SkullKid

I've always had a soft spot for Annie. I found her endearing. BUT! I dig this theory. Her having agency isn't necessarily a plot hole, either. Diane's tulpa was able to fight her "programming" for awhile and tell Albert, Cole and Preston the truth about her past. So I could see a scenario where Annie is able to fight her programming enough to help Laura. I don't feel a need to retcon Annie, as I always enjoyed her role, but the fact that she was only mentioned *once* this season--Hawk reading from Laura's diary--and Cooper's complete disinterest when he wakes up would point to her being, as you say, a trap.

One thing I'm not sure about (well, one of 90 things I'm unsure about) I think the clear implication of the show is that Evil Coop is after Judy (though he apparently knows this source of evil by a different name. Maybe as...mother?) and that Judy is currently residing in Sarah Palmer. What's not clear to me is whether or not Sarah is indeed the frog moth host from episode 8. Unless I'm sorely mistaken, right after the box monster/experiment/mother kills Sam and Tracy, we immediately cut to the Palmer house, where Sarah is zonked out watching violent nature videos. When you first watch it, it seems on par with the all-over-the-place vibe of the Return. But in hindsight it seems like a very specific choice to demonstrate cause and effect. So what is this thing's relation to the frog moth? Did it just "activate" Sarah's inner-demon? Did the long-dormant frog moth allow access to its host? Or are these two entities completely separate?

That Donna clip also does a good job of showing that Cooper wasn't always chipper and quirky. He was sometimes grave, serious, like the one we see in Odessa in part 18.

I laid out my theory above, but basically I feel the opening scene with the Giant takes place in the moment where time stops and the Cooper face overlay happens. All of the Giant's clues deal with the events that directly follow that moment.

I think Audrey was in the alt-world the entire time we saw her, but when she screamed to Charlie to get her out of there, she woke up in ACTUAL Twin Peaks somewhere.

I had a thought about the significance of the Cooper face overlay. My theory is that the face we see is Cooper in the Giant's house in the opening moments of S3. The clock stops, everything goes black, and for awhile we just see Cooper's face, almost in black and white. In this moment, when all goes black--THIS is when the Giant scene happens. Note that all of the clues the Giant gives have to do with everything that follows: -"Listen to the sounds." the clicking sounds that he hears in the forest with Laura, right before she's whisked away. Note that the sounds are the sounds of the bug from E8 who inhabits the girl. I think it's safe to say that this bug is Judy. This would make sense because of what the Giant says next: -"It is in our house now." The Giant plays Cooper that sound and THEN says "it's in our house now." The first clue informs the second--he's telling Cooper that the creature that's synonymous with that sound is in the white lodge. Cooper then says, "It is?" He's surprised. He knows what this means. The Giant responds, -"Not all can be said aloud now." My interpretation of this is, 'I have to be cryptic because Judy is here and might hear us.' Which is why he played a sound of Judy instead of just telling Cooper aloud. -He then says, "Remember 430." The amount of miles to the entry point of the alt-world. -"Richard and Linda." These are the names that Cooper Diane adopt in the alt-world. -"Two birds with one stone." I think Cooper is trying to have AltLaura meet up with Sarah Palmer to save Laura (who was supposed to be some kind of savior), and stop the mother/Judy, who's inhabiting Sarah. It could also refer to the fact that him saying "What year is this?" makes both Cooper AND Laura aware of the artifice of their surroundings. -"You are far away." Cooper is in a different world, far away from reality.

To those talking about plot threads that don't matter, I would argue that's true about the entirety of Twin Peaks. When I first watched the show a few years ago I had the same thought that I had watching S3, which was, "So all those side stories were just pointless? Totally tossed aside for this insane, triply ending?" But when I rewatched the show I realized they weren't pointless--they were incredibly entertaining in their own right. Shelly and Leo, Ed and Norma, the Packhard Mill crap, the Audrey storyline--none of it went anywhere, but it added a lot of character to the show, a lot of mood, and they were entertaining vignettes despite having no resolution. In this season it's the same, really. The Detectives Fusco, the Bobby/Shelly stuff, the Becky/Whatshisname stuff, the Carl Rod stuff...none of it mattered in a plot sense, but it added a lot or character to the season. The only thing I feel truly was mishandled was the Richard Horne stuff. Him hitting a kid with his car, abusing his grandmother, abusing those women in the bar, almost killing that school teacher...we endured all that only for him to get zapped away on a lightening rock. Instead of being some profound meditation on the natures of evil or abuse, it felt like a cheap way to generate an emotional response. We shouldn't need to see a character kill a child and call his grandmother a c-word in order to understand that they're evil.

