Perhaps the most important Lodge spirit besides the MFAP and Bob, next up is: The Giant.

The Giant

The Giant seems to be the inhabiting spirit of the Elderly Waiter (aka Senor Droolcup) working at the Great Northern Hotel. They (nearly) always appear together, and in the final episode, the Giant explicitly states they are "one and the same".

User Gordon argues against this theory, however: "The Elderly Waiter may not be a host, in the sense of a body being possessed by an entity and controlling his actions, like Leland-BOB or Gerard-Mike. I've always considered Señor Droolcup to be some kind of medium, a very special human whose presence is required for the Giant to properly appear. In episode 2.08, the Giant appears in the Roadhouse stage but it's clear to me that Droolcup doesn't move from the bar. In episode 2.09, Cooper knows he needs the old waiter for the Giant to appear. In episode 2.20, the Giant appears but Droolcup is not around, he doesn't speak and his message (preventing Annie from entering Miss Twin Peaks) doesn't reach Cooper (quoting the script "The Giant cannot reach him. Not this time").

We could consider the old waiter as an Earth (human or not, but I believe he is) counterpart of the Giant. They are indeed "one and the same", when it's obvious Leland and BOB are not..."

White Lodge spirit

The Giant is virtually the only Lodge spirit in Twin Peaks who seems unambiguously “good”, helping Cooper with clues to find Laura’s killer and providing warnings whenever danger is near.

The same could be said of Mike, of course, who also helps Cooper in his investigation but his motivations are extremely suspect. He may not act so much out of charity as of a general desire to thwart BOB. His ultimate ambition may even be to lure Cooper to the Black Lodge. Note that the Giant appears alongside the MFAP in the Red Room in the Season 2 finale which could indicate some form of connection. Then again, the Giant is seen only in the “waiting room”, not the Black Lodge. Furthermore, the MFAP clearly states “some of your friends are here” to Cooper, which supports the notion that the Giant is indeed a friendly spirit to Cooper.

There are also parallels between the Giant, the White Angel, and the White Horse. As previously described in my entry on the White Horse, all three spirits always appear in front of bright, flashing lights, are seen by one character only (Cooper–Giant, Laura–Angel, Sarah–Horse) and are usually seen at a point near death or unconsciousness. This connection suggests some protector function for these three spirits, possibly connected to the White Lodge.

When the elderly waiter appears in the Red Room (or waiting room, as the MFAP describes), he shouts "Hallelujah", before making the Indian whooping sound, later repeated by the MFAP in FWWM. The use of Hallelujah would support the "good-hearted", perhaps even "holy" nature of the Giant.

The ring

When the Giant first appears to Cooper in episode 2.01 (May the Giant Be with You), he provides three clues and then borrows Cooper’s ring until BOB is unmasked.

The question is whether there is a relation between the Giant's action and the green ring of the MFAP? In FWWM, it is strongly suggested that the green ring is a sign of evil connected to the Black Lodge. It is usually passed to the intended "victims" of the MFAP, such as Teresa Banks, Chester Desmond and Laura Palmer.

A ring implies a bond or a vow of fidelity. In Twin Peaks, rings seem to be a symbol of spiritual ownership. During the Lodge meeting, the MFAP states "with this ring, I thee wed", suggesting that its wearer becomes "spiritually" tied to the MFAP. The Giant, on the other hand, takes Cooper's ring away. If we follow the logic of the MFAP, that means the Giant willingly allows himself to be put under the control of Cooper.

The Giant and the MFAP

Another ambiguous piece of information, as pointed out by user JFK, comes from the petroglyph in the "owl cave". In the upper left hand portion of the drawing, under the mountain but about the circle of trees, are drawn a large man and a short man in proportion to each other, resembling the Giant and the MFAP respectively. Although the Giant most likely does inhabit the Elderly Waiter, his comment in episode 29 "one and the same" is a double entendre: he is explicitly refering to himself and the Waiter but implicitly refering to himself and the MFAP, as they look at each other knowingly at that moment. Perhaps they are both hosts of the lodges: the MFAP of the Black Lodge and the Giant of the White Lodge.

two things about the giant in ep.14 that still puzzle me

1. the log lady says to coop and harry "...there are owls in the roadhouse." after which they go there and the giant appears as maddy is being killed by leland/BOB. now i know "the owls are not what they seem", but throughout the series its almost too obvious that owls are somehow a connection to bob(the owl superimposed on his face in ep.9, the freeze frame owl in ep 16 after BOB leaves leland to die, etc.).
SO, why does the log lady refer to the giant future appearance as she does? which leads me to two:

