Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

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Nighthawk
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Nighthawk »

vicksvapor77 wrote:
thedarktrees wrote:-don't get all the consternation about the original story being retconned out of existence... How could that possibly be the case? Everything that happens in Part 18, right up to the last second is fundamentally premised on all the events of the Laura Palmer murder. I mean Coop, even in whatever different existence he's in, is still looking for Sarah and Laura.
Cooper/Richard thinks that Carrie is Laura, hence her murder would be undone in his eyes. We as viewers are left to wonder if that's the case, is this a strictly alternate reality, and how would her death being undone eradicate the show's existence as we know it.
There is some reason to think that the original timeline has been altered. After all, we get to revisit the Packard saw mill scene from the pilot with Pete, Josie, and Catherine. Laura's body vanishes from this timeline, although that does not mean of course that she was entirely eradicated from existence, just that she didn't die on the night of Feb 23rd-24th, 1989. This also doesn't save Laura permanently as presumably Bob continues to exist within Leland.

One thing that occurred to me about the "alternate" timeline is that I think that Cooper traveled to it alone (as opposed to with Diane) and that this reality is essentially a trap. Call it Judy's retribution if you will. This world is very clearly controlled by the Lodge spirits. Number 6 telephone pole is right outside Carrie's house, there is a dead man with rigor mortis sitting in a chair, and a small white horse on the mantelpiece. Carrie looks like Laura, but she doesn't have her identity. Cooper eats at Judy's of all places, and starts acting strangely after expertly disarming the three cowboys. It's like his persona begins to break down. Carrie also works at Judy's, which means that her whole life in this reality is setup and controlled by the Lodge. The final touch is that the Palmer house is now owned by Lodge impostors as well. This looks like a trap setup for Cooper, which he realizes in the final moments of S3.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by 28renton »

An optimistic interpretation of the finale:

-Cooper's on the right path, after all he followed the Fireman's clues
-Coop did say "I understand" regarding the clues
-We know interaction with the Lodges can fog people's minds for a time, so his understanding may have been affected temporarily (in addition to creating the awkward personality balance between classic Coop/Mr. C/Dougie we see in Cooper towards the end)
-When Cooper asks, "What year is it?", this could be an indication he's starting to come out of the fog and ask the right questions

This could give one reason to hope that all is not lost. Coop will ultimately figure it out.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by nonemoreblack »

dud wrote:An observation of mine that i have not seen voiced yet: I've seen several people say that cooper seemed careless or unethical and ultimately un-cooper-like with his gun pointing and curtness with the waitress and cook in the judy's coffee shop sequence, but i actually interpreted that as him being very cautious and wary of the entire place and its inhabitants because of its namesake. He really didn't have much of a grasp on the reality of the situation at the time: he was looking for some other waitress and demanded her address and then was surprised when laura/carrie answered the door, he clearly expected something else. I feel like cooper was relying completely on his cooper intuition from the 'richard and linda' note onward, but deep down i think he knew he was lost and his intuition wasn't as dependable and fail-safe as it once was.

Instead of the 'different person'/integration of both good and bad cooper theories, I felt like it was truly our coop and we were just seeing a different side of him for the first time, i think deep down on some level he knew he screwed something up / wasn't in control of the situation and we were seeing his frustration and dejection come through. The whole final sequence he's grasping at straws more and more: beginning with him asking laura if she recognizes anything, escalating to him rattling off weak follow-up question after follow-up question to mrs. tremond when it's already clear that he's not making any headway with this line of questioning, culminating in him asking 'what year is this' and walking forward and grasping for a door handle that isn't there in the hopes that there will be some magical lodge door there to give him some direction, truly grasping at straws. ending with the credits with cooper's face of absolute horror/brokenness as laura is standing over him, inverting the ending of fwwm where laura is sitting there radiating with the joy of spiritual transcendence while cooper is standing over her.

