After leaving the prison, Ray Monroe and Mr. C drive down a dark highway at night. With just a cell phone, Mr. C disables a tracking device that had been placed in their car. Since he also hacked into systems from inside the prison using speed-dial alone, he must possess extraordinary abilities. It’s unclear whether this power comes from BOB or from Dale Cooper himself. At least when BOB possessed Leland Palmer, he never showed such skill—so perhaps BOB has evolved over the past 25 years.
Mr. C instructs Ray to head for a place called “the Farm.” He then asks, “Ray, you’ve got something I want, don’t you?” This “something” seems to refer to the coordinates obtained from William Hastings’s secretary. Ray replies, “Yeah, I’ve got them. Memorized every number perfectly. But if you want them, you’ll have to pay. Big money, or no deal.”
They turn off the highway onto a dark, unpaved road. Ray stops the car and gets out to take a leak. Mr. C opens the glove compartment, pulls out a gun, points it at Ray, and says, “Give me the information now. You can forget your half-million dollars.” He pulls the trigger—but the gun doesn’t fire. Ray had already removed the bullets. Ray shoots Mr. C twice in the stomach.
As Mr. C collapses, a group of ragged men appears out of nowhere. Dressed in filthy clothes, wearing hats, their faces smeared black and bearded, they gather around his body. These semi-transparent figures touch his face, smear blood across it, and rub their hands over his torso. From within Mr. C’s body, a membrane-covered orb emerges—and inside it, BOB is seen laughing. Terrified, Ray flees.
These soot-covered men are the Woodsmen, inhabitants of the Black Lodge. When they first appeared—in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, above the convenience store—they had beards but not the darkened faces or filthy clothes seen here. Back then, there seemed to be only two of them. Have they multiplied or changed over 25 years? In any case, this confirms that BOB resides within Mr. C.
Driving away, Ray calls Phillip Jeffries:
“I think he’s dead. But those guys showed up—I’m not sure. And there was something inside him. That’s what this whole thing’s about. If he comes after me, I’ll kill him at the place we talked about.”
Phillip Jeffries, a former FBI agent who disappeared years ago, was portrayed by David Bowie in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. In that film, he suddenly appeared before Gordon Cole and Dale Cooper at an FBI office, even though there was no record of him ever checking in at reception—he simply materialized and vanished. The elevator he arrived in bore the number “7.” During that scene, Jeffries said, “I’m not going to talk about Judy.”
We then saw images of Black Lodge inhabitants—the Man from Another Place, BOB, Mrs. Chalfont and her grandson, the Jumping Man, two Woodsmen, and the electrician—gathering above the convenience store. Jeffries said he had followed them and concluded, “We live inside a dream.” His words implied a vast, malevolent force behind all the events.
In The Return, Mr. C is again in contact with Phillip Jeffries. A few episodes earlier, Albert Rosenfield mentioned that Jeffries had reached out to him (some years prior to the current events) to share information about Dale Cooper. Still, despite recalling all this, nothing seems any clearer now.
At the Roadhouse, Nine Inch Nails performs “She’s Gone Away.” The band, an industrial rock group from Cleveland, Ohio, debuted in 1989. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails composed the soundtrack for David Lynch’s Lost Highway(1997), contributing the track “The Perfect Drug.” In 2013, Lynch directed the music video for their song “Came Back Haunted.”
Suddenly, Mr. C—who had been lying motionless after being shot by Ray—rises again. Presumably, the Woodsmen’s eerie ritual revived him. These figures have appeared before: one sat a few cells away from William in Episode 2, and another walked behind Cindy Knox in Episode 7.
July 16, 1945. White Sands, New Mexico. 5:29 a.m. (MWT).
After the countdown, a mushroom cloud rises over the desert—the Trinity Test, the world’s first nuclear explosion conducted by the United States. Accompanying the scene is Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, a 1960 string composition by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki.
The imagery then transitions into what feels like entering the heart of the mushroom cloud. We see bursts of flickering light, static-like noise, and chaotic flashes resembling explosions — and within these, the image of a convenience store appears. The windows flash on and off as numerous Woodsmen move in and out. The store seems to be a wooden building with an attached gas station, and a sign reading “CONVENIENCE STORE” hangs out front. The windows of the “CONVENIENCE STORE” flicker, dust rises, and many people — all seemingly Woodsmen — come and go through its doors.
This is quite different from the image of a convenience store in Japan. In the United States, a “convenience store” often refers to a small roadside shop connected to a gas station that sells daily necessities. In contrast, Japanese convenience stores evolved more from general stores or zakkaya — small neighborhood shops. It’s interesting to think that depending on what the “roots” of the store were, its current form also changes.
Out of the darkness, a completely white, monstrous figure appears — likely the Experiment Model that first appeared in Episode 1. From its mouth, it spews a smoke-like, bubble-like substance enclosed in a mucous membrane, and inside one of those globes, we can see BOB’s face.
It’s unclear whether this means that both the Experiment Model and BOB were born as a result of the Trinity test, or if the Trinity test itself represents the Experiment Model, which in turn gave birth to BOB. Either way, it seems to suggest that the nuclear test gave rise to BOB, the Woodsmen, and other malevolent beings.
Regarding the birth of BOB in the actual filming of Twin Peaks, I discussed this in my post about Season 1, Episode 2.