2.the log lady SEES the giant in the roadhouse scene. she is the only character(apart from a couple of the extras in the crowd scene) who moves and reacts as cooper is blasted with light and the giant appears and everyone else is frozen. this makes me think that the giant is not just there to help cooper. he is a presence in at least the log lady's life as well. and that does give credence to the idea that the giant is a spirit from the white lodge, as the log lady has previously travelled there(or so we are lead to believe)

one more thing
in the petroglyph, in the upper left hand portion, under the mountain but about the circle of trees, are drawn a large man and a short man, in proportion to each other. pretty much sounds like the giant and LMFAP. i do agree that senor droolcup is the familiar to the giant, but his comment in ep.29 "one and the same" is a double entendre. he is explicitly refering to himself and the waiter, but implicitly refering to himself and LMFAP, as they look at each other knowingly at that moment. as if they are both the hosts of the lodges, but in different forms. does anyone else relate to this idea?

A familiar is a servant to a magician. Senior droolcup is the human host to the Giant,  - he is not a 'familiar"

I don't think he is a host either, in the sense of a body being possessed by an entity and controlling his actions, like Leland-BOB or Gerard-Mike... I've always considered Señor Droolcup to be some kind of medium, a very special human whose presence is required for the Giant to properly appear... In ep.14 the Giant appears in the Roadhouse stage but it's clear to me that Droolcup doesn't move from the bar, in ep.16 Coop knows he needs the old waiter for the Giant to appear, in ep.27 the Giant appears but Droolcup is not around, he doesn't speak and his message (preventing Annie from entering Miss TP) doesn't reach Coop (quoting the script "The Giant cannot reach him. Not this time").

We can consider the old waiter as an Earth (human or not, but I believe he is) counterpart of the Giant. They are indeed "one and the same", when it's obvious Leland and BOB are not...

So you think the significance of the Giant taking Cooper's ring is to form a spiritual bond to help lead him to the resolution of the Laura Palmer murder?

Sourdust, where the heck are you?  Don't be a stranger in this neck of the woods.  I am eagerly awaiting your next Black Lodge Encyclopedia entry!!!!

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

Most of the Giant's appearances are either directly preceded or followed by death. The first time we see him, Cooper lay dying on the floor of the Great Northern. He later appears to Cooper to tell him "it's happening again" just as Maddie is attacked by Bob. Just after he appears to Cooper to help unveil Leland, Leland dies in the jail (a shaky example, granted, as it would seem in indicate there exists some kind of retroactive payment plan).

No it makes a lot of sense. This is something I also wrote on my entry: that Lodge spirits, particularly White Lodge spirits, usually appear to people at a point near unconsciousness: Cooper sees The Giant for the first time as he's "dying", Sarah always sees the White Horse before fainting, and Laura has a vision of the White Angel while she and Ronette are "near death".

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

 i want to say yes, as from what ive read about the possibilities of season 3 either on TV or in graphic novel form, maj. briggs would have become a more prominent character and maybe would have freed coop from BOB. ive always thought that the scene in ep29 where earle speaks though sarah with a message for briggs, "im in the black lodge with agent cooper. im waiting for you" screams out that briggs is much more aware of the situation in TP than he lets on, as its classified. but at the same time, part of me thinks that the white lodge(which seems to me is only seen in the final scene of FWWM with coop and laura) might have remained a mystery, just as frost and lynch wanted the mystery of laura's death to jump start the show but never wanted to actually solve it, instead they were more or less forced to. so given the chance of a third season, maybe they would stick to their guns and keep the mystery alive. of course this is all conjecture, but as the white lodge became the most ambiguous plot point in season two, i would be inclined to think that it might have remained that way had the show continued.

sourdust: i noticed you left out an important person in relation to the visions of angels. laura sees her angel at the end of FWWM of course, but it is ronette who prays for forgiveness and the angel appears to her(laura is tied up and observing) and releases her from her tied hands. which ends up probably saving her life. tho there is the fact that by ronette being freed and opening the train door so mike can throw the owl ring in and therefore take possesion of laura's garmonbozia because BOB can not inhabit her as he wants, because she now belongs to mike/LMFAP, and BOB's only recourse is to kill her. like laura says to harold the last time she sees him, "he says he wants to be me or he'll kill me." so again we have a lodge spirit who's actions can be interpeted in good and bad ways. i guess my point is that human morality and good and evil dont apply to the spirits. they operate on a different plane, and what may be bad or evil to us may not be to them.

