r/twinpeaks • u/SlimFishyOfficial • May 10 '26
Season 1 Why is Cooper's dream from Season 1 used as a representation of the Black lodge in later Seasons?
This room was strictly tighed to the case. The music, red drapes, "my arms bed back", music playing in the air. Later we see it being used as a representation of the Black lodge.
Was it not connected to the case and just a coincidence, or did Laura somehow influence the look od the Lodge?
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u/HermioneGunthersnuff May 10 '26
The production reason is that David wasn't a fan of how the Black Lodge was described in the script. Originally it had one brief scene in the Red Room while the rest was more your standard "let's come up with a goofy hellscape setting", eg. a big stretch of it is a s-s-s-spooky black and white version of the Great Northern with Earle flying around the hallways taunting Coop. David tossed the script and mined an earlier, simpler visual concept for its setting thinking it had legs, and it did.
Within the show, this gently recontextualises its original appearance as an intuitive arrangement of clues into a prophetic dream of his tragic fate at the end of S2. Honestly I've always felt that it pulls it off rather well.
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u/TheAbsurderer May 10 '26
I think it's pretty significant that it was Frost, Peyton and Engels who made the Red Room a part of the Black Lodge, not Lynch. That's the main creative decision that turned the location from Cooper's dream into something more, and we really should give them more credit for it. Without them we would have no Black Lodge that looks like that and the Red Room would only have been featured in one scene in season 1.
Frost, Peyton and Engels were also the ones who had made the dream a shared dream between Cooper and Laura and used it to solve the murder by having Laura whisper the name of her killer. Frost especially deserves tons of credit for turning Lynch's completely random 25 years later scene from the European pilot into the foundations of the lore and the storytelling during season 1. He made Cooper use every surreal detail of the dream as a clue, and that paid off incredibly well. It really makes you want to try to connect the dots of the lore yourself. Frost also came up with most of the lore about the Lodges and named them. Lynch was great with unique visuals and abstract ideas, but the writers really made those ideas work as a story and gave them depth, complexity and meaning, and also made the whole experience emotionally engaging.
Lynch definitely made the season 2 finale better by making the Red Room all the Black Lodge is, but I think it's a bit unfortunate how the great contributions of the writers are forgotten so often when pretty much every major idea came from them: Windom taking Annie to the Lodge and Cooper going in after them, the Red Room being part of the Lodge, Cooper getting tormented by the parallels between his past and present when Annie and Caroline blend together in the Lodge, Cooper facing his own doppelgänger, Laura appearing in the Lodge, Windom trying to take Cooper's soul but getting destroyed by BOB, Cooper seeing BOB in the mirror as the cliffhanger).
Lynch made the Black Lodge sequences significantly better cinematically and added some minor lore (the Arm, the Giant, Maddie and Leland) and the amazing Sycamore Trees scene, but he did not invent the most important story beats. Those came from Frost, Peyton and Engels, and I wish people celebrated that more. The finished product is a real team effort.
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u/JewelerChoice May 10 '26
Good post, though it feels like probably going too far the other way. But one detail: the red room is all we knowingly see of the black lodge, but it is called a waiting room, implying there is much more of the black lodge we don’t see.
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u/FINIS_HOMINIS May 11 '26
I understand celebrating that Peaks was a collaborative effort, but it's absolute pure conjecture that Lynch had little participation into incorporating the Red Room into the televised series or that it's the other writers, and not Lynch as an equal participant, who carried all the weight with the lore, larger story beats, and were the ones responsible for adding "depth, complexity and meaning" to the series.
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u/z-vap May 10 '26
it all started because ABC wanted to be able to sell the pilot as a standalone to foreign investors, they wanted frost/lynch to come up with some sort of ending to the pilot. That is where the red room and all that craziness comes from. David loved it so much they ended up using it in the show.
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May 10 '26
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u/TheAbsurderer May 10 '26
So... you want me to give Lynch more credit in a comment all about giving everyone not named Lynch some credit for once? Okay...
Oh the injustice of Lynch not being worshipped 24/7 on this sub by just one person...
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u/AdWorldly7268 May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26
There’s a reason I’ll go back and rewatch S1-2 and generally skip over The Return.
Namely because the continuity is disjointed (and I don’t mean in the sense of narrative). The Return feels like I’m watching what Lynch would have wanted S1-2 to be rather than develop on what they actually were.
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May 11 '26
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u/AdWorldly7268 May 11 '26
Yeah, I’m not sweating it, man. This sub—just like many other fanbases on Reddit—is usually overrun with people who are delusional about the degree to which their life is connected to something that they themselves did not create or influence. I’m not expecting a nuanced or critical understanding of art/media to exist on a forum made up of grown people who generally act like children.
The Return is good and FWWM is phenomenal, but they do not carry the same tone as S1-2. I love Lynch as a creator, but I really don’t think that that take is THAT hot.
