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Third Day Theories: A Recap of the Latest Theories, Analysis and Predictions

Generated from Season 3 Part 7, “There’s a body, all right.”

a man sweeping the floor of the bang bang bar
Sweeping Man (William Clouter) and Jean Michel Renault (Walter Olkewicz), Part 7.

Welcome back, dear reader.  So, we thought Part 6 was plot heavy?  Wow, this episode was packed with payoffs, and a few teasers towards future developments.  I’m going to be light on big theories this week, but we’ll have a hefty Speed Round at the end.  Let’s dig in.

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Theory: Annie Blackburn does not exist.

Analysis: At long last, I can say this theory is *false*!  Whew, that feels great.

This theory, of course, stems from the Annie-shaped hole in the Secret History of Twin Peaks, but it has now been confirmed to not be true.  At least, not in *this* reality (more on that in a minute).  Deputy Hawk explains who she is the Frank Truman and that’s the end of it.  She exists.

Now, some to do has been made about the fact that Hawk says something to the effect that she’s “a girl who went into that place”, and doesn’t describe her relationship to Cooper or mention that she’s Norma’s sister.  Personally, I think that’s reading a bit too much into things.  To Hawk, she probably is just “a girl”, especially 25 years later.

Unfortunately, we still can’t put to bed the theory that she’s a “manufactured being” (or some other Lodge entity), but this was a good step in the right direction.

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Theory: There are alternative timelines / realities at work here.

Analysis: We took some steps forward and backward this week in this arena.  First, let’s talk about the non-confirming evidence.  With the arrival of the Great Northern hotel key back in Twin Peaks, this would seem to finally put to bed and theories about the “Dougie Jones” storyline being set in 2003 while the rest of the show is set in 2015 (as we’ve discussed previously).  The Post Office is not *that* slow.  So we’ve hopefully made some progress, though expect the die-hards to hold out a few more parts.

While there might not be divergent timelines being shown to us, the involvement of some sort of time travel got a huge boost this week.  One of the biggest reveals this week was that, while the headless body in Buckhorn is indeed that of Garland Briggs, it’s of a Garland Briggs that hasn’t aged in 25 years.  Don’t forget though, his prints have shown up 15 other times in the last 25 years, so we’re not talking just a single leap even.  Briggs was already established as a bit of a time traveler back in Season 2, when he came back from the White Lodge wearing a WWII-era pilot outfit.

Now, if you were scratching your head about the final scene of Part 7 at the diner, what you may have missed is that the entire scene changed after Bing pops in and asks if anyone has seen Billy.  The staff is in different places and the entire crowd of extras has switched out.  Looking around, you can see the plant is in the same position on the counter and hasn’t grown or changed in any way.  There is apparently one less pastry on a shelf.  This could just be a time jump ahead (or back) an hour or so.  Or it could be something else.  I’ve also heard that Bing himself walks out of the diner at the very end of that scene, after all the credits have rolled.

There’s one more minor possibility that I only take semi-seriously.  We started out Part 7 with Jerry Horne calling brother Ben in a panic that he’s lost in the woods.  During their conversation, he says “You say the same thing” to Ben.  Could he be caught in a time loop?  Nah, probably not.

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Theory: The “Dougie Jones” stuff is all a dream.

Analysis: I’m going to start out here by pointing you to another article on the 25 Years Later site, Dream a Little Dream of Me.  Lindsay and Eileen have done as excellent job of compiling all of the evidence, through Part 6, that supports the “Dream Theory”.  I can’t recommend it enough.

Here in Part 7, we didn’t get much of the Dougie-verse, but what we did get continued along in the same vein.  People continue to interpret Cooper-as-Dougie in the most generous ways imaginable.  When he mimics the “come here” hand gestures of his coworker, she assumes he wants her to bring the police to his office.  He fumbles his way through the police interview with a few copied words from Janey-E.  Just when a few folks recently have alluded to something being wrong and needing to take him to a doctor, in Part 7 that all goes away again and everything goes back to abnormal.

Of course, the craziest, most surreal moment of this Part came while Good Cooper was wrestling with Ike the Spike for control of the gun, and the Evolution of the Arm appears, yelling for him to “Squeeze his hand off!”  This was different than previous communications from Philip Gerard in the Red Room (most notably, no curtains), which leads me to believe it was the Arm’s Doppelganger, not the Arm.  But why would he be urging Good Cooper to do that?  Might it have something to do with the funny smell attributed to Ike in the later witness interviews?

