Navigating Between Worlds: Understanding Twin Peaks Season 3

Dale Cooper is the reason for the shape of the In-Between reality

Season 3 is oftentimes described as Dale’s internal process of finding himself, reassembling himself in a Jungian way that I believe Frost intends. But how does that explain all the other characters caught up in Season 3? This Twin Peaks theory supposes Dale Cooper tied the Timeline–and everyone in said Timeline—and Lodgespace together when he entered the Waiting Room in Episode 29 and switched places with his doppelganger.

DoppelCooper is made of pure non-material and Dale is made of pure material, so there is now a tether to the Timeline within Lodgespace and there is a tether to Lodgespace firmly embedded in the Timeline. They shoelaced both states of reality together with their ties to their home states.

The polarities of Dale Cooper have flipped, and Dale (as he exhibits in Parts 17 and 18) is acting like he’s as powerful as (and probably has become) a magician. Therefore, much as Lynch’s dreamer concept, Dale’s formed a state of lucid dream, where, as Mike Wilson from the Drink Full and Descend Podcast defined it, things appear to be exactly half in the waking world and half in the dream. Because Dale is the one who’s reversed polarities, this pulled-together reality is shaped to his order.

Or:

As a human being from the Timeline, Dale experiences his life in chronological order.

As he experiences it through time loops within the lodge, his experience also happens as if they were multiple times over the exact same period of time within the time stream. The evidence of “multiple timelines” comes from this. The evidence of what I’ve been calling Timequake since Secret History comes from this as well, except instead of two tectonic plates interacting and causing vibrational shockwaves through time, it appears that Dale Cooper is the specific nexus point of interaction and all the shockwaves go through and from him. Before I rationalize these “multiple timelines” happening concurrently with the real timeline, I will go through Dale’s time loops in chronological order from his point of view, as if it were all a straight line. Because this is how Dale experiences it.

Dale Cooper in chronological order

As told in a line, we can see how Dale, as a person dealing with trauma, is in a point between understanding and a decision. Another in-between state.

I’ll include it in two rows here for visibility purposes:

In Why Diane and Laura are the Heroes of Twin Peaks – Electricity Nexus #21 I explained a particular choice Dale makes near the beginning of Season 3:

Laura, in Part 1, literally says “You can go out now” but he chooses to wait around for an excuse why he couldn’t. It’s that BOB problem. He’s got to defeat BOB first and get the doppelganger back in. THEN he can leave. It reminds me of how Audrey couldn’t possibly go to the all-important Roadhouse even though her husband said he’d go with her, and she stops going just because he was sleepy. If Dale REALLY wanted to leave the Lodge, he could’ve gone when Laura said he could leave. Instead he chose to believe Gerard and the BOB excuse, because that suited his wants better.

Dale does not go out when Laura/Carrie says he can “go out now,” because he is not ready. Instead he meanders his way into an in-between state as Dougie. I will explain later how Dale’s state of mind personifies his particular time loops, but first, let’s establish where they are.

During Dale’s Lodge stay, two events happen three times each, and they are out of sync with each other:

• “Is it future, or is it past?”
• Laura whispers to Dale.

These are where loop points happen.

I’ll get back to the Laura whispers as I think they point to a hopeful conclusion that is tuned more with the Timeline (as he first received the whisper while he was completely attached to the Timeline), but I think Dale had a choice to choose Love or Fear during Part 2. He could choose to believe Laura when she told him “you can go out now”, or he could follow the path as he tries to answer “Is it future or is it past.” How to put it more plainly? Dale has a choice: Leave the Lodge (as Laura suggests), or go further into the curtains (as Phillip motions him over that way). He chooses to go into the curtains; literally deeper into Lodgespace.

Here, I will break down the time loops into definitions so you know exactly what I’m referring to when I use loop numbers:

• 1^st Loop: The Timeline-adjacent frequency. But the one that interrupts the natural Timeline events (such as Hawk not meeting Dale as the Lodge curtains in Part 2). This is also where DoppelCooper makes the glass box and amasses his criminal empire and wealth while Dale is in the Waiting Room.
• 2^nd Loop: The In-Between reality. This begins with Dale leaving through Non-Existence, then living as Dougie Jones, and ends in all the superhero stuff at the sheriff station. This is the only loop that specifically mentions Judy, Freddie, an unofficial version, or any plan between Briggs, Cooper and Cole. It’s also the only loop that includes Sarah Palmer as a possessed woman, Experiment, Experiment Model, or the Fireman and Dido sending a Laura orb into the world through their junction point.
• 3^rd Loop: The Lodgespace-adjacent frequency. This is a dark world where very few people are. As far as I’m concerned, this is the dream Margaret warns Hawk about, and this is the one where Laura Palmer is Carrie Page and Diane somehow becomes Linda as she likely detaches from the dream midway through. This is Dale’s hubris run amok as he ignores the fact of genuine history.
• There is a 4^th Loop as well. It only just begins in the credits to Part 18. It could be a full reset because it begins with the whisper from Laura rather than “Is it future or is it past,” but we may never know because it begins in the ending moments and is currently unfinished. More on the 4^th loop later.

Here is a visual representation of how I believe the four loops are stacked onto the timeline:

The 2^nd loop is the one in the middle, the POV location of Season 3. If you look (with the intention of positive energy) to the Timeline, you’re tuned to see events close to how they went in the 1^st Loop.

If you look (with the intention of negative energy) to Lodgespace, you’ve tuned to see events close to how they go in the 3^rd Loop.

Because the loops happen in order for Dale, we feel the time loops assert themselves in that order within Season 3. That’s why people like Jerry Horne feel they’ve “been here before” too.

We see the original Timeline/1^st Loop superseded by the 2^nd Loop: instead of Hawk meeting Dale when he sees the red curtains in Part 2, Dale overwrites the perceived timeline by beginning the superhero arc that contains the Judy plan and Freddie vs. BOB. Hawk never once mentions the curtains scene because he’s tuned to the 2nd Loop now.

In Part 10, Margaret speaks to Hawk about the dream asserting itself too, which I say is visual confirmation of the 3rd Loop superseding the 2nd Loop. though that started in Part 7 with Andy not having a chance to meet the farmer at Sparkwood & 21 (hence the dramatic Laura Palmer Theme in the scene). Both loops flowed like a river over what came before, settling into its place as the dominant point of view that we see. Dominant because it is Cooper’s point of view.

The path we are shown in Season 3 tunes and re-tunes generally to this line:

The rest of the circle is still there. Even when you’re hip-deep in this In-Between frequency, the trauma Dale wanted to erase hasn’t gone anywhere. And neither has the Timeline (or Laura’s death). Dale’s just looking away from it after Part 17, at least until that 4^th Loop.

And that dangling 4^th Loop at the end resonates with the missing diary pages Hawk and Frank read in Part 7. Three pages were found. Three Lodge Loops are shown in Season 3. Hawk and Margaret’s Log were “on the same page” right before the 1^st Loop ended, Carrie Page is in the 3^rd Loop, and there’s a missing 4^th page we know about but cannot read just as there’s a 4^th Loop we know about but will never experience as it only exists beyond Season 3.

Dale’s not the only one traveling these frequencies

Now that we’ve explored the shape of reality, and Dale’s state of mind when he’s traveling his Lodge loop frequencies, it’s time to move onto how other characters can fluctuate across these frequencies towards the Timeline or Lodgespace from within this In-Between reality, depending on the frequency of their own states of mind.

Next up: How characters can Fix their hearts (Rejoin the Timeline and step into the light) or Die (stagnate and enter Lodgespace’s darkness)