Understanding Season 3: How the Fireman “Brings Back Some Memories”

The Fireman believes in balance

Sometimes a crop field needs a controlled fire to raze the land and make it fertile again. It’s possible the Black Lodge goes through ebbs and floes in that way. You know, going back to starting positions.

It’s also possible, if you look at the Evolution of the Arm as an indicator, that it’s a step the Black Lodge needs to go through in order to properly evolve to a new form. Make them die to fix their hearts, so to speak.

Evolution is a state the Fireman fosters in everyone because he believes in balance above all else. Balance leads to evolution.

A major indicator of balance in Season 3 is the color purple. The Fireman’s domain is bathed in a purple sea. Jacoby notes in The Secret History of Twin Peaks that his glasses are meant to balance the two hemispheres of the brain and I believe it’s also supposed to balance the two levels of reality that are causing so much trouble to each other. The colors of Jacoby’s lenses give the wearer a purplish hue to how they see the world. And every chance we see purple in Season 3, it appears on a point of balance. The Polish Accountant who kills Hutch and Chantal has on a purple shirt. Gersten Hayward is wearing purple when she realizes how bad a situation she was in (which says to me she’s acknowledged her genuine reality and can begin healing). Naido herself is dressed in purple and seems to focus Cooper on the task at hand.

And in between Parts of Season 3, we go back to the Roadhouse to achieve a certain balance as viewers. We are supposed to go back to our center, back to starting positions, as we continue to experience the images Lynch puts before us.

Audrey’s own evolution into acknowledging her actual physical situation happens when she’s bathed in purple at the Roadhouse. She finds balance inside herself, acts more like herself than she had in years, and acknowledges the place where she appeared to be is not her physical location. She wakes where she is physically real. She can begin to heal, she begins to evolve.

Outside the musical interludes where our brains are allowed to relax, very few things in Season 3 are balanced. The stuttering time found around portals is unstable and therefore proves an imbalance all by itself. So does the physical world’s appetite problem.

But balance is being achieved, person by person. The Mitchums lose their violent tendencies as they get close to CooperDougie, and they help him get to Twin Peaks. Ben Horne feels the hum and he stops throwing only money at problems, even begins to invest himself in the possibility of growing love with Beverly, while also helping to rescue his brother. Freddy wants to help people and the Fireman enlists him in the quest to knock BOB down for the count. Harriet Hayward and even Donna, per The Final Dossier, find a peace within themselves (albeit on different schedules) and go into the medical profession. Nadine heals herself and finds love prospects with Jacoby while also allowing Ed to heal himself, and Norma heals herself by making her own balance more important than the growth of her business with Walter, thus leaving room for her to find love with the newly healing Ed. Margaret Coulson and Carl Rodd were abducted as children, most likely by the White Lodge denizens, and have evolved into healers as well. Carl helps his tenant not sell his blood, and he brings a mother to accept the situation that her child was killed so that she can begin her healing process. Margaret uses her words to help people find truth within the world and themselves, and once that happens balance begins to be achieved.

Jacoby himself may be doing the Fireman’s work as well: he met giants on a shamanic vision quest, documented in an excerpt from his book in Secret History. He writes about how uncomfortable the tall ones made him feel, that they were cold, reptilian. He had not found balance then (it took the death of Laura Palmer for him to properly begin to shovel himself out of his sh*t, another proof Laura’s death needs to return to the collective consciousness) but I suspect his meeting laid the groundwork for the work he was supposed to do, which I am well on record supporting as one of the most important messages in the show: spreading the message of balance and accepting your reality in order to heal en masse. He’s even working with the Fireman’s alchemical imagery, though it had to be shovels rather than an orb for this worldly agent.

Regardless of which character you look at, the pattern is the same: Once balanced, the instinct is to heal and to grow. Some may call this a way of evolving.