Once again, we are drawn back into the explosion. Entering what looks like a golden orb, we see a vast purple sea. On a cliff rising from the middle of this endless ocean stands a massive, castle-like structure. It seems similar to the place where Naido was sent after Dale Cooper was ejected from the Black Lodge. The camera pulls us toward one of the dark windows of the building, and we find ourselves inside a monochrome room filled with antique furnishings. From a phonograph, an old-fashioned melody plays softly.
This is the same room that appeared at the beginning of The Return Part 1, where Dale Cooper sat on a sofa and listened to the tuxedoed Giant utter the cryptic phrases: “430,” “Richard and Linda,” and “Two birds with one stone.” The Giant also said something like, “It is in our house now.”
On the ornate sofa now sits a woman in an elegant dress — Senorita Dido. In American English, the word dido can mean “a prank” or “a playful trick,” but it’s unclear whether her name has anything to do with that meaning. In the room stands a large, bell-shaped black machine. As a strange, alarm-like buzzing sound fills the air and lights begin to flash, the tuxedoed Giant enters and operates the machine, silencing the noise. It seems that the sound indeed carries some sort of meaning.
The Giant then ascends a staircase within the room, crosses a large hall, and stops before a stage — a theater.
On the screen, images flash: the mushroom cloud, the convenience store, BOB’s face — all the same visions we’ve just seen. When the screen freezes on BOB’s face, the Giant begins to levitate. Senorita Dido enters the hall and gazes at the screen, which now shows the cosmos. From the floating Giant’s head, golden light rises upward. Out of the light, a glowing golden orb appears and drifts down toward Senorita Dido. Inside the orb, we can see the face of Laura Palmer.
Senorita Dido gently kisses the orb and releases it into the air. The orb floats upward, is drawn into a pipe in the ceiling, and then shoots out toward the Earth projected on the theater’s screen — descending toward it.
Perhaps Laura Palmer was created by the Giant and Senorita Dido as a counterforce to BOB. That’s how it appears to me, though it may not be the only interpretation. I recall that after BOB left Leland Palmer’s body, Leland fiercely resisted BOB’s attempt to possess him again — declaring he would rather die than be taken over once more.
From a conventional standpoint (if we can even call it that), Laura Palmer was the popular girl at school who hid a dark double life — addiction, prostitution, and ultimately death at the hands of her own father. But what if, in truth, she was a being sent by the Giants to corner and fight BOB? If so, then perhaps this realm where the Giant and Senorita Dido reside is the White Lodge — though that’s only speculation. With David Lynch, one can never be sure of anything.
The scene then shifts to 1956, eleven years after the Trinity test. In the desert, a speckled egg falls and hatches into a bizarre creature — part amphibian, part insect, with tiny wings. If this continues the previous sequence, could it be that the golden orb containing Laura Palmer transformed into this speckled egg when it fell to Earth? It’s unsettling, but that’s David Lynch for you.
We then see a young couple walking together. The boy walks the girl home. She finds a penny on the ground, picks it up, and smiles, saying it’s a sign of good luck because it landed heads-up.
Meanwhile, several Woodsmen appear out of nowhere in the desert — their faces and clothes blackened with soot, bearded and wearing hats. They stop a car driven by a couple. One of them asks,
“Gotta light?”
Terrified, the couple flees. Whenever these Woodsmen move or speak, we hear strange electrical crackling in the background.
Since this takes place eleven years after the Trinity test, perhaps that explosion gave birth to the Experiment Model and BOB, as well as the other inhabitants of the convenience store — Mrs. Chalfont and her grandson, the Jumping Man, the Woodsmen, and the Electrician. Maybe even MIKE was born at that time. In Fire Walk with Me, Phillip Jeffries showed (or described) an image to Gordon Cole and others that included “the Man from Another Place.” Since MIKE once said that he and BOB had been partners and that the Man from Another Place was originally his arm, perhaps MIKE too was created then.
The boy walks the girl home, and they share a kiss goodnight.
Meanwhile, one of the Woodsmen approaches a radio station. Inside, the DJ is playing “My Prayer” by The Platters. The song is being heard by a woman in a diner, a man at a gas station, and the same girl lying in bed at home. The Woodsman enters the radio station, again repeating, “Gotta light?” He grabs the receptionist’s head and crushes her skull with his bare hand. Apparently, the Woodsman possesses both a power to heal by touch (as seen earlier when he revived Mr. C) and terrifying strength capable of killing instantly.
The Woodsman forces the DJ to stop the music, then leans into the microphone and recites the following words:
This is the water.
And this is the well.
Drink full and descend.
The horse is the white of the eyes,
And dark within.
Upon hearing these words, the woman in the diner and the man at the gas station collapse unconscious. The girl who had been listening to the radio — the same one who kissed the boy earlier — seems to fall asleep, or perhaps she too loses consciousness. Through her window, the strange winged amphibian creature crawls into her room, enters her mouth, and disappears into her body.
Some fans suggest that this girl might be Sarah Palmer. Chronologically, it would make sense for her to be a teenager in 1956. At first I wondered if this meant she was impregnated with Laura Palmer at this moment, but that doesn’t fit Laura’s age in 1990.
As for the “horse” mentioned by the Woodsman — I recall that Sarah Palmer often saw a vision of a white horse whenever someone was about to die. The horse she saw was pale, though not purely white-eyed as described here.
The Woodsman then crushes the DJ’s head, killing him, and walks back out into the desert. In the distance, we hear the neighing of a horse.
Directed, written, and executive produced by David Lynch., Written and executive produced by Mark Frost.. Originally aired on June 25, 2017 (U.S.).
She's Gone Away / Nine Inch Nails
My Prayer / The Platters