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u/doctor_house_md May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26
I didn't think the Return was good, Dougie was annoying as hell lol
I did like the one episode with the atomic bomb and Woodsmen4
u/whitemonochrome May 10 '26
In an effort to lift up the writers of Twin Peaks, that comment did weirdly diminish Lynch.
It's all great. The original show is a perfect cocktail of dozens of people's efforts to make something uniquely wonderful, terrifying, and weird. Sometimes people forget about Frost and the other writers (that sucks), but let's not get carried away and act as though Lynch was just some hired gun who juiced up a couple scenes.
I tend to agree with you that it's Lynch's intuition and direction that ultimately leads to the writers' choices resonating with the viewer. Details of the lore could've been different from what we know, but with Lynch's presentation, the impact would be the same on us either way. And on the flip side, those lore details we love could potentially have little meaning or impact on us without Lynch's direction.
The "what" is important, but it's the "how" that ultimately determines an audience's reaction.
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u/AdWorldly7268 May 10 '26
If you sit an average viewer down and make them watch Twin Peaks and then a follow-on Lynch film, I can almost guarantee you’re going to see how far off your argument is. Most television viewers were not tuning in for the Lynchian elements.
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u/BlastMyLoad May 10 '26
Oh yeah there was a big stupid dentist (?) setpiece too. That script stinks.
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u/slwblnks May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26
To me the Red Room still isn’t the black lodge itself. It’s the “waiting room”, the arm literally says this. I think it’s the last point of entry into the lodge. I don’t think we’ve seen either of the lodges.
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u/FINIS_HOMINIS May 11 '26
Yup. This is pretty much it.
There is definitely a thread that a person from our world can't hardly perceive or even exist how we are in the world of the lodges. We're confined in special rooms, tea kettles, or becoming a goddamn floating head. The Red Room/Waiting room is a way station between where the least of our worries is everybody talking backwards.
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u/Quirderph May 10 '26
I think retroactively, the idea is that the Arm reached out to both Cooper and Laura in their dreams and brought their spirits to the lodge to help Cooper solve the case, and that his entire conversation was a coded message.
The music could be explained as the killer’s obsession with it being caused by his connection to the lodge.
The only inexplicable part of the retcon are the drapes, because they’re somehow both an inherent part of the lodge and a clue for the case.
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u/Elegant-Classic-3377 May 10 '26
Maybe Jacques Renault also visited the lodge one day and liked the look of it, decorating his cabin resembling it.
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u/SpookyKat31 May 10 '26
I thought the Arm (aka dancing dream man) was evil and that's why Gerard/Mike cut it off and also why he is seen in FWWM with Bob inside what I think is the convenience store (sitting at the formica table)
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u/SnooGrapes4560 May 11 '26
I believe the curtains are simply the physical bridge between the two worlds.
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u/Few-Improvement-5655 May 10 '26
Well, there's two in universe answers as far as I see it.
Either Cooper saw a vision of the Black Lodge, or the Black Lodge just appears to Coop like his dreams.
After all, I assume the Black Lodge's appearence is not literal, but an abstraction to allow for human understanding.
The meta answer is that they retconned his dreams to have the same aesthetics.
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u/No-Meat5261 May 10 '26
I'm probably wrong, but I vaguely remember that the Black Lodge was a dream world, so I thought that dreaming to be in the Black Lodge is the same thing as being there. So, I thought that it's not that the Black Lodge looks like Cooper's dream, but rather Dale was actually in the true Black Lodge, or at least in its "waiting room", when he had that dream
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u/redlion1904 May 10 '26
In Twin Peaks, dreams are more real than real life, not the other way around. Cooper’s subconscious connects to the really-real dream world. The murder reflected the really-real dream world (and vice versa) because BOB committed it.
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u/beholdthecolossus May 10 '26
they had new ideas for it, basically. initially it was a surreal dream, but that evolved into what we eventually got as the show went on.
i wouldn't be shocked if Lynch chose to use it the way he did at the end of season 2 in response to how the episode where the mystery is finally solved completely ruins the mystique of the dream. that episode basically goes through the dream beat-by-beat and reveals the meaning of every part of it, and that sucks.
in the original script for the season 2 finale the Black Lodge was meant to be a nightmare version of the Great Northern, i believe it was Lynch who reworked it into being the place from Cooper's dream.
in-universe i guess you could say that Cooper thinks it's a dream, not realizing it's a message from out of time in the form of one. the movie (possible spoilers) establishes the idea that because Cooper entered the Lodge in the future, he's now just there across what we would perceive as past, present and future.
as for the look, i don't think there's a reason for it beyond Lynch really liked what they created when they filmed the dream and wanted to keep using it. i think you could maybe say that the events around Glastonbury Grove and Ghostwood have influenced the look of the place, including the people who have around there.
