firefly2193 wrote:My interpretation of ending is that Coop, perhaps across many timelines (or worlds or whichever) is trying to save Laura. He thinks saving her means preventing her death, for he can't come to terms with the idea that her life was what she needed saving from, not her death. Thus, every time he tries, he fails. When he does so, events are restored to their natural order and Laura lives the life she lived in FWWM and gets the ending she deserves. Essentially, Cooper is trying to rob her of that ending but crucially he is failing to do so.
That's a really interesting way to frame Cooper's mission to "save" Laura. It's also consistent with his bad advice about the ring in FWWM.
People keep saying this about the ring, but I'm not so sure Cooper was wrong, or that he warned her against it for the wrong reasons. For one thing, it's being offered by LMFAP/The Arm, who may not be trustworthy if he represents the more malevolent aspects of MIKE's personality, and IIRC the shooting script for FWWM says that the cuts to LMFAP during Laura's murder are meant to show him *laughing* (even though it could arguably be wincing/crying the way it appears on-screen). So the idea that LMFAP ever has Laura's best interests in mind seems questionable, and the fact that he's just identified himself as The Arm gives Cooper sufficient reason to doubt his intentions.
The other thing is that if Cooper already has a hunch that the ring is Teresa Banks's, he probably associates it primarily with Desmond's disappearance at that point. And given that Desmond (even as of TPTR) has never reappeared, that's another good reason to doubt that anything good can come of putting it on. Cooper may well have expected that taking the ring would have led to Laura being pulled into the Black Lodge and possibly trapped there, which he knows first-hand is not an enviable fate even if the alternative is impending death at BOB's hands.
As for reconciling the two...I don't necessarily see one as negating the other as long as you assume that either these are alternate realities or the two realities can coexist in some fashion. Laura is wearing her hair "Carrie"-style when she appears to Cooper in the Red Room in Episodes 1-2 of TPTR, but she also still identifies herself as Laura and says "I am dead, yet I live," suggesting that some link to Carrie already exists *before* she screams and disappears. If she hadn't said that when she did, I'd be more concerned that Cooper's actions and the creation of Carrie have somehow pulled Laura away from whatever peace she found after death, but it's possible that deceased-Laura continues her existence as such regardless of what is going on in the Carrie universe.
I'm unable to reconcile the 2 endings together as well.
FWWM was fairly basic in that her soul was moving onward as a vessel for her spirit on an upward path beyond the threshold or plane the lodges exist in to eternity. Season 3 sort of re-defined what this meant I think is the easiest way to reconcile the 2.
How about she got the shortcut to the angels, but Cooper still had more work to do- like vanquishing the evil (Judy?) that took over Sarah instead, and becoming Carrie's guide out of the nightmare he brought her into, which is not our Twin Peaks, or the world of the Return at all?
We know it's not the same time and possibly not the same bubble universe because, as Diane podcast said, the RR is made to look different, and the Tremonds and Chalfonts have since TP 1&2 occupied or are previously occupying (prior to TP1&2) the Palmer house.
firefly2193 wrote:My interpretation of ending is that Coop, perhaps across many timelines (or worlds or whichever) is trying to save Laura. He thinks saving her means preventing her death, for he can't come to terms with the idea that her life was what she needed saving from, not her death. Thus, every time he tries, he fails. When he does so, events are restored to their natural order and Laura lives the life she lived in FWWM and gets the ending she deserves. Essentially, Cooper is trying to rob her of that ending but crucially he is failing to do so.
firefly2193 wrote:My interpretation of ending is that Coop, perhaps across many timelines (or worlds or whichever) is trying to save Laura. He thinks saving her means preventing her death, for he can't come to terms with the idea that her life was what she needed saving from, not her death. Thus, every time he tries, he fails. When he does so, events are restored to their natural order and Laura lives the life she lived in FWWM and gets the ending she deserves. Essentially, Cooper is trying to rob her of that ending but crucially he is failing to do so.
Deserves.... ouch
Haha, this refers to her happiness in the final scenes with the angels that have not abandoned her. Not that she deserves to die.