Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Discussion of each of the 18 parts of Twin Peaks the Return

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

Post by ArthurKing »

Who is the dreamer?
Laura is the one.
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nonemoreblack
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by nonemoreblack »

What I'm finding difficult with the finale is separating my mind and my heart. I can appreciate all the interesting theories about what it means, but I can't switch off the feelings I had for these characters in the original Twin Peaks. The world is already going through a dark time, and Cooper has always been a ray of light. No matter how much I understand the point being made with his arc, it's hurtful for that Cooper to be taken away as soon as he was brought back. And I don't know if I'll ever be able to watch Audrey's old scenes the same way now that she has such a bleak fate. It's just too much nihilism for me to take right now. The theory of it being a new mystery the Fireman is guiding Cooper through is the one I'd most like to believe.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Diane »

It seems to me that the lodge is a place where "stories" are made based on the karma of the souls involved.

What we see in episode 18 is just another story with the same unresolved elements.

But it does seem that both the good and the bad Dale were both dreams and that Richard is somehow the combination of both characters.

I think maybe season 3 is Lynch's meditation on what happens when we believe stories.

But I have two questions--

1. What is this 430 clue? I seem to have missed it.
2. What does the giant say to Dale about Richard and Linda at the beginning of the season? Does anyone recall that? And if Dale is really Richard, then which version of Dale is the giant talking to?
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by CircleOfTrees »

ArthurKing wrote:Who is the dreamer?
Laura is the one.
We are all the dreamers.
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SwiftSails
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by SwiftSails »

Hi! New member here! Only got into Twin Peaks a few years back, but I felt like sharing some of my thoughts on this, even though I think this ending is one of those things that have a billion interpretations.

At this point, I kind of feel like the reason that Laura disappeared on Dale is that he can't actually change the past, no matter how hard he tries.

Richard has been dreaming this whole time... and the dream has been so intense and involved, that he has lost this sense of who he is in the real world and even what year it is. He obviously wants to be Dale... but, in reality, he's a mixture of all three. Dale's ideals, Mr. C's methods, and Dougie's quirks, and he's obsessed with making up for or fixing the past.

As for Laura, part of that history must be "real," but a few of the things in his reality that he knew have drifted into his dream. Perhaps he had done some research on Laura already and knew these elements of her past... and where she currently worked, and things like that. But, he had never really been to the real Twin Peaks... and when he got there.... it was different from his imagination.

He knew, at the end, that it was time to wake up. He needed to get back to finding Laura. He had been dreaming a long time, and he hadn't finished his job. Diane, the one woman who was in love with him his whole Twin Peaks life was Linda, a woman that he was in a failing relationship with that was finally coming to an end.

It hurts to think that most of Twin Peaks may not be real... that it is all a dream, but... that is really the feeling *I* get from all this.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Cipher »

SwiftSails wrote:Hi! New member here! Only got into Twin Peaks a few years back, but I felt like sharing some of my thoughts on this, even though I think this ending is one of those things that have a billion interpretations.

At this point, I kind of feel like the reason that Laura disappeared on Dale is that he can't actually change the past, no matter how hard he tries.

Richard has been dreaming this whole time... and the dream has been so intense and involved, that he has lost this sense of who he is in the real world and even what year it is. He obviously wants to be Dale... but, in reality, he's a mixture of all three. Dale's ideals, Mr. C's methods, and Dougie's quirks, and he's obsessed with making up for or fixing the past.

As for Laura, part of that history must be "real," but a few of the things in his reality that he knew have drifted into his dream. Perhaps he had done some research on Laura already and knew these elements of her past... and where she currently worked, and things like that. But, he had never really been to the real Twin Peaks... and when he got there.... it was different from his imagination.

He knew, at the end, that it was time to wake up. He needed to get back to finding Laura. He had been dreaming a long time, and he hadn't finished his job. Diane, the one woman who was in love with him his whole Twin Peaks life was Linda, a woman that he was in a failing relationship with that was finally coming to an end.

It hurts to think that most of Twin Peaks may not be real... that it is all a dream, but... that is really the feeling *I* get from all this.
That ... tracks, but only to the point before you get to Laura hearing Sarah call her name, and shrieking the lights out in the house. We switch to her POV at the end.

