There once was a man in South America, assassinated when an entity claiming to be a founding agent of the Blue Rose Task Force reached out to one Albert Rosenfield, a forensics specialist also assigned to the Top Secret Task Force charged with investigating (among other mysteries) individuals who manifest in the world as dual entities. Albert revealed the name and location of this man in South America, a double agent field asset under deep cover. That man died as a result of Albert’s disclosure. Albert was phished and fell for it.
Eventually, an entity calling itself Phillip Jeffries (there was more than one) developed a new field asset. The asset Ray Monroe was assigned to the worst villain. Ray’s mission was to slow him down at all costs. A set of coordinates were essential to that dark boss of the underworld of the human psyche. Ray Monroe was conjured from a portal of dark creative energy, wherever it is that misaligned characters are born, represented in Twin Peaks The Return as a two-room country shack where the world is filled with truck drivers.
When conjured, then summoned, Ray gets to work. He gets those coordinates. But then he (conveniently) got arrested for crossing over state lines with illegal weapons. He’s in Federal Prison in Yankton, the city that Al Swearengen was always bitching about in Deadwood. And now Mr. C has to get Ray’s ass out of prison to get those coordinates. This major inconvenience earns him the title That Fucker Ray, bestowed by the darkest villain as a coronation for fucking up the plans of an evil man.
No one knows what those coordinates meant. Most of us have theories, but they are all emotional. Nevertheless, they were important enough for Mr. C to stop what he was doing and get into prison to bust Ray out and get those coordinates, all of this in service of slowing Mr. C down enough so Cooper could catch his breath in a windswept room of his mind that he was cast away inside without agency, conscience, or concern.
Without Ray’s sacrifice, the whole plan would have fallen into disaster by the speed at which Mr. C executes his dark machinations early in the story. Ray froze Mr. C for thirteen parts, more than half the narrative. This is why Ray Monroe is one of the indispensable characters of Twin Peaks The Return. The whole story falls apart if you extract Ray’s presence and actions. There is a reason that the Red Room reclaims Ray Monroe, and it’s not just that he had the ring put on his finger. Mr. C had to send him back to cycle Ray’s energy into the psychic energy grid that powers this third season of Twin Peaks.
In The Return, The Red Room is as much a place of comfort as a palace of malice with all those ominous whooshing winds. And Ray Monroe is a Son of the Red Room, putting him in the rare air of Cooper and his double and triple selves. Ray is there with Leland and the demented memory of Diane’s tulpa, whose damaged, dangerous falseness purges in the fire of a mind. Without Ray Monroe, none of that would happen. For this, we remember Ray as one of the few indispensable characters of Twin Peaks: The Return.
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I almost had heart failure on this one, JB! I thought the actor who played Ray left us. Screeeeeam. :-(