By Cheryl Lee Latter

‘Your Laura disappeared. There’s just me now.’

If you take Cooper’s journey out of the equation, and focus only on Laura, it would be very easy to see the otherworldly as a figment of her imagination.

She tries so hard to be the perfect girl that the town wants that detaching herself from the darker side of her personality helps her to feels less guilty about the charade.

The other Laura she talks about is the Laura who embraces the more hedonistic side of things, who parties, takes drugs, and works at One Eyed Jack’s.

She is volunteering for Meals on Wheels and being ‘good Laura’ when she meets the Tremonds, who lure her away with warnings of danger. Is it a coincidence that the decor in the Tremond painting is so much like that at Jack’s?

‘Sometimes I think there is someone inside me, but another, stranger part of me. Sometimes I see her in the mirror.’ – The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer.

When she sees the ‘other’ Laura in the Tremond painting, is it the Laura who is in the Red Room? Or the Laura who spends her nights in Jacques’ cabin with the red drapes behind her? When the real Laura enters the painting, the Tremonds direct her into a different room where the grandson creates fire. He directs her away from her doppelganger. Is that because she doesn’t yet have the perfect courage to face her shadow self?

Perhaps she doesn’t really know she has that courage herself until she puts on the green ring.

Did Laura’s angel leave, or did Laura let her go? The change in the angel painting reflects an absence of hope, but also Laura letting go of childish things and the safety of home. It is Laura accepting her new fate.

Just as Laura could have created the demon Bob to help her young mind process the reality of her abuse, she could have created the red room and the idea of her doppelgänger as a way of containing the dark side of her life away from the real day to day life of Twin Peaks. 

IF you take Cooper’s journey out of the equation….