I think, more and more, that Cooper and Diane are different in the alt-world NOT because they're amalgams of their past selves, but because, like DougieCoop earlier in the season, they're not entirely "awake." It's really the DougieCoop thing all over again. Consider: DougieCoop displayed some of Coop's qualities and desires, but had to be triggered by a strong memory to to be woken up completely and understand his purpose. Similarly, AltCoop displays some of Coop's qualities, but it noticeably more muted and straightforward. DougieCoop begins to fully awaken when he hears the name Gordon Cole. AltCoop AND AltLaura begin to fully awaken when they realize they don't know what year it is--when they realize the artifice of this world.

I think the Audrey stuff will present its importance on rewatch. But to me, the final moment of E18 suddenly made the Audrey scenes click. My interpretation may be wrong, but it seemed like when Cooper asked "What year is it?" and started to wobble, he was realizing the artificiality of the world he was in. Laura realized it too, and screamed. When she screamed the entire artifice of the world fell apart--windows shattered and the electricity went out. This suddenly made me think the Audrey scenes make a lot of sense. Whenever we saw her, we saw her in the alt-world that Richard/Coop and Alt-Laura occupy. It's why Audrey says she feels like she's someone else, somewhere else. Charlie threatens to "end her story," and Audrey references the story of the little girl who lived down the lane. Finally when she was in the road house and all that insanity happened, she woke up. The artifice of that alt-world fell apart, and she woke up somewhere in actual Twin Peaks.

I feel pretty confident that "the story of the little girl who lived down the lane" is a timeline. Specifically, the timeline in which the bug crawls into the girl's mouth--the little girl who lived down the lane. I think that girl is Judy, and that insane event of the Woodsmen traveling there, wreaking havoc and finding a host for that creature, created this world outside of time. So when the Arm Tree asks, "Is it the story of the little girl who lived down the lane? Is it?" he's asking Cooper which timeline he's in, similar to the "is it future or is it past?" question. Plus, the song on the radio that played in E8 is the same song that played during the love scene in E18.

My absolute biggest question through this entire thing is, why did the season open with a strobed shot of the screaming girl at Twin Peaks High, and why did Andy see that girl in his vision in the white lodge? It feels hugely important.

The thing that's really stuck in my head is the image of Diane seeing herself at the motel after Cooper walked inside. Since this purgatorial place seems to take place outside of time, maybe multiple versions of oneself can exist. Maybe a Bad Cooper walked out of that motel and got in the car with that Diane, whereas a Good Cooper (though one still not entirely in control of his mental faculties) walked out and got in a different car with that *other* Diane. The sex scene we see features Bad Coop, whereas somewhere off screen, another Coop and Diane share a similar romantic moment. Basically, the Coop we see wake up in the morning and yell for Diane is not the same Coop that we saw in the sex scene. It's as if the same thing keeps happening in this same place over and over, in slightly different ways. But probably not. I feel like there's a simple answer to all this buried underneath Lynch's artistic flourishes.

I don't know about that. Frost said in an interview that it took Lynch and him a full year to write the first two hours of the show. Those first two hours are FULL of clues that don't pay off until part 18. So I think the actual interlocking mystery parts of this season are totally Frost. I do think it's safe to say that he didn't anticipate 10 cumulative minutes of just driving, though.

A potentially important thing I noticed: in Episode 2, the one armed man says "Is it future or is it past?" to Coop in the red room. Then he says "Someone's here," and disappears. That's when Laura walks in and sits down. In Episode 18, they use the exact same start of the scene--is it future or is it past?--but then the one armed man disappears. He doesn't introduce Laura, and the camera zooms in toward the empty chair where she sat in Episode 2. Not sure what to make of that. What's stranger is that instead of Laura walking in, we see what appears to be another mirror of E2 of Cooper being lead by the one armed man to The Arm. After introducing itself, in E2, the arm says "Nonexistence." In E18, he says "Have you heard the story of the little girl who lived down the lane?" Both appear to be related, as in Alt-World, the characters seem to be in a state of nonexistence. Audrey, in that alt-world, says "What story is that, Charley? The story of the little girl who lived down the lane?" Heck if I know what it all means, but the connections are neat.

This is a great interpretation. If I'm not mistaken, during that segment in Episode 1/2, Cooper opens a curtain to find a long stretch of highway. It's the same one Bad Coop is driving down in Episode 3, but it's also the one Coop and Diane drive down in Episode 18.