And we can’t talk about evolving without mentioning Major Briggs. The details of Briggs’ role is murky at best as we have no POV from the man himself, but what we do know is he puts in place a number of things that in the end lead the good guys of the sheriff’s department to Jack Rabbit’s Palace. His note directs them to grab a handful of dirt before they get there, which to me is another proof that they were crossing from one reality level to another and they needed a mooring to remember how to come back to Earth.

Why go through all that? So that Andy Brennan, a good man and a helper by nature, can get a vision that will give him the information when needed to help end the earthly tenure of both DoppelCooper and BOB. Briggs knew this would happen most likely because he was working with the Fireman, who plays long game better than anyone. I suspect Briggs also knew that eventually his physical body would be killed along with Ruth Davenport in “the Zone” but I suspect Briggs was completely Obi Wan about it by then because Bill Hastings said his death was beautiful as Briggs’ head separated from his body. Briggs’ head then passed by the purple sea where Cooper saw him (and Briggs may or may not have triggered something in Cooper’s memory by saying “blue rose”), and then took up residence as a Wizard Of Oz-style floating head in the White Lodge as a Lodge entity and peer of the Fireman.

Let me put it plainly: Briggs was once a man but he has evolved.

Extrapolating that we are humans just like Garland Briggs began, this means we are like toddlers to the Fireman, and we can grow into an ascended being if we just achieve repeated moments of balance and evolve stage by stage. Some may even say alchemical stage by alchemical stage.

The White Lodge denizens, based on Major Briggs’s head, leads me to believe there are evolutions we can grow into. The Buddhist reincarnation Lynch tends to be fond of also believes in this form of evolution over time and that makes me think this is an intentional connection to make.

The Fireman looks to Dale Cooper as the kind of person who can become a magician and can evolve like Major Briggs, but also knows Cooper’s unable to see the bigger picture outside Cooper’s experience up to now. Cooper, as much as he screwed up the timestream with the Laura removal in Part 17, is comparatively just a child, momentarily lost in understandable shortsightedness and hubris. And with experience he’ll learn.

Dale Cooper and the Fireman’s Plan

When Cooper agreed to help the Black Lodge, he appeared to be mired in worldly concerns as well as sympathetic to a whole race of denizens who don’t deserve to die. He wanted to help the Lodge with their troubles, but he was being purposefully short-sighted. In the first scene of Season 3, he is being primed as a sleeper agent of the White Lodge, not to be triggered until he hears the sounds of Laura being taken from Cooper in the forest of the Part 17 Fire Walk With Me flashback/rewrite. This means the Fireman knew Cooper needed to steal Laura from the timestream by way of Lodge reality. The Fireman knows there’s a reason for this to happen, even if it’s just to give Cooper a choice to make.

The Fireman allowed Cooper to take Laura because he also knew that Lodge-influenced memories in the physical reality was no more indelible than faerie glamour. This can be undone, and I’ll explain how in a bit, but for now the Fireman knew Cooper needed to learn his lesson firsthand or he was never going to learn it.

The Fireman has the patience of a parent with Cooper. He saw what the Black Lodge and Cooper’s plan did to reality, but he didn’t get angry with Cooper. He saw kids wanting what they want immediately when they want it. He saw it like the kids broke something while they were playing. While they were learning how to use their bodies better. In this case, how to use their souls better.

The Fireman used his talk with Cooper in Part 1 like an episode of Daniel Tiger for adults: don’t mess with the timestream, you may break something. And when you do, own up to it, move forward, and fix it. He doesn’t tell Cooper judgmentally because Cooper just doesn’t know. It’s not Cooper’s fault he’s ignorant of so many things, he can only learn so many things at so fast a pace. The Fireman can tell Cooper every reason under the sun why he shouldn’t do something but it’s not Cooper’s fault he doesn’t listen to everything because he doesn’t even know how to listen yet. He’ll get there, with time and patience. We can all see how Cooper will be when he’s all grown up into a mature Lodge spirit. All his assertive leadership will make him a good Fireman one day. The Fireman gives Cooper the information that will help him succeed, then puts Cooper back in the timestream, hoping this time when Cooper hears the sound he makes the choice to listen.