as to coop's ring, again it was a vague clue. i believe the giant says that it will be returned to coop once he finds the things the giant has told him to be true. in ep.16, coop, desperate for help, goes to mike in the great northern. mike tells him of the "perfect relationship" he and BOB used to have, A GOLDEN CIRCLE. which immediately coop picks up on as a reference to his ring that the giant took. which mike says "he is known to us here, he can help you find BOB, you must ask him first." then he tells coop that the answer is not in his head, but in his heart, a possible reference to the crux of the black lodge, facing and defeating fear, which can be trouble for the mind, but for the heart, the answer is love. again this makes the interpetation of mike/gerard/LMFAP all the more difficult, as some of their actions seem good, and some seem bad.
but that is our perception in our world. to them there may be no difference, only what is and what needs to be done. now that my brain is dribbling from dipping into these esoteric matters when i was just going to coment on the white lodge's possible appearance, i shall retreat as to not make this even more confusing.

 Well, think of it this way: Had Laura not died, she'd have undergone the nightmarish torment that was playing host to Bob. As several characters insinuate over the course of the series, Laura saw death as preferable to living life with/under Bob.

The angel's allowing Ronette loose, and opening the train door, allows Mike/Gerard to throw the ring to Laura, permitting her to die instead of being possessed by Bob. Had the angel not appeared, Laura would have been helpless to Bob's possession, and potentially murdered/done something heinous to Ronette, and possibly Leland.

didnt i say something like what you just said?

" i guess my point is that human morality and good and evil dont apply to the spirits. they operate on a different plane, and what may be bad or evil to us may not be to them."

so actually, i really agree with your post mistergrey and have thought/felt similarly. after all her last diary entry was "tonight is the night that i die." and jacoby tells coop in the series something very similar. and mentions a kind of peace he notices on her last visit she had that made her seem less troubled than in her previous sessions which he interpeted as her acceptence of her impending death, after the fact(tho FWWM really discounts the jacoby statement as laura is shown not only traumatized with the knowledge the BOB is her father, she is also in a drug haze, but of course thats FWWM, and the incongruencies are part of its charm in my opninion). anway, she had accepted death was the only alternative to becoming BOB, now that BOB's possesion of leland was found out and his former abusing of her was in jeopardy because of the visions she recently had(aided by the chalfonts and MIKE/gerard in the traffic stop scene). after the night of that incident, laura asks "who are you, who are you really?" and soon she finds out. this is kind of related to my idea that good and evil are not clearly defined(if at all) for the lodge spirits. tho the chalfonts and MIKE and the angel freeing ronette lead to laura being killed, they also prevent her possesion by BOB. which is a better outcome? i think it is arrogant to make a judgement on that, as us, the audience, must fill in the blanks, and our interpetations to the abstractions in this film(most lynch films too) tell us more about who WE are and less about the actual film.

This site has been a fantastic discovery. So much I hadn't picked up on.

I have another theory that no-one seems to have mentioned here. It was my first reaction to the "one and the same" scene in the final episode that the MFAP and the giant were the same entity, or at least on the same side - the atmosphere of the whole scene is very gloating and it felt to me as if cooper realised he had been betrayed.

I really feel strongly the giant is not an entity of the white lodge at all - he doesn't do anything to help coop but serve him suspicious coffee (incidentally I love the theory elsewhere that the coffee is reacting due to time distortion caused by the rubbing of the MFAP's hands)  and he seems to me subservient to the MFAP in some way in the scene. plus they both appear to make deals with rings.

surely if they are the spirits representing each lodge they should be old enemies? I can interpret it as them being flipsides of the same coin up to a point - especially if you take the view that good and evil are just names for different sides, which does tie in with the references to Greek and Roman gods elsewhere - those gods meddled with the affairs of humans in ways not easily attributed to just doing good and bad. if the giant is a spirit from the white lodge, i still feel he used cooper as a pawn as much as anyone from the black lodge did.

only thing that potentially messes up that theory is that lynch films to me often do portray morality in simple terms of good and evil... though when dealing with people he does definitely recognise the potential to do evil and good in everyone, which is what I thought a lot of FWWM was about, so I say why should the lodge spirits be any different?

Now if only the jumping man in FWWM had been a giant....  still haven't a clue about that one.

 (EDIT - I forgot also that both the giant and the MFAP make the same whooping sound, another thing that made me make the association that they were the same entity, as I'd tragically already seen FWWM before the series)