Twin Peaks: The Return may not be about Dualism.
In the original run of Twin Peaks, there was a high emphasis on the number two...at least that's been the theorization up to this point. I mean, the town is even called "Twin Peaks" and it features doppelgängers, etc. So that has to be a clear focus on dualism right?
I've put together a rough list of every occurrence of the number three in the return up to episode nine for the community's consideration and discussion. I'm typing this as a stream of consciousness to an extent, so please excuse me if I forget any minor characters name.
1.) Three people are involved in the New York opening sequence: the guard, the coffee girl, and the employee paid to watch the box.
2.) In the opening New York scene, Camera three needs tended to.
3.) There are three Coopers: Mr. C (the third letter of the alphabet?), Dougie, and Dale Cooper.
4.) In the Great Northern this season, we're only ever shown three characters: Ben, Jerry, and Beverly.
5.) In the opening scene, Jacobi has three shovels delivered to him.
6.) In the apartment scene where they find Ruth's head, there are three characters: the Crazy red-haired lady and two cops.
7.) William Hastings is in a love triangle with Ruth and his wife.
8.) Almost every family in Twin peaks is one of three: Dougie, Sonny Jim, and Janie-E, The Major, Bobby, and his mother, Laura, Leland, and Sarah, Andy, Lucy, and their son, Truman, his wife, and their dead son, etc etc.
9.) The show hinges itself on three plains of existence-- The White Lodge, The Black Lodge, and our reality.
10.) When Cooper escapes the Black Lodge he makes thousands at slot machines which require match-3.
11.) Gordon talks about the ring finger being the spiritual finger which is the third finger on the hand.
12.) On Dougie's car there is a sticker that says "'03" despite the season not taking place during that year.
13.) There are three men killed in Dougie's car explosion.
14.) Hawk finds three diary pages in the door of the bathroom at the police station.
15.) There are three "alarms" that are shown so far in the season: Two in the what I'm presuming is the white lodge (Main room and theater) and one in the space scene where the eyeless woman gets knocked into oblivion.
16.) Three Woodsman come to help Mr. C after he's been shot and extract the Bob essence
17.) The Woodsman is shown to hypnotize three people with his radio broadcast: a waiter, a mechanic, and the young woman.
18.) There are three groups of three detectives actively working on three different aspects of the mystery: Cole, Albert, and TP, the three detective brothers in Vegas, and Hawk, Bobby, and Truman.
19.) Mr. C associates himself with two criminals at a time for two groups of three: Him, Ray, and Daria. Once they disband (to put it nicely) there is now the two people he contracted from "the farm" to kill the warden in S3E9.
Now, there are other occurrences of three that are smaller as well but put there on purpose either to be visually pleasing or to keep with this theme. Based on the prevalence of the number I would assume it's the latter.
20.) Three showgirls (Candy, etc) dressed in pink in the LA scene where the casino manager get's beat up.
21.) There are three seats in The Black Lodge.
22.) There are only three employees of the Double R (that we know of) -- Shelly, Norma, and the one that laughs too much.
23.) There is a scene where Richard Horne, Ray, and a guard are seen together but the guard being there seems to serve little purpose.
24.) In the hit and run scene the mother, son, and Carl Rod are shown in multiple frames as a group.
25.) In the scene outside the morgue TP, Gordon, and Diane are all outside smoking.
I'm sure there are more, but I've listed enough to start the conversation. One that I saved to isolate and that comes from Lynch's character Gordon that I think is particularly important is when he points out that the ring finger is the spiritual finger. The ring finger is the third on the hand. Lynch himself is a very spiritual person and commits much of his time to meditation and the Buddhist way of thought. Buddhism itself is built upon the principle of the "noble truths" which is basically an outline of our reality and why we're supposedly trapped in a cycle of suffering that we ourselves contribute to. We love therefore we grieve, we yearn for things and experience disappointment when we don't get them or want something better, we suffer from addictions that trap us in a cycle that we could choose to break but do not. This ideology is all through twin peaks. Could the reoccurrence of this number have something to do with this? Or could it be a Christian symbol where there are more prevalent instances of three like the holy trinity?
In many religions three is stated to be a "spiritually pure" number because its prime and indivisible. It's also associated with evil in some circles because it's half of 6 which is "the devil's number", hence why so many horror movies use 3:00AM as a "witching hour".
I have more questions then answers about this, so I'm hoping someone else has some ideas.
TLDR : The number three appears in twin peaks as a theme almost thirty times so far and may have a plot significance yet unexplored. Open for discussion
