TWIN PEAKS AND THE BLUE ROSE by Rocko Van Buren

We here at the Daily Dirt Diaspora family of websites are proud to bring you this illuminating Guest Post about some of the more obscure elements of the magnificent Lynch/Frost creation Twin Peaks by our brilliant friend Rocko Van Buren. Enjoy! - YOPJ

“Through the dark of futures past

The magician longs to see

One chance out between two worlds

Fire walk with me”

- Bob

TWIN PEAKS, BLUE ROSE, AND THE UFO PHENOMENON

In the first few moments of Part 12 of the ongoing Showtime television event, Twin Peaks: The Return, the audience finally learns definitively what “Blue Rose” means in the context of Dale Cooper, Gordon Cole and the rest of the FBI. This exposition comes in a scene with FBI deputy director Gordon Cole, Albert Rosenfield and agent Tammy Preston sipping fine wine while seated in a private room at a hotel in Buckhorn, South Dakota, surrounded by red curtains (reminiscent of the mysterious Red Room itself), Albert explains Blue Rose is a secret extension of the now-closed, real-world Project Blue Book conducted by the U.S. Air Force to investigate UFO phenomena.

As the Air Force describes in it's own documentation, some of which is now publicly available through the Freedom of Information Act and quoted here from Wikipedia:

Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force. It started in 1952, and it was the third study of its kind (the first two were projects Sign (1947) and Grudge (1949)). A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices ceased in January 1970.
Project Blue Book had two goals:
1 To determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, and
2 To scientifically analyze UFO-related data.”

Prior to this revelation in Part 12 of The Return, fan-favorite character Maj. Garland Briggs from Twin Peaks original two seasons was the show's clearest connection to Project Blue Book and how the classified Air Force investigation connects to the White and Black Lodges of Twin Peaks lore.

Following a mysterious disappearance in Season 2 in the original run, upon which we will touch in greater detail later on, Briggs tells Cooper that even though Project Blue Book was disbanded, “There are those of us who continue in an unofficial capacity, examining the heavens as before, or in the case of Twin Peaks, the earth below. We are searching for a place called the White Lodge.”

Back in The Return, Albert explains to Agent Preston that Blue Book was shut down in 1970 as part of a “cover-up” that concluded the UFO phenomenon was not credible, and there was no resulting threat to national security.

“A few years later, the military and FBI formed a top secret task force to explore the troubling abstractions raised by cases Blue Book failed to resolve,” Albert explains. “We call it, 'The Blue Rose,' after a phrase uttered by a woman involved in one of these cases just before she died., which suggested these hazards could not be reached except by an alternate path we have been traveling ever since.”

Albert goes on to name the agents involved in this secret task force created by Cole – himself, lead agent Phillip Jeffries, Chet Desmond and the original show's main character, Dale Cooper. All of the special agents involved in Blue Rose, excepting Albert and Cole, have since disappeared. All this exposition is by way of recruiting The Return's newest FBI agent, Preston, into the fold of the Blue Rose task force. And thus we have the first explicit delineation from Project Blue Book straight to Blue Rose and the strange, occult aspects that surround the FBI's investigation into the murder of Laura Palmer in the Washington town of Twin Peaks (in the original TV series) and the murder of Teresa Banks in nearby Dear Meadow (in the film Fire Walk With Me).

While the original Twin Peaks run of 1990-921 owes much of its nostalgic love to its soap-opera-style story-lines, Cooper's frequent references to “damn fine coffee,” “the best cherry pie in the tri-counties,” and scenes like Audrey Horne engaged in a strange and seductive dance to music composed by Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti, it is the lore and mystery of Twin Peaks that always attracted me most. And while this aspect of the story was certainly included in the original run of the series, it was never as prominent on ABC prime-time as it was later on in the show's darker, stranger cousin, Lynch's 1992 film Fire Walk With Me (which was my introduction to the world of Twin Peaks). Nothing in the Twin Peaks ecosphere compares to the dark strangeness of Fire Walk With Me (which was originally intended as a series of three films; however, part two and three were never filmed because of the poor critical and financial reception to its first installment). While the inability of Lynch to continue the story in the 1990s was certainly disappointing to hardcore fans, without that failure, we may not have ever been able to experience 2017's revival of Twin Peaks via The Return, in which Lynch and Frost have continued their legacy of breaking new ground in television entertainment.