The Fireman’s plan has three parts, as far as I can decipher when it comes to fixing the imbalance in Season 3:

A) rid Cooper of BOB

B) send the Golden Laura Orb into the world

And C) push the Lodge back into its proper proportion

All three of these goals will put any number of characters back to starting positions or present in their lives, and therefore able to look through their darkness and move into the future. This includes Cooper, Diane, and even Laura Palmer.

The BOB Problem

Margaret contacts Hawk, which leads to uncovering Laura’s prom photo. The path to Betty Briggs, the message in the chair, and Bobby’s interpretation led the way to Jack Rabbit’s Palace and Andy getting his vision. It allowed Naido to be in the proper place to unlock Diane once her tulpa accepted its trauma and alchemically changed, and Andy also readied Lucy to begin the process of removing BOB from DoppelCooper.

From another direction, Freddie received his marching orders from the Fireman and was directed to being in the right place when he stuck up for his dumb friend James (and helped him from getting the crap beat out of him) when James couldn’t help being too nice to a woman who happened to be married to someone else.

And the Mitchums were called to courier in Dale Cooper, so that after the BOB problem was literally punched away from the world he could unlock Diane somehow from her safehouse inside (that uncomfortable moment of whitewashing known as) Naido.

Once this happens, we have still-in-cooperation-with-the-Black-Lodge Dale Cooper doing his thing by removing Laura Palmer from the Lodge-adjacent level of the timestream, but then he begins a time loop again. And this time when he leaves the Lodge, Diane (for the purposes of this argument I’m assuming she’s the real Diane rather than an entity calling herself Diane, neither option being provable), who was freed from Dale’s last time loop, is waiting for him.

And they may be predominantly in the physical world when they meet but they drive 430 miles away and reenter Lodge-space where Dale (who I still believe is confronting his shadow self by living as his shadow self) assists Diane through the moment of Diane’s final trauma: the night DoppelCooper raped and presumably killed her.

Just as Dale—in Episode 29—saw himself and Caroline stabbed on the floor of the waiting room, Diane sees herself outside the hotel where “Dale” took her before revealing his BOB side. Then Diane, who seems to be steeling herself for what she knows will happen, confronts this scene from her life head-on. And just like how Annie and Caroline switched back and forth in Dale’s scene, Dale and DoppelCooper seamlessly and continuously switch back and forth for Diane’s. And by the end, Diane appears to have looked through this darkness and moved on from it as she’s never seen again.

Did Dale confront his shadow finally in these Part 18 scenes? Or is there still work to be done there? It’s hard to say. He ushered Diane through her trauma, ushered Carrie through hers later on like a Bodhisattva  (I’ll get to that), but Season 3 leaves him at the same point Jeffries was in at the end of his Fire Walk With Me scene. It’s hard to know if Dale will go the way of Jeffries or of Briggs, but I do know he has potential for either and the choice is his to make because the Fireman can only give people the chance to make a choice.

Like he did for the whole world when he made the Golden Laura Orb.

Brings back some memories

The Fireman made the Golden Laura Orb in response to seeing BOB. The BOB orb that we saw had a constantly moving Frank Silva inside it. The Golden Laura Orb had a still image inside it. I made a case here that this difference means something huge, but it’s not about counteracting a frog-bug in Sarah Palmer or just being a portal into the White Lodge. The real reason why I think this image is used is because it’s supposed to remind the physical Twin Peaks world of what the true fate of Laura Palmer was.

If the world can remember that Laura Palmer died, the belief of people living in a nested dual-reality will be able to push away this false Lodge-adjacent reality where Cooper saves Laura from death. Belief in the true story will take shape as truth in the Lodge reality as well, thus reasserting the reality where the Black Lodge spins out of control and needs to die and evolve.

