Theories & Speculation

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Mr. Strawberry
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Re: Theories & Speculation (SPOILERS)

Post by Mr. Strawberry »

Jasper wrote:To be completely honest, this just sounds kind of silly.
Thanks for the honesty Jasper, I really appreciate that. Truth is I was a little nervous about sharing this theory because I thought I'd be scoffed, but hey, we can't have real discussions if we aren't honest about what we think, and if we are resistant to how others react. This forum is a great place precisely because we can go down these avenues of speculation and bounce ideas off of each other.
Jasper wrote:The doppelganger doesn't have a drop of good in him. Dougie-Coop has all of the good. Now, I will say that it's possible that the reintegration of the two could lead to normal Cooper, with the shadow self submerged deep in the unconscious. We do need an shadow component for a number of reasons, one being that we need to be able to understand and predict what evil humans might do. We also need to be able to go into a mode where we're less than angelic, purely for the sake of survival, which is something which societies ask of their warriors.
Agreed, reintegration is the key to the survival of either half.

I'm not saying that Dale is good, I'm just saying that he's trying to do what's right. Without feelings, he's still up to something, there's a goal he thinks is the right aim, and he's doing everything he can to achieve it yet he cannot ascertain right from wrong on any sort of emotional level. He can't feel but he can reason.

Now, if he's merely a plain and simple "bad guy", if he's just The Big Bad Wolf, that goes beyond boring: that would be completely lacking any kind of tragedy. Hawk's explanation of the Dweller on the Threshold implied something much deeper. It seemed to me the idea was that one could go through their entire life trying to ignore their inherent darkness without confronting it or actually changing, while choosing to only show their inherent good. But this stifling or concealment of the dark side would only serve to allow its growth, and that a day would inevitably arrive when an individual would come face to face with what they've created, and either run in fear or stand tall knowing they've got the upper hand.

Cooper's demons were locked away and on the surface he was perfect, but the confrontation with the Shadow Self resulted in the destruction of his soul. This is why he is so corrupted, because he's been spiritually fragmented and emotionally destroyed. As Hawk warned, "Your soul will be utterly annihilated".

If sitting in a chair for 25 years before emerging to our world without memories is supposed to be the definition of the soul's destruction, I'm not buying it. There's got to be more to the story than "The Doppelganger is evil". Such interpretation implies that this entity is separate from Dale, and is simply evil for the sake of it. But isn't it an aspect of Dale rather than a separate being? Isn't it Dale with all his demons and none of his angels?

Jasper wrote:The shadow self is really only supposed to be one in the lodge/unconscious. When it emerged it seems to have emerged with its own physical form, the existence of which precludes the emergence of the good Coop in physical form. The doppelganger has impenetrable black eyes and a backwards fingerprint.
These are superficial elements of the physical body, and they reveal something wrong on the inside, but that doesn't mean that it can't be Dale Cooper.

Jasper wrote:Q:
So, was Cooper occupied by BOB in the script before you changed it?

LYNCH:
No, but Coop wasn't occupied by BOB. Part of him was. There are two Coops in there, and the one that came out was, you know, with BOB.
Interesting reply because he sort of contradicts himself in several ways. He says that Coop wasn't occupied by BOB, then that part of Coop was occupied by Bob, and then that there are two Coops and the one that emerged is occupied by BOB. Not a very conclusive answer although I can see how it can be interpreted to imply that there are two physical manifestations of Coop.

Jasper wrote:Q:
Why was Cooper possessed by Bob at the end? It seems like he's lost it.

LYNCH:
Well the thing is he hasn't been possessed. It's the doppelgänger thing, the idea of two sides to everyone, he's really up against himself.
So to paraphrase, "Everyone has two sides, and he's up against himself". Seems like this one can be interpreted to support my theory, because being up against oneself does not necessarily imply two physical selves. We go up against ourselves on a daily basis in life, struggling to assert our willpower in order to do the right thing, or the most beneficial thing, rather than what's easier to do or what's the most instantly gratifying act to partake in. We become conflicted about what we want versus what we need! Urges well up inside of us and we must use our reason to quell our emotional desires.

The fact that Dale isn't concerned with needs says a lot. A conscientious person puts actual needs above base desires. But he's all about following urges these days.