OUTSIDE OF TIME AND SPACE

Of the many oddities in Twin Peaks, the Black Lodge and its denizens, Bob, The One-Armed Man (aka Mike/Phillip Gerard) and The Man From Another Place (aka the arm) are it's most persistent and vexing. Where do they come from? What is their purpose? While there are many theories surrounding Twin Peaks culture about the meaning and origin of this place and its inhabitants, most of them ignore the connection to Project Blue Book, UFO phenomena and the possibility of alien life. My analysis will attempt to connect the line from Blue Book to Blue Rose, from the idea of UFO encounters and alien visitors to inhabiting spirits like Bob and his cohorts.

To understand this, we must first reconsider the popular conception of aliens – we are not speaking here about extraterrestrial beings in the sense depicted in Steven Spielberg's films E.T. or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. These are not little green men in flying saucers, nor necessarily “Greys,” “Reptilians,” “Nordics,” nor any of the other alien races promulgated by popular culture shows like Coast to Coast AM. (although some images in The Return do bear a striking resemblance to the alien “grey,” notably the being credited as “The Experiment/Mother” in Part Eight, the being in the black box in Part One, and the first scene in Andy's vision from Part Fourteen).

Instead, we are speaking of aliens as inter/extra-dimensional beings that inhabit our world and adjacent worlds unseen, the type of spirits discussed in dozens of Hindu and Buddhist legends, and, most eloquently in 'western' society, by well-known UFO researcher and PhD Jacques Vallée. Vallée, not coincidentally, was the inspiration for Spielberg's character Claude Lacombe, played in Spielberg's film Close Encounters by François Truffaut.

In an interview with Jeffrey Mishlove on the public television program Thinking Allowed, Vallée discusses his 1979 book Messengers of Deception:

From my own point of view, I'm going to be very disappointed if UFOs turn out to be nothing more than visitors from another planet, because I think they could be something much more interesting... I think what the UFO phenomenon is teaching us is that we don't understand time and space. Here are objects, I think we have to call them objects, that are physical, that interact with the environment, that cause effects on the witnesses, on the psychology and physiology of the witnesses and leave traces on the ground, and yet are capable, appear to be capable of manipulating time and space in ways that go beyond what our physics understands today.

He references frequently recorded effects of UFO encounters on witnesses that resonate with some of the phenomena in Twin Peaks, such as a loss of the sense of space/orientation, loss of a sense of time, physiological effects such as sunburns and damage to the eyes (conjunctivitis, temporary blindness, etc.) and instances wherein the healing process for certain physical ailments seems to have been sped up.

In many of his later works, Vallée continued to explore the hypothesis that alien visitors are not coming to Earth from other star systems in “nuts and bolts” spacecraft, but, rather, are inter-dimensional beings coming from a separate but parallel universe (or universes) to ours. [In fact, the distinction between nuts-and-bolts UFOs and the inter-dimensional hypothesis has become the major dividing line among modern ufologists]

“THE OWLS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM”

The first time we encounter this phrase in Twin Peaks is as one of three messages delivered to Cooper by The Giant, after Cooper is shot in his hotel room at the conclusion of Episode 8 of the first season. [The Giant, as he is referred to throughout the original series, is revealed in Part 14 of The Return to be named The Fireman.]

In the following episode, the Season 2 premier, Cooper's body lies on the floor of his room at The Great Northern hotel with a bullet in his abdomen. Cooper, in a dream-like state, is visited by The Giant, who tells him three things: “there is a man in a smiling bag,” “the owls are not what the seem,” and “without chemicals, he points.”

