, yes, that headless body belonged to Major Briggs, who Bill Hastings claims to have me in an alternate reality he and the deceased Ruth Davenport called "the Zone." And he and Ruth found coordinates for Briggs in a "secure military database," and after handing them over Briggs started to float away while saying "Cooper. Cooper." And then Briggs's head disappeared. Where do we even begin with this?
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Luckily, when the FBI goes to the site -- directed by Hastings -- they do eventually find Ruth's body. However, we still don't know why her head and body were separated.
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25 years earlier, Briggs had given his wife a small tube to hide until Bobby, Sheriff Truman and Hawk all visited together. The tub contained some cryptic instructions that only Bobby could understand, as well as a copy of the transmission from outer space that Project Blue Book had received 25 years earlier. The one that was a bunch of normal gibberish but with "Cooper/Cooper" tossed in the mix. Is the implication, then, that Major Briggs is the one who sent that transmission?
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We should also note that the transmission, which Briggs showed Cooper way back in season 2, would have been sent before Briggs went into hiding. However, given that Briggs had not aged when Hastings and Ruth met him indicates that "the Zone" works differently than Black Lodge that Coop was locked in for decades. Could there be a time travel element in this?
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Bill Hastings's account of the night Briggs lost his head in the Zone is pretty unclear. He describes a bunch of other threatening people being there, one of whom attacked him and demanded to know his wife's name. And somehow Ruth Davenport's head ended up on Briggs's body in the real world after Hastings returned. What exactly happened and who were those "others"? The woodsmen?
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So... what is this an entrance to, exactly?
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And why was Dougie's wedding ring inside Major Briggs' body?
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By the way: Bill's wife seems to have known Evil Doppelganger Coop -- who murdered her in Part 2. Were the other people in the Zone working with Bad Coop somehow?
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So it turns out, according to Part 9, that Duncan Todd (Patrick Fischler) is working for Bad Coop -- and thus Bad Coop is the one sending assassins after Dougie/Good Coop. How much does Bad Coop know about what's going on with Dougie? And why would a guy who wears a suit and works in an office hire assassins? He's clearly got his own team of sorts with Hutch (Tim Roth) and Chantal (Jennifer Jason Leigh).
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The Las Vegas detectives who are investigating the car bomb that blew up Dougie's car are running Good Coop's fingerprints (taken from the coffee cup he drank from), which should reveal that he's a former FBI agent and not just an insurance guy from Vegas. But who else's attention will the fingerprints draw? Will Coop finally be reunited with Gordon and Albert?
So we know now that after that out-of-context scene in Part 9 that Johnny Horne, the mentally disabled son of Ben Horne, is not dead after sprinting around their home and smashing his head against the wall. He's alive -- just badly bruised with his jaw wired shut -- when Richard Horne comes to visit. But was the previous scene only to show that he's incapacitated when Richard breaks in, or is there more to it?
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Is it just a coincidence that Johnny knocked a picture of White Tail Falls off the wall? What is the significance of that?
At the end of Part 9, we see a young woman named Ella (Sky Ferrera) meet with a friend at the Roadhouse. She has a weird rash on her armpit, and she and her friend exchange weird sentences like "Have you see that penguin?" So, yeah, what does this have to do with anything?
In Part 1, our favorite otherworldly giant (Carel Struycken) returned to present Agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) with some knew cryptic sayings: "Remember 430. Richard and Linda. Two birds with one stone."
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As Agent Cooper was journeying out of the Black Lodge toward reality in Part 3, he encountered the spectre of Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine) in some new extra-dimensional space. She warned him that he needed to hurry because "my mother is coming" -- possibly implying a new major paranormal force. And another thing the giant said was, "It is in our house now," which maybe could be referring to that "mother." But what is it?
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In Part 8, we saw a floating woman with what looked like an umbilical cord coming out of her face -- and an image of BOB appearing on the cord. So is this "Mother" the one responsible for BOB's creation? And what did the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico have to do with all that?
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Who is the woman in the evening gown (credited as "Senorita Dido" and played by actress Joy Nash) with the Giant in Part 8? They live on some part of the spectral plane and appear to have been monitoring that mysterious Mother somehow -- and they apparently created Laura Palmer in response to seeing BOB's face in the umbilical cord. So... what's all that?
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What's the deal with the hobo ghosts? We'd seen them a couple times in the "Twin Peaks" revival in random spots, but they were front and center in Part 8, seemingly resurrecting Bad Coop and then showing up all over New Mexico in the 1940s and '50s. But what did they actually do? And where did they come from? Did the atomic bomb test bring them into this world from the Lodge?
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Who was the girl in New Mexico? The frog bug thing, which we believe is BOB, crawled into her mouth, but we have no idea who she is. Sarah Palmer maybe? Could the bug actually be the Laura spirit rather than BOB?
???????????????
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In that other dimension with Ronette and the woman (listed in the credits as "Naidu") whose eyes were covered in flesh, we see a couple of strange machines -- one labeled 15 and the other, which transported Coop to the real world, labeled 3. Later, Coop finds a hotel key from the Great Northern in Twin Peaks for room 315, which is the room Coop stayed in during the original series. So what does all that mean?
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Near the end of Part 5, we see a creepy man (Eamon Farren) at the Roadhouse hand someone a cigarette pack filled with money and then assaults a girl who asked him for a light. In part 6 he appears to be trafficking cocaine, and he runs over a child with his truck. The credits list this character as "Richard Horne." So he's part of the Horne family -- revealed to be Sylvia Horne's grandson in Part 10, so most likely Audrey's son -- but what's his deal?
