another big thing that i feel is really hurdling the idea that judy is somehow twin peaks’ big ultimate bad is the fact that she’s an owl. if we accept that the negative spirit depicted on hawk’s living map is judy, this is the logical conclusion; judy’s symbol seems to be a form of the owl cave petroglyph, which itself seems to represent an owl in flight.

wikia user Special Agent Dale Cooper’s opinion - as documented on the twin peaks wiki’s owl article - is that the owls act as ‘vessels’ for spirits like BOB; but my interpretation of episode 16′s finale scene was almost the opposite. as some unknown entity scurries around the forest floor, screen flush with violent red, an owl suddenly flies into frame from a bright white light; the owl is a spirit of the white lodge sent to retrieve a rogue spirit. that’s the role of the owl; a watcher.

The Secret History seems to agree more with the former interpretation. the owl is said to be the psychic representation of a large-eyed race of “grey aliens” with malevolent intentions and hailing from the black lodge, in opposition to the benevolent “nordic” race from the white lodge. my reason for dismissing this supposed discrepancy was at first to try to accept that lynch and frost’s versions of twin peaks would always fundamentally differ. majorly, Secret History and The Final Dossier seem content with the assumption that the white and black lodges are indeed simply two different “locations”, contrary to the series’ own implication that black and white are the same. but i think the books themselves hold clues that this so-called “black and white” interpretation of the world of twin peaks may be misleading. frost uses the twin earthly lodges of the masons and the bavarian illuminati as worldly analogues to the two spiritual lodges. but real-world masonic lodges contain a particular design element that surely inspired lynch’s depiction of the lodge; a black-and-white mosaic floor, “emblematic of human life, checkered with good and evil.”

the phrase so central to twin peaks’ mystery is not “the owls are a force of good”, but it also isn’t “the owls are spirits of evil”. the owls are not what they seem. and so this needs to be followed through to its ultimate conclusion. judy is not what she seems.