The homecoming photo has always meant “remember Laura’s story.” It was at the end of almost every Twin Peaks episode in Seasons 1 and 2. Even when we were hip deep in Evelyn Marsh and Little Nicky (I know, bad image) it always ended with that photo telling us, even when Laura doesn’t seem to have anything to do with things, that she (and the trauma her photo represents) is always going to be here looming behind everything.

Does the homecoming photo serve the same purpose in Season 3? It’s the first image of every episode except the first one so you tell me.

The opening moments of Season 3 is reused footage between Dale and Laura from Episode 29, where she says I’ll see you in 25 years. We are reminded of this.

There’s a hard fade followed by fog, recalling the opening moments of the Pilot. We are shown the mill for the only time, to make us remember how it was before. We are shown the high school’s hallway, then a slow-motion version of the scene where the nameless girl runs screaming through the courtyard. Her scream is expressed trauma, and she is reacting to the death of Laura Palmer. This is what we’ve been asked to think about when we are shown the trophy case with that homecoming photo in it. This is what we’re still thinking about when we get a close-up of the homecoming photo, and when the title font words “Twin Peaks” are displayed on screen.

We are methodically reminded of Laura Palmer’s specific tragic story.

And that’s exactly what I think that image in the golden orb is supposed to do to the residents of Twin Peaks as well. The Fireman sends the golden orb into the world as a living memory that can reassert physical reality’s truth over things. It’s a golden shovel for the world to see through the delusion. It is the exact reverse of a tulpa: a creation in Lodge-space with physical shape that is meant to recreate memories inside people’s minds.

Memory is under fire everywhere in the physical world. The Lodge-assisted arrival of Ruth Davenport’s head and Major Briggs’ body in her apartment makes Ruth’s neighbor Marjorie such a mess that she can’t help the police do simple things like let them inside, and Hank the janitor thinks the police are after him as if he can’t get out of his own fear’s way. And this is only one small moment from well outside Twin Peaks proper. The Lodge messes with people everywhere.

Cooper’s removal of Laura Palmer from the Lodge-affected timestream similarly veils the physical world (up to and including the town’s microfiche) and it needs to be undone by the reintroduction of the physical memory through the golden orb.

The photo begins its work as Margaret suggests Hawk reopen the investigation. Hawk understands first it was a murder. Frank Truman also understands this to be true because he’s newly returned to Twin Peaks and hasn’t been charmed by the proverbial faerie dust on this issue. And the photo, when it’s sitting on the table, begins its work in earnest with Bobby Briggs, who says it all: “Brings back some memories.”

Audrey, mentioning the little girl who lived down the lane, seems to be inciting a ghost story against Charlie when he says he’ll end her story too (does he really mean in a Lodge-adjacent cover-up of actual events like what Cooper achieved?), and she eventually pushes the Lodge side of her world (that went away along with the false Laura ending) away from her life, eventually ending up in what looks like may be her hair salon (long story if you haven’t read Final Dossier). It’s as if, even though she can’t see the homecoming photo, she feels it, and the little girl who lived down the lane is the verbal-only explanation of the homecoming photo.

Even the Evolution of the Arm, the only known evolved member of the Black Lodge, seems to know what’s really going on, and is possibly beginning to accept the fate of its home. The Evolution of the Arm too incites the little girl who lives down the lane, as if the tragic story of Laura Palmer is reasserting itself into even the Lodge’s reality. It’s unraveled the Black Lodge’s plan that quickly.

The more often the physical memory of Laura’s death asserts itself over the Lodge-adjacent memories, the more barriers go up between the realities. The more balance is achieved.

But to seal the deal, Laura’s trauma needs to understand what happened to her so her circle can be complete.

Carrie Page and Laura Palmer

In the Fire Walk With Me flashback, the sounds the Fireman wanted Cooper to listen to (his trigger to become a White Lodge agent in earnest) was likely the sound of an angel coming to get her. And the scream is identical to the one Carrie Page screams when being removed from the Lodge in Part 2.

