Cytat:Laura Palmer is, in real life in Twin Peaks at some point in time, being raped by her father. She can't handle reality, so she begins to create stories and fantastical elements to distract her from the truth and to avoid it. She dreams her dream, and then lives inside it. In FWWM, we can already see this happening. She sees "Bob's" face over her father's when he rapes her. Arguably, it is possible the full delusion of this dream began when she enters the painting on the wall. And, by "dream", this doesn't just have to be a legitimate dream during sleep. This is also a kind of waking dream, an avoidance and delusion so deep that she truly believes it. Stories we tell ourselves that we come to believe. She has thrown herself into this magical, fantastical world to escape her father's abuse.

And so in this world, she is dead. She is gone. Nonexistent. Now, she is at peace. She's hidden herself from the world. But her brain can't just let her do that, it needs her to confront the reality of her situation and resolve it somehow. That is the embodiment of Dale Cooper. He is the part of her subconscious that is designed to "find" her, and awaken her to the truth, so that she can resolve this situation and alleviate her pain and suffering. This is also the reason why Cooper was able to be "trapped" by his doppelgänger. His doppelgänger is the fearful side of Laura's brain that's trying to stop Cooper from waking her up. So in the Red Room, where Laura is, Cooper has the opportunity to tell her to wake up. But his doppelgänger arrives, and traps him there, and escapes out into the world of the dream.

But, through a long, long plan Cooper hatched while in the Red Room, and part of which we see in this season (mostly what he was planning while in Dougie's body, as he was aware of everything), he was able to coordinate with The Fireman (the part of her brain that is trying to confront reality and resolve it) to trick Mr. C/BOB and kill him. This is the resolution we see in Part 17. Over the phone, Cooper is able to convince Lucy to kill BOB because, well, Lucy and him are both two parts of the same dream. Then Cooper arrives, and Freddie destroys BOB. The doppelgänger is back in the Red Room. Cooper is able to be sent back in time to prevent Laura from being killed by her father. Remember, this is all in her "dream", so she hasn't really died in real life yet. She's created this as a worst case scenario for her tragedy, but also to hide herself within the dream.

We see her body in the shore flicker out of existence, and Pete go fishing. This means she was never killed. In the forest, as Cooper guides her by her hand to return home, Laura suddenly awakens to the truth of her reality and lets out her bloodcurdling scream. She simply cannot confront it, and so disappears, creating another dream for herself to live in and avoid her trauma further.

Cooper is thrust back into the Red Room. When he exits out, he's still in the original dream world. Diane is there. They need to go into the new dream to save Laura, because that is Cooper's eternal mission. He is the part of her brain designed to wake her up to her trauma and reality.

Diane, for whatever reason, cannot do this anymore. I think she is simply apart of the old dream. So Cooper wakes up, and now he is Richard. Same physical entity of the brain, new dream. New person. He finds Laura in Odessa (now Carrie Page, because her brain the 2nd time around got smarter at avoiding her trauma and so changed her name and sent her to another part of the world). But, of course, Cooper found her because he's Cooper.

So in this new dream, he brings her up to the Palmer house. Again, Laura's brain has gotten smarter for this 2nd time around, and so her real parents don't live there anymore in the dream. Its new people, recycling the names Chalfont and Tremond again, as the brain does in dreams. As they walk back out onto the road, Richard/Cooper is confused. He clearly remembers the prior dream, and so this makes no sense to him. He asks what year it is. This disturbing question unsettles Carrie, causing her to awaken just enough to hear her mother's voice cut through the dream (at this point, she is actually sleeping) "Laaaurraaa..." she hears, and then suddenly, right there, awakens again to the true, terrible, horrible reality that her father is raping her, and she lets out that bloodcurdling scream of sheer terror. And it cuts to black.

It ends on us not knowing whether she woke up again fully, or if she created another dream to hide herself in to avoid this trauma further. The last time she woke up, in the woods with Cooper, she sent herself into another dream and became Carrie Page. So, here, the point is that we are simply not supposed to know. It's left up to the viewer to decide.

As for Judy, she's the representation of reality. "We're not going to talk about Judy" because Laura is not interested in awakening to her reality. However, the "extreme negative force" of Judy follows her everywhere. In the second dream, in which Laura is Carrie Page, she works at Judy's. Judy is the reality of her situation, and the extreme negativity that's surrounding that. She's also possibly the figure that birthed BOB during the atom bomb test, which might represent the very beginning of Laura's abuse at the hands of her father.

And, as for Audrey: she is in her own separate dream. She really was in the bank explosion in real life, and went into a coma. Laura incorporated that into her ongoing dream, confirmed by Doc Hayward mentioning it. But the scenes we actually see with Audrey in them, are happening in Audrey's coma. This is ironic because Audrey actually wants to awaken, but physically cannot. Thus, when she realizes she's in a coma, all she does is end up in a totally white room, staring back at her reflection. Laura, on the other hand, is physically capable of awakening but doesn't want to, so she throws herself back into a dream each time she confronts the truth of her situation.

