Chapter 5: Welcome Back To A Skeleton Key To Twin Peaks
005 - A Skeleton Key To Twin Peaks, 2nd Edition
In 1939, James Joyce published his final novel Finnegan’s Wake after 17 years of work. The famed mythologist Joseph Campbell fell under the spell of this book. In 1944, he wrote the essential guide to understanding the deep complexities and nuances of Joyce’s nearly impenetrable masterpiece.
A Skeleton Key To Finnegan’s Wake helped many serious readers navigate Joyce’s intricate prose, which was meant to recreate the experience of sleep and dream.
Campbell’s book inspired the one you are now reading. I wrote the First Edition of A Skeleton Key To Twin Peaks to frame my experience of watching Twin Peaks The Return with the hope that my book will help serious viewers navigate the intricacies of this powerful, long, segmented film that likewise recreates the experience of sleep and dream.
I will explore with you, scene by scene, how Twin Peaks The Return tells the story of the return of Dale Cooper from a dream within a dream within a dream.
Everything that follows is my opinion, and I respect yours.
The Dale Cooper we know and love is being attacked through a coordinated, deadly plan, put together by his shadow self, now in league with a demonic force of extreme negativity that invaded Cooper’s soul at the very end of Season 2 of Twin Peaks.
Cooper is caught in a triple-layer mind melt, trapped in a seemingly endless nightmare maze about to turn vicious.
For twenty-five years of dream time, Laura Palmer has been begging Dale Cooper to save her as they repeat the beginning of a Hero’s Journey that never quite gets started.
Cooper believes he is a modern-day chivalrous knight who will fight every dragon to save the nearest princess in peril. Unfortunately, this sense of noble duty is a honeypot of deception, a test that drew Cooper in and presented him with a challenge to either save himself or save the dead girl. Unfortunately, he failed this test and has been stuck inside the Red Room dream layer while his doppelganger partnered with the demonic entity known only as BOB.
Cooper’s dark side (Mr. C) and BOB work on gerrymandering the dreamer’s reality by damaging memories to distance Coop from the friendships that made him strong in the main story narrative of Seasons 1 and 2 of Twin Peaks.
I don’t think we ever see the narrative world of Seasons 1 and 2 in Twin Peaks The Return. Instead, I believe we begin where we last left Cooper, inside the primary layer of his dream, the Red Room.
From this primary Red Room dream layer, the slow, looping process cycles over and over until a trap that Cooper springs on himself, from the future (or is it past) of a sub-narrative in this multi-layered dream that I will refer to here out as The Version Layer.
I believe that for Cooper’s doppelganger to take over the waking reality after the dream ends, the golden seed of Cooper’s core of goodness must be cast into non-existence. This almost happens in Twin Peaks The Return.1
In The Version Layer of this dream turned nightmare, Cooper will face ten deadly trials and be given the slimmest hope to exit this dream with his soul intact.
Everything is set against Dale Cooper succeeding, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Will Cooper’s warm memories of friendships, possibly now broken, cause the better angels of his nature to come to his aid when he needs it most inside this dream and its game of “Call For Help?”
Let’s find out.
Put this key in the lock, and let’s walk between worlds together at least once more.
If you’re a Harry Potter fan, consider comparing the golden seed in Twin Peaks The Return and that small module of light that the Dementors suck from their victims with a soul kiss. That light, that golden orb, represents pure joy and benevolence. And when that’s gone, the world turns dark fast for everyone involved.