‘Twin Peaks’ and the Cycle of Abuse
The article below contains discussion of sexual assault, murder, and other related topics. Reader discretion is advised.
Spoilers for “Twin Peaks” and “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” to follow.
In season two episode three of “Twin Peaks,” Leland Palmer (Ray Wise) quietly reveals the darkest secret of the series. Just weeks after the murder of his daughter Laura (Sheryl Lee), he enters the police station and encounters Sheriff Truman (Michael Ontkean), Deputy Hawk (Michael Horse), and Special Agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) conversing. The three men suddenly stop their conversation as Leland approaches. “I’m sorry…I hope I’m not interrupting,” he says.
“That’s okay, Lee,” Truman assures his friend after a pause. “What’s on your mind?”
Leland raises a police sketch of a long haired, disheveled looking man. It is a drawing of BOB (Frank Silva), the intangible spirit who has tortured and raped Laura Palmer for years . This is the suspect the three lawmen are looking for. But what they do not know is that this evil presence is standing right in front of them. BOB is inhabiting Leland’s body, using him as a host. Not only has Leland — or BOB, depending on who you ask — been taking advantage of Laura, he was also the one who took her life on that cold February night. “This man,” Leland says as he indicates towards the sketch, “I know him.”
“How do you know him, Leland?” Cooper asks.
“When I was a little boy, my grandfather had a summer home up on Pearl Lakes. We used to go there every year,” he answers. Leland met this sexually abusive force when he was just a child, and walked through adulthood possessed under the trauma of his experiences with BOB.
Laura’s abuse is front and center in “Twin Peaks,” and is arguably the entire plot of its prequel film, “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” (1992). But Leland’s experience with BOB is confined to just a handful of vague lines. Many fans and critics forget — or choose to forget — BOB’s molestation of Leland, with in-depth writing on it being available almost exclusively in the dark corners of the online reddit thread, “r/twinpeaks.” The phenomenon is treated in many fan circles as if it was an easter egg that creators David Lynch and Mark Frost intended for only the most eagle-eyed viewers to catch, as opposed to the most vital driving force of the story.
The most overt mention of the abuse Leland suffered occurs just moments before his death. After being arrested for Laura’s murder, Leland is locked in an interrogation room. In a moment where BOB appears to be in control of his body, Leland smashes his head into a door, causing blunt force trauma that would soon prove to be fatal. Now, with Leland suddenly free of BOB, Cooper cradles him in his arms and listens to his last words.
“I was just a little boy. I saw him in my dreams. He said he wanted to play…and he opened me…and I invited him…and he came inside me,” he says, weeping like a child. In a literal sense, Leland is referring to when BOB’s spirit entered his body and began using him as a host. Yet the metaphor is by no means subtle. BOB nonconsensually entered his victim and, as a result, took authority over his body. He confused and scarred Leland, causing him to commit malevolent acts he would otherwise never perform.
Several moments in “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” show Leland in situations where the viewer cannot entirely tell if BOB is in control. This is likely deliberate on Lynch’s part, as BOB is not a switch that is turned on and off inside Leland. BOB has been present in Leland for so long that the two souls are intertwined by now, similar to how untreated trauma can infest itself in a person’s mind over time.
While the pure evil of BOB may be easy to digest for a viewer, understanding Leland’s complacency in BOB’s actions can become quite complex. One may see it as simple and painless to interpret the situation as BOB forcing a good man to commit evil acts. One may feel similarly content thinking that BOB is corrupting this man and turning him evil. But things get a tad uncomfortable when one sees Leland as a layered person who has committed evil actions in response to the trauma he experienced as a child. The duality of Leland as both the survivor and abuser speaks to the fact that he is not a blameless victim, nor a pure monster.
A clue to why so few speak about Leland’s molestation may be present in a scene just after his death. Truman, Cooper, and others stand outside the police station and consider if BOB could truly exist. Truman says about the evil spirit, “I’m having a hard time…believing.”
Cooper asks, “Harry, is it easier to believe a man would rape and murder his own daughter? Any more comforting?”
“No,” he admits.
Similar to how Cooper finds the supernatural explanation for Leland’s rape and murder of Laura to be the more consoling one, many viewers prefer to see BOB as an unreal entity, rather than the disturbing metaphor he represents. Despite “Twin Peaks” being a metaphysical piece of fiction, Leland’s character is eerily realistic.
Around 30% of childhood abuse victims will go on to abuse their own children, whether that mistreatment is physical, emotional, or sexual in nature. Real-world traumatic childhood experiences can lead to anger and confusion in adulthood, just like we see in Leland. The continuation of the cycle of abuse is unfortunately quite common. It is breaking the cycle that is so much harder.
While Laura’s death may seem like a hopeless ending to the story, her sacrifice was not in vain. As he cries in the arms of Cooper, Leland says, “They wanted her. They wanted Laura. But she was strong, she fought them, she wouldn’t let them in.” Laura would not let BOB make her the abuser, so she did everything in her power to stop him. “He wants to be me or he’ll kill me,” she would say. Laura rejected BOB’s evil, and never let him enter her soul. As tragic as her death was, Laura Palmer died knowing that she finally broke the cycle of abuse.