On the side of disconfirming evidence for the Dream Theory, as previously mentioned, Ben Horne is given the key to Room 315 by his new assistant Beverly, having arrived in the mail that day.  As expected, the Great Northern went over to key cards 20+ years ago, which helps him date this back to the room where Agent Cooper was shot.  No further progress there, but he did pocket the key.  My prediction: he’ll hand it over to his daughter Audrey, remembering her infatuation with Cooper.  But the point is that, like Dougie’s wedding ring, here again we have an artifact from the “Dougie Jones” storyline that has appeared in the “real world”.  It can’t be just a dream if these things have real existence.  I’ll say though, I don’t think that interpretation builds on a firm understanding of David Lynch’s body of work.

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Theory: Bad Cooper “visited” Audrey Horne, leading to the birth of Richard Horne.

Analysis: It was revealed by Doc Hayward that Bad Cooper went into ICU while he was at the hospital, and theories abound about him doing nefarious things to Audrey who was there in a coma after the bank vault explosion.  I could always be proved wrong, but I just don’t believe that’s where Frost and Lynch are taking us.  Lynch by himself?  Maybe.  But Lynch tempered by Frost?  Sorry, I just don’t buy it.

I think the more obvious answer would be that he was there to get the Owl Cave ring from Annie, who was likely also in the ICU at that time.  We saw, in the Missing Pieces, a nurse take the ring off Annie’s hand.  How about maybe that nurse was under BOB’s control?  This makes so much more sense to me.

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Theory: Bad Cooper “visited” Diane, in the same manner.

Analysis: It goes without saying that something bad went down between Diane and Bad Cooper.  “I’ll always remember that night” he says.  Again, the internet has gone wild with theories abounding about Bad Cooper having raped Diane, and again, I just don’t buy it.  What she expresses to Gordon is that something is missing *in his heart*.  To me, that says that he betrayed her, not hurting her physically but rather emotionally.

What I envision goes more like this.  Bad Cooper returns to Philadelphia and confesses his love to Diane.  They have a night of wild passion, but he vanishes in the morning, never to contact her again.  Hurting someone so close to Good Cooper is just a bonus, because his real objective is to get ahold of Dale’s tapes to Diane.  Granted, this presumes that Bad Cooper doesn’t have all of Good Cooper’s memories, and thus he needs this information in order to play the role.  Those few who saw him around Twin Peaks have all commented that he acted strange and/or something was wrong about him.  As theories go, it may be a bit thin on supporting evidence, but when I re-watch their interaction, the things they say to each other make a lot more sense than they would through the lens of darker theories.

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Speed Round:

  • Many are predicting that because there were news crews on the scene at the attack in front of Lucky 7 Insurance, the story will break the national news and be picked up by someone in Buckhorn, at the FBI, or in Twin Peaks itself. My prediction is a bit more subtle.  I think it will just be picked up locally, but that will be enough to alert the Casino owning Mitchum brothers, leading to yet another threat Good Cooper will have to face in his semi-comatose state.
  • Gordon Cole has a picture of an ear of corn in his office. Theories have been proposed that it’s a garmonbozia reference, or that it’s Lynch acknowledging that some things on this show are “corny”.  I think a more obvious reference would be that for years, people have been saying that the Owl Cave symbol upside-down (or right-side up, no one knows for sure) looks like an ear of corn.  Either way, he’s probably poking a bit of fun at us.
  • In case you missed it, there is some kind of coded message in the windows of the private jet taken by our FBI crew out to South Dakota (there’s a good video of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81YppIvdXMQ). Rest assured, your Reddit team is hard at work trying to decode the message, but amazingly, as of three days later, it remains a mystery.  A few things we do know: it’s not natural (there’s obvious evidence of digital editing), there are 7 windows total with one always being whited out, and it’s not ASCII or a simple numbers-to-letters cypher.
  • Was Diane’s boy toy in the bar scene from Part 6? It wouldn’t really affect anything, but I’m just curious.
  • It’s interesting that they’ve been painting in a bit of darkness onto the canvas of Gordon Cole’s character this season. Despite his denials to Denise, he obviously has earned the reputation he has for being a bit of a letch with the young ladies.  He’s also caught being dishonest with Albert about not hearing him.  All I’m saying is that we don’t want this guy going into the Red Room, because he’d spawn a doppelgänger for sure.
  • Probably irrelevant, but Janie has an effect on the cops not unlike her effect on the loan shark thugs from the previous hour. She almost seems to be able to influence them to her will. This is a bit odd, but not necessarily any odder than anything else going on.
  • It seems clear now that the bar “where she drinks” was back in Philadelphia, given how quickly both Albert and then later Albert with Gordon were able to go visit Diane. This was a minor mystery from Part 6 resolved.  Perhaps interesting that despite whatever happened to Diane and her resulting animosity for the FBI, she stuck around in the area.
  • So far, Harry Truman has been on the show more than Audrey Horne. Ha!  Many are predicting that he will, in fact, make an eventual surprise appearance on the show.  With all the teasing of his character coupled with the hints that they are going to kill him off, I actually like this prediction.  There was this whole swirl around Michael Ontkean initially being excited about returning to Season 3 and then weirdly pulling himself out of running.  I suspect Lynch found out he could get Robert Forster and put Michael on the back burner.  But they didn’t kill off his character outright, giving us a bit of hope.  A nice parting scene of Harry and Cooper going off camping in the woods would be a killer ending to Season 3, wouldn’t it?
  • Doc Hayward’s Skype name is “middlebury_doc”, a nod to actor Warren Frost’s actual home town of Middlebury, VT. Also a nice nod to have his scene be played on Father’s Day (Warren Frost is Mark Frost’s father, in case you somehow didn’t know).
  • Cole was whistling an actual song by the band Rammstein called “Engel”. Lynch is a fan of the band, apparently.
  • When Gordon explains the secret code to Tammy, he says “I’m very very happy to see you again old friend.” When Bad Cooper greeted Gordon, he said “It’s yrev very good to see you again old friend” (I checked).  “I’m .. happy” versus “It’s .. good”  Meaningful or just terribly sloppy?  I can’t say.
  • Bad Cooper’s voice is weird and slow again when he talks to Diane. It seems our previous theories about that being an effect of the accident or being drained of garmonbozia were incorrect.  On Bickering Peaks podcast, they theorized it’s an effect of his voice passing through electronics, which I like.  Or he’s putting on some sort of show specifically for the FBI.
  • Why doesn’t Ray look like a man walking the Green Mile? I had been predicting Bad Cooper would just kill him outright in the prison, but now I wonder if their past interaction was all some sort of a deception for Darya?  If that was in the past, that is.
  • And one last humorous prediction for ya: given how pumped up Janey-E is in those post-attack interviews, I’m predicting Dougie Jones is going to find out he was manufactured for a “special purpose” after Sonny Jim goes to bed tonight. Or as u/BrothaBacon put it to me, “Janey-E gives two rides”?

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As always, please reply below with your own comments and corrections, or give me your own well thought out theory.  You can catch me on various Facebook groups, such as “Twin Peaks (2017)” or our own “25 Years Later” page, on the Reddit r/twinpeaks forum, or email me at catnapspirit@gmail.com.  See ya next week.

Written by Brien Allen

Brien Allen is the last of the original crazy people who responded to this nutjob on Facebook wanting to start an online blog prior to Twin Peaks S3. Some of his other favorite shows have been Vr.5, Buffy, Lost, Stargate: Universe, The OA, and Counterpart. He's an OG BBSer, Trekkie, Blue Blaze Irregular, and former semi-professional improviser. He is also a staunch defender of putting two spaces after a period, but has been told to shut up and color.

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2 Comments

  1. I believe that the evolution of the arm was telling cooper to squeeze his hand hand off so as to leave an artifact of Ike in the world. It will be interesting to see what may become of that.
    Also worth noting is that the slogan on the back of the Great Northern key that Jade sends back , at least in the original TP that we saw, was never a slogan of theirs. It was dialogue by Cooper.

  2. u/BrothaBacon here. I just could not get over Coops smile when Janey-e shows the picture of Coop (actually I believe it was a picture of Dougie and Jade) and Jade and Coop says “Jade give 2 rides”. Anyhow, thanks for the shout out. I hope to soon post some picture I bought from Richard Beymer. He did some behind the scene photographs that I have hung on my wall for the last 20 years. I would like to ask him if it is okay first.