Thanks for the welcome! :)

Once again, I can't be sure or anything, but I think that the Black Lodge agents are just toying with Coop in a strange way. Trying to show that they know him better than he could have thought, hence the cup of coffee (Coop's only passion besides Annie, lol). I'm not sure as to why the MFAP stated the chant, but I always just thought it was also their way of showing Cooper that he only found out what they allowed to him to find out, which goes along with the idea that they were possibly attempting to lure Cooper to the Black Lodge since he became involved. Again, that probably doesn't answer the question.. Would love to hear other people's theories on the matter!

"Wow, BOB, Wow!" always stuck in my mind.. Mostly because that must have been one of the only lines where the actor Michael Anderson didn't have to learn it backwards!!

"And the angels wouldn't help you.. Because they've all gone away.."

    - Laura Palmer, 'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me' 

In a way, the Black Lodge is constantly luring people there. Maybe not always so that they'd end up walking through the curtains but so that they'd "lure" people to lose their innocence. Maybe it was so that Dale was so good as a person that for them to have access to Dale's bad side, they had to change his person completely, in other words they had make the Doppelganger-Dale to have a full control in the real world.

The controller, BOB, was inside of the "real" Leland while his "ability to do evil", his Doppelganger, was in the Lodge. In Dale's case it wasn't possible to control the "real" Dale so they had to make a change between the good and bad Dale. Only then they could use Dale to gain their garmonbozia.

I'd say the main goal for the Black Lodge is to mess with peoples innocence. Whenever a human being loses his/her innocence, does something bad, causes fear and sorrow, causes uncontrollable lust, the Black Lodge inhabitants are fed. They had tasted the garbonbozia gained from Annie when she was unhappy with her life, when she had tried to kill herself. But Annie gained strength and became innocent again. Annie was pure. So, it would be essential for the Black Lodge to get access to Annie. It would be a huge accomplishment to the Black Lodge. But Dale was there by her side it would be nearly impossible to make Annie to give the garmonbozia. It would be nearly impossible to make Annie to lose her innocence, to make her do bad things. ....but if they could do so that all of Dale's good will would be gone it would be a piece of cake to corrupt Annie. "How's Annie" doesn't necessarily mean a will to kill her. Dale may not have meant "How's Annie, I'm going to kill her" but more like "How's Annie, I'm going to corrupt her" but, of course, in the end it could have been ended up in death.

We could compare it to a situation in the real world where a young girl doesn't yet know the existence of really bad people. She doesn't really even know that people would be able to be mean to each other. She would be nice to everyone. And she is still a virgin. Then, a man sees her. He finds out about her virginity and makes his mission to, sorry for the rough language, fuck a virgin. He seems to be a nice guy but that's all an act for him to get the girl to bed. He eventually does it and soon after leaves her and finds another girl. The reality has now punched the girl really bad. Not only the girl would be sad, but she could end up having a bad lifestyle where she could hurt herself or other people. That would create more unhappiness and bad feelings to the world. In the world of Twin Peaks, that creates the "food" for the Black Lodge inhabitants and keeps them alive. You know what happened to Laura Palmer. Her father took her sexual innocence away and pretty much corrupted her. She started to have this bad lifestyle where she would do harm to herself and others. And she was very, very, very important to the Lodge.

But luckily, in the world of Twin Peaks, there are few people who are able to actually see those forces that allows people to be harmful to each other. Let's look at this subject in a real world perspective and look at it through a religion, like for example Christianity. There is Heaven and Hell. Heaven is being completely with God and Hell is being completely away from God. Satan is, for some reason, trying to lure people to make them go away from God, to Hell. There have been people who have had the ability to be in a some sort of a contact with both God and Satan and hence the Bible was written. It's just like in Twin Peaks. Some people are able to see those things invisible to most of the people and some people have recorded that information. The information was studied by Earle, Hawk had heard/read about it and eventually Dale and co. found the map that proves that probably for the whole history of mankind there have been people who have had the ability that, for example, Laura had.

Some of you might feel that all this is far fetched but to me it actually makes some sense.

Beware of BOB

When I call out no one can hear me,when I whisper he thinks the message is for him only..my little voice inside my throat,I always think there must be something that I've done or something I can do...But no one no one comes to help,he says,a little girl like you...