Also, all of the focus will now be on part 18, but 17 was a lot of fun. Completely edge of your seat, nail biting stuff with BONKERS Twin Peaksyness. I thought the editing, sound design and pacing as Evil Coop makes his way through the station, Chad escapes from his cell, Naido starts going insane, and Good Coop is driving up with the Mitchums was incredibly effective. I also think people are forgetting a crucial moment: after BOB and Evil Coop are destroyed, we see the clock stop moving (maybe at 2:53? I can't recall), and we also see this visage of Cooper's frozen face on the screen. It's this super happy moment, all of the main cast reunited in the iconic Sheriff's station. But time seems to freeze. I like to think that the ensuing 90 minutes take place all in that frozen instant of time. We got our happy ending, everyone was reunited, but Cooper also went on this insane journey to save Laura Palmer from Alt Texas, all in that moment.

Spoilers for LOST, I guess, but this felt like a very Lynch take on the LOST ending. During the entire final season, the show cuts between the main story and an alt-world, which appears at first to be an alternate timeline caused by a major event in season 5. It's eventually revealed that this alternate timeline isn't that at all--it's the afterlife, or perhaps the moments *before* the afterlife, taking place outside of time, in the moments before a person passes on. And in this zone, one particular character, Desmond, has the job of "waking up" the castaways. Everybody is living some mundane version of their life before the crash, but when Desmond is able to trigger a memory in a given character, suddenly they realize where they are. They remember all the friendships they made, the tragedies they endured, and the experiences they had with these characters who had a profound impact in their life. It almost struck me as if Cooper/Richard is a Desmond-like character. He and Diane said that once they entered this "place," things would be different. They didn't know how, but they would be. What happened is they entered a world where Twin Peaks exists, and the characters exist, but in different roles than they had before. RichCoop wanted to "wake up" Laura, so to speak--to trigger her memory of Twin Peaks. And it appears he was able to do that in the final moments of the show. And when she woke up, the entire artifice of this world fell apart. She realized that she didn't know what year it was--that this was some place outside of time, that she was living in some dream. But who is the dreamer? My initial gut reaction is that this world is some sort of purgatory. It's where Laura went when she took her face off, revealed the light, and shot up to the sky. She had a Dougie-Coop-esque existence, but once she was awakened? All of her memories of TP unlocked. I think it's safe to say that this is where Audrey was as well. Any time we saw her, it was in alt-Twin Peaks. And when the artifice around her broke, she woke up in *actual* Twin Peaks--maybe in a psych ward, maybe in a hospital, who knows? I'm not saying that the Bang Bang Bar isn't real--I'm saying the version of it we saw in part 16 wasn't real. Hope that makes some kind of sense. (posted this comment on Reddit too, full disclosure)

I think the intention of the scene is definitely to show BOB being removed from Bad Coop. Because that's exactly what it shows--BOB being removed from Bad Coop. We don't see him being put back in. We see him lifted out of Coop, then there's electro-lightening-fog-machine effects. Then Cooper disappears for a few seconds. Now, true, we didn't see the Woodsmen run off with the BOB-blob. (Boblob?) But the show isn't generally THAT obtuse. We see BOB being lifted out. That's it. On that note, I wonder if BOB and Mr. C have somewhat different goals. When BOB/Mr. C are together in Ep II, he says that the strange symbol on the playing card is what he's after. And he built the glass box, presumably to trap that same entity. But after Episode 8, we see Cooper going on this grand journey all to find...Judy? And ask about Judy? And what the deal with Judy was? It's all very strange.

As much as I've enjoyed this season, I have to echo the concerns about the reliance on brutal violence and rape. The biggest concern I have is the death of the child, which, unless that thread comes back in a significant way in the last two hours, was completely played for shock. To recap, Richard Horne: -Threatened to rape girls in a bar. -Murdered a child -Violently threatened and verbally abused his grandmother to a shocking degree. -Attempted to murder a witness to his crime ...And then just got...electrocuted to death on a rock. In the case of Hutch and Chantel, I really liked the choice to make their comeuppance random and disconnected from previous story threads. But in the case of Richard Horne (assuming he's dead, of course) it seems inappropriate. Breaking Bad established Gus Fring as one of the baddest villains of all time before we even saw him slit that guy's throat. This show went to gratuitous lengths to show Richard's depravity only to end his storyline in a way that does not involve any of our heroes. I know there's artistic intent there. I just don't think it's effective.