Twin Peaks sea­son 3 decoder: The redemp­tion of Bob­by Briggs

This arti­cle con­tains spoil­ers for Twin Peaks sea­son 3 part 9. For max­i­mum enjoy­ment, we rec­om­mend read­ing after you’ve watched the show.

Part nine is a return to a more tra­di­tion­al sto­ry­telling mode. Bad Coop sur­vived Ray’s assas­si­na­tion attempt and is look­ing at clean­ing house. He’s sent goons Hutch (Tim Roth) and Chan­tal (Jen­nifer Jason Leigh) to kill War­den Mur­phy (James Mor­ri­son), before pack­ing them off to Las Vegas (pos­si­bly to deal with a cer­tain Dougie Jones). Bad Coop still hasn’t secured the infor­ma­tion from Ray (the mil­i­tary coor­di­nates he got from Bill Hast­ings’ sec­re­tary), so chances are he’s hot on the turncoat’s tail and wants to secure them pronto.

In part two, just before Coop snuffs out Darya (Nicole Lal­ib­erte), he shows her a play­ing card (an ace of spades) filled in to look like a black cir­cle with two small anten­nae pro­trud­ing from the top. What­ev­er this sym­bol ulti­mate­ly is, it’s very impor­tant to Coop. ​“This is what I want,” he tells her. The pic­ture drawn on the card could be an abstract owl image (very impor­tant to TP mythol­o­gy), relat­ed to Owl Cave or some­thing else entire­ly. Some fans have the­o­rised the sym­bol on the card is relat­ed to the Mother/​Experiment, the thing from anoth­er dimen­sion which attacked Sam and Tra­cy way back in part one, or the enti­ty sus­pend­ed in black space which spewed up Bob dur­ing part eight.

But it might well sym­bol­ise a forth­com­ing mys­ti­cal event, an eclipse of some kind. The anten­nae look almost like moun­tain peaks… Is Bad Coop/​Bob attempt­ing to access the White Lodge? Or does he want to reach an alter­nate dimen­sion? It’s clear he has no inten­tion of going back to the Black Lodge. What’s clear is that (from the viewer’s per­spec­tive) the infor­ma­tion leads to Twin Peaks.

The very same abstract image on Coop’s play­ing card appeared this week in a clue left by Major Gar­land Brig­gs. In Frost’s 2016 book ​‘The Secret His­to­ry of Twin Peaks’, the Air Force black ops hon­cho cot­toned on to the fact that Coop­er was act­ing a bit weird and he set in place pro­to­cols (and quite pos­si­bly knew he was going to die). As gleaned from Bob­by, in part four Gar­land dies in a fire at the mil­i­tary instal­la­tion, Lis­ten­ing Post Alpha, a cou­ple of days after Bad Coop emerges from the Black Lodge. Dale was the last per­son to see Major Brig­gs alive before he per­ished in the blaze.

Hid­den inside a chair in the liv­ing room of the Brig­gs fam­i­ly home is a metal­lic vial, which only Bob­by (Dana Ash­brook) knows how to open. In addi­tion to this, Bob­by under­stands the cod­ed mes­sage on the tiny scroll read out by Sher­iff Frank Tru­man (Robert Forster). At a place known to the Brig­gs’ as Jack Rab­bits Palace, some­thing will occur on 1 and 2 Octo­ber at 2.53. ​“253 … time and time again,” as the Arm tells Coop in the Red Room, in part two.

Brig­gs leaves instruc­tions for the boys to walk 253 yards east of Jack Rab­bits Palace and place soil from Jack Rab­bits Palace in their pock­ets. Sym­bols on the tiny scroll reveal a red cir­cle, the black sym­bol on the ace of spades card and a red cres­cent – all above the twin peaks. The oth­er tiny piece of paper is from a mes­sage orig­i­nal­ly received in 1989, the night Josie Packard shot Coop at the Great North­ern Hotel. Back then, it looked as if it was intend­ed as a warn­ing that Dale was in dan­ger (and he was), but in sea­son three, it’s been ret­conned as por­tent to the dop­pel­gänger. Amid a whole bunch of gib­ber­ish, the name ​“Coop­er … Coop­er” appears. (Eagle-eyed fans will note the mes­sage been cut down from four rep­e­ti­tions of ​‘Coop­er’ to two.)

In sea­son three Bob­by Brig­gs is a deputy with the sheriff’s depart­ment; his father’s hopes that the for­mer­ly trou­bled teen find the straight and nar­row seem to have been realised. The high-school jock was once caught up in bad things with Lau­ra Palmer (he mur­dered Deputy Cliff from Deer Mead­ow) and there was a time when he want­ed noth­ing more than to destroy James Hurley’s life. In sea­son two’s Lynch-direct­ed open­ing episode, Gar­land sat with Bob­by in the Dou­ble R din­er and relayed to him not a dream, but a vision.

In it, he describes a beau­ti­ful palaz­zo on a vast estate. Gar­land is an eccen­tric, emo­tion­al­ly dis­tant man, but he informed his errant son that he loves him. ​“A vision as fresh and clear as a moun­tain stream. The mind reveal­ing itself,” Gar­land explained, adding ​“There came a knock at the door, my son was stand­ing there, hap­py and care­free. Clear­ly, liv­ing a life of deep har­mo­ny and joy. We embraced. A warm and lov­ing embrace. We were, in this moment, one. I awoke with a tremen­dous feel­ing of opti­mism and con­fi­dence for you and your future.” Bob­by is reduced to tears by his father’s vision. In sea­son three, Twin Peaks’ pre­em­i­nent bad boy has come good.