Posted by: Jack

The Lodge entities for me, especially after watching FWWM, have always been fascinating.  I think they are David Lynch created entities, and that Mark Frost only added to their mythologies (such as TSHOTP).  But they are important because they have always been an integral part to the plot of Twin Peaks.  Laura's death is what brought Cooper to Twin Peaks in the first place.

 

So about MIKE.  We know he cut his own arm off, and that the Arm had a tattoo on it saying "Fire Walk With Me".

We also know that whoever puts on the ring made of the formica table top, that their left arm will go completely numb to the point that they can't use it.

- Teresa Banks - we know she wore the ring and that her left arm went numb.  the ring disappeared off of her finger when she died.

- Dougie - we saw that his left arm was numb.

- Annie - she was wearing the ring, but was unconscious, so we can only assume that her left arm would have been numb.  Of course, her fate is unknown.

- Annie's nurse - she stole Annie's ring in the Missing Pieces, but her fate is unknown.

- Laura - she wore the ring when MIKE threw it to her just before BOB killed her.

- Cooper's Doppelganger - Ray told him that Philip Jeffries wanted him to put the ring on his finger.

 

So.....just so I think all Twin Peaks fans can agree that this has been established as truth:

 

(A) The ring belongs to MIKE.  And that the wearer of the ring becomes a host for MIKE.

("With this ring, I thee wed.") - meaning that whoever wears the ring, becomes in a union with MIKE.

(B) MIKE always gets his ring back, as when the person who is wearing it, upon their death, their body enters the Red Room.  We saw this with our own eyes with Dougie and with Ray.  We can only assume that it happened to Teresa.  When MIKE gets his ring back, he puts it on the black and gold table, where it always sits when it is not worn.

(C) MIKE wanted Laura to wear the ring in the train car before Laura's death, to prevent Laura from being possessed by BOB.  We know from Laura telling Harold, and from reading her diary, that BOB was trying to posess her, but she wouldn't let him.  So MIKE saved Laura from being possessed by BOB, although it resulted in her death.

 

So if we all agree that the above is all true, my question is, why in FWWM, did the Arm show Laura the ring in her dream, as if enticing her to wear it, but Cooper warned Laura: "Don't take the ring Laura."?  (which impossibly skews time).

Lynch could have shown MIKE offering the ring to Laura in that dream but instead, it was the ARM that Lynch chose to  show offering it to her.

Yet, MIKE (while inside Phillip Gerard) directly told Laura in person that BOB was inside Leland, while showing her the ring on his own hand.  That caused Laura to remember the 2 other times she saw that ring: on Teresa's finger and in her dream of The Arm and Cooper.

So I conclude that MIKE created Dougie for the purpose of helping get Cooper out of the Black Lodge and back onto Earth.  Knowing that Cooper's doppelganger was not going to follow the rules of coming back into the Black Lodge, and that that meant that Cooper couldn't leave the Black Lodge, he decided to create the artificial Dougie, and to guide him into having his own life in Las Vegas, only so that Cooper would take his place.  MIKE could then guide Cooper safely through life until the time comes on October 1st (2:53 time and time again) for Cooper and his doppelganger to confront each other, where one has to return to the Black Lodge.  MIKE has worked hard to keep Cooper safe, and the life of Dougie was a safe out of the way place to keep him until the doppelganger would return to Twin Peaks.

But that leaves us with the 4 most important questions that we don't have answers to yet (and hopefully we will get them!):

(1) What will bring Cooper's personality back?  His doppelganger's death?  His shoes?

(2) What are Cooper's doppelganger's motives for doing what he is doing, what does he WANT?  That question involves the playing card he showed to Darya, which looks a lot like "The Experiment" from Episode 8 (not "The Experiment Model" from Episode 1 and 2)

(3) Since we know that BOB and Cooper's doppelganger are 2 different entities, do they have separate agendas and motives, are they symbiotically helping each other, or is BOB manipulating the Doppelganger for his own purposes?

(4) How does the town of Twin Peaks figure into all of this?  We know that Glastonbury Grove is the accessible location of one of the openings into the Black Lodge.  But why do the residents of Twin Peaks become affected by Lodge activity from time to time?

These in my mind are the 4 questions that no one has answers to yet, and that in the last 5 episodes, we may or may not get these 4 questions answered.  I can't wait!

At risk of sounding like a pedant, and assuming I haven't mis-interpreted what was written above, the Owl Cave ring existed from the time of the Nez Perce and Lewis & Clark, as referred to in the handwritten sections of TSHOTP, so wasn't made from the formica table top.