And I gathered that timing his arrest for that time was another way to screw Good Dale over. If the Dougie plan didn't work as of 2:53, then the assassins kill the spare and Good Dale ends up in federal prison for all of the weird stuff in his car, unable to explain ANYTHING.sewhite2000 wrote:I'm very confused by your question, but I hope this helps:
Evil Coop created Dougie specifically so that when Cooper re-entered the real world, he would switch places with Dougie instead of him. There seems to have been some cosmic moment of destiny when Cooper was going to come out of the Black Lodge, and the way it was supposed to work was that Evil Coop would go back in at that same moment. It was preordained. Jeffries told Evil Coop it was going to happen, but Evil Coop told Darya he had a plan for getting out of it. If Dougie had been killed before Cooper left the Lodge, Cooper would have switched places with Evil Coop. Thus, Dougie had to be alive for Evil Coop's plan to work.
In the meantime, I'm wondering about the 25 years. I had a thought. Jeffries, despite working against Doppelcoop, seems to be evil. Hawk said in the original series that confronting the Lodge with imperfect courage meant your soul would be annihilated. This ep, they mentioned 3 agents who disappeared: Jeffries, Chet Desmond and Coop. I wonder if we're seeing the three possible results of facing your shadow: loss, tie, and win. We know Jeffries was working with Doppelcoop, so I would bet that he lost and all that's left of him is his shadowself. We haven't seen or heard of Desmond doing anything since he disappeared, so it would make sense he won and ascended to the White Lodge, leaving no shadow to appear in the Black Lodge or replace him on Earth. Cooper still exists, and his doppelganger still exists, so maybe this was a tie. And all Cooper had to do was survive a specific amount of time in the Black Lodge to get a rematch. This would explain why Jeffries isn't swapped back to the Lodge, but no one expected Doppelcooper to avoid his fate (If Jeffries had avoided returning due to a trick I think Gerard and the voice on the phone and the Arm would've been prepared for trickery), and why Desmond isn't referenced at all except in a recount of missing agents.