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In Part 7, Sheriff Truman calls up Dr. Hayward to ask him about the night Evil Doppelganger Coop came out of the Lodge at the end of season 2. Dr. Hawyard says he took Coop to the hospital for a work-up, and then later found him in Intensive Care with that "strange face" (presumably when BOB shows through). He speculates that Coop was checking on Audrey, who was in a coma after the explosion at the bank. Might that imply that Bad Coop sexually assaulted Audrey? Could Richard Horne be Bad Coop's son?
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In Part 6, Hawk took apart one of the bathroom stall doors and discovered three missing pages from Laura Palmer's diary -- including the page on which she wrote the supernatural message from Annie from "Fire Walk With Me." Hawk speculates in Part 7 that Leland Palmer hid them there when they brought him in for questioning for Jacques Renault's murder. But where's the other missing page, and what does it say?
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So where the hell is Annie now anyway? Heather Graham has said she wasn't returning for the "Twin Peaks" revival, which could be misdirection -- or it could mean she's dead or missing or some other nefarious "Twin Peaks" thing. We've had multiple reminders of her important role in the past, though, which would seem to imply she's still important now, in some way.
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What is this black box sitting in an ashtray in Buenos Aires? In Part 5 we see it twice, first when the assassins trying to kill Dougie Jones report in to a woman named Lorraine, who then calls the box. Then, later, Bad Coop seemingly also calls the box from prison, after which it morphs into a small piece of metal. Also, Phillip Jeffries (David Bowie) is said to have disappeared from Buenos Aires in "Fire Walk With Me." And Rosenfield says Bad Coop and Jeffries worked together on a thing together in Colombia at some point? And apparently Phillip wants to kill Bad Coop. So what does all this mean and how do the dots connect?
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What was that weird hum/ringing sound that Ben Horne and Beverly Paige heard in the Great Northern in Part 7? It seems to be coming from everywhere and nowhere -- could this be Josie Packard continuing to haunt the place? Remember, Ben Horne previously saw her face in a drawer pull in season 2 after she died.
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Does the Linda the Giant mentioned live at the Fat Trout Trailer Park? In Part 6, someone else from the trailer park tags along with Carl Rodd into town because he needs to get the mail from the post office for a woman named Linda, who he mentions has to use a wheelchair to get around. Is that the Linda?
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While Carl is in town, he has a sort of encounter with Richard Horne, when he witnesses Richard plows over a young boy with his truck. In a weird way, we could consider this Carl's "Richard and Linda" day, though that could be a reach. Also, Carl seemingly saw the boy's soul float away after he died -- we know that Carl likely was taken to the Lodge when he was young, but why would a Lodge-related vision manifest for him now?
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What will finally bring Coop out of his funk? In Part 6 we see some positive signs, as his detective instincts kick in as he marks up some insurance paperwork with what initially seems like nonsense -- until his boss takes a look and totally gets what Coop was doing. Then in Part 7, Coop reflexively disarms Ike the Spike when he comes to kill Coop, his FBI training seemingly kicking in at the right moment. MIKE appeared again in Part 6 to try to wake Coop up, so it would seem there's a meaningful amount of urgency to this.
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Late in Part 5, we see Agent Preston apparently comparing the fingerprints of Coop from back in the day to those of Evil Coop from prison. All but one of the fingers has the same print -- Albert notes in Part 7 that the print for Bad Coop's left ring finger is reversed. Gordon Cole notes that that finger is the "spiritual finger," and reminds us that when Bad Coop greeted Gordon and Albert in Part 4 he reversed the word "very." What does all that mean?
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So while everybody thinks the real Coop is somebody named Dougie Jones, the real Dougie Jones is gone now, having been turned into a ball bearing after taking the real Coop's place in the Black Lodge. MIKE says Dougie was "manufactured" for the purpose of that swap, but by whom? And why?
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There have been a couple mentions of "blue rose" in the new season -- first by the ghostly visage of Major Briggs floating through space and later by Agent Rosenfield. The blue rose refers to a type of FBI investigation -- the Teresa Banks case in "Fire Walk With Me" was a blue rose, as was the whole Laura Palmer situation. The question, then, is why did Major Briggs' ghost say it to Cooper? And how, specifically, is the "blue rose" defined? That symbol seems to have some deeper meaning beyond just being a categorization, but what it is remains unclear.
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Bad Coop has a lot of weird scenes in which he seems to be setting the stage for something. That something, though, is still totally unknown at this point. Which leads to probably the biggest question in the revival: After 25 years in the real world, what exactly is Bad Coop trying to accomplish?
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And then there's this box in New York. When Good Coop tried to leave the Black Lodge he landed on it, was sucked into it and floated through it before ending up in some other weird dimension. Nobody knows who put the box there and paid some kid to stare at it all day, or what exactly it's supposed to do. So, yeah, what's that about?
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We finally get to meet the kid Lucy was pregnant with all through the original series, and he's a weirdo named Wally Brando played by Michael Cera who makes this really bizarre speech to Sheriff Other Truman (Robert Forster). Somehow this scene is weirder than everything else in the show thus far. What the hell?
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We examine all the new mysteries (major spoilers ahead)
At just under 18 hours long, the "Twin Peaks" revival is the longest David Lynch movie ever, so it's only natural that we're gonna have a whole lot of questions nine hours in. There are, of course, lingering questions from the original series -- but for now let's focus on the many new questions we have so far, through Part 13. (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD)
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