pretty heartbreaking interpretation but yeah lol. so devastating. simply put, i think the ending of the show was that cooper screwed everything up and undid the beautiful ending that laura had at the end of FWWM. yet i don't think his flaw is exactly hubris as others have said: i think he was overcompensating for his regret about screwing up things for carolyn and annie. he trying too hard to be good, so he went overboard trying to help laura and undid her good ending :( her scream of horror at the end was her new ending because she never got the chance to face her demons / abuse at the end of FWWM and transcend them because cooper snatched her up instead
I got that impression about Cooper in the diner as well. Although he wasn't acting like the Cooper we know, he came across as fearful and uncertain more than anything. He had a sadness about him, as if he was sorry for how he was acting, but he didn't know how else to go about it.
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Nighthawk
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Nighthawk »

28renton wrote: -When Cooper asks, "What year is it?", this could be an indication he's starting to come out of the fog and ask the right questions.
I agree with that. It's the first sensible thing he does since the moment he stepped into this reality. His prior actions seemed intuitive, strange or perhaps controlled by others. Going to Odessa, stopping at Judy's, finding Carrie/Laura, and even going to the Palmer house were all quite irrational. He's already time traveled and moved between worlds so the first thing to do would be to try to find out where and when he is?
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Another Year
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Another Year »

Hi,
The new reality with Carrie Page may have its roots in Texas. Probably these are nearby locations to those presented in episode 8. In this respect, episode 8 was an introduction to this new reality. Bob was planted (after atomic bomb, but in Twin Peaks reality this could have happened in different circumstances), Laura/Carrie as an orb was put into Texas/Arizona/New Mexico location. The girl that "ate" a frogmoth could have been Carrie or her mother. Seeing Woodsmen in episode 8 may mean that lodges entities are present in different realities. What do you think?
Another issue, do you think that Cooper tricked us and went to live Dougie to Las Vegas? Remember what he promised to Sonny-Jim? Perhaps different behavior in episode 18 indicates that his manufactured form continues the journey?
The last of my comments so far: the question "what year is it?" was to me an attempt to check whether it was 25 years after entering the lodge...

Regards.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Daliz »

My apologies if it's mentioned before but the very awkward sex scene immediately reminded me of "intercourse between two worlds".

Coop/Richard certainly seems to be in another "world" after that night.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Rhodes »

That footage with Leo was never shown before, wasn't it?
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by sewhite2000 »

I had a thought about the Woodsmen: why were they incapable of reviving Evil Cooper this time around? Also, it seemed like there were a lot fewer of them than when Ray encountered them.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by sewhite2000 »

Nighthawk wrote:
vicksvapor77 wrote:
thedarktrees wrote:-don't get all the consternation about the original story being retconned out of existence... How could that possibly be the case? Everything that happens in Part 18, right up to the last second is fundamentally premised on all the events of the Laura Palmer murder. I mean Coop, even in whatever different existence he's in, is still looking for Sarah and Laura.
Cooper/Richard thinks that Carrie is Laura, hence her murder would be undone in his eyes. We as viewers are left to wonder if that's the case, is this a strictly alternate reality, and how would her death being undone eradicate the show's existence as we know it.
There is some reason to think that the original timeline has been altered. After all, we get to revisit the Packard saw mill scene from the pilot with Pete, Josie, and Catherine. Laura's body vanishes from this timeline, although that does not mean of course that she was entirely eradicated from existence, just that she didn't die on the night of Feb 23rd-24th, 1989. This also doesn't save Laura permanently as presumably Bob continues to exist within Leland.

One thing that occurred to me about the "alternate" timeline is that I think that Cooper traveled to it alone (as opposed to with Diane) and that this reality is essentially a trap. Call it Judy's retribution if you will. This world is very clearly controlled by the Lodge spirits. Number 6 telephone pole is right outside Carrie's house, there is a dead man with rigor mortis sitting in a chair, and a small white horse on the mantelpiece. Carrie looks like Laura, but she doesn't have her identity. Cooper eats at Judy's of all places, and starts acting strangely after expertly disarming the three cowboys. It's like his persona begins to break down. Carrie also works at Judy's, which means that her whole life in this reality is setup and controlled by the Lodge. The final touch is that the Palmer house is now owned by Lodge impostors as well. This looks like a trap setup for Cooper, which he realizes in the final moments of S3.