As the season proceeds, we discover “a man in a smiling bag” is a reference to Jacques Renault's corpse in a body bag at the morgue. “Without chemicals, he points” is a reference to Phillip Gerard, aka “Mike”, aka “the One-Armed Man,” who is inhabited by a spirit who used to be a companion of Bob, and who joined Bob in his murderous deeds until (he claims) he saw God and removed his arm, somehow freeing himself of their bond. The spirit within Gerard reveals himself when he fails to take his medication, Haloperidol (often prescribed to patients diagnosed with schizophrenia), or as the case in Episode 6 of Season 2, is deliberately deprived of it during an interrogation. 

Absent the effects of the drug, Mike explains he is an inhabiting spirit, and Gerard is his host. This exchange follows:

Cooper: Who is Bob?
Mike: He was my familiar.
Cooper: Where does he come from?
Mike: That cannot be revealed.
Cooper: What does Bob want?
Mike: He is Bob; Eager for fun; He wears a smile; Everybody run. Do you understand the parasite? It attaches itself to a life form and feeds. Bob requires a human host. He feeds on fear, and the pleasures. They are his children. I am similar to Bob. We once were partners. Through the darkness of future past; the magician longs to see; one chance out between two worlds; fire walk with me. But then I saw the face of God, and was purified. I took of the arm, but remained close to this vessel. Inhabiting from time to time for one single purpose.
Cooper: To find Bob?
Mike: To stop him. This is his true face, but few can see it: the gifted, and the damned.

Asked if Bob is nearby, Mike replies, “For nearly 40 years,” and reveals Bob is currently at “a large house made of wood, surrounded by trees and filled with many rooms, each alike, but occupied with different souls night after night.” Cooper deduces Bob is at the Great Northern Hotel, and in the following episode Cooper, sheriff Truman and the rest of the gang make their arrest of Leland Palmer.

The iconic scene, wherein Bob reveals his presence within Leland and confesses to the murders of Laura and Maddy, then follows. The mystery of the owls, however, is never fully explained.

MORE ON THE OWLS

Previously, in Episode 5 of Season One, Cooper joined Hawk and Truman on a hike that takes them past the Log Lady's home on their way to the cabin where Jacques Renault and Leo had sex with Laura just before her death. Log Lady (Margaret Lanterman) tells the trio they are “late,” then invites them for a cup of tea, after which she describes what her log saw on the night of Laura's death. Among the information the log provides about that night is the phrase, “The owls are moving.” [Margaret believes the log is inhabited by the spirit of her late husband, who died in a fire]

The owls are mentioned again after Margaret speaks with Maj. Briggs while sitting at the counter of the Double R Diner in Season 2, Episode 2. After commenting on the “shiny objects” on Briggs' uniform, she tells him that her log has “something to tell him.”

“Deliver the message,” she says, translating for the log. “Do you understand?”

“Yes ma'am, as a matter of fact I do,” Briggs replies. 

In this same episode, Briggs visits Cooper at The Great Northern Hotel to deliver the message as instructed by the log. He shows Cooper a printout of a mysterious message intercepted at his air force listening station in Ghostwood Forest, around the time Cooper was shot. Among a jumble of apparently nonsensical letters and numbers is again, the phrase, “The owls are not what they seem,” followed later in the morning by three appearances of “Cooper” in the transcript.

In addition to these specific mentions, shots of owls appear in several ominous scenes throughout the original two seasons, either perched on branches or flying through the woods, usually in connection with strange events associated with the Lodges. They seem to function as watchmen – observers on behalf of the entities that inhabit the unseen realms, and especially the Black Lodge. Notably, owls are shown immediately before Bob seems to exit the Black Lodge portal into our world in the final episode of the second season, and in conjunction with the disappearance of Major Briggs in Season 2, episode 10.