There are two possibilities here:

1. Carrie was created specifically inside this Flashback. “Your Laura disappeared,” she tells James. “It’s just me.” This could be Laura’s trauma created here, then removed by Cooper. Possibly she’d grow into the Carrie Cooper meets in Parts 1 and 2.
2. This version of Laura was taken by an angel just like Laura was at the end of Fire Walk With Me in an inverted version of that same ending as seen outside the Waiting Room but still inside the Lodge. And still next to Cooper when it happens.

Though I think this is a false memory, the Fireman still sends an angel to take this Laura away. And yes, I now think the Fire Walk With Me angel is an agent of the Fireman. She was in the Dutchman picture in Laura’s room. That picture was given to Laura by the Chalfonts, who appear to be allied with the White Lodge more strongly than the Black Lodge. Possibly that picture was a choice for Laura: an escape route, or an avenue for her angel protector to find her.

I’d say there was just one angel, except there absolutely were two in Andy’s Fireman vision. One on either side of Laura. I’m most comfortable thinking these angels both saved Laura, once in the real version, and once in Cooper’s unofficial version.

And where did these angels bring her? To keep her safe in the White Lodge safehouse room while she stayed inside American Girl just like her similarly-fated roommate Diane stayed in Naido (I’ve dug into this concept here for more specifics). Laura, while incomplete because upon her death her trauma separated from her before she could accept it, needs her tulpa to accept its fate just like Diane’s did. Once the tulpa turns into a gold lump of metal then Laura’s soul will be free to come out, become herself, and go on her Lodge trial just as Diane did in Part 18.

But Cooper needed to fetch Laura’s tulpa first because Carrie cannot remember this past as Laura. She has not had the trigger to remember quite yet. She has not come across her “:-) ALL” or her “listen to the sounds.” So Cooper’s going to bring her to where her trigger is: The Palmer House.

And let me remind you, I’m suggesting this is an in-Lodge mission that is simultaneously in our physical world. There is no Judy. Judy is just a red herring. Carrie is not a bomb. This is something much more organic happening. This is alchemy on a personal scale.

When Cooper and Carrie get to the Palmer House, it’s very possible that in this Lodge loop Norma had decided to never franchise, hence no “RR 2 Go” painted on the diner. It’s also possible Sarah really did die and her haunting presence no longer resides in the Palmer house. But I’m beginning to think that, much as Briggs appeared to have skipped like a stone forward over time (having barely aged since his purported death in 1989), Cooper was also skipping over time in this new Lodge loop. Diane’s confronting of her trauma in the hotel room may have been a catalyst to put Cooper into a hibernation and this could be the equivalent of a hit of fingerprints on Cooper’s own journey ahead in time. He may not know that he’s skipping, just like how Jeffries didn’t know what was happening the first time he lost two years. Cooper may be so far ahead in time here that the town of Twin Peaks has no recognizable residents left. It’s possible that’s how long it took for the town to heal enough for the trauma-brought-to-life Carrie Page to come in and put the finishing touch on things.

What was the trigger Carrie needed to finally acknowledge things? Diane’s tulpa had “:-) ALL” to be able to acknowledge “he raped me”. Carrie needed Laura’s childhood house. Specifically, she needed it to be a haunted house. She needed the walls of that house to remember the moment of Sarah’s grief when she realized her daughter was missing and probably dead. Carrie needed the house to replay her mother calling out her name, something we’ve seen that house do so many times. Carrie needed that house to do its haunted house thing so that she could acknowledge “my father killed me” and now Carrie the tulpa can go back to the Lodge and turn into a little gold metal ball so that the real Laura’s soul “can go out now” from that room in the White Lodge, hatch out of American Girl, and do the hardest thing she could do by witnessing her trauma from the inside one more time with hindsight. And once she does that, she’ll be able to “go out now” and ascend like Major Briggs. And like Cooper will, once he goes through at least one more time loop after the longest whispered message yet from Carrie, or possibly some other new aspect of Laura Palmer.

Or maybe this time it really is Laura Palmer instead of someone who just feels like they know her.