BOB in terms of power seems just another agent of the Black Lodge, and so I think that in order for him to really 'possess' someone, that person needs to accept the darkness he offers before he can claim their soul. Laura seeing her reflection as BOB was probably his attempts to try and frighten her by showing he has a hold over and that she cannot escape his possession of her. As for why BOB kills her, I imagine it has something to do with 'the ring' and possibly her communications with people like Dale through her dreams which may have been seen as a threat. Or perhaps he thought that he had corrupted her enough that he could make her too and agent of the Black Lodge? A girl as beautiful and seemingly innocent as Laura could corrupt many souls in the process (something she is obviously looking to fight as shown in her terror when she thinks that Donna might be becoming like her). Leland's cries of 'Don't make me do this' is probably aimed at both BOB and Laura. BOB, because he is controlling his actions of killing his daughter, and Laura because despite her great strength not to allow BOB to possess her like he has Leland, it means that BOB would have no option but to kill her.

Leland was probably a victim of child abuse, and being a victim of domestic violence when I was younger, the utter feeling of powerlessness is what one is left with more often than not. Because Leland was still a child, and therefore easily influenced, the propositions of BOB probably seemed appealing. So that rather than being hurt, he could be the one that hurts perhaps.

Laura, to me, was grounded by the people around her and her own personal strength. The painting of the angel on her wall to me symbolises a 'light' at the end of the tunnel for her. When I was younger I used to keep a picture of the northern lights, and told myself that one day I'd get through it all and go see them for myself. (Went up to see them a couple of years ago. They were lovely. :) ) And of course, people like James Hurley, Harold, and Donna kep the 'good' side of Laura present in her soul, or rather reminded her of it.

"And the angels wouldn't help you.. Because they've all gone away.."

    - Laura Palmer, 'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me' 

Some cool ideas in your theory, Rami - but don't forget that Annie was brought to the Lodge by Earle, who was essentially a visitor to the Lodge and not one of its inhabitants. So there isn't much to suggest that those in the Lodge were even aware of Annie until she was brought there by Earle (and he was ultimately destroyed for doing so, if you recall)

Coop's sarcastic tone as he repeats "how's Annie?" has always intrigued me. I took it as a sign that BOB is amused by the strange constraints of the physical world - including language itself, which never seems to be from Lynch's mind. For what it's worth, his tone also echoes that of Laura Dern when she hits Hollywood Boulevard in INLAND EMPIRE: "I'm afraid!"

Regardless of Lynchian motifs, in terms of narrative, I always took Bob's maniac "How's Annie?" as a sign that Cooper's girlfriend is undoubtedly the next target in his killings. This is implied in one of the Black Lodge scenes, for instance, when Annie says to Dale, "I saw the face of the man who killed me." - thereby indicating that while Annie may die by Cooper's physical form, it will be by Bob, ("the face of the man who killed me." - his true form).

-- Gerry

the black dog runs at night

 I'd say those in Lodge are aware of everyone. Now you might say that they didn't know about Harold but I think that they did know about him but not his connection to Laura. Or then again, they might have known that too but his house was protecting him from them.

My thought about Annie came from a thought that everyone who is connected to misery, suffering and pleasure is known to the Lodge.

But then again, I'm might be very wrong :)

But by the way, who has said that it isn't possible that Earle would've been lured by the Black Lodge? What if the feel of power that came to Windom when he first started to research things about the Lodges was sent/caused by some Lodge powers? We know that things in the lodge can tempt people to do things so maybe Windom was lured by tempting him with the sense of power. He would be tempted to the Lodge so that he would bring Annie and Dale there so that they could make Dale and/or Annie to be new sources to garmonbozia. After all, it would be a real victory for them to get a man like Dale on their "side" and Annie could be easy target because of her past and she would also be a major victory to the Lodge because of how innocent she had turned out to be.

Beware of BOB

When I call out no one can hear me,when I whisper he thinks the message is for him only..my little voice inside my throat,I always think there must be something that I've done or something I can do...But no one no one comes to help,he says,a little girl like you...

Going back to electricity...while most people are existing on the main circuit, with a steady current flowing through,  some people short circuit /catch fire(the fire is walking with them).   Why does this happen?  when you "shut your eyes" and "burst into flames" or think too much or too deeply or too differently you can go to wierd places.  (DL might have had some experience here) where "its not so bad if you can just keep the fear from your mind." But its hard to be different and not be vulnerable.  Not that its not worth it, but there may be a high cost to pay.

 BOB dosen't want thesoul-less (no garmanbozia)  shallow robot/sheep types, he wants the soul-ful deep thinkers  (Coop)and emotional risk takers (Laura).  The ones who bother to think enough that it could be dangerous.  For Coop it is worth the risk.  He became receptive to his psychic powers, exposed himself by falling in love  (again)etc. --going from travelling on the main wire to short circuiting and "risk(ing) utter anhilation" but he wouldn't have had it any other way. HE was willing to face his demons/fear.