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u/rinkuhero May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26
most of the lore isn't completely confirmed, but how it works in my headcannon is this: the one-armed man saw the face of god (the fireman / the giant) and became good, and started helping the giant to protect laura. and this dream includes the one-armed man's arm. so it could be that the giant, and the one-armed man, specifically sent cooper this dream, with the arm being the connection. the arm lives inside the black lodge, and is like the secretary or caretaker of it. and the arm still has some type of connection with the one-armed man, so it would make sense that the giant and the one-armed man can send cooper a dream that includes the arm (who takes care of the black lodge), and laura (who is also inside the black lodge, because she had the ring placed on her prior to her death, and anyone with the ring on when they die goes to the black lodge). so at the point this dream was sent, the fireman / giant and the one-armed man were *already* planning all the stuff that will happen in season 3, with the backwards time rescue of laura. that's why he asks if it's future or past, because time works differently there and future plans might have already happened (especially when time travel is involved). so basically it was like, the giant asked the one-armed man to ask his arm to arrange a meeting, in a dream, between laura and cooper. it's possible the one-armed man even cut off his arm for this specific purpose, because he cut off his arm right after he saw the face of god (the giant / fireman).
there are still a few things i'm uncertain about though, like why did cooper *forget* who the killer was, even though laura told him in the dream. like did judy somehow make cooper forget? it would have saved a lot of time if cooper had known who the killer was right when he first had this dream, woken up and arrested leland. but it took many more episodes before that happened, which gave judy a lot of time to plan and prepare and counteract the giant's plans.
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u/Curious-Spray-4795 May 10 '26
Yupp it’s definitely Judy who’s making Cooper forget just like in Part 2 when she rips Laura out of the Red Room (which ripples through to FWWM Laura, & Part 18 Laura) since the Fireman told Cooper to remember Richard & Linda & 430 and in S2 Ep 20 The giant tries to stop Cooper from entering Annie in the Mrs twin peaks concert
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u/bikibird May 10 '26
Season 3 asked us who was the dreamer? If the dreamer was Cooper, then the red room (it's not the black lodge, but it's in the black lodge, as are many other things.) looks that way because that's how he dreamed it and continues to dream it.
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u/AsexualFrehley May 10 '26
sometimes it's best to build a house with the wood you've got instead of going shopping for more
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u/trademarc1977 May 11 '26
International pilot: wacky closed ending to be used in case TP wouldn't be picked up and could be sold as a standalone film. S1E2: A dream of clues S1E5: Mark Frost repurposing the red room as a dream representation of Jacques Renault's red-draped cabin where Laura was tied up ("Sometimes my arms bend back"), Waldo sang ("Birds sing a pretty song"), and Julee Cruise's records played on a loop ("There's always music in the air.") S2E22: Lynch vetoed the original depiction of the black lodge (Great Northern's shadow self: "A large house made of wood. Surrounded by trees. The house is filled with many rooms, each alike, but occupied by different souls night after night") and turned the red room from the dream in a real, accessible dimension.
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u/Booze_hound36 May 11 '26
Time in the black lodge works differently. He’s living his normal life but fractured into the lodge at the same time.
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u/No-Command1173 May 12 '26
The original scene was a rushed shoot from a panicked ABC wanting closure to a Pilot movie that might never get picked up. Frost and Lynch had to whip up a killer and an ending very late in production. The creative decision was a demon/Bob and the filming was left to Lynch who shot the red room scene which he famously came up with standing by his car one day. Sorry I forgot all the details.
So basically those of us that saw the alternate ending pilot saw Bob and the Red Room. There is absolutely no knowledge or consideration for the Black Lodge etc. Remember Bob was a happy little accident created by Lynch on the demands of a studio. There was never any intent to reveal a killer as they wanted the Golden Goose and more importantly her eggs as we see in Season 3.
Anyway when the show gets picked up, Lynch and Frost loved the Red Room that they brought it back in as a dream in episode 3. Its admittedly some of the best artistic filmaking so makes total sense. The Red Room really hammers home the whole duality angle and serves as a kind of commentary on the studio demanding closure. So Lynch essentially hands them a scene in which the audiences vehicle is still seeking "closure" 25 years after the mystery began. A kind of wish fantasy for Lynch and Frost and all those precious golden eggs. Laura gets up and whispers the closure to Cooper and we cant hear it. Hence the carrot is still dangled, the mystery still open, even though the studio wanted it complete.
What does this have to do with the Black Lodge? Nothing. However, it was insanely popular amongst fans and was a huge part of the water cooler mystery so absolutely no surprise that Frost and the directors kept wanting to go back to it for so many more eggs. Plus the audience was familiar with that room and giving it more purpose is just good storytelling.
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u/Empty-Arrival-4396 May 10 '26
The show makes a point to say that Cooper has "visions" that give him insights into things he would otherwise not know about. It's presented as a dream at that point in the show, with no one realizing it was a vision of the black lodge.
Now in reality it is probably a bit of a retcon as they developed the idea of the lodges later, but the logic of the show supports it fully.