Dougie Cooper is a Dream World (SPOILERS)

[Obi-Wan McCartney]

Anyone else think the whole Dougie Cooper storyline is an inception/vanilla sky type dream? That he was "manufactured" by Evil Cooper in the deep corner of his mind to keep the good Dale trapped when he exited the Lodge?

Part of me always felt that the supernatural elements of the Twin Peaks story were always meant to be read as occurring alongside the regular physical reality. Leland was "possessed by Bob," which also just represents "the evil that men do." The literal and the otherworldly explanations are both true (from a certain point of view). Sort of like the Iliad, where the Gods exist and their actions exist and affect the human characters. Thus, the supernatural elements, while they exist, still exist within our physical world governed by regular physics. That would mean that the Good Dale can't really exist outside of his body, he literally can't come out until the evil Cooper goes back in the Lodge because they exist as part of Agent Cooper's mind.

So any confrontation with Dale and Evil Cooper would have to happen in his mind, in some kind of dream world. Kind of like Superman III.

[BigEd]

So did the USPS pick up the Great Northern key in Dougie's dream world and deliver it to Twin Peaks?

[Normonaut]

Yeah the alternate reality/dream/2003 theories have all been squashed by the key. Thankfully

[writersblock]

If only there had been some other work by David Lynch that involved a key opening the way between a dream world and "reality"...

[4815162342]

Not via USPS though, that's a bit more concrete.

[AgentEcho]

I very much doubt Lynch, completing a story on his own terms, would go down this road in any explicit or literal fashion. No doubt one can interpret some of his past work this way and in the end that may be a valid interpretation of Twin Peaks, but it would be an interpretation and not a specific plot point. Even the most obvious example from his past work, which came out of needing a solution to complete a project that was originally conceived differently, it's not spelled out in any literal sense.

[wAtChLaR]

i love Dougie Coop


it's going to be hard to let go of him

[LostInTheMovies]

Prior to pt. 9 it was still remotely possible that both Twin Peaks & Vegas were part of the same dream/alternate reality...but last week delivered the final blows to that by linking evil Cooper directly to the Vegas henchman via a phone call, connecting South Dakota with the other two (already connected) strands. I think there might have been a few other links too. The 2003 thing *never* worked for me.

Although I liked the idea of a dream reality initially, the way Lynch cut between these stories eventually made me feel that it wouldn't work to separate them that way. It would feel too much like an intellectual conceit rather than something intuitive (as in Mulholland Drive or Inland Empire).

[TheAlien]

If only there had been some other work by David Lynch that involved a key opening the way between a dream world and "reality"...

THIS!

[TheAlien]

I very much doubt Lynch, completing a story on his own terms, would go down this road in any explicit or literal fashion. No doubt one can interpret some of his past work this way and in the end that may be a valid interpretation of Twin Peaks, but it would be an interpretation and not a specific plot point. Even the most obvious example from his past work, which came out of needing a solution to complete a project that was originally conceived differently, it's not spelled out in any literal sense.

But it has already had two seasons, a movie and the current series to establish that the world of twin peaks is very much reality, in Twin Peaks...