Twin Peaks sea­son 3 decoder: Let’s rock

This arti­cle con­tains spoil­ers for Twin Peaks sea­son 3 part 12. For max­i­mum enjoy­ment, we rec­om­mend read­ing after you’ve watched the show.

Twin Peaks fans can breathe a sigh of relief – Audrey Horne is back! Sher­i­lyn Fenn returned in part 12 drop­ping f‑bombs and demon­strat­ing that her char­ac­ter has changed a lot since we last saw her chained to the bank vault door, just as the booby­trapped safe blew Andrew Packard (Dan O’Herlihy), Pete Martell (Jack Nance) and bank man­ag­er, Dell Mib­bler (Ed Wright), to king­dom come.

For almost 25 years fans assumed, with great sor­row, that Audrey was killed in the blast. Then, in 2016, Mark Frost’s book‘The Secret His­to­ry of Twin Peaks’ revealed Martell man­aged to pro­tect the girl from the blast, thus giv­ing Jack Nance’s Pete an off-screen hero’s death (the actor passed away in mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances in 1996).

Part 12 won’t go down as a clas­sic episode, but plen­ty hap­pens in it. First up, we now know that the phrase ​‘blue rose’ was – as Peaks obses­sives have long sus­pect­ed – a code term for cas­es which require think­ing out­side the box, mean­ing super­nat­ur­al or extrater­res­tri­al. Gor­don Cole (David Lynch) is pret­ty much the Nick Fury of the Blue Rose Task Force, and they’ve signed up their lat­est recruit, Tam­my Pre­ston (Chrys­ta Bell). Being a mem­ber of the Blue Rose crew is per­ilous busi­ness, as Albert Rosen­field (Miguel Fer­rer) is the only one left stand­ing (Spe­cial Agents Phil Jef­fries, Chet Desmond and our boy Coop are miss­ing). Sam Stan­ley (Kiefer Suther­land) was not in the blue rose cir­cle of trust and arch-fiend Win­dom Ear­le (Ken­neth Welsh) was only involved in Project Blue Book.

Anoth­er key scene sees Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) going loopy in a con­ve­nience store (with the accom­pa­ny­ing sound­scape lift­ed from Fire Walk with Me). You may well have noticed her Lau­ra Palmer-style hair­do, and been mys­ti­fied by her ram­bling about the new stock of beef jerky and the warn­ing that bad things are com­ing. In a lat­er exchange with Deputy Hawk (Michael Horse) at the Palmer res­i­dence, she cryp­ti­cal­ly refers to there being ​“some­thing” in the kitchen, when Hawk enquiries to the source of the noise he hears in the house.

In Buck­horn, South Dako­ta, Albert, Gor­don and Tam­my still don’t trust Diane (Lau­ra Dern). The FBI Deputy Direc­tor wants to keep her close, so they ask her to join them as a deputy. She thinks about it for a moment and utters the phrase ​“let’s rock” (lis­ten to the sound design, as she utters the line). The scene plays out in a library type set­ting, with red vel­vet cur­tains hung on the walls. Echoes of the Red Room abound. ​‘Let’s rock’ direct­ly relates to the Red Room spir­its and the Man from Anoth­er Place aka The Arm (Michael J Ander­son), who has evolved in sea­son three into an elec­tric tree. The phrase is first heard in sea­son one dur­ing Coop’s dream (in it, he meets Lau­ra Palmer and the Man from Anoth­er Place in the Red Room; after stand­ing in a cor­ner and rub­bing his hands togeth­er, The Arm turns around and com­mences the con­ver­sa­tion with ​“let’s rock.”). But why would Diane use this very expres­sion? Is it to fur­ther hint that she’s in cahoots with Bad Coop?

The phrase turns up again in Fire Walk with Me. Sent to inves­ti­gate the mur­der of Tere­sa Banks (Pam Gid­ley), Chet Desmond (Chris Isaak) dis­ap­pears into thin air at the Fat Trout Trail­er Park, in Deer Mead­ow, WA, upon touch­ing the green jade ring he finds under­neath a trail­er. Dale Coop­er is dis­patched to Deer Mead­ow and Wind Riv­er to find out what’s going on. He finds no trace of the agent, but does find his car with ​‘let’s rock’ writ­ten on the wind­shield in what looks like red felt pen.

The phrase’s appear­ance in Fire Walk with Me is a nod to the film’s trou­bled pro­duc­tion – Kyle MacLach­lan and David Lynch fell out over the cast hav­ing to work with what they deemed to be pale imi­ta­tors of Lynch (they had a point). MacLach­lan dragged his feet, then told Lynch he had no inter­est (as did co-star Lara Fly­nn Boyle) in repris­ing his role for the pre­quel. So, Lynch and co-writer Robert Engels invent­ed Chet Desmond as a replace­ment figure.

Engels explained to fan mag Blue Rose (Issue 2), MacLach­lan and Lynch buried the hatch­et and about a month into the shoot, that he would, after all, return to play Coop, in a reduced capac­i­ty. Chet’s dis­ap­pear­ance was writ­ten in and Coop sent out to Deer Mead­ow and Wind Riv­er. Accord­ing to Engels, his wife sug­gest­ed Coop finds Desmond’s car with ​‘let’s rock’ writ­ten on it.