In terms of the Lodges, the Black Lodge is most likely the place Laura goes when she awakens to the truth and screams. If she has perfect courage (she's able to confront her reality), then she can pass through to the White Lodge and find peace and resolution some way, or at least be capable of doing so. Fortunately, Cooper's sole purpose seems to be to help Laura awaken to her reality, so even if she does confront it without "perfect courage" and send herself back into another dream, there will be another chance to face reality further down the road, with the help of Cooper.

It should also be noted that although a lot of time has passed within the dream (25 years), it might have only been a couple of months in the real world. If Laura's Twin Peaks dream began on February 24th, 1989, and Audrey was in the bank explosion in her dream the same time that it happened in the real world, then that would have been around a month after Laura's dream began. Time may speed up or slow down in the dream, or jump ahead or behind in time (as we saw, Cooper was able to visit the past to prevent Laura's death in the dream), so it's hard to say when exactly the last moment's of The Return were exactly happening in Laura's real life. By the time Cooper/Richard brings Carrie Page to the house, it might have only been a couple of months since Laura's Twin Peaks dream, and when Cooper awakens her in the forest in Twin Peaks as Laura, it might have only been a couple of months since all this truly began.

And, in the way that Carrie was Laura, Laura might have been Teresa Banks. And in the way Richard was Cooper, Cooper might have been Chester Desmond. There might have been a dream Laura created that came before the one in Twin Peaks. That's more of a wild card at this point, but I wanted to add it at the end here. If that's true, then story of the "girl who lived down the lane" might be an eternal one, of a poor teenage girl who has been sexually abused at the hands of her father, and is gently guided back towards confronting reality with the help of whatever physical embodiment her brain has created for her: whether its Chester Desmond, Dale Cooper, or Richard.

And, finally, it should be noted that when Cooper arrives in Deer Meadow, he asks Carl Rodd who lived in the trailer before it (and Chester Desmond) disappeared. He tells him it was someone named Mrs. Chalfont. This is the same person who owned the Palmer house before the current occupant in the Carrie Page dream. So not only are the story beats the same from dream to dream, but names are being recycled as well, because it's all taking place in Laura's brain. Chalfont, Tremond, Richard, and Linda. It will go on and on, time and time again, until Laura is able to truly confront her reality with "perfect courage", and thus transition into the White Lodge and be able to awaken fully and resolve her trauma, instead of sending herself back into another dream to avoid it.

"The Return" is about Laura Palmer returning to the threshold of awakening, guided by Cooper. We see this twice in this season: in Part 17 in the forest, and in Part 18 at the Palmer house. Laura Palmer will continue to return to the threshold of awakening, until she is finally able to conjure perfect courage within herself and pass through the Black Lodge, and confront her reality.

So, this theory explains the concept of dreaming, who the Dreamer is, and how it fits into the plot. When it comes down to it, it really does make a lot of sense, even though it means that everything we’ve seen in the show is a dream. I’ll be honest, I really don’t mind this outcome because it was presented to us in such a crazy and unique way. It was definitely about the journey, not the destination.

Here is the breakdown:

- Laura is the Dreamer in this theory and Judy equates to Reality, which explains why Laura is fighting Judy as a negative force. Laura has created a dreamworld where the reality that her father abuses and rapes her is hidden in the depths of her subconscious. I liked this theory because I definitely got the sense that BOB is a construct of Laura’s imagination while reading The Secret Diary and watching FWWM that helps her cope with the truth. With this in mind, Judy can potentially be considered the White Lodge, or the awakening from Laura’s dream into reality. She has to face the true reality of her existence with pure courage, but is unable to so continues to create dreams for herself to hide in until she can.
- The Infinity loop then represents the cyclical nature of Laura’s dreamworld and how she’s trapped within it until she’s able to confront her reality with true courage in order to come to terms with it and move on.
- The Red Room is a place she ends up when she is coming close to waking up and needs to determine if she’s ready to confront her reality or create another dream to live in.
- The Giant/Fireman and the Jumping Man are opposing forces. The Fireman is trying to help Laura reach the truth and aids Cooper in the process, which Cooper was created by Laura in order to help her reach her courage to exit the dream cycle. The Jumping Man, BOB, etc. are there to help keep her dreaming so she never has to face the brunt of her pain and suffering, even though it’s constantly there behind the scenes of her dreams.
- The Black Lodge, then, is what feeds her dream world and pulls her back into the dream cycle if she knows she’s not ready to face her truth.
- The green circles orbiting the Infinity loop are her different dream worlds she’s constructed to hide in or has created to help house the other entities of her dreams (Mauve Room and Convenience Store are sort of included but still outliers due to the nature of their goals to interfere with the dream cycle). They include Twin Peaks, Las Vegas, Buckhorn, Odessa and, of course, White Sands, the birth place of BOB.
- The last scene with Jeffries, then, is telling Cooper the exact location of Judy, or Laura’s dream of Twin Peaks and the Palmer house, which is where her truth lies. We witness her facing her truth again in the last scene when she realizes where she is and screams.

With the ending of the show on that scene, I’d say it suggests Laura wasn’t ready to wake up, so she created another dream in which to hide from her truth. While I think we won’t see another season, if there is, it might be much more of the same confusion with Laura in another dream until she can face her truth. Then, maybe we would see what her reality looks like, which I wonder is similar to that of the “119” woman in Las Vegas, something I just don’t want to see.