While on a camping trip with Cooper, Briggs remains at the campsite while Cooper is relieving 'the call of nature' some ways away, when an owl hoots and a bright light envelopes the campsite. A dark figure appears in the distance, Briggs cries out Cooper's name, and then disappears. When Cooper returns to the campsite, there is no trace of the Major.

Immediately prior to this event, Cooper tells Briggs that he finds himself thinking a lot about Bob and if he truly exists, imagining him incarnate and searching for another victim to inhabit. Briggs says he has been pondering the same thing, and adds:

“There are powerful forces of evil. It is some men's fate to face great darkness. We each choose how to react. If the choice is fear, then we become vulnerable to darkness. There are ways to resist. You sir, were blessed with certain gifts. In this respect, you're not alone. Have you ever heard of the White Lodge?”

“The White Lodge? No, I don't believe I ever have,” Cooper says.

Cooper then announces he must take a moment to relieve himself, with the conversation to continue momentarily. But of course, they have no such opportunity.

Maj. Briggs later reappears in Episode 12 of the second season, as his son, Bobby, speaks to his mother at their home and shares a story of a vision his father told him about several episodes prior.

Briggs vision of Bobby: 

This was a vision, fresh and clear as a mountain stream, The mind revealing itself to itself. In my vision, I was on the veranda of a vast estate, a palazzo of some fantastic proportion. There seemed to emanate from it a light from within, this gleaming, radiant marble.
I'd known this place. I had in fact been born and raised there. This was my first return.
A reunion with the deepest well-springs of my being.
Wandering about, I noticed happily that the house had been immaculately maintained.
There'd been added a number of additional rooms, but in a way that blended so seamlessly with the original construction, one would never detect any difference. Returning to the house's grand foyer, there came a knock at the door. My son was standing there. He was happy and carefree, clearly living a life of deep harmony and joy. We embraced, a warm and loving embrace, nothing withheld. We were, in this moment, one. My vision ended and I awoke with a tremendous feeling of optimism and confidence in you and your future. That was my vision of you. I'm so glad to have had this opportunity to share it with you. I wish you nothing but the very best in all things.

Upon his return after the campsite disappearance, Briggs asks his wife how long he has been gone. “Two days,” his wife says. “Strange. Seemed much shorter,” Briggs replies, alluding to the altered perception of time coincident with UFO experiences and alternate dimensions.

We do not know where Maj. Briggs went during this 48-hour disappearance following the camping trip with Cooper, though we may conclude it had something to do with the existence of the Lodges.

Speaking to Cooper and Truman in Episode 13 of Season Two, Briggs' says, he remembers “stepping from the flames, a vague shape in the dark, then nothing until I found myself standing by the coal remains of our campfire two days later.”

Cooper: Major, there are some new techniques that might help us break through your amnesia.
Briggs: My memories are immune from regression. I can feel them. They're palpable, the smells, the sensation. Everything is known to me, yet somehow beyond my reach.
Cooper: Do you remember anything else?
Briggs: Very little, save for one disturbing image of a giant owl, pervasive.
Cooper: A giant owl? How big?
Briggs: Enough to cloud my mind and memory.

Doctor Hayward, who is giving Briggs a physical examination, notes he now has “three triangular scars behind the right ear in perfect proportion,” another clue that connects to the physical signs sometimes reported following UFO abduction experiences. Interestingly, this scene with Briggs post-disappearance interview is immediately preceded by an image of stars in space, during which a voice whispers, “Cooper,” and a three-pronged symbol strikingly similar to that used to mark nuclear test sites comes spinning toward the screen and dissolves into flames.

