Twin Peaks sea­son 3 decoder: Annie Blackburn

This arti­cle con­tains spoil­ers for Twin Peaks sea­son 3 part 7. For max­i­mum enjoy­ment, we rec­om­mend read­ing after you’ve watched the show.

Neces­si­ty is the moth­er of inven­tion. Dur­ing sea­son two, the writ­ers of Twin Peaks thought about devel­op­ing the scorch­ing chem­istry between Audrey Horne (Sher­i­lyn Fenn) and Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er (Kyle McLach­lan) into a full-on romance. But it nev­er hap­pened. Instead, Heather Gra­ham was cast as Annie Black­burn, a for­mer nun with sui­cide scars and sis­ter to Nor­ma Jen­nings (Peg­gy Lipton).

Annie appeared in just six episodes towards the tail end of sea­son two – and yet she is arguably one of the most impor­tant char­ac­ters. How so? Well, for starts Coop fell head over heels for her. Her doe-eyed soul­ful­ness and wound­ed bird mys­tique charmed him com­plete­ly. With the show’s cli­max fast approach­ing, the writ­ers need­ed to lay the ground­work pron­to; the ex-nun’s kid­nap­ping by Win­dom Ear­le saw her enter the Red Room, with Coop not far behind.

From this moment Annie became a piv­otal plot device. Damsels in dis­tress are Coop’s weak­ness, and the writ­ing team need­ed a sol­id rea­son for him to go hot-foot­ing it after Ear­le to Glas­ton­bury Grove (where the red cur­tain por­tal appears). A love-at-first-sight romance, the Miss Twin Peaks beau­ty con­test, Annie crowned as the win­ner and Ear­le kid­nap­ping her all pro­vid­ed the nec­es­sary motivation.

In 1992’s pre­quel film Fire Walk with Me, Heather Gra­ham cameoed as Annie, appear­ing to Lau­ra Palmer (Sheryl Lee) in a time­line-warp­ing dream sequence. This short scene is one of the most impor­tant in Twin Peaks mythol­o­gy. ​“The good Dale is trapped in the lodge and can’t leave. Writ­ing it in your diary,” a corpse-like Annie informs a vis­i­bly freaked-out Laura.

In the sev­enth part of sea­son three, Hawk (Michael Horse) finds torn pages from Laura’s secret diary stashed by Leland dur­ing one of his vis­its to the cop shop, way back in 1989. Lau­ra did indeed write down this dream­like encounter with Annie. We now know that Leland was pre­vi­ous­ly aware of ​‘Dale’, and got rid of his daughter’s bizarre scrib­blings because she’d final­ly realised that Bob and Leland are one and the same.

But there remains a giant ques­tion mark over Annie and how she fits into the over­all scheme of things. In Mark Frost’s book ​‘The Secret His­to­ry of Twin Peaks’), the show’s co-cre­ator pro­vides a mini-biog­ra­phy of Nor­ma Jen­nings. Her maid­en name is Lind­strom, her moth­er is Ilsa, the father named Mar­ty – but there’s zero men­tion of Annie. This ​‘new’ infor­ma­tion clash­es with what is revealed in sea­son two. Norma’s mum is a food crit­ic named Vivian Smythe Niles (pen­name: MT Wentz). Vivian (Jane Greer) pitch­es up in town with new hus­band Ernie Niles (James Booth), an ex-con known as The Pro­fes­sor and for­mer prison mate to Norma’s bad boy hub­by, Hank Jen­nings (Chris Mulkey).

Again, no younger sis­ter is men­tioned. Is Nor­ma adopt­ed? Is Annie adopt­ed? That wouldn’t make much sense, since we know that Norma’s par­ents hail from – and reside in – Twin Peaks (a post­card invent­ed for the book gives their address as 538 Park­er Road, Twin Peaks, WA 98065).

When pulled up about the bla­tant­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry rewrite of Norma’s past, Frost acknowl­edged it was indeed dif­fer­ent and we’d all have to wait and see for an expla­na­tion. Was Annie ​‘man­u­fac­tured’ like sea­son three’s Dougie Jones? Was it Annie’s ​‘mis­sion’ to lure Coop into the Black Lodge all along? Is she a lodge spir­it, or in cahoots with them? Sea­son two end­ed with Bad Coop smash­ing his head into the bath­room mir­ror, repeat­ing one line over and over, ​‘How’s Annie?’ But today there is a big­ger ques­tion at hand: ​‘Who is Annie?’

Check back next week for the sixth part of our Twin Peaks Sea­son 3 Decoder.