Twin Peaks sea­son 3 decoder: The door­way picture

This arti­cle con­tains spoil­ers for Twin Peaks sea­son 3 part 15. For max­i­mum enjoy­ment, we rec­om­mend read­ing after you’ve watched the show.

Spe­cial Agent Phillip Jef­fries (played by David Bowie in 1992’s Fire Walk with Me) has been a shad­owy, Har­ry Lime-style pres­ence through­out sea­son three (for good rea­son, Bowie passed away in Jan­u­ary 2016, unable to reprise the role). In part 15, the long-lost Phillip Jef­fries makes an on-screen appear­ance… as a giant metal­lic ket­tle voiced by Nathan Frizzell. Neces­si­ty is the moth­er of inven­tion, after all, and Lynch’s mind works in won­drous­ly bonkers ways.

By the look of things, Jef­fries nev­er found his way home after find­ing what­ev­er it was he dis­cov­ered in Judy’s apart­ment all those years ago, and has cast off his earth­ly form and become… a ket­tle. Why a ket­tle? Because David Lynch, that’s why! (The scene does car­ry with it a fris­son of Alice’s encounter with the Cater­pil­lar in Alice in Won­der­land; the smoke ris­ing from the spout, turn­ing into num­bers, and the rid­dle-like dialogue.)

The themes of mov­ing on and trans­for­ma­tion are also echoed in what turned out to be the Log Lady’s final scenes. That Cather­ine E Coul­son man­aged to appear in sea­son three at all is a bless­ing, as she was ter­mi­nal­ly ill and passed away in Sep­tem­ber 2015. ​“You know about death; that it’s just a change, not an end. Hawk, it’s time. There’s some fear in let­ting go,” Mar­garet says to Deputy Hawk (Michael Horse) over the phone.

Yet anoth­er intrigu­ing, mythol­o­gy-expand­ing link back to Fire Walk with Me cropped up this week. In the pre­quel, Lau­ra (Sheryl Lee) is set­ting off on her Meals on Wheels errands from the Dou­ble R when the creepy Chalfonts/​Tremonds (the granny and kid in a tuxe­do wear­ing the papi­er-mâché mask) grab her atten­tion. The pair appeared briefly in the orig­i­nal series (known as the Tremonds), help­ing Don­na track down Laura’s miss­ing diary (which was in ago­ra­pho­bic Harold Smith’s pos­ses­sion). In the film, their motives are more sin­is­ter. Are they Black Lodge spir­its or White Lodge spir­its? The jury’s still out on that one.

“This would look nice on your wall,” Mrs Chalfont/​Tremond (Frances Bay) says, hand­ing over a pic­ture she hap­pens to have with her. This gloomy print depicts a murky room with a wood-pan­elled door left open. ​“The man behind the mask is look­ing for the book with the pages torn out,” the freaky kid tells Lau­ra (drop­ping a major clue to the real iden­ti­ty of Bob). Lau­ra takes the framed pic­ture and runs home, where she final­ly comes to realise that Leland (Ray Wise) is Bob (Frank Sil­va). Lat­er, Lau­ra dreams about the Red Room and finds her­self walk­ing inside the pic­ture. It is here she dreams about Coop­er and the Owl Cave ring.

The mys­tery room and its wall­pa­per are evoked in part 15, when Bad Coop access­es the alter­nate dimen­sion motel (via the con­ve­nience store locat­ed in the woods). Now, the wall­pa­per includes pink ros­es, red ros­es and – wait for it – blue ros­es. But it’s the exact same design style and could well be the same room (or anoth­er room in the same super­nat­ur­al space), though it’s look­ing more aged and there are patch­es of tears in the wall­pa­per. Either way, it is the through a very sim­i­lar thresh­old of a door­way that Lau­ra and Bad Coop pass to access anoth­er realm.

Whether it’s in lit­tle details such as strange rooms and sym­bol­ic wall­pa­per, or grander plot points tying togeth­er, Lynch real­ly wasn’t kid­ding when he said his maligned 1992 pre­quel would be heav­i­ly ref­er­enced through­out sea­son three.