OWLS IN THE UFO COMMUNITY

Owls have long been associated with UFO phenomena and abduction events, synchronicity and other high weirdness, such as the Mothman sightings of West Virginia in the 1960s and 70s, the abduction encounters of Whitley Strieber in his book Communion (among others), and the mysterious rituals performed by the rich and powerful “elites” in Bohemian Grove. It is not clear when the first modern association was made between owls and UFOs, but owls have been connected in many cultures throughout history with knowledge and wisdom, and also have been believed to be signs of good fortune, or conversely, as unlucky omens and harbingers of death.

One of the most prominent researchers associated with the subject of owls and UFOs is Mike Clelland, author of The Messengers: Owls, Synchronicity and the UFO Abductee, in which he describes his own abduction experiences and association with owls, and shares similar accounts based on interviews with numerous other individuals who have experienced owl associations in conjunction with UFO or alien encounters.

In his book, Clelland relates stories regarding the apparent use of owls as implanted “screen memories” to hide abduction experiences related to UFO encounters, as well as his own and others' strange experiences of synchronistic events coinciding with the appearance of owls:

I have a set of memories from my youth that paint a disturbing picture. As a 12 year old boy, I had a very clear UFO sighting at night. A few months later I had a two-hour missing time experience with an associated odd orange flash in the sky. And in the winter of 1993 I once woke to see five spindly gray aliens with big black eyes out my bedroom window. This is a short list of some of my more overt experiences. I’ve also had plenty of less overt episodes like psychic impressions, hyper-vivid predictive dreams, an obsession with UFOs and profound synchronicities.

All that said, I had spent the first 44 years of my life actively denying that there was anything unusual about these heavy-handed experiences. But at the same time there was a building pressure. I recognized what it all pointed to, but I was working hard to ignore the implications. There came a point when I knew I needed to look into what I suspected might be at play in my life. The owl sightings with Kristen came in September of 2006. This was exactly the point in my life when I was wrestling with all those confusing experiences and their UFO implications. These memories were in the forefront of my mind and those weird owl episodes with Kristen felt like an alarm in my head screaming, “This is real! You are a UFO abductee!”

This connection might seem illogical, but there was a very real sense of knowing within that moment. I could feel it. It took great strength to put the lid on that voice in my head and hide it away. The problem was that the owl sightings continued and the pressure kept building. It was easy to ignore all my UFO experiences, I mean, those just seemed absurd. But I couldn’t ignore what was happening with all the owls. When someone is deeply asleep whispering won’t wake them. Sometimes you have to really shake them. If that doesn’t work, send in the owls. The owls came in tandem with a set of insanely powerful synchronicities, so much so that they seem intertwined. From my direct experience there is a blurry line between synchronicity and owls. I don’t think a mere mortal could untangle these arcane threads, so I won’t even try. I was stuck and the owls changed me. The person I once was is gone and it was the owls that pushed me over that cliff.

DOPPELGANGERS, SHADOW-SELVES AND THE LODGES

As noted earlier, our first introduction to the Lodges in the original Twin Peaks TV series comes in Episode 10 of Season 2, immediately before Maj. Briggs disappears..

In the following episode, Cooper asks his friends at the sheriff's office if anyone has ever heard of the White Lodge.

Deputy Hawk, a member of the Nez-Perce tribe, offers this ominous answer:

Cooper, you may be fearless in this world, but there are other worlds.  My people believe the White Lodge is a place where the spirits that rule man and nature reside. There is also a legend of a place called the Black Lodge – the shadow self of the White Lodge. The legend says that every spirit must pass through there on the way to perfection. There, you will meet your own shadow-self. My people call it, 'the dweller on the threshold.' But it is said, if you confront the Black Lodge with imperfect courage, it will utterly annihilate your soul.

This shadow-self, or “dweller on the threshold,” as Hawk describes, appears as a doppelganger – that is, a being identical in appearance and knowledge to the original, but apparently possessed of one's own worst thoughts and instincts. We meet Cooper's doppelganger when he enters another realm through a portal in Ghostwood National Forest in the finale of Twin Peaks' second, and until recently, final, season.

