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The “Eyes” Have It: Intuition, Those Crazy Glasses and Hold My Purple Latte!

I found myself thinking about Doppel-Cooper’s or BOB’s (depending on your theories on that little quandary) new MO of shooting out the left eye of his victims. It’s honestly not my favorite part of Twin Peaks to think about and I began wondering why he chose that particular calling card or impulse (“I don’t need anything, I want.”). Then I started seeing eyes (the magician longs to see) and possible connections everywhere in Season 3, which you can do with just about any path you choose to take with Twin Peaks. Here are a few random theories/connections about eyes and Season 3 so far:

Starting with Doppel-Cooper/BOB’s new MO, why does he shoot out the left eye? The left eye has long been associated with intuition, the feminine and the moon and some believe the left eye/side is the receptive side to the supernatural. It seems that Doppel-Cooper/BOB is trying to hide in plain sight to avoid having to go back to the Black Lodge so is this his way of marking it by “blinding” the supernatural receptive eye of people (albeit dead people) from seeing who he truly is? Is it some kind of “tell”? Given that Dale Cooper is known for his intuitive methods (Tibetan rock throw), and that Dale may hopefully someday soon-ish use these methods to stop his doppelganger, could Doppel-Cooper be symbolically trying to block the path of intuition?

Then there’s the connection of the blinding of the left eye/feminine side to the extremely uncomfortable theme of the victimization and killing of female victims in Twin Peaks, which could be the focus of many a graduate thesis that I will leave others to cover. I also don’t think it’s by chance, though it was a tragic hunting accident on her honeymoon, that Nadine’s left eye was shot out.

Next, the glass box room (hold on to your lattes) looks like an eye, and we watch it when not distracted with ahem, lattes, but I noticed that its reflection/shadow (insert Wally Brando joke here) looks even more like an eye. In some traditions, the eye is a portal to many other dimensions so I don’t think it’s a stretch, though its probably is too obvious to point out, that this room is an eye in addition a portal. On the alchemical front (how often do you get to say that?), the eye in the sky foretells events, both past and future. Mike asks Cooper “Is it future, or is it past?” Alchemy, which is referenced both in Secret History and in the red room scene where decoy Dougie Cooper is turned into a small bit of gold, is sometimes associated as one of the left-hand path religions—another connection to the left eye?

Related to the glass box eye, I think, is the way we see the new opening credits with a white circle of light as if through a lens. Is the glass box showing us another dimension or alternative reality that we know as the town of Twin Peaks? Was there ever a town of Twin Peaks? I couldn’t help but notice that the white circle lands on Laura Palmer’s eye in the new opening credits, though I think it’s the right eye but then she is pretty tuned in to the supernatural to say the least and is not blinded to BOB or Doppel-Cooper. There is a lot of hope that she may have a strong role to play as someone who is no longer a victim of BOB’s or the Black Lodge but that remains to be seen.

And now to Dr. Jacoby’s glasses with one red polarized lens for the right eye and one blue polarized lens for the left eye and his optical integration system, covered in The Secret History of Twin Peaks. He mentions that Nadine would have been the perfect candidate to test his system, had she not had that unfortunate accident. He writes that he believes that the red spectrum suppresses logic and the blue spectrum suppresses the intuitive side and that when you view the world through his red and blue polarized glasses it gives “reality” a slightly purple tint and increases integration between the left and right hemispheres. Purple realm, anyone? The woman in the purple realm with no eyes may also be fully integrated and helping guide Cooper though this realm though she may be simply a victim of the mother, or a manipulator tricking Dale into choosing the wrong portal. Doppel-Cooper’s eyes are black which could be his own optical integration system or another tell that he can’t run from the Black Lodge.

In conclusion, there’s definitely an eye theme. Please discuss and let me know what you think!

Written by Linda Novak

Linda Novak, author at 25YL, is an OG Twin Peaks fan and a fan of spooky and witchy TV and films, period drama, art films and Victorian Halloween postcards. She has an MFA in poetry tucked away in a drawer somewhere. She’s married to another Twin Peaks fan (he's got theories) and is a proud mom of twins and a rescued dachshund.

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