Now, there are some things that will change
Cooper’s mission this season was not his slow return as Good Coop, or to Twin Peaks. It wasn’t to destroy Bad Coop, and not to save Laura from dying. His mission was to destroy Judy.
In episode 17 we learn that Major Briggs told Gordon Cole and Cooper about Judy, an extreme negative force. Cooper, Gordon and Major Briggs make a plan to destroy Judy. Then Major Briggs disappears. Cooper tells Gordon to look for him if he disappears, as he is trying to “kill two birds with one stone”.
The Fireman, episode 1: “Remember 430. Richard and Linda. Two birds, one stone”.
Laura is the stone. He needs her to live to help destroy Judy (I guess Bob is the other bird?). It’s been his mission since the opening scene in the 1st episode.
We know from episode 8 of this season that Laura, or a spirit to inhabit Laura, was created by Dido and the Fireman to counter Bob and the mother/Judy.
Log Lady, episode 10: “Laura is the One”
Initially when watching episode 18 I was wondering why Cooper would intervene in Laura’s last night alive to stop her from dying, only to take her back to her home to Bob and possibly Judy (either as Sarah Palmer or an entity inside her home). She would also still have all the trauma from past abuse. Now I see that he isn’t our Dale Cooper white knight trying to save her from dying a painful death, but to save her from dying and putting on the ring(he warned her in FWWM not to take the ring) and spending 25 years in the lodge. He wants to prevent her from dying so she can face off against Judy.
When Richard/Coop and Carrie/Laura meet in Odessa he says he would like to take her to her mother’s house. Of course, this has a double meaning as the Mother is another name for Judy. And Judy is possibly inhabiting Sarah Palmer, or her house. Philip Jeffries tells Cooper he can find Judy in 708, (Sarah’s house), and that someone might be there. Around the moment Laura disappears we see Sarah in her lounge room smashing up Laura’s portrait. In season 1, episode 3 Leland dances around with Laura’s portrait in the same room and accidentally smashes it before Sarah screams “What is going on in this house!?!”
So, Cooper goes back to 1989 to the night Laura died. He tells her he is taking her home. As Cooper is leading Laura out of the woods he turns and she disappears. A few people have noted this is like the Greek tragedy of Eurydice and Orpheus (thank you! I haven’t studied the Greek myths and would never have known that).
“…When Eurydice dies of a fatal snake bite to her foot, Orpheus refuses to accept that he will never see his beloved wife again, and so attempts to achieve the impossible by retrieving her from the Underworld. Putting the supernatural creatures in his path under the spell of his divine lyre music, Orpheus manages to get through all of the obstacles of the Underworld. As a reward, he is granted the opportunity to lead Eurydice back to life with him, on the condition that he never looks back at his ghost wife as they exit the Underworld…Tragically, Orpheus fails to meet the obligations of the deal and in a moment of madness he looks back at Eurydice, condemning her once more to the shadows...”
http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/virgil/georgics/orpheus-eurydice.shtml
Laura disappears into the Underworld. Or the alternate reality/Odessa. Has season 3 been Cooper as Orpheus, trying to get through obstacles to get to this Underworld? It could explain why Freddie- a new, minor character introduced late in the season- is the one to dispatch Bob, not Cooper himself. It isn’t his main goal.
Also, just before Laura disappears in the woods Coop hears the record scratching sound. In episode 1 The Firemen tells Cooper to listen to the scratching record and that “It is in our house now”. In season 2 when Leland/Bob attacks Maddie we also hear the record scratches. The record scratches might indicate the presence of evil including Bob and Judy. Perhaps Judy intervened and caused Laura’s disappearance.
So, Cooper remembers 430, Richard and Linda etc. He crosses a threshold to a different reality to find Laura, to bring her to confront Judy
Of course it isn’t that simple. It may be a different timeline, or an alternate reality. Despite RichardCoop’s line “What year is this?” I’m leaning toward it being a different reality/the Underworld. It’s a kind of mirror of the Twin Peaks world but there is something so off about this place. The presence of Judy, or evil is like an oppressive fog. The whole episode is flat, nihilistic, and a little sleazy. It’s like Twin Peaks with the colour drained out. Both Laura as Carrie and Cooper as Richard have none of their original’s charisma. The “Welcome to Twin Peaks” sign is missing. Laura/Carrie doesn’t recognise anything until the very end. Coop recognises the places but can’t seem to process it. He barely reacts to the dead guy at Carrie’s. He doesn’t see the Tremond/Chalfont connection. There is no music in this place, Badalamenti’s score is noticeably absent, except The Platters song “My Prayer” playing over the sex scene. It’s the same song playing at the end of episode 8 from the radio station which the girl is listening to just before the bug/frog/roach crawls into her mouth and the woodsman shatters skulls.
And of course, Laura/Carrie works at a diner called Judy’s. There is a white horse outside Judy’s diner, a porcelain white horse in Carries house, and she wears a horseshoe necklace (in the original series Sarah Palmer sees the white horse just before Bob appears; the got-a-light woodsman mentions a horse in his incantation: Log Lady mentions a pale horse in a poem in the original series “Woe to the ones who behold the pale horse”). When Richard/Coop tries to complete his mission, the Tremonds now live at the house and Sarah Palmer is no longer there. At first. We hear Sarah the very last moment, as Laura/Carrie becomes aware.
Many fans are speculating that the town of Twin Peaks is now irrevocably altered and lost forever because of Cooper trying to save Laura and crossing thresholds. I thought this at first too. But now I think the town in ep 18 is not our Twin Peaks at all but is the alternative Twin Peaks. This means the only thing that changes in our TP, at Cooper’s intervention, is the death of Laura Palmer. We see in episode 17 Laura’s dead body disappearing on the shore, Pete Martell fishing as usual, and not finding her body. She is now a missing person. In the Red Room she disappears, meaning she never put the ring on, never died and never ended up in the Black Lodge.
And of course, if there was no murder, then Cooper never came to Twin Peaks.
Cooper, episode 17: “Now, there are some things that will change. The past dictates the future”
He knows he is going back to stop Laura’s death. If Laura doesn’t die, if Judy and Bob are eradicated, then Dale Cooper never came to Twin Peaks. But he will still remember it. He will remember his time there that never happened. This is the dream. Dale Cooper is the dreamer. The whole show is now his dream.