Jasper wrote:Dale Cooper's body was able to emerge because of the existence of Dougie Jones. This is perhaps because Dougie provided raw organic material for Cooper to reformulate as if going through a Stark Trek transporter. Cooper's mind and/or soul lost something in the transfer (maybe his shoes/pin, and/or the Dougie sphere), but this is the real, physical Dale Cooper. He has Dale Cooper's haircut, suit, physique, and even his Great Northern room key. This wasn't supposed to be possible, but it was made possible.
In this particular case, two physical selves do eventually exist, but this wasn't always the case. Before Dougie was manifested we had Dale's body and mind in the world and Dale's heart and soul in the Red Room.

I agree that he was able to emerge because he is essentially replacing Dougie Jones, and that Dougie was himself a physical clone of Cooper, but this still doesn't make the man in Vegas the "real, physical Dale Cooper". He's more of an exact recreation of the original. The fact that he emerged with his haircut, suit, physique, and Great Northern room key only only illustrates that it's how Dale went in.

How you go in is how you go out, right? So who's to say that when he emerged 25 years ago he didn't have a key to Room 315? It wouldn't make sense for him to have not emerged with that key when you think about it. Why two suits, two ties, two pairs of shoes, but not two keys? It wouldn't surprise me at all if Frank ends up learning that there's already an original 315 key laying around, perhaps even in Harry's possession.

Of course by exploring this line of thinking I'm going out on a limb, but given how matter of fact and shallow an "evil" bad guy sort of character would be in something that Lynch & Frost created, I'm still entertaining the idea.
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Re: Theories & Speculation (SPOILERS)

Post by Neosmith »

Just had a thought on what actually happened to the Original Dougie Jones:

I've rewatched Dougie's "death" in the Red Room: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTEAygQBadY

Something that occurred to me in hindsight, after seeing up to Episode 13 - Dougie doesn't so much die, as he seems to become "unborn."
Let me put it this way - time in the Red Room is fluid. We've seen that it can run forward and backward, sometimes at once.
Note that Dougie's flesh begins to shrink, getting thinner and thinner until it's all gone.

And then his head vanishes and a puff of black smoke is in its place. The the golden sphere flies up. It's almost as if Dougie ages backwards until all that remains is his incorporeal form - the golden sphere.

The scene cuts to Mike, then back to where Dougie was sitting.

What happens then seems to show how Dougie was "born": from out of thin air, an Experiment Model Egg forms, surrounded by the black smoke. The egg ages and a bugfrog creature begins to crawl out.

A golden sphere also manifests nearby, the two then seem to merge and collide until the sphere, now in tiny, solid form is all that is left.

Given everything shown in part 8 and beyond, this latter sequence seems to encapsulate how someone like Dougie is created - a bugfrog and a golden sphere, created by the Lodge beings, come together into a single whole.

So, is it possible that Mr. C/Bob manufactured Dougie by regurgitating an egg, a la the Experiment, and then combining it with a soul/sphere? Would that mean Dougie Jones is Mr. C's son, in a way? Was Laura also a hybrid being (golden sphere and bugfrog in one being?)
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Framed_Angel
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Re: Theories & Speculation (SPOILERS)

Post by Framed_Angel »

Neosmith wrote:Just had a thought on what actually happened to the Original Dougie Jones:I've rewatched Dougie's "death" in the Red Room: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTEAygQBadY
Something that occurred to me in hindsight, after seeing up to Episode 13 - Dougie doesn't so much die, as he seems to become "unborn."
... Dougie's flesh begins to shrink, getting thinner and thinner until it's all gone. And then his head vanishes and a puff of black smoke is in its place. The the golden sphere flies up. It's almost as if Dougie ages backwards until all that remains is his incorporeal form - the golden sphere.
...What happens then seems to show how Dougie was "born": from out of thin air, an Experiment Model Egg forms, surrounded by the black smoke. The egg ages and a bugfrog creature begins to crawl out. A golden sphere also manifests nearby, the two then seem to merge and collide until the sphere, now in tiny, solid form is all that is left....So, is it possible that Mr. C/Bob manufactured Dougie by regurgitating an egg, a la the Experiment, and then combining it with a soul/sphere? Would that mean Dougie Jones is Mr. C's son, in a way? Was Laura also a hybrid being (golden sphere and bugfrog in one being?)
!!!
I re-watched it to see what you meant. I didn't recall a frog-bug, but when I paused the footage around the 2:00 mark it did look like a beaked head shape-- constituted of hardened lava nonetheless (IMO). I wish it had been clearer! Your ideas based on this have me thinking them over. I've wished to understand better how Laura figures into the whole framework. How either of them were "manufactured" or whether it was similar processes... It's not easy to dismiss her as "manufactured", I would rather think of her as human and a vessel for a purpose (a good one -- not like Leland being 'possessed' for an evil purpose).