It would also be unsatisfactory, I think, to remove Laura's presence in the story, as its heart, after Fire Walk With Me.

So at this point I resist any readings besides those that interpret the series as having literal events that read dream-like, rather than dreams that read literally.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by tresojos »

ArthurKing wrote:Who is the dreamer?
Laura is the one.
i feel like i know her, but sometimes my arms bend back
donna madonna mañana fofana osama bin laden hayward
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Ashok »

sewhite2000 wrote:Almost everyone who has commented on it has expressed hatred for the Freddy/BOB fight scene, but I thought everything leading up to it was a wonderful exercise in tension
Every single scene with Freddie Sykes was gold for me. The green glove kid also got some of the best closure of all the characters in S3. :lol:
"Whatever happened, happened." -Daniel Faraday
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Nighthawk »

BHell wrote: 1.) The Fireman is not malevolent. He might not be conciously benevolent either, but at least he is battling Judy, who we know to be a force of evil. Just like Bob, Judy seems to be interested in pain and sorrow (= Garmonbozia), which could be a reason, why she/it chose Sarah as a host, after the latter lost daughter and husband. Where else would you find that much pain?
It seems that the giant is meant to be inscrutable in his goals, beyond human concepts of good and evil, though on the balance of things he seems to be working more like an agent of good.
BHell wrote: 2.) The place, where Cooper and Laura end up, does seem bleak, yes. But Laura ending up there is probably not down to Cooper or the Fireman, but initially caused by Judy. Cooper (in league with the fireman) chases after her. And revisiting his dialogue with Diane, right before crossing over, he seems to be aware of a certain risk to himself (and Diane, for that matter) - that they could end up not being quite themselves. Considering this, it's even more perplexing that he reckons that Laura would be "awake" - or that Twin Peaks would be Twin Peaks.
But in the end, as cruel as it feels, Laura does awaken. And thus, for the first time our protagonists, both deeply flawed characters (intriguingly, here they are even more flawed than their "real world"(?) personas) are both together (outside the logdes) and presumably ready to do whatever needs to be done.
There is a lot of uncertainty as to when the reality shift actually takes place. Arguably it could be as early as when the wall clock at the TP Sheriff's station starts repeating the same second tick, stuck in a loop. The scene that follows, of Cooper opening the door to the Great Northern boiler room using room 315 key is straight out of a dream.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by BHell »

Diane wrote: 1. What is this 430 clue? I seem to have missed it.
2. What does the giant say to Dale about Richard and Linda at the beginning of the season? Does anyone recall that? And if Dale is really Richard, then which version of Dale is the giant talking to?
1.) "430" is one of three clues the giant gives (the others being "Richard and Linda" and "Two birds with one stone"). As it turns out, Cooper has to drive exactly 430 miles to cross over to wherever he crosses over to. As for how he knew how to make sense of that clue ... no idea. But in the Logde he claimed to understand.

2. As far as I recall, nothing but their names.
And which Dale? Your guess is as good as any. I'd say our "original" one - the one that was trapped for 25 years.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Pinky »

BMS242 wrote:I was firmly in the profoundly disappointed camp for most of the season but last night was special for me. I simply cannot get that final image of Coop's face while Laura is whispering to him out of my head. Lynch was forced to reveal the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer but he left us with the mystery of some terrible truth that was revealed to Coop. Some on here have done a great job of extracting some meaning out of the ending but that face still haunts me.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk
the image and the Badalmenti track are perfect, it's as good as the vibe from the FWWM ending. Levels of mystery remain.

Just about the one thing I wasn't looking forward to with S3 was losing that sense of magic from the end of FWWM, the sense that this whole thing was somehow so much greater than its parts. I was convinced I was getting closure, even if it was the super ambiguous Lynch kind. I never once thought we'd be back where we were at the end of FWWM, albeit this time it's Lynch/Frost's choice, rather than a studio's.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by FlyingSquirrel »

sewhite2000 wrote:
cgs027 wrote:
BHell wrote:
Your observation that Leland's command to find Laura actually happened after the fact in this episode is intriguing, but then again, Leland had exactly the same line of dialogue the first time Cooper escaped the lodge. And within the lodge time does obviously not run in a linear fashion. So, yeah, probably some kind of reciprocal (and entirely non-temporal) causation between Cooper and Leland (and their individual desires) going on.

