Here my best guess guys!
What do you think about it?
There are three "dimensional" levels intertwined in TP plot: (I) the REAL world (OUR reality), (II) the fiction, (III) the dream inside the fiction.
Then, "who is the dreamer"? And how are these 3 dimensions connected to each other?
Laura Palmer is a real (when, again, real means part of the REAL world, OUR dimension/reality) blonde young lady, living in Twin Peaks.
Inside her dream, in which the entire TP series is settled, some characters are purely born from her imagination, as Coop ("I saw you in my dream"), some are taken from her close TP world/community, as her parents and schoolmates, some are taken from our (and also REAL Laura's!) reality, as "Billy" Zane, Monica Bellucci or Eddie Vedder.
At the end of episode 18, she hears someone calling her and awaking her (father Leland? "Lauraaaaa"...). However, as final credits roll up, we are not allowed to see her once awake, basically because... she is "real". She is one of us! And she awakes together with us, as TP season 3 ends.
Some rationales further sustaining my guess...
1. "We all live inside a dream", says Philip in FWWM.
2. "We are all dreaming", says Coop in episode 17... staring at us......
3. "We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives inside the dream, but who is the dreamer?", states Gordon. Accordingly, we do have characters that dream (Gordon does, Coop does, most likely even Audrey) but only one of them is the REAL dreamer (Laura!), that also "lives inside the dream".
4. REAL characters appearing in the dream (Billy, Monica, Eddie, as well as the owner of Palmers' house in the REAL world) suggest The dreamer has some connection with OUR reality.
5. The dreamy dimension TP is settled in justifies fantasy characters, as giants or spirits, and crazy events like those seen in episode eight; don't we also create unrealistic events and people, every night, in our dreams? Well, maybe not exactly this way, but still... somehow, we all do!
6. Names repeat across the episodes: Judy is a negative entity but also a bar, there are two Richards, two Pages, two Chalfonts. Laura is basically messing up with informations stuck in her mind (real names, of people she probably know in the REAL world) that emerge from her subconscious here and there during the dream (again, something very common in everybody's dream!).
7. Characters are often not coherent with their own personality, as Coop after the night with Diane at the motel, or for instance Bobby Briggs and Ben Horne, that appear sometimes as negative figures, sometimes as positive figures, sometimes as mad figures; again, such personality changes and incoherences seem more likely in a dreamy dimension than in the REAL world.
8. The fiction inside the dream (so, what I referred above as dimension "II") makes characters having their own behavior, personality and tasks, like in every movie, series or theatre piece. However, they all seem affected by Laura and her dream, like they are aware of it, like they know, even though "unconsciously", what is really going on (in the end, they are all creatures of Laura's mind...). Consequently: some try to escape from this evil dream (like Sarah, hitting Laura's picture, like she is trying to awake her); some of them are trying to catch the "mother" of evil, Laura, who is actually creating evil through her dream (like the whole FBI team); Coop instead tries twice to take her back home, getting "two birds with one stone", as awakening Laura (although this is not a "conscious" goal driving Coop's actions) means also killing Judy, the "mother" of the dream.
9. Tulpas and mirrors: when we all see ourselves in our dreams, aren't we actually duplicating and mirroring ourselves? We are the real ones, dreaming, but our "tulpa" is alive inside our dream. And when we look at our tulpa we are actually looking at the dreamy version of ourselves.
10. Explicitly showing that the whole TP series was actually just a dream, could have easily disappointed most of the fans; maybe this is why Lynch preferred to make this dreamy explanation less evident than in other movies (like Mulholland Drive, the most similar DL's work to TP). This is maybe an additional reason why we are not and will not be allowed to see Laura waking up, which would give us full certainty of what the whole story was about. That was just a dream...
11. Last but not least: Mulholland Drive itself......
🙂 ALL!!!
On first read, this makes a lot of sense to me.
Perhaps worth noting that in Carrie Page's house, there is picture on the wall that contains three circles arranged vertically. Underneath the picture is a pack of toilet rolls laid sideways - resulting in three circles, also arranged vertically.
(Sorry - don't have a screenshot)
Thanks this is a detail I really didn't noticed!
I noticed it last night - and it was clear it meant..... something.
But I didn't have a clue what, until your post..........
(Think it is the lingering shot when Carrie is off-screen getting her coat)
The problem with your approach there is that the fictional reality also shows many obvious dreamlike qualities.
It may lack supernatural entities (or does it, because something happened there at the end), but that reality itself seems a lot more fluid than the one in your level 3.
Thanks Chris!
Dimension III is created and driven by Laura's dream, so I am actually totally fine with this dimension showing dreamlike qualities.
I do see it as a dreamy and fluid dimension, to use your own words!
I also found this very interesting:
I would assume that, within the dream, Coop and Diane go back to the past, right before the nuclear explosion of episode 8, once crossed mile 430. A past that is then completely turned upside down by the subsequent events seen in that episode, when Laura is created and sent to the world, along with Bob and possibly other evil spirits (Mrs. Chalfont/Tremond?) that were not present BEFORE the "creation".
I would assume that, within the dream, Coop and Diane go back to the past, right before the nuclear explosion of episode 8, once crossed mile 430. A past that is then completely turned upside down by the subsequent events seen in that episode, when Laura is created and sent to the world, along with Bob and possibly other evil spirits (Mrs. Chalfont/Tremond?) that were not present BEFORE the "creation".
The car is a Ford Galaxy 1963.
They go back to the past, but not so much, probably in the 60's, the last post seems to me a good theory :
Got it, thanks.
Still, these to me are interpretation we are trying to give to a dream, as I guess in my original post above.
A dream where, by definition, not everything can be rationalized... reason why we are all losing our sleep 🙂
In my current framework, I think of there being 4 realities in the TP universe: 1) the Lodge reality, where the Arm and Mike and American Girl, etc live, 2/3) two Twin Peaks realities (which I call 3 and 15), and 4) OUR reality, which is shown almost documentary style in the final scene--but which also contains strange mysteries.
Maybe some locations--Laura's house--exist in all of the last 3?
Fire walk with