Twin Peaks sea­son 3 decoder: Blue rose

This arti­cle con­tains spoil­ers for Twin Peaks sea­son 3: parts 3 and 4. For max­i­mum enjoy­ment, we rec­om­mend read­ing after you’ve watched the show.

The open­ing sequence to part three is with­out doubt the most auda­cious moment in Twin Peaks: The Return. Hav­ing passed through the mys­te­ri­ous glass cube seen in parts one and two, Agent Coop­er (Kyle MacLach­lan) falls through time and space into a pink-hued world. In a room, he meets a blind Asian lady sit­ting by a fire­place, who speaks in what sounds like sta­t­ic dis­charge. The jit­tery frame rate, stac­ca­to edit­ing and repet­i­tive body move­ments recalls Mike’s line in part one: ​“Is it… future, or… is it… past?” The blind lady leads Dale to a rooftop, flips a switch which charges an elec­tri­cal cur­rent, before slip­ping into the abyss of the stars. Then, a great big surprise…

Don S Davis (Major Gar­land Brig­gs) passed away in 2008. It was some­thing of a shock to see him on-screen as a gigan­tic, plan­et-sized float­ing head, appear­ing before Coop­er to utter the enig­mat­ic phrase ​“blue rose”. When Coop climbs back into the room, anoth­er lady is sat by the fire­place (played by Phoebe Augus­tine aka Ronette Pulas­ki in sea­sons one and two). ​“My mother’s com­ing,” she says, the steel door dent­ed with pound­ing fist marks. Heav­en knows what lays behind it.

The term ​‘blue rose’ first appeared in Fire Walk with Me. Gor­don Cole (Lynch) asks Chet Desmond (Chris Isaak) to inves­ti­gate the Tere­sa Banks mur­der case in Deer Mead­ow, east­ern Wash­ing­ton (a town that is like the inverse of Twin Peaks; its ugli­ness not hid­den but out in the open). Tag­ging along is the man who cracked the Whit­man case, Sam Stanley.

As Chet arrives at the local air­port, Cole and Stan­ley meet him and then the boss man intro­duced his ​‘mother’s sister’s girl’, a woman in a red dress and red wig, who mimes a series of ges­tures (a sour face, blink­ing eyes, a twirl, one hand in her pock­et, the oth­er hand made into a fist, walk­ing on the spot). Chet decodes their mean­ings for the ben­e­fit of his slight­ly befud­dled part­ner (and the view­er). ​“Tai­lored dress­es are code for drugs,” Chet explains (okay…). When Sam enquires about the blue rose, though, he’s met with a sharp rebut­tal: ​“I can’t tell you about that.”

At the end of part four, Spe­cial Agent Tama­ra Pre­ston (Chrys­ta Bell) is told to go wait in a near­by restau­rant by Deputy Direc­tor Cole. He and Spe­cial Agent Albert Rosen­field (Miguel Fer­rer) have a con­ver­sa­tion about their prison inter­view with Bad Coop. They know some­thing is up. ​“Something’s wrong, Albert. I hate to admit this, but I don’t under­stand the sit­u­a­tion at all.” With Tam­my hav­ing exit­ed the scene (wear­ing wire), Albert uses the term ​‘blue rose’ to describe his sense of ill-ease. ​“It doesn’t get any bluer,” Gor­don replies.

Both Tam­my and Sam are exclud­ed from the full pic­ture. They’re not trust­ed. They’re on the team but they’re not in Cole’s inner cir­cle prop­er. Desmond was, Coop was and Albert is. Most cru­cial­ly: Major Brig­gs under­stands its mean­ing and his appear­ance does sug­gest he’s there to remind – to plant it in his sub­con­scious. For Coop, hav­ing emerged through the plug sock­et in Las Vegas, is ren­dered an amne­si­ac tak­en to mim­ic­k­ing others.

Brig­gs and Cole have a shared his­to­ry (relat­ed to Project Blue Book), so it’s very pos­si­bly a phrase used to decode the pro­found­ly mys­te­ri­ous, the unset­tling and the super­nat­ur­al. The blue rose on Lil the Danc­ing Girl’s dress was not in the orig­i­nal or shoot­ing script for Fire Walk with Me, but added by Lynch intu­itive­ly dur­ing the shoot. It gave Desmond a big hint that the Banks case will lead some­where odd. He did after all van­ish into thin air, when he picked up the jade ring at the Fat Trout trail­er park.