HagbardCeline wrote:Okay, I am sure someone else has already suggested this, but doing another re-watch before episode 5 drops 1.33 days...
In FWWM, BOB is trying to do a ritual that will allow him to fully possess Laura. At this point Bob has been in Leland for a while. Leland doesn't give us a specific time, he just says "since he was a boy." Could it be that Bob was about to have to go back into the lodge after a period inside Leland and then he was trying to do this ritual in the train car to he wouldn't have to go back?
Fast Forward to the new series. DoppleCoop has this complex ritual that he's trying to work so he doesn't have to go back. It involves the glass box. It involves the headless corpse. It involves Hastings/Mrs. Hastings. The gray entity (which some have said is holding a gold ball if they play around with the video exposure) is able to enter our world because the guards are gone and Tracy/Ben can gave sex. That entity becomes a proxy for DoppelCoop who loses his creamed corn, but isn't sucked back into the lodge.
Interesting speculation. I personally think the Box Entity could be the powerful "owl" figure Bob-Coop is seeking on his playing card. I think Bob-Coop wants to keep growing in power and its this owl-like thing that he thinks will give it to him.
My own speculation about how much time Bob has to spend in the world before having to return to the Lodge is based on a couple of things:
1. There's a difference between possessing a human host and a doppelganger.
2. There's a practical aspect to Bob sometimes wanting to change hosts: age/other considerations.
Ideas on 1.: A human host is a less perfect host than a doppelganger manufactured exactly as bob likes. Human beings have more free will than doppelgangers, and Bob needs to work within their own specific set of desires and needs. They want to be able to do the dark deeds and sins that having Bob with them allows them to do (their darkest urges and desires), but they also need to be able to keep up appearances of their normal life, like respectable Leland and Bill Hasting's. Part of them keeping up appearances has to do with Bob erasing/overpowering their empathy, conscience, and memory. This is the devilish part of the "contract" between them. What I like about this reading is that it retains culpability for Leland while showing how Bob helped enable him to do what his unconscious desired to do.
When a human invites Bob inside them, there is no time limit on how long Bob can stay. However, doppelgangers have a different set of magical rules to them and Bob's time in them may be more limited. Perhaps Cooper could only be held by the Lodge for 25 years before he had to be returned to the world?
Ideas on 2.: But as we see with Laura, Bob sometimes finds superior hosts to inhabit while possessing his current host. Superior means things like younger, more beautiful, more powerful, all the qualities that would lead to more pleasure and garmonbozia for Bob. Lelend was entering his later years when Bob wanted to shift inside the younger Laura. There may have been no time limit forcing Bob out here, just his own practical desires.
Doppel-Coop also has entered his later years by the time we meet him in The Return. He seems to crave the power of the owl-entity, so he's sort of in a similar position to when he was in Leland and started desiring perhaps a younger/more powerful host. Add to this what I mentioned above about the rules of the Lodge perhaps demanding that Cooper be released, and the time left for Doppel-Coop seems to be ticking away -- unless he can kill Good-Coop and/or join with the owl-entity.
I think The Return is going to show us that there are forces more powerful than Bob and that he, like Earle, will be consumed by them.