Prior to this, Cooper experiences what appears to be the White Lodge, or at least interacts with one of its residents, several times in dreams and visions, such as when the Giant appears to him after he is shot in his hotel room, and in the final episode of Season 2, when the Giant appears on stage during the Miss Twin Peaks contest to warn him, “It is happening again.”

Cooper then enters the Black Lodge in an effort to stop Windom Earle and rescue his new love, Annie. There he encounters both Bob and his doppelganger, and seemingly fails to exhibit the perfect courage necessary to conquer his own darker nature, which results in his entrapment in the lodge for 25 years and the escape of his doppelganger, who takes Cooper's place in our world. The series ends with his doppelganger (often referred to by The Return audience as “Dark Coop,” “Evil Coop,” “Mr. C,” or “doppelCooper” entering the bathroom of his hotel room, squeezing a tube of toothpaste into the sink (perhaps experiencing a connection to the flesh now that he has exited the spirit world) and bashing his head against the mirror, breaking it, while he maniacally repeats the phrase “How's Annie?” 

It is important to point out we do not really know the place Cooper enters at the end of Season Two is in fact the Black Lodge. It is often referred by the audience as the “Red Room,” but the only name we are given in the show itself comes from The Arm, when he tells Cooper “This is The Waiting Room.” Some viewers speculate that the waiting room is separate from the Lodges entirely; I believe, however, that the Waiting Room and the Black Lodge are likely the same place. Since Hawk tells us all souls must pass through the Black Lodge prior to entering the White Lodge, it makes sense that the waiting room is this place, where Cooper must defeat his shadow-self and become purified before he can move on. Indeed, the mere presence of his doppelganger/shadow-self seems to indicate The Waiting Room and the Black Lodge are one and the same.

Of course, so much of this is mere speculation. While some aspects of Twin Peaks mythology are more explicitly illuminated in Mark Frost's novel, The Secret History of Twin Peaks, I have deliberately avoided including excerpts from the book due to the seemingly-changing nature of Twin Peaks mysteries, as well as my personal preference to rely on the lore that comes from Frost's collaboration with David Lynch and Lynch's powerful use of imagery to give life to the Twin Peaks story in a way the written word simply cannot emulate.

Speaking of “bringing to life,” Part 14 of The Return also gives us an explicit reference to a Tibetan Buddhism concept of the “tulpa” in relation to the doppelgangers that appear in the FBI's Blue Rose cases. In fact, we learn in Albert's conversation with Agent Preston that the phrase “blue rose” was uttered by the first doppelganger encountered by the men who would become the founding members of the Blue Rose task force. As Albert explains, Cole and Jeffries were young field agents in 1975 investigating a murder in Olympia, Washington. 

They arrived at a motel to arrest a woman named Lois Duffy when they heard a gunshot from inside. They find two women inside; one on the floor, dying from a bullet wound to the abdomen. The other holds a gun, which she drops as she backs away when they enter. They recognize the wounded woman as Lois Duffy. 

 She speaks her last words to them: “I'm like the blue rose.” She smiles, then dies. Then disappears before their eyes.  

The other woman screaming in the corner, they now notice, is also Lois Duffy. By the way, Lois Duffy does not have a twin sister. Then, while awaiting trial for a murder she swore she didn't commit, this Lois hangs herself. 

Preston divines the “blue rose” utterance is a reference to the dying Duffy's artificiality, as a blue rose does not appear in nature.

“The dying woman was not natural Conjured. What's the word.... a tulpa,” Preston says.

ON TULPAS

A tulpa is a thought-form, an imagined being that can seem to take life when enough psychic power is directed at it. It can start as a fear, like the modern-day myth of Slender Man, or as an imaginary friend, but it takes shape with greater mental attention, and can, in some tellings, eventually become independent of the thinker who created it. Tulpas who gain this kind of independence are often associated with trickster-type phenomena and generally dark things.