 People like Harold are so far off the continuumn that he is more like a tripped breaker--the electrical current has gone dead.

  Josie, I don't know.  I guess she was just high anxiety. Maybe BOB put her in the drawer for dessert later.

 Why did Coop hit his head on the mirror?  I think that even though he was possessed by BOB, and could not stop BOB, (at least not yet!  I imagine an inner battle royale.) Coop had an awareness that he had beeen possessed.(he had psycic powers  and a healthy body/mind awareness from all that yoga and meditation)    Perhaphs he was trying to kill himself (and BOB) to prevent himself from rampaging the town as evil Coop.  But he didn't die, and BOB was mocking Coop for the failed attempt by focusing on the person Coop would like to hurt the least:  Annie.

 Or somethin'...

I am sorry for the overly long quote underneath but it's such a great post I could make up my mind about what to concentrate on...

This is for me one of the very best posts I have read on this board for a veeeery long time

Well so I have bolded some sentences at the beginning just to say that
it is the first time EVER that someone showed to me a difference between Leland's and Coop's possession in a way that would both make full sense to me and show why this difference is something really meaningful and not just a 'technical' difference. I am IMPRESSED.

Bobi 1 Kenobi

B. Beware
O. Of
B. BOB 

Yep, I think that is the intention but there's one little problem with this. Cooper is such an obviously "good" person to all who come into contact with him (unlike Palmer) that it would be impossible for Bob to hide in his body. Cooper will just be sent to a lunatic asylum and that's that.

I forgot how depressing that last episode was. Ed and Norma are kaput. Audrey and Pete are kaput, etc... 

Wow, nice to hear I was able to write something coherent (even if you were the only one to think so) :D 

When I saw Twin Peaks for the first time (I was 8-10 years old back then) I used to think that the only way for Bob to get in and out of people is to make a huge wound to their head. It made perfectly sense to me back then as he got away from Leland after he run his head against to door so then I thought that Bob had to make Dale to smash his head against the mirror so that he would be able to get inside of Coop. Well, today I know that this most certainly isn't the case :D

But seriously speaking, it could be so that the "bad" Dale was just getting an "alibi" of some sort to himself. To make people think he's lost his mind a bit after all he had gone through. Maybe he tried to make Truman and co. to bring him to the same hospital where Annie is... "How's Annie HIHIIHIIHI....... I struck my head. I Think I need some medical attention. Could you get me to the hospital where Annie is? Please..."

By the way, am I hearing wrong when I hear a short voice of Laura (or somebody) screaming right at the moment Dale hits his head to the mirror? It kinda freked me out to hear that although I'm not completely sure if there is a scream... But to my ears it sure does sound like it.

Rami,

I think you're right on about the screaming; I hear it too.  Most everyone I've ever watched it with says that it's just the sound of the glass breaking, but I don't buy it.  I know a Sheryl Lee scream when I hear it, boy howdy!  :)

In other news, I think I tend to shy away from the idea that Leland's and Cooper's "possessions" are different.  It seems to me that people who like to think they are wanting to cannonize Cooper in a weird way and make him a sort of perfect moralist or something.  The truth is, as we see in the progression of season 2, Cooper has a dark side to his personality that manifests more and more the longer he says in TP.  This is completely independant of BOB and the lodge influence, as we can see it start to grow out of his past with the Caroline and Earle history.  Even something like his "maleficence" in getting Audrey back from Jack's points to a darker nature.  And remember Jean Renault's conjecture in ep 20 that Cooper "brought the nightmare" to TP, despite his intentions.  Good stuff, that.

The majority of the first season seems to make him out to be perfect... but my theory is always that still waters run deep.

Though it's status in TP canon is debateable, (given it depicts Cooper investigating Theresa Banks murder, when it was clearly - at least initially - Agent Desmond in FWWM), it would do well to note certain extracts of the tie-in book, The Autobiography of Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes in reference to Windom Earle. The implication in certain passages, though unknown to Cooper himself narrating through his tapes to Diane, but certainly to those well versed in the series - Bob has a definite influence over Windom Earle's actions with regards to Caroline and the other murders beforehand, and his dwindling sanity. (Cooper interviews the captured Earle at one point, and he talks to him in a possessed voice, a la Leland's interrogation). That is not to say Earle is possessed by Bob by the time he arrived in Twin Peaks to begin his elaborate chess game, but it is clear even throughout the book that Bob was trying to get close to Cooper throughout his life. (For example, Cooper has a dream where he is locked in a room with his mother, and a man on the other side is trying to get in, his mother warns the young Cooper not to let this man in - perhaps Bob into his body?). It's been a while since I read it, so naturally I'm sketchy on certain details, but the whole thing is transcribed here: http://www.glastonberrygrove.net/texts/coopbio.html  

Definitely food for thought with regards to the idea the prescence of Windom Earle was to deliberately lure Cooper to the Black Lodge...