Also hadn't noticed until this re-watch: the CHAIR that Dougie is sitting in. It's upholstered differently than all the other Red Room chairs we've seen.
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Neosmith
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Re: Theories & Speculation (SPOILERS)

Post by Neosmith »

Framed_Angel wrote:
Neosmith wrote: I re-watched it to see what you meant. I didn't recall a frog-bug, but when I paused the footage around the 2:00 mark it did look like a beaked head shape-- constituted of hardened lava nonetheless (IMO). I wish it had been clearer!
I kinda like the ambiguity of it.

If you compare the cracked/hatched egg in the Dougie scene to the speckled egg hatching in the 1950s in Part 8, it looks similar - a crack in the shell and a bloody, squishy creature starts to crawl out. That's why I called it a frogbug, based on the appearance of the thing from Part 8. This is also supported by the wing flutter sounds in both scenes.
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Re: Theories & Speculation (SPOILERS)

Post by Neosmith »

Framed_Angel wrote:
Neosmith wrote:
I've wished to understand better how Laura figures into the whole framework. How either of them were "manufactured" or whether it was similar processes... It's not easy to dismiss her as "manufactured", I would rather think of her as human and a vessel for a purpose (a good one -- not like Leland being 'possessed' for an evil purpose).

Also hadn't noticed until this re-watch: the CHAIR that Dougie is sitting in. It's upholstered differently than all the other Red Room chairs we've seen.
I think both the Laura Sphere and the bug wound up inside Sarah Palmer - so Laura was born with that Lodge duality. But who knows? They might never reveal this or how Dougie had been manufactured. Hadn't noticed anything special about the chair myself.
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Re: Theories & Speculation (SPOILERS)

Post by claaa7 »

Neosmith wrote:Just had a thought on what actually happened to the Original Dougie Jones:

I've rewatched Dougie's "death" in the Red Room: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTEAygQBadY

Something that occurred to me in hindsight, after seeing up to Episode 13 - Dougie doesn't so much die, as he seems to become "unborn."
Let me put it this way - time in the Red Room is fluid. We've seen that it can run forward and backward, sometimes at once.
Note that Dougie's flesh begins to shrink, getting thinner and thinner until it's all gone.

And then his head vanishes and a puff of black smoke is in its place. The the golden sphere flies up. It's almost as if Dougie ages backwards until all that remains is his incorporeal form - the golden sphere.

The scene cuts to Mike, then back to where Dougie was sitting.

What happens then seems to show how Dougie was "born": from out of thin air, an Experiment Model Egg forms, surrounded by the black smoke. The egg ages and a bugfrog creature begins to crawl out.

A golden sphere also manifests nearby, the two then seem to merge and collide until the sphere, now in tiny, solid form is all that is left.

Given everything shown in part 8 and beyond, this latter sequence seems to encapsulate how someone like Dougie is created - a bugfrog and a golden sphere, created by the Lodge beings, come together into a single whole.

So, is it possible that Mr. C/Bob manufactured Dougie by regurgitating an egg, a la the Experiment, and then combining it with a soul/sphere? Would that mean Dougie Jones is Mr. C's son, in a way? Was Laura also a hybrid being (golden sphere and bugfrog in one being?)
thanks, this had me looking at this scene with fresh eyes.. the similarities with episode 8 are many as you point out - the golden sphere, the hatching egg, the black smoke, the sound effects. very intrigiuing. i hope we will get some more answers to these mysteries before the show wraps. so far there's constantly been more mysteries than answers being provided for us as viewers.
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waferwhitemilk
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Re: Theories & Speculation (SPOILERS)

Post by waferwhitemilk »

According to Schopenhauer's theory, as paraphrased by my limited understanding, a person is primarily blind will (which is inherited from the father's side) but also reason/intelligence (which is inherited from the mother's side), and only reason can shine enough light on the blind will to make it resign its primal urges, and ideally stop wanting to be alltogether, after seeing the amount of suffering existence leads to. Kinda analogues with a person like Dougie being manufactured out of two parts, Bob the Beak and Laura the golden egg, as described by Neosmith above. A perverted version of this mating of the male will and female reason to form a person could also potentially be read in the combining of the decapitated body of major Briggs with the head of Ruth Davenport.
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Re: Theories & Speculation (SPOILERS)

Post by BGate »

BGate wrote:This is probably apropos of nothing, but Paul Schrader has been commenting periodically on the series, and this week he linked to an IndieWire recap and said "Thank God there's someone who can see midst this tangled grove of associations.", to which Harry Goaz responded:

The tangled grove will open to the sky . . .


https://www.facebook.com/paul.schrader. ... 9016273888


Like I said, probably just Harry being Harry, but interesting none the less.