And you are certainly right on the point that Leland is as imperfect a being as is Cooper, and thus does not see the whole picture. Though that does open up another "loophole": Other lodge spirits should have been able to forsee the consequences of Cooper going after Laura (either by going back to FWWM or by crossing over to a strange (dream?) dimension with Diane). Especially Mike, who guided him throughout the whole Dougie-Plot, but later didn't deem it necessary to warn him of persuing Laura. And where again did Cooper get those "430 miles" from!?

Does that mean, that the (perceived) forces of good wanted the ending to happen the way it did? And if so, why?

Damn, Lynch is crazy. But the good kind of crazy.
Yeah, that kind of bugged me, too. Even the Fireman seems to guide Cooper into this alternate timeline where both him and Laura are shadows of themselves, and are confused and ineffectual. Doesn't seem like the act of a benevolent character. Unless the entire end game was to keep Laura away from Judy (who may or may not have possessed Sarah). Almost like Briggs "hibernating", we have Laura hiding out in this skewed timeline (though she is not aware of it in this case).
But in the final seconds, she once again becomes aware of it, which is why she screams?

I too am confused as the role of the Fireman, who seems to have been the engineer of Laura as some kind of force of good in the world to combat the evil of Judy and BOB? Cooper seems to follow his directions precisely, and now he and Laura are when this really bleak, seemingly hopeless place as the result of his doing so. Now, if this was just the beginning, if there was more to come, maybe I could understand it. Maybe Cooper still has a chance to rectify things. But if this is where the Fireman (and Lynch and Frost) wanted Cooper's journey to end, it makes me feel like his motives are malevolent.
Maybe there's a touch of Blue and Orange Morality (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... geMorality) in the conflict between the Fireman and Judy/BOB, even if most of the time the former line up with good and the latter with evil? OTOH, the Fireman's communications are sufficiently oblique that perhaps Cooper just misunderstood some of what he was being told, or perhaps he was meant to cross into the alternate reality but not to try to undo Laura's death.
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by rocketsan22 »

The over the top Lynch love is a tad annoying...
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by AgentEcho »

Jacob wrote: But Part 17's softness is precisely why it fails to really work in my opinion.
I can see your point, but this seemed to be the point of those scenes. The climax came on startlingly quickly, especially after the long build up to getting there. Everything seemed awfully tidy for a long moment which contrasts with what happened before. There seemed to be an awareness throughout the Return of audiences expectations which were consistently subverted. Here we are given a kind of approximation of a crowd pleasing denouement, only to
the rug pulled out from under us and be presented with something far more challenging and unsettling. Much of this seemed to serve as a contrast to what follows. You mentioned it seemed like a joke and I think it may have been a joke about the absudity of what audiences expect from stories.... he gave us momentarily what "audiences" would expect and highlighted the absurdity of it, right down to having a comic book super hero battle Bob. I think Lynch's counter to what your saying part 17 is soft would be to say, "expecting a tidy ending is soft, and I was just showing you that."
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Re: Part 18 - What is your name? (SPOILERS)

Post by Cipher »

rocketsan22 wrote:The over the top Lynch love is a tad annoying...
If you want to find honest critique of any number of Lynch works here, Return included, you'll find it. Including from people currently head over heels with the finale; I know I'm currently in love with it, but you could find any number of posts where I'm critical of certain elements in ways I'd still stand by.

I guess I'm trying to say that wasn't a very constructive or interesting post. Why not add some of your own thoughts or feelings instead of merely critiquing the vague trends of others'?

Re: Part 17: I love its absolute, over-the-top, pulpy silliness (purpose of the green glove revealed) as a prelude to 18. It's a tease of exactly what the series would look like had the mythological elements been treated in certain ways, as this season hinted during its most exposition-heavy moments they might be. There's a genuine pleasure in it that can't be denied, but then it's onto the final ninety-minutes wherein the series lays bare what it really cares about, and what these elements have always been partially masking.

Both sides of the series are working in perfect tandem there.
Last edited by Cipher on Mon Sep 04, 2017 11:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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