In his now-defunct blog, Rigorous Intuition, writer Jeff Wells collects several stories of tulpas in a number of posts, such as this excerpt written by Alexandra David-Neel and included in Wells' essay titled ‘Planet of the Lost Children (Part One)’:

Besides having had few opportunities of seeing thought-forms, my habitual incredulity led me to make experiments for myself, and my efforts were attended with some success. In order to avoid being influenced by the forms of the lamaist deities, which I saw daily around me in paintings and images, I chose for my experiment a most insignificant character: a Monk, short and fat, of an innocent and jolly type. 

I shut myself in tsams and proceeded to perform the prescribed concentration of thought and other rites. After a few months the phantom Monk was formed. His form grew gradually fixed and lifelike looking. He became a kind of guest, living in my apartment. I then broke my seclusion and started for a tour, with my servants and tents. 

The Monk included himself in the party. Though I lived in the open, riding on horseback for miles each day, the illusion persisted. I saw the fat tulpa; now and then it was not necessary for me to think of him to make him appear. The phantom performed various actions of the kind that are natural to travelers and that I had not commanded. For instance, he walked, stopped, looked around him. The illusion was mostly visual, but sometimes I felt as if a robe was lightly rubbing against me, and once a hand seemed to touch my shoulder. 

The features which I had imagined, when building my phantom, gradually underwent a change. The fat, chubby-cheeked fellow grew leaner, his face assumed a vaguely mocking, sly, malignant look. He became more troublesome and bold. In brief, he escaped my control. Once, a herdsman who brought me a present of butter saw the tulpa in my tent and took it for a living lama. 

I ought to have let the phenomenon follow its course, but the presence of that unwanted companion began to prove trying to my nerves; it turned into a "day-nightmare". 

Moreover, I was beginning to plan my journey to Lhasa and needed a quiet brain devoid of other preoccupations, so I decided to dissolve the phantom. I succeeded, but only after six months of hard struggle. My mind-creature was tenacious of life.

Dougie Jones, whom Cooper replaces upon his return to our world, has no record of his existence prior to 1997. Upon Cooper's re-entry, Jones is transported to the Red Room, where The One-Armed Man tells him that he was manufactured and his purpose is now complete. Dougie proceeds to fade from existence, and the owl ring he was wearing falls to the floor. The Las Vegas Police detectives the Fusco brothers, unaware that Jones has been replaced by the now-infantile Cooper, speculate Jones' lack of a past may indicate he is in the federal witness protection program. But what if Dougie himself was a tulpa, conjured into existence by evil Cooper as part of his plan to remain in our world and prevent himself from being drawn back to the lodge? Could other characters we have come to know also be tulpas, conjurings from the human imagination, the dark power of Bob, the mysterious Mother/Experiment, or the Lodges themselves?

THE CONCLUSION OF THE RETURN

It remains to be seen what final answers, if any, the conclusion of Twin Peaks: The Return will provide. We have not even touched upon Sarah Palmer's visions of a white horse, also referenced by the Woodsmen in Part 8, nor the importance of the nuclear explosion, The Experiment/Mother (and it's physical similarity to the idea of the alien grey). We have only briefly mentioned the concept of fear and suffering as food (garmonbozia) to inter-dimensional beings, nor touched upon the major reveals in Part 14 relating to the eyeless woman, Naido, or the being that seems to inhabit Sarah Palmer when she removes her face at that part's conclusion and kills a man at the Elk's Point #9 bar by biting his jugular.

Knowing the way Lynch operates in his films and the rest of the Twin Peaks pantheon, it is quite possible any conclusions we have drawn so far will be turned on their heads by the time the final Part 18 airs several weeks from now. One thing is for certain, however – The Return has cemented the Twin Peaks catalogue as a powerful thought-form, a tulpa conjured by Frost and Lynch more than two decades ago and given tremendous agency after feeding on the psychic energy of thousands of intrigued and obsessed viewers for the last 27 years.