He was giving a hint!!!
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Re: Theories & Speculation (SPOILERS)

Post by Wonderful & Strange »

Theory 1: Naido is Laura. She's in disguise to protect her. The images the Fireman shows Andy clearly imply a connection between Naido and Laura.

At the very least, Naido will somehow lead us to Laura.

Theory 2: Mentioned already in the Audrey thread, but Audrey is Tina, and possibly has a number of other alters like Paul and Paula. She's suffered from DID since awakening from her coma and possible assault by Mr. C. Megan is her daughter, but Megan views the "Tina" persona as her mother, probably because "Audrey" has been unable to live her life due to the trauma inflicted by Mr. C.
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pinballmars
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Re: Theories & Speculation (SPOILERS)

Post by pinballmars »

WHAT IF BILLY IS THE DREAMER?????
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Re: Theories & Speculation (SPOILERS)

Post by Wonderful & Strange »

I think we can mainly consider the living in a dream references to be meta references to the act of storytelling. In that sense, Lynch and Frost are the dreamers and we're all living in their dream with them called Twin Peaks.

But if Lynch were actually to pick just one dreamer on the show, my top three candidates would be Cooper, Laura, or the Fireman.

We did see the Fireman, after all, dream up Laura in an act of loving creation.
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somevelvetmorning
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Re: Theories & Speculation (SPOILERS)

Post by somevelvetmorning »

Could the atomic bomb in 1945, actually have been what gave birth to the black lodge and it's inhabitants (and maybe evil itself), and not just the "mother"?

It has been confirmed that time as we see it, might not be the same to the lodges, right? "Is it future or is it past".

So what if when we split the atom, we also split the spirit world, and just like those nuclear shadows in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a shadow world was created? Even though it took place in 1945, when would it have taken place in a world not bound by a linear timeline?

It's interesting to think of this in combination with the scene above the convenience store in FWWM. What if that scene also takes place in the beginning?

We see what I assume are hints to both black and white lodge inhabitants in that scene (the Tremond boy, sitting in a sofa with a similar pattern fabric as the chairs at the Fireman's)

So maybe that's just not a meeting but at a time when all the spirits lived together:

"We lived among the people.
I think you say, convenience store.
We lived above it."
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Re: Theories & Speculation (SPOILERS)

Post by dronerstone »

somevelvetmorning wrote: So what if when we split the atom, we also split the spirit world
THIS is a really interesting point and a certainly good way to interpret, although parallel/unseen realms have most probably existed before.

On a side note: Lovely username btw! I reckon you're aware of the Lydia Lunch version? If not, check out her "Honeymoon In Red" concept album! Easily one of my favorites.
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Re: Theories & Speculation (SPOILERS)

Post by BigEd »

somevelvetmorning wrote:Could the atomic bomb in 1945, actually have been what gave birth to the black lodge and it's inhabitants (and maybe evil itself), and not just the "mother"?
There was not evil before 1945?? Not quite following you here.
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Wonderful & Strange
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Re: Theories & Speculation (SPOILERS)

Post by Wonderful & Strange »

A theory that occurred to me the other day: when do we see a mass group of people falling asleep in the show?

Episode 8: when the Woodsman uses the radio to put that local community to sleep. And while they sleep, evil presumably plants itself in their heads.

Might not this be the moment when a mass dream began?

The dreamer wouldn't necessarily be the same as the dreamers. There may be one primary dreamer guiding the dreams of the masses -- the Mother.

By the way, reading The Golden Spruce it becomes clear how the Woodsman could be read as a metaphor for civilization, and Western civilization in general. Woodcutters traditionally destroy the mystery of the forest in order to clear evil and darkness away and to build civilization.

You can see how this could be seen by Lynch as a terrible destructive force. Clarity and order destroy the dreamy and dark possibilities of the forest.

It works perfectly with his basic view that rationality is destructive to the fundamental unseen and mysterious forces that drive us and the creative act.
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