Just to get the most obvious Oz resonance out of the way...
Dorothy/Judy Garland wrote:Aunt Em
There, there, lie quiet now. You just had a bad dream.
Dorothy
But it wasn't a dream. This was a real, truly live place.
And I remember that some of it wasn't very nice - but most of it was beautiful.
But just the same, all I kept saying to everybody was, 'I want to go home!'
And they sent me home.
[All Laugh]
Doesn't anybody believe me?
Uncle Henry
Of course we believe you, Dorothy.
Dorothy
Oh, but anyway, Toto, we're home! Home! And this is my room - and you're all here!
And I'm not going to leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all! And -
Oh, Auntie Em, there's no place like home!
...if only because this is such a common theme.
Part 18 is very, very interesting in that it zeroes in on the Palmer house, which is Laura's home, not Cooper's. Additionally, it isn't the Palmer house, but the Tremond house. For us the viewers, the effect is somewhat like watching Dorothy waking up in her room and finding herself surrounded not by familiar farmers and her beloved family, but in a room devoid of life and laughter. In other words, while she dreamed of a strange and wonderful world that was both breathtakingly beautiful and blood-curdling in equal measure -- eventually finding salvation and the way home -- home turns out not to be what she supposed it to be. It's an
unheimliche heimat, an unhomely home that is a disturbing blend of the familiar and the unfamiliar. It is disturbing
because it is familiar. There's a 'narcissism of small differences' as Freud would say: there's nothing more unsettling than meeting someone or being somewhere that is very similar, but just a bit different. Catching sight of someone's face in a mirror and thinking they look a bit off, then realising you're at the wrong angle and are seeing someone else's face entirely, for example. Or returning home after a prolonged vacation and finding your house, in your absence, has somehow acquired a slightly different personality. I think part 18 plays on all these kinds of feelings, sometimes subtly and sometimes not so subtly. The overall effect is one of growing disquiet, which creeps and builds throughout the whole episode and then explodes at the end in a moment of recognition and terror. The disturbance you felt -- the metaphorical off-ness of the face in the mirror, the weird feeling things are different, etc. -- was there after all, and you brought it with you!
At the risk of sounding undergraduate this was a very gothic flourish, redolent of the kind of twisted ending E.A.Poe might give to a story.
How this is 'home' for Cooper is an outstanding question. I doubt any of us can answer it in a perfectly straightforward way. I'll just ramble a bit in an impressionistic sense about what the theme of home brings up for me. On first approach, I would be more inclined to view the Twin Peaks Sheriff Station get-together of part 17 as Cooper's 'home' given the amount of time he spends there in previous seasons. Added to which, Coop of yesteryear -- the Cooper we know -- was only really at home when the game is on; when he's embroiled in a strange mystery and sleuthing away with his intuition. But that somewhat cartoonish, feel-good Coop is gone here. We don't know what this Cooper wants; since the appearance of the overlaid face in episode 17, what this Cooper wants is as much of a mystery as who he really is. Things will change, he claimed -- and chief amongst these changes was his own deportment: he becomes sombre and sacrificial, even bloody-minded perhaps. Having gone home to Twin Peaks, and at times having revelled in the strange journey that led there, he still hasn't landed. There's another side to Twin Peaks after all, a side that is as much home as any, but is dark as pitch. The unhappy 'big face' Cooper tugs at his heartstrings and urges him to rectify this -- which many have read as
hamartia, the tragic character flaw that will strand him in a world of mirrors. Nonetheless, his journey to the past/underworld lies before him and he seems to assume its burden with grim resolve. Coop as we know him falls away with every passing scene.
Is this 'home' then? Is this the most basic truth about Cooper: the flawed over-reacher who will deprive Sarah of her grief (or her goblins of their garmonbozia), Pete of his tragic discovery, Catherine and Jocelyn of their feud over compassionate leave of their workers, Ben of his breakdown, Donna of her time with James, etc., etc. all just so he can get to be the one who saves the day?
Others have proposed this, but I'm not sure. Things get complicated, and all these divergent narratives look like they are Matryoshka dolls nesting inside each other rather than traditional sci-fi 'timelines'. Cooper feels to me to be going further and further inwards, away from the surface reality of things, in search of some mythical centre point behind layers and layers of onion skin that don't ever reveal a true core. He's lost. He doesn't even know what year this is. That, maybe, is his home. He spent 25 year lost, let's face it. So perhaps there's no centre, there's no home, there's no origin; just the recurrence of the same thing on every level: Sarah shouts for her missing daughter, Laura screams and the lights go out. It seems bleak to call that darkness home, but that is, on a narrative level at least, where things began: a mysterious violence and Cooper as yet unknowing just how mysterious it can/will get.