-- Gerry

the black dog runs at night

Hi, Everyone!

 I'm new here; I joined because I came up with something last night I wanted to share.  IThere are a lot of good theories and points in this thread so far, and I think I've hit on something key.  I think Leland, not the eyes, is the key to who's who in the Red Room.  Also, while a lot of the websites and theories talk about the different belief systems the shows' creators drew from, I've never really seen a theory that fully appeals to the very  belief systems the creators cite in the show's context.

Even the Dwarf, whose own identity is not clearly defined by the conflicting evidence, has both a "good form" and a "Doppleganger".  The petroglyph indicates that the Giant and Dwarf are a pair, either representing the neutrality of the Red Room or each representing a Lodge.  FWWM indicates he's the spirit of MIKE's arm (some Eastern belief systems hold that the soul is distributed throughout the body, and part is separated when something is removed from the body), but "I am the arm" could also refer to the tattoo that MIKE says binds people to the Devil: the Dwarf could be the

Let's remember that this is Zen we're talking about, and the idea in most Oriental Dualisms is that good and evil must *balance*.  The seeming extreme goodness of Cooper may indicate a flaw of its own, perhaps.  Cooper is presented as a good investigator, but it's actually Harry and his deputies, who, other than their sexual proclivities, are depicted as good.  Several times, Cooper refers to Harry as the "best of men."  I think there's something LOTR-ish going on (Tolkein said Samwise is the true hero of the story), where we think of Cooper as the "Hero," but he's a flawed hero, like Frodo; if Cooper were to be liberated from the Lodge, the one who will face the Lodge with perfect courage will turn out to be . . . Andy!  Society often conflates innocence, naivete and stupidity, and Andy represents all three.  In the end, he's the guy who you can count on even though he seems like a wimp.

Now, getting back to the meaning of the dopplegangers, the key detail is Hawk's reference to the "Dweller at the Threshold".  This is not a concept in any "time honored" belief system but actually in the 19th theosophy movement, which Mark Frost apparently is interested in and has written other works involving.  Theosophy holds to a belief that every soul has a "body" in this world and a "body" in the astral plane.  What exactly the Dweller at the Threshold is varies between authors, but it seems to be one of two things:
Either
1) the pop-culture "good angel and bad angel" on the shoulders are actually separate embodiments of the soul on the astral plane, a good soul and bad soul battling for control of the body,
OR
2) (and this is how the originator of theosophy used it), the "Dweller at the Threshold" is a residual manifestation of the soul's previous incarnation.  As in most reincarnation theories, the soul gets reincarnated because it needs to make up for misdeeds in a previous life.  In theosophy, apparently, the idea of reincarnation is kind of mixed with the Christian idea of the afterlife.  Maybe a good way to put it is "personality".  The soul has multiple "personalities" or images (related to the physical bodies), and these stay on the astral plane when the soul is reincarnated to a new personality and body.  If a person is reincarnated because of horrible sins the soul committed in the previous incarnation, the previous incarnation is so bad that the new one is haunted/possessed by it and tempted to its misdeeds, and one of the challenges of reincarnation is to confront the "Dweller at the Threshold" and slough off the crimes committed in the previous incarnation.

Now, up until mid-season 2, this theory would work:
Bob/Mr. Robertson (whatever his original name was) was a serial killer who lived in the early 20th Century, above a convenience store with Mike.  Mike repented, but Bob did not. At some point (presumably by the early 1940s) they both died, and were reincarnated as Leland Palmer and Philip Gerard.  Both Leland and Philip were tormented by their "Dwellers on the Threshold."  MIKE was trying to use Philip to repent and stop BOB.  BOB was using Leland to kill.  Both Leland and Philip were too weak to confront the Dweller at the Threshold.

Now, that theory would hold until the latter part of Season 2, when it's made clear that BOB is some kind of demon, even a lower level one.