I feel like Diane did travel with Cooper into the alternate timeline, or at least partway into it. They found the spot that was ripe with electricity, drove into it, and suddenly it was night, an indication that they had both gone "elsewhere". Then Diane saw an alternate version of herself. Further evidence they were "somewhere else" was that it messed with Diane's memory or identity. She now thought of herself as "Linda". Interestingly, though, things change even more after Diane leaves Cooper. Different motel, different car, now Cooper's in a town or small city instead of an isolated motel in the middle of nowhere. As if it took some time for the reality to fully change or for Cooper to proceed further into it.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by nonemoreblack »

28renton wrote:An optimistic interpretation of the finale:

-Cooper's on the right path, after all he followed the Fireman's clues
-Coop did say "I understand" regarding the clues
-We know interaction with the Lodges can fog people's minds for a time, so his understanding may have been affected temporarily (in addition to creating the awkward personality balance between classic Coop/Mr. C/Dougie we see in Cooper towards the end)
-When Cooper asks, "What year is it?", this could be an indication he's starting to come out of the fog and ask the right questions

This could give one reason to hope that all is not lost. Coop will ultimately figure it out.
IndieWire had a similar optimistic outlook: http://www.indiewire.com/2017/09/twin-p ... 201872863/

"Evil triumphs good in the alternate dimension when Carrie Page reawakens as a horrified Laura Palmer. But good will keep trying nonetheless; that’s the optimism of David Lynch. Part 8 turned the scope of 'Twin Peaks' into a grand fight between evil (Judy appears to be the monster figure that gave birth to BOB) and good (the Fireman gives birth to Laura Palmer, the only being that can defeat the evil created by the atomic bomb). Part 18 ended the series by saying that fight never ends. It’s destined to keep repeating itself; but as long as we have Dale Cooper’s in the world, good will always have a shot. Lynch’s finale ultimately makes this grand statement understandable and unavoidable; it’s what 'Twin Peaks' is all about. Here’s hoping we get to see Cooper have another shot at evil in the future."

My only issue with this is that it doesn't go into how Cooper's desire to save Laura robs her of her transcendence, and how no matter what he does, it doesn't change the trauma she went through. Maybe his final question is meant to be a signal that he'll get there eventually, so they can both be at peace. I have a theory that while Judy needs to be controlled, good and evil must always exist together, and therefore she can never be 'beaten' like Cooper assumes. What happened to Laura was terrible, but by preventing her death Cooper took away both the bad AND the good which came from it, such as Laura's freedom from Bob and all of the people Cooper loved in Twin Peaks. Evil will always exist in some form, and Cooper needs to learn to fight it in a different way. It makes me think of what Dougie was able to do in Las Vegas compared to the rot which was setting in throughout Twin Peaks. Instead of trying to change the past, Cooper could do far more good for the residents of Twin Peaks in the present. He doesn't realise this yet, so he passes them by. It's late and I'm slightly delirious, so apologies if this doesn't make sense. haha
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by N. Needleman »

sewhite2000 wrote:I had a thought about the Woodsmen: why were they incapable of reviving Evil Cooper this time around?
I don't know that they were. I think Cooper arrived and shut things down just in time - BOB was exposed and vanquished. That may have done the doppelganger in for good.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by bastia »

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lit ... ne_(novel)

It is about a 13-year-old girl named Rynn Jacobs who lives alone in a house, and murders people who threaten her solitary life.


Carrie Page? Sarah Palmer?


I think that the arm tried to explain both the nature of the story and the character we are trying to find.


About the black lodge.. Cooper never really leaves the lodge, it is always with him. That is why he can see MiKe, the sequence out of it are like a dream, an illusion. We can see it in the peculiar path of good cooper.
First, he behaves like we would do in a dream. Lost, only reacting with the reality our brain gives us, unaware of what it really going one, but still riding with it.
Then he DOES NOT wake. When he snap to the cooper we all know, that he is not him waking up. It is him gaining conscience that he is indeed a dream, a LUCID dream.
As you know, if you ever have one, a lucid dream can be a great experience. You are aware that you are in a dream and you can interecat as you like, changing the way of the path.

In the end, the entire sequence of the station, remind him, seeing all the people of his world, of his dream (all the characters are there, isn't strange? They all converge in one point. To find the source of the dream).

Cooper is the centre of the world, his world. The version of the world where he is being away for 25 years and his evil self runs free.

