Twin Peaks sea­son 3 decoder: Vision of Laura

This arti­cle con­tains spoil­ers for Twin Peaks sea­son 3 part 10. For max­i­mum enjoy­ment, we rec­om­mend read­ing after you’ve watched the show.

Much of part 10 cen­tres on young men being absolute mon­sters. Dope fiend Steve Bur­nett (Caleb Landry-Jones) going nuts on poor Becky (Aman­da Seyfried) and Richard Horne being an absolute mon­ster to, well, every­body. First he snuffed out Miri­am (who wit­nessed him run­ning over the lit­tle boy in part five), then he threat­ened bent cop­per Chad (John Pir­ru­cel­lo) and, to top it off, drove over to Grand­ma Sylvia’s house to steal all her mon­ey, before beat­ing her up and threat­en­ing to ​“corn­hole” his dis­abled uncle John­ny (Eric Ron­dell). With a grand­son like that, who needs enemies?

Eamon Far­ren has made a gigan­tic impres­sion in the hand­ful of scenes he’s appeared in so far. Richard Horne is sure­ly Audrey’s son (his mum – one of the orig­i­nal series’ most icon­ic char­ac­ters – remains con­spic­u­ous by her absence), but who or what made him such an irre­deemable shit? Eagle-eyed fans will have not­ed Johnny’s ted­dy bear fea­tured an orb-like head with a gold­en light fix­ture with­in. Remem­ber Laura’s orb from part eight? Lau­ra used to home tutor John­ny, back in the day.

There’s one scene, how­ev­er, which came out of nowhere and brought with it a major rev­e­la­tion. Folk with psy­chic abil­i­ties are inte­gral to Twin Peaks mythol­o­gy. The Log Lady doesn’t oper­ate like the clas­sic clair­voy­ant fig­ure, she gets cryp­tic mes­sages from the piece of wood she car­ries around (hence her nick­name). Mar­garet Lanter­man (Cather­ine Coul­son) cropped up again this week to tell Deputy Hawk (Michael Horse) that things in the town are afoot, that the Tru­man broth­ers are ​“true men” and that ​“Lau­ra is the one” – the last line a bit of ret­conned mate­r­i­al from the Lynch-direct­ed Log Lady pilot episode intro, which he wrote and filmed back in the 1990s, when Twin Peaks was re-aired on Bravo.

The char­ac­ters in Twin Peaks with tra­di­tion­al psy­chic traits are Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) and Lau­ra Palmer’s dop­pel­gänger, cousin Mad­dy Fer­gu­son (Sheryl Lee). It is Sarah who saw Bob hid­ing at the foot of Laura’s bed, knew of the miss­ing neck­lace, pic­tured Laura’s face pro­ject­ed onto Don­na Hay­ward (Lara Fly­nn Boyle) and white horse in the Palmer liv­ing room (“the horse is the whites of the eye and the dark with­in”). The face plant­ed onto anoth­er char­ac­ter image (used also in Lynch’s Lost High­way) echoed in sea­son three part 10.

Gor­don Cole is sat in his hotel room doo­dling on a piece of paper: a pic­ture of a stag with a dis­em­bod­ied hand reach­ing out. There’s a knock at the door. He gets up to answer and is stunned to see Lau­ra Palmer’s float­ing head. She is fright­ened and cry­ing. This vision of Lau­ra – in fact sev­er­al match dis­solve shots in a mon­tage – is lift­ed from Fire Walk with Me (where Lau­ra final­ly puts two and two togeth­er as to the ​‘real’ iden­ti­ty of BOB). When the vision weak­ens, Albert Rosen­field (Miguel Fer­rer) is stand­ing there. Gor­don doesn’t even look­ing at him. Albert glances over his shoul­der to the wall, an attempt to see what his boss is seeing.

Albert brings news of the cryp­tic text Diane (Lau­ra Dern) received from Bad Coop. ​“Around the din­ner table, the con­ver­sa­tion is live­ly,” the mes­sage reads. Diane writes back about Gor­don, Albert and Tammy’s planned move­ments. They are tak­ing Bill Hast­ings (Matthew Lil­lard) to the site mapped by the coor­di­nates which led him to Major Brig­gs. Gor­don lets Albert in on a hunch: he knew Diane was act­ing shady. ​“I felt it when she hugged me” the Deputy Direc­tor tells him.

This changes part seven’s prison car park exchange dras­ti­cal­ly. It wasn’t Cole’s clum­sy inabil­i­ty to show emo­tion, but that Diane was giv­ing off hinky vibes which caused his hes­i­tant embrace. The ​‘vision of Lau­ra’ scene is made even more pecu­liar by the arrival of Tam­my (Chrys­ta Bell). As she walks to Gordon’s door, she does so in slow motion (recall­ing a famous sequence from Jean Cocteau’s 1946 fairy tale clas­sic, Beau­ty and the Beast).

Is Gor­don super­nat­u­ral­ly gift­ed, like Sarah and Mad­dy? It would cer­tain­ly explain why he codes cer­tain cas­es as ​‘blue rose’, uses trust­ed spe­cial agents for mys­te­ri­ous gigs and why he was able to Lau­ra Palmer’s float­ing head before him in the hotel cor­ri­dor. Why is Lau­ra reach­ing out to Gor­don? That’s clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion… for now.