So, apparently, by "Dweller at the Gate," they don't mean the theory I identify as "2" above, but the one I identify as "1": every soul has a "good" and a "bad" "echo" in the Lodges.

We know Laura Palmer did some very good things and some very bad things.  We are also led to believe that she was, in essence, good, in that she *wanted* to be good, she *wanted* to do the right thing, but she was trapped and enslaved by her father/BOB, so she may not have had full moral culpability for the bad things she did. 

So, if you go to the Red Room, you confront both your good and bad natures, and if you can't confront your bad nature successfully, your soul is "annihilated."  If you *can* succeed in confronting your badness--or you have no badness to confront--you get to go to the White Lodge.  That's why there are seemingly two Laura Palmers in the Red Room, two Dwarves, etc., and we're left wondering about Maddy, Caroline, and Annie.

Now, Leland is the interesting one.  When Leland appears, he's got salt-and-pepper hair, representing the "good" brown haired Leland has found balance with the "bad" white-haired Leland.  He says, "I never killed anybody," which is interesting because we know that "Leland" killed Jacques Renault.  Leland was aware that he did that.  Now, BOB was also present that night, and that's the night that BOB fully took over, when Leland chose to kill someone of his own volition.

Now, here's where things get tricky: Leland was possessed by BOB since childhood (we don't know how early in his "childhood").  When it came to Leland's actions, it's hard to tell sometimes where he's acting and where BOB's acting, but I think it's safe to say that, as BOB himself says, Leland is more or less an innocent. 

Thus, the figure Cooper encounters in the finale is either Leland's integrated self, that ironically Leland is one of the few characters to find "balance" because he's confronted his own evil--which was actually minimal--or it's his doppleganger.  For a "normal" person in TP-land, the "doppleganger", not BOB, would be at work whenever that person does something wrong.  For Leland, BOB was always at work, except when he killed Jacques Renault, an act for which he had no real moral culpability, either.  Therefore, Leland's "doppleganger," the evil half of his soul in theosophy, "never killed anybody."

Cooper is, as others have noted in this discussion, not as inherently "good" as say Major Briggs.  He does have a dark side.  We're told Annie is his "mirror image" or whatever, and she's supposed to mirror his "innocence," but we also know that Annie has attempted suicide in the past, so she's not as pure as she seems, either.

However, Cooper is not prone to evil, so BOB cannot rely on Cooper's evil self, his "Doppleganger," to do evil.

BOB himself has to occupy Cooper's body in order to use him as an instrument of evil, just as BOB occupied Leland. 

The thing is, as far as the finale goes, we have to remember that the knew it was the end.  It was almost 2 months since the previous episode aired.  The writing was on the wall, and they had time to prepare.  Yes, they were "making it up as they went along" at that point, but they really did not have any reason to expect that there would be a season 3.   So I think the way the finale was written was intentional, at least as far as the TV series is concerned.

We can speculate about a "Season 3" and a grand rescue, but we want such a resolution because a) it's a TV show, and Cooper's our hero, and b) we have a Western concept of the soul/self that makes us want to see the "Good Dale" rescued.

However, in the worldview shown in _Twin Peaks_, and culled from various influencing belief systems, it seems inevitable that the "Good Dale," just like the "Good Laura," will eventually ascend to the White Lodge.  In the show's cosmology, getting "trapped" is probably the best thing that could happen to the "Good Dale," because BOB has taken away his ability to choose evil.  From now on, even if Dale Cooper becomes a serial killer, it's BOB controlling his body, and his soul is trapped in the Black Lodge. 

We know based upon Laura in FWWM that his soul can be eventually liberated to the White Lodge, and that matters far more for Dale-in-the-fictional universe than being liberated back to the physical realm.

When Coop wakes up and asks how's Annie, Truman and the Doc give each other a glance when they tell him she's in the hospital.    I always assumed she was dead and they were keeping it from him until they knew what kind of shape he was in.   Therefore, I thought his menacing 'how's Annie?' was sarcastic because Coop/BOB knew she was already dead.

Not saying this is correct, just how interesting the different interpretations are.    I'd never considered that she was still alive at that point! 

Myowl

When Truman and Andy find her and Dale, her face is bloodied much like Maddy's was (face or head wound, Bob's MO), and the scene cuts before you hear any sign of life from her.  I understand the duality between her and Caroline in the Lodge, but it feels like it's too late, she's been murdered. 

Again, it's open to interpretation.    Like I said, I'd never even considered that she might still be alive at the moment the show ends, and that makes the ending a little less dark for me!