He defeats his evil self. Like he was supposed to. Without that he COULD NOT escape the dream, HE COULD NOT exit the black lodge. The lodge is not a place you can go in and out easily, like we thought.

After that, he goes to the centre of the dream. The hotel basement, finally exiting the lodge dream.(this sequence explicit hints the dream logic. The key to a reality. Mullholland dr?)
There he finds the real philippe gerard. He finally says the word, fire walk with me.

Dale then can finally make sense of it. He goes back in time, the power of time and space. The lodge gives that possibility, as jeffries discovered. But dale never really left the lodge.

Coop change the past, thanks to the lodge power, but then laura disappears.
Coop finally gain consciousness. Is it future, is it past?
He realize he is still in the lodge, that he never left it.

He is broken, he is a man finally understanding the reality of his situation. Inside the dream he was our old cooper. But in the reality, he was not. He was broken.

He exits the lodge, he has a job. But the black lodge changed him, he's quite, he's tired. He wants to finish everything and save the day. No matter what. The dream changed him, he is now a one with his evilness, he is disoriented.
He cannot understand what is real anymore, he's lost. Like jeffries. (After lucid dream, after 25 years in a world like that. Who would not?)

He is behaving like he just waken up. Reacting again.
The world is too bright for his tired eyes. He indeed changed the past, he remember he has a porpuse, an assignment, by the giant.

Save laura, kill judy.

But he could not. The real world shutts down in a paradox when Laura remembers the old universe. The one she died. All is black.

That is the story of the little girl who lived down the lane.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by claaa7 »

Drgarage wrote:
claaa7 wrote:I just rewatched both parts (couldn't resist) and the little move that Cooper makes right before he says "What year is this?" to Laura is not a Dougie move as some has described it (at least not only).. it's the almost exact move that Mister C makes before being thrown into the White Lodge from Jack Rabbit's Palace in ep. 17.. a little step forward and reaching out into the air as if to open a door... very intriguing discovery!!
Same gesture he made to make the curtain open into Glastonbury Grove in 18.
i don't know, the prolonged hand wiggling while walking doesn't really resemble the move that much though imo.. the parallel between Mister C at Jack Rabbit's and Cooper before "what year..." is almost exact if you look at it again
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Pinky »

28renton wrote:An optimistic interpretation of the finale:

-Cooper's on the right path, after all he followed the Fireman's clues
-Coop did say "I understand" regarding the clues
-We know interaction with the Lodges can fog people's minds for a time, so his understanding may have been affected temporarily (in addition to creating the awkward personality balance between classic Coop/Mr. C/Dougie we see in Cooper towards the end)
-When Cooper asks, "What year is it?", this could be an indication he's starting to come out of the fog and ask the right questions

This could give one reason to hope that all is not lost. Coop will ultimately figure it out.
This is how I took it as well. I can't check right now, but do we know when exactly the Richard and Linda, 430 conversation with the Fireman takes place? I'm probably wrong but as far as I can tell, Coop is still on the path and is right where he's meant to be. The only way this is invalidated is if his talk with the Fireman is the Fireman making contact with him in a last ditch attempt to provide some kind of help to Coop, however futile it may be. But i've not been reading it this way.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by silvo »

sewhite2000 wrote: I feel like Diane did travel with Cooper into the alternate timeline, or at least partway into it. They found the spot that was ripe with electricity, drove into it, and suddenly it was night, an indication that they had both gone "elsewhere". Then Diane saw an alternate version of herself. Further evidence they were "somewhere else" was that it messed with Diane's memory or identity. She now thought of herself as "Linda". Interestingly, though, things change even more after Diane leaves Cooper. Different motel, different car, now Cooper's in a town or small city instead of an isolated motel in the middle of nowhere. As if it took some time for the reality to fully change or for Cooper to proceed further into it.
My thoughts here is that Cooper and Diane firstly enter a part of the lodge, a place where a doppelganger of Diane exist! They have to do the ritual sex to enter the other timeline where it would lead them to be Richard and Linda. If that is the case then Diane might be trapped in the Lodge again! Or maybe she has to serve another duty and leaves Coop in the bed with the paper. The lodge is the reason I think why Coop takes Diane and no one else
There could be also a probability that DoopelDiane change with Diane and the ritual sex fails and Coop is going to an alternate of the other timeline.
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