2020-08-18 16:20:59 ¶ ●

internet was out for a few days while i finished The Return, so i had some time to mull things over. i’ll try to churn out some of my thoughts on it over the next while.

obviously a lot of the thoughts buzzing around my head after the finale were about “Judy”. naturally, one of the first things i did when i got access to the wide web again was to surf around and see what other people’s thoughts were. maybe a mistake. i quickly found that most people had picked up on the same thing that i had, but that i was really hoping wasn’t true.

it seems pretty airtight that the ‘mother’ cooper needs to be wary of, banging on the walls of the strange zonespace room, is the same ‘experiment’ being watched for in new york, banging on the walls of the glass cube. this ‘experiment’ would appear to be the same creature that birthed BOB following the white sands nuclear test in 1945 (i.e. a mother). it makes perfect sense that this thing would be the thing depicted as a huge dark “owl” on hawk’s living map, and mr. c’s ace of spades card.

what bothers me is this idea that judy, presumably as the ultimate evil and therefore overarching villain of twin peaks’ cosmology, would also be laura’s mother sarah palmer.

i won’t pretend i don’t see any hints at all. if seasons 1 and 2 climaxed with the reveal that laura’s father killed her, it follows that season 3′s villainous ‘mother’ character would literally also be laura’s mother. sarah’s psychic nature does seem to reveal a dark source in The Return, and there is, of course, the scene wherein she turns to attacking laura’s image to consider.

but i’ll get my less academic misgivings out of the way first. the idea of a “female” spirit being twin peaks’ ultimate evil is bad enough on its own - BOB is “the evil that men do” above all else, and his hosts who make up the primary antagonistic forces of all three seasons are emblematic of anti-woman violence. to have this female evil be none other than the grieving mother of the victim and the wife of the killer would be beyond out of line with twin peaks’ established moral thread.

more practically; sarah palmer as judy as twin peaks’ ultimate villain just doesn’t track within the logic of the series. one instance of grief stricken mania directed at a long dead daughter does not suddenly rewrite every other aspect of a character’s personality or history. the “white (horse) of the eyes” is demonstrably not sarah judith palmer “looking away” from the abuse of her daughter. within Fire, Walk With Me we see with our own eyes not only that sarah opposes her husband’s sometimes cruel treatment of their daughter, but that leland / BOB takes the active precaution of drugging her so that he can commit his evils without her interference. within The Return, too, the one instance in which sarah uses her powers for violent purposes, she’s defending herself from a man. if the entity that lives behind sarah’s face were judy, then it would be abundantly clear that judy is strongly against sexual violence.