Twin Peaks sea­son 3 decoder: Buenos Aires

This arti­cle con­tains spoil­ers for Twin Peaks sea­son 3 part 5. For max­i­mum enjoy­ment, we rec­om­mend read­ing after you’ve watched the show.

Remem­ber: there are three FBI spe­cial agents who have gone walk­a­bout in Twin Peaks. Dale Coop­er (Kyle MacLach­lan), we know what’s hap­pened to him. ​‘Good Coop’ was trapped in the Black Lodge for 25 years and his BOB-pow­ered dop­pel­gänger allowed to gal­li­vant around Amer­i­ca, get­ting up to all sorts of mis­chief. But we mustn’t for­get Chris Isaak’s Chet Desmond, who van­ished into thin air at the Fat Trout trail­er park in Fire Walk with Me. And then there’s Phillip Jef­fries (David Bowie), whose appear­ance in the 1992 pre­quel film is deeply enig­mat­ic (read: bat­shit crazy).

In the dying moments of Part 5, Lynch whisks view­ers off to South Amer­i­ca. It’s a moment which no doubt had diehard fans shout­ing ​“Holy Jump­ing George!” Accom­pa­ny­ing a drone shot above a for­eign-look­ing cityscape, an on-screen cap­tion reads: ​‘Buenos Aires, Argenti­na’. In a dank sub­ter­ranean space (what appears to be a base­ment) amid dusty shelves filled with old files, on a con­crete floor, sits a com­mu­ni­ca­tion device in a wood­en bowl (seen ear­li­er in the episode dur­ing a phone call scene, made after Dougie Jones’ car explodes). The device’s LED lights blink red and the whole thing mag­i­cal­ly reduces in size.

The pre­ced­ing scene sees ​‘Bad Coop’ dis­play­ing his super­nat­ur­al gifts to the Yank­ton prison war­den. Allowed to make a per­son­al phone call, giv­en to him on the orders of Deputy Direc­tor Gor­don Cole, Bad Coop works his witchy mojo to cause screens, light­ing fix­tures and lis­ten­ing devices to go hay­wire. ​“The cow jumped over the moon,” he says into the receiv­er, after dialling a super-long sequence of dig­its. Who was Bad Coop giv­ing a bell? At this point, we just don’t know.

To ful­ly appre­ci­ate Phillip Jef­fries’ back­sto­ry, you real­ly need to watch the longer ver­sion of his bizarro appear­ance in Fire Walk with Me. Lynch cut it down sig­nif­i­cant­ly for the the­atri­cal release, mak­ing Jef­fries’ sur­re­al ram­blings and ref­er­ences to events even more per­plex­ing. Luck­i­ly, it’s includ­ed in fea­ture-length Blu-ray extra fea­ture known as ​‘The Miss­ing Pieces’.

So, what hap­pened to Jef­fries? In 1987, he checked into the Palm Deluxe hotel in Buenos Aires. After ask­ing the recep­tion­ist if ​“Miss Judy is wait­ing here, by any chance?” he is giv­en a piece of paper left to him by a per­son the recep­tion­ist only refers as the ​‘señori­ta’ and again in Eng­lish as ​‘young lady’. Phil goes to his room using the lob­by ele­va­tor and… exits at an FBI field office in Philadel­phia in 1989.

The lines ​“We’re not going to talk about Judy,” ​“We live inside a dream,” and ​“Who do you think this is there?” have been obsessed over be fans ever since. Espe­cial­ly the Judy line. The call­ing into ques­tion of Coop’s iden­ti­ty should be read as Jef­fries hav­ing eso­teric knowl­edge of Dale’s fate. Phil men­tions the meet­ing of the Red Room spir­its above a con­ve­nience store. He described to Gor­don, Dale and Albert find­ing some­thing in Judy’s apart­ment in Seat­tle and men­tions a ring. Jef­fries then does anoth­er van­ish­ing act, re-emerg­ing in the Buenos Aires hotel, on a stair­case, the wall behind him blast­ed and scorched. The bell­hop reacts to the freak­ish­ness of it all by (lit­er­al­ly) crap­ping his pants. Jef­fries is so fraz­zled, he’s lost the abil­i­ty to speak. ​“Are you the man?” the ter­ri­fied bell­hop asks.

Nobody has seen Jef­fries since his brief time-trav­el­ling sojourn to the Philadel­phia office in 1989. In sea­son 3, part 4, Albert Rosen­field admit­ted to giv­ing Jef­fries secret infor­ma­tion (via a phone call) after Coop’s dis­ap­pear­ance in 1989 (Twin Peaks sea­sons 1 and 2 are set over the course of a few weeks). Giv­en the extend­ed sequence’s sta­tus as a delet­ed scene, with only the bare bones of it used in the the­atri­cal release, the Buenos Aires ​‘Miss­ing Pieces’ seg­ment is not strict­ly canon per se, but it looks very much like Frost and Lynch have remixed ele­ments from it for the new season.

With Spe­cial Agent Jef­fries prov­ing a sur­pris­ing – if phan­tom-like – pres­ence in the new series so far, his appear­ance in Fire Walk with Me (and ​‘The Miss­ing Pieces’) and the city of Buenos Aires is grow­ing in nar­ra­tive impor­tance and por­tent. The far-flung loca­tion might be puz­zling to new­com­ers or view­ers who skipped the film, but it goes way back in Twin Peaks mythology.